001e e e [Music] he [Music] [Applause] y item 1 a please join me in the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all okay item 1B approval of agenda items for discussion um Mr Scott just approached me as I was walking in with an issue on the agenda and so Mr before we go down this path Mr Scott do you want to talk about that yeah so um I was reviewing the meeting minutes and there's there's an in correct motion on here which I believe is going to affect tonight's agenda so the Neola when we voted on Neola last month we did vote to pass um one two 3 four five six seven to
002pass eight of the Neola policies and we talked about postponing the rest but we never actually uh made a motion to postpone those or had any action on them so in the meeting minutes where the um where it shows that the motion included passing the eight and postponing the rest that is factually inaccurate so I'm going to make a motion to uh make a modification to the agenda and that would be to remove action item 2B from the agenda and then when we get to the the uh meeting minutes I will make a motion to uh correct those to show the correct motion that involved the passing of eight Neola policies but not the postponement of the remainder and it's my belief that the remainder of those will need to be reintroduced since we did
003not take action on them last month second there's no motion on the table there is no no okay I'm going to move that we uh approve the agenda with the exception of the removal of action item 2B for the February 17th 2025 regular meeting Mr Scott yes I'm sorry just for clarification um you said that there in the minutes it says that policies were approved and the motion also says that we would postpone oh I see it now thank you right so the the the part about postponing it was never in the motion made by Mr Keller or SEC seconded by myself and I have time stamps from the recording if if we want to cue it up um it's recording three at the 31 minute and 25 second Mark is where Mr Keller makes
004his motion okay so there was some discussion at the table about the need to postpone them but it was a pretty scattered discussion and we never actually made a motion to do so okay I will take your word for it certainly I don't think we need to queue up does anyone wish to queue up the recording okay so sorry are we officially discussing this motion then well so then anything that would be on discussion items well the motion's not yes Mr Scott made a motion to approve the agenda with the removal of item 2B for the February 17th 2025 regular meeting where's my support Mr goleski yes I uh second that Mr goleski second it so now discussion yes please okay um I guess one thing I was consider considering I guess just sort of
005a general question regarding action item Toc which was the agenda we kind of have that as a se you know we're going to vote on it talk about it and then there's a secondary discussion 3B so I guess depending on uh the motion from Mr Scott I would actually cons like to consider putting that a agenda in as a discussion 3A as well so we kind of talk about sort of everything all at once as opposed to talking about it as an action and then having a subsequent discussion on the exact same policy later I would I would actually move to amend your motion Mr Scott to also include to C moving to 3A so I think and Greg thank you for bringing that up obviously you and I had a discussion so there's um
006we received a ton of feedback from November and December around people not knowing a lot of the discussion at the table I think Mr Campbell you even spoke about it last meeting about we had no clue what you were truly voting on because there was discussion but then there were so many modifications I don't think that the public it was very hard to follow and if you go back and and watch them a second time it's it's very hard to follow despite being here and present so what I did in this and perhaps this goes into this discussion Item B as a new way of not this exact way but perhaps we identify a way is to say okay let's vote on what we discussed but if there's huge modifications you know other than a
007comma here and and there and or there let's introduce that as a discussion even though we have to PO potentially modify twice so that we can actually have the discussion on those modifications um again I'm open to what that looks like in the future but that's what I did on this agenda so that we could separate the two um and so just for context for the rest of the crew Megan um just a suggestion as well uh since Mr Scott did uh clearly state that there was lots of conversation just not a motion to postpone uh somebody could make a motion to set aside board policy to create action items for those policies that were going to be action item tonight anyway so you could make a motion to set aside board policy to make
008these action item tonight if it gets seconded then you can vote on that and then they become action items and I think I need a refresher on how we've got a motion on the table we have um a motion that's not seconded yet to amend that motion and now there's discussion of bringing forth a third motion and I ref on how how to this is compounding and I'm not exactly sure what the right process so the most recent motion on the table is Mr Keller's motion to modify to amend Mr Scott's motion so we need to deal with Mr Keller's motion first um I I support Mr Keller's motion okay I'm trying to write the motion down excuse me for the pause motion by Mr Keller supported by Mr Scott to move item to remove
009item 2C off of action items and maintain it on discussion items is that correct correct okay on that motion I'm going to take a roll call vote Mr Scott yes Mr goas yes Mrs Coleman no Mr Keller yes Mrs Shaw no Mr Campbell no and I'm a no that motion does not pass the motion currently on the table that we are now dealing with is Mr Scott's original motion not amended any further discussion on the non-amended motion by Mr Scott which was supported by Mr galeski so what needs to take place to keep that on there was discussion but no vote no motion there would have to be a motion to set aside board policy and maintain items that are noted in item 2 B for Action yeah I certainly would not support uh setting
010aside policy in a case like this I I think it's fair to the community that we follow the policies that we pass and there's zero urgency on these items I think the proper thing to do is uh do them correctly by the book make sure the minutes are correct and that that they're not going to be questioned later on and I think taking a step to uh circumvent our own policies in order to pass um new policies which have no immed mediate pressing concerns is a a dangerous precedent to set so I certainly would not support that type of um action from the board can I ask when the appropriate time to make a motion to set a sideboard policy would be now before we vote on this policy I make a motion to set
011aside board poliy to keep items to be on the agenda as presented I second okay you guys I'm going to write this down so apologize if I pause what we're trying to avoid by making things moving things around so much I I agree okay if I'm hearing correctly I have a motion to amend Mr Scott's original motion to maintain item 2B on the agenda as originally presented and set aside board policy am I hearing that correctly yes yes so is there a is there a specific policy that allows us to do that Mr Hughes no that's just standard procedure you're to do that yeah we can there's other policies that we've set aside as well are we in discussion Megan yes go ahead I'm just writing so I didn't want to continue jump too soon
012if you're still working over there so I I know for me personally there are some you know I kind of went through again these policies and I know that some of them again since we'll be talking about I think four of them now in 3A I would prefer again given there's some some edits that I think that didn't get included I would propose we continue up upon on the or down the path of Mr uh Scott and keep those as discussion items just to try to keep it as clean as possible I'm happy they're on there in discussion items to talk about but I know since the last meeting there's work that's been done and we've been looking into that to prepare for tonight like I hear you Mr Scott on that but short of
013your point of the issue with the last meeting at the time Mark you said I think there's been preparation to to move forward with these any additional discussion on the motion presented by Mrs Shaw's supported by Mrs Coleman one other thing I want to add to give some examples so on conflict of interest we met and talked about when I say we Mr Hughes and I we met and talked about 11:30 3110 4110 I think everything that I pointed out on 3110 was incorporated but on 11:30 there there's some material in section B that is still not in there and you know the only time we had the chance to catch that was when this packet was released right because there wasn't no there was no previous opportunity to have a secondary conversation about some
014of the edits that were missing so then also in 4110 in section 4 there's some strikethroughs that are missing and then there's some additions that were missing again this is all the same content that I shared a month ago but it just I think got overlooked when the edits the secondary edits were made so I I do think we want to kind of keep these in the discussion to keep it clean and for me to be able to proceed voting in the affirmative I'm going to want to see those changes made so you just asked to keep it in discussion I don't think anyone's asking to remove from discussion but I thought the point of the motion that was on the table was to keep it as an action item to overlook the bylaw or
015policy to to move it into the discussion no no it's to keep 2B as action items instead of removing exactly so that would be not a discussion and the the one that you're bringing forward is the one that is is not sorry 6 6110 6111 6325 or 0166 it's not any of the so that's 11:30 had some additional changes that I think needed to be made um I have you know I had some questions on 5340 that didn't get Incorporated I think everything that I mentioned for 6111 and 6325 we have already as 3A those would be opportunities to discuss that but again for these other policies we can discuss them as actions but I think it will be harder to track what changes are necessary if we don't do it as a discussion I
016think we're going down the same road that happened in November December January's meetings right about um I think the way to conduct business is to vote on the policies we have in front of us minus maybe a comma grammatical error misspelling um and then anything that you want to revise further should be brought as the discussion item Greg I was under the impression that you Matt had revised done your grammatical errors but then took your additions separately like you you the additions okay so just to be clear the additions are separate per 3A no questions there but some of the other things that were just typographical clerical that that got overlooked in today's packet are still here so we're voting on things that I summarized to the team a month ago but are still and
017those just grammatical changes well I mean it's be to me it's beyond grammatical right it's missing some language that's in the other policies and there was also Direction two times during that conversation from president gach to have Mr Hughes reach out to the niola rep and get some exp explanations on several of those policies and to date I have not received any explanations uh from Mr Hughes or the Neola rep okay I'm say I disagree with that and here's why this is this is bothering me I sat for an hour and a half with Mr Keller went through every one of these policies wrote down every one of the changes he wanted me to make he pointed them out there were three policies he wanted to make significant changes to at least adding sentences and
018whatnot and my recommendation would those be discussion items if they're small grammatical we can take care of that through policy on typographical um minor changes or you can bring that policy back at discussion item next time and say this was a big no no on that one we passed it but we need to change it so I disagree I did exactly what I was asked to do I sat with Mr Keller for an hour and a half and I made sure Renee had all the changes and did you get with Pat from niola and and get the explanations on uh the items that President gach requested at last month's meeting the biggest one that I was asked to check into was the $5,000 of $10,000 um when I met with Mr Keller I asked Rachel
019to come in Rachel was able to clarify it Mr Keller said he was good with that so that's what there were two specific requests from president gach at last month's meeting regarding the neup one was that uh some explanation of why the verbiage is different between the various conflict of interest statements and the second was um why or if we aren't revising the conflict of interest by bylaw and then we got we did get some communication um that the information shared at last month's meeting was incorrect inaccurate as far as nea's uh ability to help us with our bylaws but never got any followup on uh what niola or Pat's recommendation was to handle that bylaw change so I did talk uh Renee talked with Pat he said that the bylaw is fine the way
020it's written for that particular number so don't worry about it he said we we didn't recommend any changes there the other ones he indicated that uh um we could do what we needed to do to make if we felt more comfortable with them being similar so we sat with Mr Keller and made them similar so if I didn't get that information to you I thought I did a whole email after I met with Keller on what transpired in that conversation so if I didn't give you exactly what you're looking for I certainly meant to well I certainly don't see the need to rush these through um and uh and and break our own policies simply to say we got it done especially when there's still questions at hand um so I I as I said
021I certainly could not support passing these this evening in their current form and the way they've gotten to the table I think the fair thing to do for uh the public for our constituents for our students is going to be to uh remove them from the agenda and if someone would like to reintroduce them tonight that's absolutely fine um but but to just pretend that uh that the rules don't exist so that we can continue march on with our agenda when there is absolutely no need no hurry uh I think is irresponsible so I will stand by um my request to remove that from the action item and I certainly will not support any of these policies tonight in their current form all right again motion on the table to maintain item two to amend
022Mr Scott's original motion and to actually maintain item 2B on the agenda um as originally presented any further discussion one last check Mr Scott no Mr goleski no Mrs Coleman yes Mr Keller no Mrs Shaw yes Mr Campbell yes and I'm a yes that motion passes moving forward we are now on item 1B we are um the motion has been amended so Mr Scott's original motion supported by Mr goleski has been amended to maintain item two be on action items hearing any discussion Mr Scott no Mr goleski no Mrs Coleman I'm sorry I have to clarify we're so now we're we're just simply voting on item 1B as it is on the agenda yes because it was amended all right just wanted to make sure then I'm a yes Mr Keller no Mrs Shaw yes
023Mr Campbell yes I'm a yes that motion passes item 1 C consent agenda uh so to modify the minutes do we need to remove them from the consent agenda is that the proper action you just actually have to request to take it separately I'm going to request to remove the to to uh address the minutes separately please okay you want to go ahead and talk about that and then we can um move forward with um the approval of the minutes after you talk about modifications so um on the minutes where it's uh new and revised policies the second motion reads motion by Keller supported by Scott to amend the agenda item and approve policies 7455 312 0.08 533 0.0255 and .09 as presented and then I request that we strike and postpone the approval of
024number 1 13 0 311 0 411 0 611 0 6325 731 0 5340 and 8321 okay to clarify the the changes that you're requesting under new and revised policies in the second paragraph you would like to strike the last portion of the first sentence which indicates postpone the approval and then it lists 11130 3110 4110 6110 so on yes any questions on that striking would this move to two sorry 2f is that what the the new structure would look like for the agenda no I think we you somebody would have to make a motion to modify the agenda further and a modification after it's been passed but once you pull it out of the consent agenda where does it go what do you mean vote on it now no we would vote on the minutes
025with the modifications okay yes thank you so do I have a motion to pass the minutes but as amended with the strikeout under new and revised policies so moved I'm sorry so moved okay moved um move to pass the minutes as amended by Mr Scott do I have support support motion by Mr Scott supported by Mr Keller any discussion hearing none Mr goleski or I'm sorry Mr Scott yes I'm sorry Mr gesi yes Mrs Coleman yes Mr Keller yes Mrs Shaw yes Mr Campbell yes and I'm a yes that motion passes we now have to take payment of invoice and approval of board member expenses um separately so please move forward with those motions I move that the Board of Education upon the recommendation of the Chief Financial Officer approves the financial report as of
026January 31st 2025 and the payment of invoices totaling $2,891 45 and payroll obligations totaling 5,183 n525 support motion by Mrs Shaw supported by Mrs Coleman any discussion on payment of invoices 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 um C3 1c3 sorry I move that the Board of Education upon the recommendation of the Chief Financial Officer approves the board members expense report for reimbursement as presented motion by Mrs Coleman supported by Mrs Shaw any discussion here none Mr Scott yes Mr goleski yes Mrs Coleman yes Mr Keller yes M um Mrs Shaw yes Mr Campbell yes I'm a yes that motion passes all three items have passed on one C for those following along item 1D
027we're going to move into the superintendent report all right thank you uh first up tonight I'm going to change a little bit of order here because Scott Usher's out of here so I told him I'd get him on first uh we have a brief technology update from Scott Scott you're gonna we have the Legacy up here so you're going to have to do what you have to do I've done that before just don't lose her she's not lost hi everybody okay to see you st thank you very much it's good to be seen all right so um this is just a brief technology update let everybody know uh what we did last year uh last summer and kind of where we're at technology work order wise and what we're planning to do uh this coming
028summer okay so first of all I want to tell you a little bit uh about the uh uh our profile the district's profile with regard to technology of course we have nine buildings 329 classrooms labs and instructional spaces uh and we have about 1950 computers we have 75 copers SL printer uh that are stationed throughout the district we have um interactive technology in every single classroom including document cameras interactive flat panels they're commonly referred to as smartboards they're not actually smartboards they're new line interactive flat panels um and we have some clever touch panels and a couple of other other brands as well they all function the same uh and there are about 320 of them districtwide uh we have our classroom sound systems in the K through k through eight buildings sorry uh we
029have um uh microphones that the teachers wear to amplify their voices and then speakers uh somewhere in the classroom here at this building Legacy and at the high school we have um uh we have speakers uh we don't have microphones in the classrooms those teachers when asked about that indicated that they did not need nor want those on the overall basis so we just put speakers in those classrooms um we have 744 phones throughout the district including voicemail system which uh if a voicemail is left it goes to a person's email so they can hear it um from anywhere they are on their uh on their email system we have 840 wireless access points located throughout the district keeping uh our Chromebooks which are all wirelessly connected um able to uh communicate with the network
030um card access uh card access system we have currently 898 badges that have been printed and um and handed out with the intelligence in it that allows access to our buildings for all of our various different employees um that includes some elevator fobs a lot of elevator fobs for the high school for students who are on crutches or in need of using the elevators to get from um U um uh level to level in that building uh we have some um some fobs that or some badges that we have for our elementary school subtitute teachers that they can use when they go out to playground uh to do recess to allow the children back in um so those are part of the 898 we have 293 cameras located throughout the district in all of our
031various different buildings we have digital signage you'll there's digital signage here uh at the front of our building here when you walk into this building and each of the buildings has digital signage um and there are 22 of those throughout the district we have paging systems of course to communicate in our buildings um we have a lot of network devices uh and devices on our Network including HVAC uh our Vape detection those things are all sitting and and and running on our Network that we the technology department have to uh take care of uh we have internet internet connectivity or internet connectiv inter connectivity uh fiber between all of our buildings and then fiber that runs to the leesa that is shared fiber not just but we share that with um with the the county
032as well so we have a partnership through the county which is governed um through the leesa we have a shared 10 gigabit connection of internet connection that we share through the Lea um for all of our buildings to connect you that is shared with all the other districts in the county okay so that one 10 gig connection is shared with all the other districts in the county there's an advantage to that because the main firewall that sits at the lasa campus is large enough and big enough to kind of take care of an umbrella all of us we have also internal firewalls here at the district level um that also help keep us protected um from anybody getting in out from the outside um we average about 700 megabits of bandwidth throughout the day that's
033an average we of course Peak and Spike at times Well above that sometimes in the upwards in the in the range of about three um uh three gigabits so at times we really really have a lot of data that travels through and then it it it shrinks down again and we can average we average about 7 to 800 megabits of bandwidth throughout the day uh that's that's a decent amount and we do share that like I said with all the other districts in the county and if that connection goes down which it has for us in the past we have a backup 10 gig connection that is our own that we use and that 10 gig connection we have switched over to in the past and we have the ability to switch over to that
034um that goes directly to our internet service provider Wayne County Risa all right so we have a backup there in case we need it which again like I've said we've had uh about three years ago I think it was uh we went down we had our our fiber down for a couple of days uh down uh in Brighton there was a big old cut right there o um across the Little Pond and the fiber guys had to use canoes and break the ice and get out there and they were literally up there in these canoes and boats it was just quite the uh quite the scene when they had to fix that um so it's important for us we would have been down for a couple days and that would have been during our weeda
035testing and uh some other things that were going on not good time to have uh have our internet connection go down so that backup connection I've I've lobed to maintain for all these years and I think it's been a very helpful uh thing for for us so I have a quick question Scott all of this is great great stuff um wonderful technology that we have available how do we do with making sure that people are trained and supported to use all this stuff so there's a couple there's two different sites to that right there are the end users that are using it on a daily basis and there's also the technology staff that have to know how to how to make it all work okay so um we on the technology side of things we
036learn ourselves we have a lot of uh a lot of years of experience on our side that enables us to be able to put all these things together we also do have the ability and have at times gone out to some service providers and had them come in to help us with things okay so that's on our side we we do a lot of learning on our own though and we figured a lot of we figure a lot of things out um the on the end user side of things we do we've done a lot of training in the past and our end users every time we in we introduce something new like the interactive flat panels a couple of years ago we did uh quite a bit of training on that for all of
037our staff members and we have probably uh that type of training available um online somewhere where people can access it and reference it or we sure do there's a there's a technology uh help desk page that people can go to and there are some uh there are some videos of there are some videos as well as some white paper step-by-step instruction guides quite a quite a lot of them actually that would help a new teacher for example that comes in uh learn how to use those uh those those various different types of technologies that are in the classroom or um if they're into an office space or or you know secretarial position or something like that yes okay yep so we train on an as-needed basis normally when we put a new technology in does
038that make sense cool all right so who are we I keep talking about we the technology team this is your technology team um and I've got it listed there from the left to the right on your screen with the folks that are um except for the last three guys there um with the folks that are uh in order pretty much of our uh our years of service so myself the technology director then we have Jen Grabowski uh who works in uh Dave's Department uh she's in curriculum but she's also our help desk person and she answers the phone when things go wrong and she's constantly watching our work orders and kind of helping us to make sure that we are on task and and seeing work orders that come in uh Network Administration and computer
039hardware support we've got David wward who's been here for uh a number of years about 15 or so Jason Watkins and Cameron monney who have been here several years we've got Stacy Moes as our data our director of Data Systems Stacey's been with us I think since 2015 2014 something like that she's been here here quite a long time and gone through a number of different roles in the district and now is our director of Data Systems absolutely fantastic uh that she's she's she has the knowledge that she has for both our online testing our illuminate our online testing um software as well as our our um myar software for our student database uh software uh network engineer we do see Dave every once in a while although he's not here as often he is
040a leesa employeer and he is a shared employee we share him with Brighton fville leesa Harland obviously is in that and I think now Howell and Pinkney are starting to pick up some hours with him as well so we do have him he's always available if we call him and we have two systems Engineers that work with us Luke Johnson and Ryan Fox who uh work with leesa as well and we share them as well with Brighton follow Lea and sometimes Howell and sometimes Pinkney when they need them down there so that is your entire technology team well we've had this collaboration with leesa for gosh Mr Hughes I think what 10 12 years I think we've been working with them and had uh had somebody from leesa here at Heartland to help us with
041some of those uh some of that network engineer kind of uh kind of things that we don't have necessarily the skill on staff to deal with um a lot of the guys Jason and Cameron and Dave they have have a lot of those skills but um it's always nice to have that that uh that person that you can go to to bring in to H that has that additional knowledge and quite frankly it's been very advantageous as well to have those folks um uh those leesa folks be at the different districts throughout the county and experience the different things so they could bring ideas to us and help to streamline our processes as well so all in all we have a total of 96 years of experience with those folks supporting technology and education that's
042supporting technology and education that's a lot of years of experience um for that group of folks right there I'm really glad that all of those folks are on this staff I think it makes it allows us to do the kinds of things we need to do support each of our end users whether that be through training or whether that be um through break fix something's not working right or whether that be through hey there's this there's this Tech techology that we need to start implementing let's figure out how to do it 96 years of total experience so that's the list that's kind of the um we call this our our technology uh staff responsibilities flowchart and this gives an idea of the types of things that each of those people do uh in the district
043and so this is kind of like a mini job description it hits the the the main topics for each of us when we're supporting technology one of the biggest things or the biggest thing in the culture of our department is always we do this in what's best interest of the students and the teachers the parents and the community at Heartland and we've always had that belief we've always felt that and that's the direction we've always gone so our technology work order system is in place ways to get Tech help we can uh the best way to do it is to submit a work order electronically teachers or end users can call the help desk to get some help they can email or call a specific person in the technology department and we will answer and
044we will help anybody but we always purport that the best thing and the easiest way for all of us to maintain the highest level eff of efficiency is to make sure that a work orderers put into the system and we'll get to those folks as soon as we possibly can on the right hand right hand side of the graph you'll see that it says technology work orders and you'll see last year's total number of work orders open and closed compared to this this year's total number of work orders open and closed up to today that's up to this morning at about 9:30 when I pulled that data and then you can see the data there the little blue graph States the total number of work orders closed while though yellow is numbers of work orders
045opened in the months from July of 24 through today's date February 25 you can see a couple of those dates or a couple of those months we have uh you know scales a tip one way or the other the one that's mostly interesting to me is September when our teachers come back we have a lot of new employees to Mr goal's comment about training well a lot of those folks need some handholding on that uh when we come back and and we have things that aren't necessarily working perfectly so we go and spend some time with those folks and to your point from earlier not only do do we conduct training globally or or you know in a classroom style fashion we do a lot of training one-on-one while we talk to folks as you
046can see in that September we had more work ords open than we actually were able to close because it's just a real busy month for us okay um last summer in 2024 these are the things that we did we replaced computer hardware at the high school um we installed we also installed Windows 11 on all of the computers at Harland high school we did that for a couple of different reasons not the least of which is um in preparation for this year and kind of as a test pilot or test group um to to install Windows 11 on and start working with it have our teachers and our staff start to work on it because in October of 2025 windows windows will eliminate support of Windows 10 altogether and in order to obtain updates and
047make your software the most secure possible which we like to have it here at Heartland um you have to we have to update to Windows 11 so we did install Windows 11 on all the systems at the uh at the high school last summer as kind of our test group since they were brand new computers it just made sense to us we installed the new card access system last summer we have more secured cards we issued cards to all of those almost 900 staff members uh that you saw from earlier that was a big project over the summer we also replaced our firewall and our content filter um that graphic up there is it says web page web page blocked um that's uh that's a the the the block page that a student or a
048staff member would see if there's a site that you're not supposed to go to um so we did that uh last summer as well that was another really big project which went swimmingly well I have to say uh we added Chromebook carts to the high school out of the 20120 bond and by the way those new computers out of the um from HHS were also purchased out of the Bond um and then annually we have a bunch of things at the bottom there where no matter what year it is we still have to add new staff user student user uh users into Google into active directory so they have access to computers um we have uh we always Implement server and software upgrades throughout the summer as well uh we re-image all of our computers
049districtwide While most of our computers districtwide um or we update them in place in some cases and then we conduct our annual summer recycle project and you can see there's a bunch of computers that are sitting there um representing what that pile looked like for recycle and none of those machines were worth hardly anything nor functional anymore because we use all of our computers until we can't really use them any longer for 2025 our our projects include replacing the computers here at this building the machines here at this building are currently 8 years old 7 years old will be 8 years old um coming up so we need to make sure we get those replaced a 7-year-old computer is definitely a machine in a in a production uh Enterprise environment that that needs to start
050to be looking at getting replaced so we're going to be doing that this summer that's out of the 2020 Bond we're going to replace computers in the HMS collaboration lab um that we haven't done yet but we're going to get that done this summer as well um we're going to upgrade all of our computers in the district to Windows 11 everything that's left out there except for this building is capable of running Windows 11 and we're going to update that or upgrade those so that they are ready to roll when October 20 25 comes around we're going to perform our annual summer Network and server maintenance and uh update our servers and things like that collect the old equipment and do our recycling project we're going to update on all of our district new line
051panels our new line panels that are the interactive flat panels like that one over there that are in all of our classrooms are in need of an update unfortunately uh even though there're only a couple of years old they can't any longer update over the Internet like you know you push Windows update on your computer unfortunately we have to take a thumb drive to every single one of those panels and update them by hand so we're going to do that over the summer so we're not interfering with folks um we're going to do our annual rollover of students in myar Google active directory and we're going to conduct our annual staff ads use and uh ads removes and uh changes that is what we're going to do I have a quick question for you Scott
052yes are we doing anything or do we needed to be doing anything differently to prepare for kind of what's to come with AI and artificial intelligence I think there's good and bad out there and and I think we're starting to see that but is is there anything that your team needs to prepare for that a little bit differently we are we are talking about it we always talk we've been talking about it and through the curriculum Department Mr minsker and I have partic participating in and have participated in um in AI Task Force at the leesa so we're talking about what we're going to need to be able to continue to to do to support our end users to make sure that our equipment is ready for that in tip shop tiptop shape and ready
053to roll we've also had a professional come in and work with some of our staff our high school and middle school I believe uh I think Middle School right correct uh and what we'll get from the teachers as they start experimenting with this is what their needs are as well I also wonder even if there's you know some type of advocacy that has to occur at the state or federal level or whatever level because a lot of this requires a ton of energy a ton of data and so do we expect our energy bills to Skyrocket or is you know the government you know whether that's State local whoever are they going to offer some offset of of grant funding to support that I know you don't have that answer today not but just thinking
054out loud about you know some of the things that are coming down the pipe you're welcome thank you all very much thank you than you have a good rest of your evening thank you sir while you're logging off do you want to give a Shameless plug to the other job that you do for the district which one pick just pick one good answer Mama M as coming up oh yes yes um yeah uh Mama Mia is coming up in in April uh tickets aren't on sale yet but they will be in the next coup on sale and Mom and me will be happening SC I don't know your days are what normally what's that 20 hours long no not that bad not that bad thank you though thank you thank you everybody you all right
055uh next we have Nicole connley principal for our Legacy alternative Ed program as well as our HVAC or HVAC hva Heartland virgal Academy not air conditioned units um but uh Nicole thank you for being here tonight and we like to refer to Legacy as our Legacy High School so when I say alternative I really should say high school all the time well good evening board I'm I'm Nicole Conley as you said I'm the principal of Legacy High School and Heartland Virtual Academy and tonight I'm here to celebrate our school's Endeavors and I'm going to do it by highlighting in a day in the life of presentation to begin students in all three of our high schools and two middle schools study from the Michigan Merit curriculum this means walking through our classes you will see
056students Reading literature writing essays performing experiments and playing sports testing theories and studying algebra and geometry just to name a few of their studies and more often than not you will see the Finesse of Highly dedicated and Innovative Educators as they individualize instruction and find ways to make lessons handson which is a preferred learning style for most of our students you could also see many alternative education students during their school days on various campuses throughout Livingston County as they study in the many career and trade courses that our sharetime programs offer in addition alternative ed students are in college classes as dual enrolled high school students after school you could catch some of those stud students in the plays that we were just talking about is there rehearsing for the fall show or the upcoming
057mam Mia spring musical because our thesbian Captivate our artists Inspire our musicians and singers Mesmerize and our athletes have grit you could easily find a legacy or hbaa student on the fields courts Sidelines and in the pool throughout Heartland Athletics doing their part to bring home championship titles for HCS just like our Esports team did with their legacy member as many of you know both Legacy and HBA are located in this building essentially we are in the heart of Heartland and we love sharing the SSC building with the 17 plus organizations that are here because it provides amazing opportunities to network volunteer and intern but beyond all that it allows us to practice two fundamental principles all HCS believes in connections and Community matter so you will see our leadership as we present at the
058state level in Lancing or accept awards from Senator Ty and you will see our connectedness with the community when we partner with the Fire Department volunteer with the preschool or enjoyed time with the senior center because we are Beyond thankful for our opportunities and our school family we often say we offer big District options with a small school family feel our staff is a synerg IC team of collaborative colleagues that have a shared passion commitment and inventive spirit that leave lasting impacts on student learning and growth they welcome all students no matter where they are on their educational journey and we invite everyone who wishes to wear our blue and gold with pride because above all else we are all Eagles thank you for the opportunity to present tonight um Nicole quick question is there
059any kind of program that perhaps there's been an interest in by students a request for that maybe we not capturing right now and maybe we need a little bit more effort in in developing something like whether it's a technical type of uh career vocational thing or one of those um specifically at Legacy or districtwide well Legacy too specifically Legacy right now um if there's anything that maybe you know some of the students have requested that maybe we don't have in other words is is there enough resources for you that you know we could uh maybe help provide or what have you similar to all buildings we um balance that student offerings and staff with districtwide needs right so where we benefit from is the collaborative partnership that we have with main campus so students that
060go to Legacy or hva can still dip into those resources so openly we don't have for example an art class here however if one of my students is very passionate about that we can enroll in a main campus class and they can take much all of their here and then go to main campus for an elective gotcha so we do that's how we can share with those you know trade programs and elective coures shared resources yeah thank you thank you Nicole for sharing I don't think I've ever cried at a board meeting I was close so thank you I mean the pride that you have in your students and staff just shines through so they're amazing people lucky we have to figure out how to get that piece of Eagle artwork and like display it
061somewhere that has a lot of you know traffic in our district that would be awesome blow it up maybe thanks they can go right here we have a gentleman that tells us all the time exactly well thank you very much thank you thank you all right can I leave us open okay um next uh the Strategic plan I did uh let the board know that um our msab masb uh representative is waiting for me to sign the Strategic plan process there was um I think Mr Scott you had indicated that you were hoping to have a selection of individuals to choose from as a board uh however um that can be done but it would in the fall I think I shared that with you all uh so that delays the the Strategic plan process
062until the fall so right now they have uh the individual that I shared the name with you shared some information with you um they're waiting for me to sign before they assign him to somebody else and I told him by by tomorrow I would know if there's any consternation on the board table uh and so unless there's consternation with me uh going ahead and getting with them and signing up with that uh I'll do that tomorrow uh and and so I just wanted to make sure the board knew what I was doing and uh I think you've already passed a resolution to move forward it's just a matter of you know having a multitude of selections of people to do it or who they have available and just to your point um Mr Hughes and
063just for those listening the motion was passed I believe in August and that General agreement for masb was in that packet I think for the board you know are we comfortable with the individual that he had selected or um I know there was some discussion around individuals that we would rather not necessarily have coming into the district um if if that individual is not one of them um for those of you that work with consulting firms I know some of you on the board do um I've never been able to necessarily handpick my consultant they there's usually an end of deliverables um but it would just be a matter of timing as well I know from a board standpoint trying to get this strategic plan together before 202 the 25 26 school year would be
064optimal um but certainly want to make sure everyone's comfortable with it we don't need to vote on it um but want to make sure everyone is comfortable with that individual so I'm assuming unless I heard tonight whoa make breaks I'm going to go forward and we'll sign the contract and we'll get this started all right Mr Scott I don't I um am intentionally leaving the individual's name no that's fine I mean I just want to make sure he's not on your he was not on the list of people I did not want to be involved with strategic planning um because I don't believe he's masb EMP employee I think he's a contractor the consultant um and uh and given the timeline I I certainly think it's more important to start now than wait and I
065think even if we wait it might be who knows who we're getting so um yeah okay okay thank you U and lastly I just wanted to thank Dave and Kate and the haa uh they've been in uh engaging in conversations around setting the calendar uh for next year and so we do have a calendar that has been negotiated and ratified by the haa uh Dave will you talk about our start date and what that's going to look like and then there'll be more to come after this yep absolutely I can speak for Kate um I appreciate the haa and the conversations that we had the collaborative conversations it's always a good um talk to about what our school is going to look like what's best for students and and their learning um the first day
066of school for uh students will be August 18th uh be a half day for students in k6 and a full day for students in um and it says a little bit SL later start date so it's about by about five days later and we still get out before um before June so it worked out pretty good any questions on the calendar when will the broader the broader calendar will come out uh as soon as uh we get the calendar Rene's got to do some formatting and whatnot and we'll get that out as soon as we can okay and I will put the start date in my news uh my weekly update this week so parents at least know what the start date is okay so ends the superintendent report thank you moving on to item
0671e call to the public this is just a reminder that speakers are asked to express themselves in a civil manner with due respect for the dignity and privacy of others who may be affected by your comments each speaker will be limited to 3 minutes I will wave the yellow folder when you have 30 seconds left um first up we have Larry Parsons good evening everybody I missed last month's meeting so happy New Year belated there beautiful weather out there isn't it so um there's been a lot going on in the in the past um few months and what I want to talk about tonight is um all the Dei stuff that's been going on but first I want to share something with you this is one of my favorite pictures we keep this on my
068wall at home that's my one of my favorite people in the world and um he signed some executive orders and he's actually making our lives easier because um we can stop boys and girl Sports and we can stop racist Dei programs I have a picture a screenshot on my phone from the Great Lakes equity center their website has been shut down I believe you're contracted with them maybe we can make that ridiculous contract go away but I understand that there's some um let's call it animosity there's rumors going around the community so um let's I don't know whether the rumors are true but I understand that there's some board members that just want to reverse a whole bunch of stuff that got done in December and I would caution against that I think that's a
069mistake plenty of time ahead of you to work things out and get this done properly we're all adults we can work together there no scores to settle here it's all about the kids and what's best for the kids and crazy wacky policies are not good for kids got to keep the girls safe in their bathrooms safe in sports it's not fair to put a young lady up against a guy in a skirt in a swimming pool or on a football team on a soccer team you have you have women that are getting broken noses playing soccer with a guy that wears a dress we have to protect our ladies we love them there are daughters there are wives there are mothers sisters you know the drill so I'm ask the school board to pass reasonable
070legislation worry less about vendettas about doing the right thing so I don't have to come to Schoolboard meetings so I can stay at home so I can spend time with my granddaughter maybe my grandsons or maybe just go fishing good evening everybody and thanks for listening next up we have Barbara [Music] tonkovich thank you now that I'm back from Florida for four months it was long um some of the comments that were just made tonight about things coming down the pike the district profile and uh I can't read my writing the important thing is about what is best for the kids as Larry was mentioning how to teach children right from wrong not by man's Wisdom but it's by God's cuz you have to have some type of Truth and it's got to be absolute
071truth and all of us know that we're just thinking what Our Truth is there is truth it's God's truth we should be we are currently concerned with worldly lessons but leaving undone the moral compass of the p personality and character of children that's why I would like to um I didn't put my number down but I probably should give it to you man I would like to know how we can go about getting the Ten Commandments back in all of our schools we had it through the 60s well not through the whole 60s but we did have it in schools that would take care of a lot of the issues going on the racial issues the confusion with gender issues it's not a religious thing it's a God thing there's a big difference religion can
072be Hindu or Muslim or whatever but the thing is we need the truth from What God Says and it's spelled out in his word and I have as offered through the year that I've been coming here to freely teach come in speak to kids who have any questions about what's in the Bible what's it about because that's what's happened to this country and to this community so that's what I want to leave you with thank you John C thank you Barbara yeah I'll get it from you after good evening good evening Bard I uh left a little folder on all the board members desks um and uh I had uh I think a pretty successful three elected terms and Brighton as a trustee but I these are pretty basic things and if you can believe
073it they're masb and I don't always support masb but um it talks about board member responsibilities we flipped the second page it says under Michigan law the board is responsible to educate students provide for safety and Welfare of students which support obviously period 100% expenditure you know School receipts I'm skipping down a little bit and then down in the next paragraph down it says setting the curricula in courses taught in schools often board members haven't been included in this the policy uh programs are brought brought to them and say Hey you approve it or not but they really haven't generated a lot but under under state law we're supposed to be involved in that talking about taxes we're aware of that um talks about negot NE iations that's another issue negotiating with employees the unions
074salaries conditions of employment the board members are often left out of all of that there's typically something that does it for you contracts are brought to you and then hey we're going to approve it or we're not going to prove it well this is under Michigan law now technically that means board members are obligated to be involved in this now management will tell us differently some days and then the page two of the packet is the uh mcl's on this and it's revised school code it's been around a long time it's pretty straightforward um not fun reading really but it's just a couple pages I don't need to review that but that's really encapsulated in what this uh masb page that I just read off of and then the packet three in your little folder
075is something a little bit different I stumbled across this this is elect your employer it's easy as 1 two three this is provided to the union hierarchy um throughout each School District in our state from what I understand this particular one is the mea and it was provided to our district locally and it talks about how um the union goes about electing school board members I think it's really important and it should be read very closely thank you and uh and if you're one of the people that they elect did remember the laws that you have to uphold so thank you for your time tonight Aaron McKenna hello my name is Aon MC I do have one question I'm hoping you guys can answer I noticed on the agenda um for the op in it
076says rescinded across it what does that like what what do you mean rescinded is anyone able to answer it no okay so okay all right so it's being moved to ac9 all right well I wanted to just give as a parent in the school district first off I think that this program will be valuable and I hope that it can continue to move forward and I hope resending doesn't mean the program is going to be rescinded um and that the opin part um I would encourage it to be moved to um opting out versus opting in um parents that don't want to have their children participate in that and are passionate about that are going to reach out and opt out and I think it would just be better for our community and better for
077the students um if it remained as a um you are you have to opt your child out um the only other thing I wanted to bring up for tonight was during uh under policy 6110 for Grant funds there is a discussion point to add in a fifth um component related to promotion of race-based cre sorry I can't talk tonight um out of um on um where we can't use our federal uh funds uh the grants this is currently not a restriction in Title 20 USC 7906 however there is a new provision related to weapons that should be reviewed for adding it and and making it align with law um so if you if you pull up the policy there is no such thing related to race-based curriculum and prohibiting it but there is a very
078long blurb related to weapons that should be looked at um and that's all I have thank you thank you moving on to item 1f committee and building reports Mr Keller I'm going to start with you it's okay I I can start over here with Mr Scot you good yeah I don't have anything Mr goleski um thank you thank you Megan um I had uh the pleasure of speaking with Carol Hayes last week regarding Harland Community Ed and some of the programs that they have going on there and I thought I knew a lot about Community Ed and she proved me wrong um I was really pleased to find out some of the additional things that they do that they're responsible for one of the biggest ones that I did not realize is that we have
079a Heartland Early Learning Center it's at the 51 building and it's it's child care for children ages 6 weeks to four years old um we have a preschool for three and four year olds just during this during the school year latch key for kindergarten summer camp for kindergarten but one thing that really uh blew me away is that it's open year round I always assumed that it was open just during the normal school year and it's not and I think that's a great great offering uh to the community to uh especially for uh mothers that maybe have to work a job or uh uh because a family has obligations with different shifts and such I really think it's a great program that's something that we could uh really help uh help promote a little bit
080it really is and then um thinking about a revenue stream coming in we have uh room rentals that the community ed is in charge of they schedule all the rental rentals and the events uh in the district um lots of good stuff we have long-term rentals including uh Livingston Gem and Mineral Lisa preschool classrooms um all kinds of stuff we have uh Ohana karate Harland chamber Courtesy Driving School so all of this adds to the overall bottom line of the district and they do a good job of maintaining that and handling that um so I want to give them uh a big thumbs up for for doing that and then of course all of the other programs that they offer um the the biggest one that you can really keep your eye out for and
081I know that I've been guilty of this sometimes I get the community life paper and to me it just looks like another paper coming to my house and I'm like ah I'm going to toss it but if you open it up there's a good chance you're gonna find a picture of your kid there's a good chance you're gonna find um some great events that are going on in all the schools um lots of good information and that comes out uh 10 months out of the year and I'll tell you what if you're a small business if you're uh looking to uh advertise that's a great thing to do it's a great paper because it gets out in front of parents so um keep your eye open for that but uh Carol was very eager to
082brag about her staff and the programs that she offers and uh I I left being just blown away by some of the things that they do outside of what you normally think so um with that that's it thank you Mr galeski Mrs Coleman thank you um I I don't have too much specific to report this time but I I have been able to get to uh visit the the team at Creekside um particularly to spend some time with Mrs gun um I was there in January and then again um already in Fe February um I've been around uh since our last board meeting and I've got another meeting set up with Mrs hodam there um obviously with the Dei committee we've had a couple of Zoom meetings I missed the inperson meeting that we had
083um but uh we we did meet a few times for that and the senior center will meet again uh at the beginning of March um and I just wanted to do this kind of a personal shout out but um for the high to the high school counselors and all the other support staff there um thank you for all you do this time of year with not only getting our high school students um scheduled for next year but also the middle school students I've gotten questions from a couple of Middle School parents with their first time doing it thinking they assume that I must know everything because I have four kids that I've helped um schedule but I know virtually nothing so thank you for the patience um and for answering all the questions to uh
084everybody there at the high school they the team does a great job there that's it I'm sorry I have a question did I just hear that there have been Dei meetings committee meetings I think they had trips to yeah we had the we had the team went to Indie and then we met on Zoom with our contact from me didn't we agree that all committee meetings were going to be open there are two representatives for the Great Lakes initiative so Mr goleski and Mrs Coleman right so the great it's not the whole board that attends that right but didn't we pass a resolution that committee meetings were going to be open to the public and I think that these me meetings were the Great Lakes meetings they were the they weren't specific to Dei committee
085me that's that's my bad for calling it The Dei committee it's the committee that met in Indie Mr the good news is that they're no longer functioning so Mr Keller building and committee report okay thanks president gach I didn't have any committee meetings this past month but I was able to see Mr Howton a couple times has always had some uh great conversations with him and I always leave um very much impressed with both Mr Howton and Mr Shan ofir as well as the rest of the staff in the in the office I think you know trying to juggle 900 kids it's quite the feat so um again I'm very impressed with the how they are operating things over in the Middle School uh lots of things that um I don't know how many people
086are on Mr howerton's email list but he has literally hundred things that he lists off about what's going on this day that day so if you know if if you um feel as though you're not aware of what's going on you're not reading your emails because Mr Howton is all over it so thanks again to him for his diligence and keeping uh both board members and community members informed uh couple things just wanted to give some shoutouts to our February students of the month we had Ella Nelson um from 8B the team 8B so eighth graders and then uh Paige wasney from the 7B team there was some uh yearbook contest winners so I just wanted to congratulate them for their great work that's uh key W Cc or sorry key had the front cover
087award and then on the back we had uh CC basnik and then iy penala was the planner cover so again great job to the three of you and appreciate your good work there were some students from both the middle school and the high school there 19 in total that presented some speeches at The Optimist oratorical competition and 11 of those are going to advance to the annual competition coming up here on the end of the month on February the 26th uh we had the counselors from the high school come in and visit all of our eighth graders to kind of walk through some of the choices that they'll be able to make for n9th grade and I know a lot of kids were very excited about that uh the Middle School uh cheer teams last
088Friday they got first place at the middle school matchup so the Heartland blue team uh they had the highest score of their season their highest score excuse me of the season and ended up with they first place finish for the six seven and eight uh grade combined Division and then Heartland gold they actually had the highest score of the entire competition so congratulations to them um and they were in the seventh and eighth grade division we've got the the unified basketball team and the swim and dive teams coming up here shortly starting their Seasons um and then we've got uh some of the eighth graders that will be visiting the Holocaust Memorial center on the 24th and then kind of last but not least related to the middle school there was an a couple of
089new Palm coaches that we had this year and the team made it to the state finals they being new didn't realize some of the protocols in order to secure Transportation so the day before it was kind of a bit of a panic about trying to get a bus to get to the uh Eastern Michigan and I forget the name of the center there but where they were competing so I I just wanted to acknowledge Mr Marino and Mr Hughes for uh some of the work behind the scenes to try to make that happen for the seventh and eighth grade pal team and then last but not least with the with the driver I just want to shout out to Mr Robinson I don't know if he listens to school board meetings I hope for his
090sake probably not but if you're listening Mr Robinson the U the Palm team very much appreciates your willingness to uh take the call last minute on a Sunday and so concludes my report thank you Mr Keller Mrs Shaw unfortunately I have not been able to connect um with the staff at farms because Mr Hughes keeps calling snow days when I'm scheduled to be there so we'll see if we can maybe connect later this month so thank you Mr Campbell Keep Calling snow days though if you have to uh no building report I've been to uh a number of athletic events though and it's great to see our athletes uh compete we have great athletes great teams um great work by them in the athletic department and a big shout out to uh the lies the
091pep band uh at the high school um varsity basketball games is is awesome it's great to hear so it's job well done by them awesome um for me uh my Village I have no committee reports my Village report is on the 7th they had a very successful glow dance um packed the house for that um they have coming up in March their slam night and so they took um back uh several years ago we used to have literacy night at Village where we would have guest readers and a book fair and and all of the things and they've turned it into a bit of um a science and literacy and art um celebration and so we have kids that are presenting their experiments um kids that are presenting their art um a silent auction kind
092of all of the things um and so that will be uh here coming up they have po poorn Friday this Friday um and so I know that the kids every kid in the district looks forward to popcorn Friday um and then they're planning their um grade field trip so each grade is going to a different some do the walking field trip fourth graders obviously do a little bit of a bigger field trip um but everyone will be uh going on a field trip and then they're starting their testing prep and so um starting to get ready get the kids introduced to what that will look like um so that they can be successful in the spring all right moving on to item 2A 2024 25 budget amendments I move that the Board of Education upon
093the recommendation of the Chief Financial Officer approves the 20242 budget amendments as presented support motion by Mrs Coleman supported by Mrs Shaw any discussion on 202 425 budget amendments I just have one quick thing to say and that is a big thank you to our CFO Rachel boys um as as many who watch or follow these meetings know we're constantly talking about La everything's last minute and we're lucky to get things uh one or two business days in advance but uh Miss boy sent this out to the board I think over two weeks ago giving everyone plenty of time to ask questions scheduled meetings uh she was very diligent in answering some questions I had and it made it so much easier to prepare for today's meeting and not try to fit in everything on
094a Friday and a Monday so I just want to say thank you to our CFO for planning ahead and uh it was obviously in the packet as well but to have it two weeks in advance is a huge huge benefit to board members to make sure we can do our due diligence so thank you any further discussion I just want to Echo Mr Scott's sentiment that you know Rachel was able to meet with me for over an hour so we were able to talk about a lot of different topics and questions so for everyone else spare you an extra hour of your time so again Rachel thanks for meeting with me and answering all my questions and I think again you do a very good job of putting together these budgets any additional discussion hearing
095none Mr Scott yes Mr goleski yes Mrs Coleman yes Mr Keller yes Mrs Shaw yes Mr Campbell yes I a yes that motion passes item 2 B revised policies for Neola post postpone well no revised policies Neola is there a motion on the table I move while I was debating whether to read them individually or are we going to read the alternative version I just need a motion to react to I move that the Board of Education upon the recommendation of the superintendent and the assistant superintendent of personnel adopts revised policies 1130 31 1 04110 534 6110 6111 6114 6325 7310 and 8321 as presented support motion by Mrs Shaw supported by Mrs Coleman discussion yeah I'd like to I I noted earlier in the um the agenda approval that there was still a couple
096things that I think just probably got overlooked based on the conversations that I had with the team and then also what I shared with the board this past month um so in my mind I'd like to see either we postpone these or again move these down to the um discussion items so again for example in 11:30 section B there was a reference that it was missing officers or agents and again this is all under the premise that every all three policies read identically I I know there was some conversation about whether or not we just have one policy versus three Standalone for the various sections and that way we avoid any kind of issues if if one reads one way and one reads another um but again with 11:30 there was still one more one
097more requested correction that I had put out there a month ago um 3110 looked like it in orated everything I don't have any issues there uh 4110 though there were three can I go ask you a question back to yes 11:30 it indicates the staff member officer agent or board member on that item sorry which item um item I think it's is it B is well it's large B not a let's see I think you're looking at a I'm looking 3B yeah is that what you're looking at yeah so in in actual subsection B in the middle of the paragraph it says exceptions will be made known to the employees and what's missing that's with in the other policies is officers or agents supervisor so if you add the word officers or agents then it
098would be consistent again with 3110 are you indicating in that request that conflict of interest policies for um that they be made known to all officers and not just their employee supervisor so they would submit them well again it's just making the language the same so if you want to flip ahead to 3110 if you read that exact same section it's adding those words so I I guess I wasn't advocating that we added in but again in the eort in the spirit of being consistent I thought we should include it in there 3B there is maybe it's 4110 then that had it it's in 4110 yes again a reminder a reminder that you have to look at where each one of these groups uh is covered under the policy so profess professionals uh administrators then
099Professionals for 30,000 and then support staff for 4,100 and the question I think Megan head is do you really want them to report to officers and agents or just their supervisors so and the language you can put it there it's not going to hurt it that's a that to me is a grammatical if we added that back in there to make sure that all four of them said the same but it doesn't it's it wasn't there in the first place because administrators are different than professional staff are different than support staff and who they are to respond to that's that was my point a long time ago but just want to point it out again well I I mean I can say that in a neighboring District that has the exact same vendor for and
100the exact same language it's in there so again just trying to be consistent I me that's that's one of my largest issues in general with all of these policies is there seems to be uh zero transparency as far as how these arrive to us uh as as Mr Keller stated other districts get packages from Neola that have various options and selections and generally are reviewed by a a policy committee somehow they appear they come to us in a different format with all of these grammatical errors typos Etc and uh I have not been able to get any sort of explanation of where these come from how they arrive to us um and and why we can't have some some communication with Neola and see the original documents that relate to these so specifically Mr Scott
101I think that that's going to be discussed as part of a discussion item so if we could keep this discussion to these specific policies that would be great well I mean at last month's meeting we were we were uh you instructed to Mr Hughes to find out why 11:30 includes board members why why that's not in the uh the bylaws and so I mean I have so it's in administrative policies so we're taking policies for administrators and wrapping board members into them it makes absolutely no sense to me why we would do this here is the administrative guidelines I'm reading from the policy manual that I just picked up from the cart the administrative guide guidelines are intended to give direction to the staff in carrying out the policies adopted by the board of education
102so why are we adding board members into uh administrative guidelines I I have nobody has been able to answer that question other than Mr Hughes at the beginning of this meeting say I talked to Pat he says it's fine that's I'm sorry I'd like to talk to Pat I I tried to talk to Pat and was told he didn't he wouldn't talk to me so um I'm absolutely not comfortable passing these in those circumstances when we can look and see what other districts get from niola and it doesn't seem to match what we get from niola so I think there's something missing and yes it will be a conversation that we have when we talk about committee structure but again to start passing these um just to hurry up and do it so we can
103move along is is is not responsible in in my um opinion sorry so well to to just kind of continue on my original thought so for 5340 there was the new language says beginning with 20252 sorry this is the third paragraph for everybody and this isn't by the way this is nothing new that I'm bringing to the table just so everyone's clear um beginning with the 2025 2026 school year it says the board shall develop a cardiac response plan now I I Mr Hughes was able to provide that to me but to me it's it wasn't the board that developed the plan it was the district so I think as a board we should discuss if this is worded correctly which is again why I'm advocating that these move from action to discussion again just
104for that specific policy let me can I explain that to you um because as a board member you have to understand what your role is first of all and your role is is to hire a superintendent to run the operations of the school district and when it says the board shall what it's talking about is the board under its Authority shall Grant the superintendent the responsibility to run the district and so what you're reading is your literal interpretation versus the Board these are board policies that the board then says superintendent you need to do these things and so the cardiac response plan has been in place for a few years now as part of our Emergency Operations plan as approved by the Michigan State Police and the operations uh um TRC kanteti who is the
105Kate um County County response yeah County Emergency Response coordinator so what I said to you Greg is that we've already developed this the board shall develop it through the superintendent right direction through the superintendent to make sure it's in place it's in place it's it's in all of our emergency response plans so I would say you don't have to read that literally except read it from the standpoint of what is your role as a board member your role as a board member is to hire the superintendent to get this job done I that's a perfect segue refer to the board and the board's oversight of developing things just like the board develops curriculum the board de develops for X Y or Z but but if again it's about consistency so if you flip to the
106exact to the very next policy if I may real quick on that policy before we go to the next one the item that Mr K needs to finish his discussion first and then unless he's going to hand it over to you I so you know if you look at 6111 the very first sentence the superintendent shall establish document and Main so again in the theme of who's doing what in one case we're saying board one case we're saying superintendent I'm just asking that we're saying the same thing asking for legal Clarity I'm I'm asking the board to approve it as the superintendent does it not that the board does it well what if it's not the superintendent that does it what if the superintendent directs employees a b and c to devise this policy that
107he approves then it wouldn't be the board right we hire the superintendent to delegate these these duties to develop plans through the superintendent okay are you done with your discussion so I can kick it over that I've got you know items for each policy but so if you me to go through these one at a time weekend or my comment was merely to support Mr Keller in the fact that the item we striking out on that policy is the superintendent's responsibility with first aate and CPR and we're re replacing that with uh the Board responsibility for a cardiac response plan so this is the kind of thing that I believe if we saw the original from Neola it probably has multiple options for us to select from on whether we want to put that responsibility
108on the board or the superintendent that's what I've seen in other districts so the fact that we as a board don't get a chance to look at those options make those selections um is concerning to me and the fact that you know we have no choice and what ends up in front of us there's no policy committee no Committee of the whole to review these other than these kind of halfhazard discussions here um and i' I'd just like to add too that when you have a policy where you you could have several people read it and it means different things to different people it's a bad policy and it requires clarification so okay go ahead continue and then I'll Circle back thank you president glac so in 6110 I think some of this we're going
109to talk about when we get to three uh 3A I guess it is so I won't necessarily belor those but um jumping ahead to 6114 because that's not one that's in um 3A there's a policy 6116 time and effort reporting that's not included but again it's referencing that same title to code of Federal Regulation so I just want to confirm is that an oversight from Neola that it wasn't included or if there's a reason why it wasn't Rachel you happen to know that one it's likely not included because there were no changes to the time and effort reporting requirements these policies are addressing individual items within the whole CFR 200 part like 1,700 through, 1800 so that's likely why it's not uh re recommended to make any change to that policy and I have not
110seen anything that in my comings and goings that they've made any amendments to the time and effort reporting so that's likely why there's been no changes recommended to that and that may be the case I guess I would just like to verify it right so we don't overlook it if there's some potential Gap um with 7310 that's also one that's not in 3A and again all this is from January so it's hopefully not new but in the very first paragraph on disposition of the Sur plus property it talks about um doing a review periodically I was proposing that as a board we put some guard rails around how long it you know what does periodically mean is that every 10 years is that every one year is it every six months I I think we
111should Define that better for the team so that they understand what our request is with that so uh let's see the last one I think 8321 was not part of 3A so um again last month asked that we just remove the reference to thrun because we could just say District legal council as opposed to specifically calling out thrun in the event that there was ever any changes and I think that covers all of my previously um sent correspondence to the team I I just have one quick question and this should be a real easy answer when these changes come from Neola do are we getting the raw change and seeing what they're proposing or does this get filtered before it gets to us yep so I'll explain that um as always has been uh Neola
112comes in and says hey here are the legal changes to the policies that need to be taken care of and so what we do is we sit down with niola we go over all the legal changes we then take that document and we compare it to our current policy we align it with that policy we also align it with any contract language any handbook language any other language that the district operates under policies practices and procedures and we then bring that to the board so let's give you an example let's just say um uh discipline let's just throw that one out there there might be a a number of options for how you reasons for removing somebody and we look at those options and we say yes these are these options these are the one
113that we currently have in our policy we we make sure that those ones remain there these ones are in violation of the board or the master agreement with that particular unit we don't even put those in there because the board can't discuss it anyway because it's contractual you can't violate contract so as long as I've been the superintendent of this District the way it's operated is exactly like that and so what you see is what's aligned with how we've been doing business with the changes that are the legal changes that the Neola is asking you to change now not every policy has selections and choices and it's it's every once in a while there might be a policy that has a selection and choice and we just make sure it's aligned before we send it
114forward that's how we do business so the packet of options that you referenced where does that who gets that if there's options it would be in front of us when we're talking to our Neola rep and then we would say we print these off that are aligned with what we currently do so who is us myself Renee Kate Dave Rachel whoever is functioning to review those policies for all these uh um Financial ones Financial ones Rachel reviews and to make sure that they're in line with how we do business but policy review should be is is the responsibility of the board so to have these filtered before we even see them seems um it it seems wrong especially when we're the ones paying niola for these recommendations and then don't get to see nea's recommendations
115in full if you want to change the way we've done it for for as long as I've been here then that's up to the board to change the process it's worked well for this district and that's how we've done it in the past so I'm going to refocus everyone to the motion that's on the table that we should be discussing there is a discussion item coming up in discussion can we please stay on the agenda Mr Keller did you motion for something differently in this motion I heard a lot of discussion I did not it was simply discussion appealing to the team about why I felt that this should be a discussion and not an action item but I'm I'm happy to make a motion to again once again move these to discussion but we
116we've already denied that motion in the you know in the in the onset so if someone else has a different motion I would entertain that I move to postpone uh all of these action items until the March general meeting second hold on guys sorry I'm gonna write with my red so I can Mr Scott just for means of the minutes and so people can can listen can you please repeat what you have just said yeah and I'll clarify I move to postpone action item 2B which includes Neola revised policies 11 130 3110 5340 611 0 6111 6114 6325 7310 and 8321 to the March 2025 general meeting and that's supported by Mr goleski yes any discussion on the motion from Mr Scott to postpone these action items action item 2B to the March 2025 general
117meeting Mr Hughes is there a a hard deadline on these I mean I know we want to be efficient but is there any harm that would be caused to the district by waiting one month it depends if something comes up and the policy is not in line with what it should be what if something comes up it's a conflict of interest I don't know I can't answer that question I think it's pertinent to get these done and then if you want to change it next time through the discussion today then that's your prerogative but I think they should be taken care of I also am just requesting by those members of the board sitting up here today that if you have questions or need clarification from Pat please give me a list and the next
118week so that I can set up some time with him Coler you and I have already chatted every other person I have not talked to hearing no further discussion we are voting on the motion made by Mr Scott to postpone the items to be to the March 2025 general election meeting sorry general meeting um supported by Mr goleski Mr Scott yes uh Mr goleski yes Mrs Coleman no uh Mr Keller yes Mrs Shaw no Mr Campbell no and I'm a no that motion passes does not pass excuse me going back to the original motion presented by Mrs Shaw supported by Mrs Coleman any further discussion I'd like to say that I I think this now the fourth meeting that we've talked about these I've been in the audience before at least the third um good
119grief I I think we're trying to avoid this and I know Mr Keller I appreciate I've talked to you twice uh since the last meeting not recently but um since we're here today and there just continues to be things that come up and I appreciate too we want to see the legal uh guidance on this but there are people in place that we trust to make those good decisions I think it's appropriate to pass ask these um accept these today and then tweak them if we need to moving forward but it just keeps to be kicked down the road and and if we go with specific questions next time the questions were asked today to Mr Mr Hughes I think are acceptable he's saying there's a chain of command basically that's why there's not uh
120people that are reported to each time for each incident and I think everything we're told is acceptable and it's it's always like a brainstorming session where we're rifling through papers trying to keep up and I know we're not trying to do that right now go slowly through as you talk but it's just I think it's appropriate to pass these and then we can decide in each one for discussion items next time what needs to be looked at specific questions and not in the moment like I'm also happy to set up small groups with Pat um as we just did with some other items um but people do need to get me their questions ahead of time because these people need to come prepared to talk about things and not just kind of an open form
121it just helps keep some mindful of time well um with that though I'd like to say that uh um it would be good for us to have the raw information get it unfiltered this is where questions come up and for the life of me for whatever reason in this District the the term of well that's the way we've always done it is used incredibly uh uh much much that I I I I don't get it I don't care how long we've done it if we're having an inefficiency in getting it done let's work on that let's change it I think we can talk about that in item 3B Mr goleski sure so um since we have got no um nothing back from niola or Mr Hughes in regards to the conflict of interest 1130 311
1220 4110 I move to amend uh all three conflict of interest policies to remove the words and board member or or bember or or board member in any location and if you want I can go through and read off where they exist I have a motion to amend you're going to have to repeat the language Mr Scott I can't follow any longer to to amend and uh 11:30 3110 and 4110 to remove the term quote and board member unquote I'm sorry and board members unquote and or the term quote or board member unquote Andor the term or board members unquote essentially removing board members from administrative uh policies and staff policies I have a motion by Mr Scott to amend 1130 311 04110 to remove the term and board members quote and or board members
123quote and or I didn't I can't follow your last one board member in the singular or plural there it it varies from singular or plural depending on the location okay a motion to amend by Mr Scott second supported by Mr goleski so then the existing bylaw would be the only policy that governs board members is that what I'm hearing that would be the my intention okay any discussion um real quick I think what we need to do because this I I agree with Mr Campbell going through all this stuff is really annoying it's time cons in we need a different way in which we can discuss these things and not just bring them to a once a month meeting and starting with getting the actual raw information and then talking about it I don't want
124to get into a problem solving session right now but I think we need to work on a change that makes it easier for all of us to understand not run into all of these um uh configurations of does it match with this does it match with that and and do it a little bit differently I don't think that the way we've been doing it for so long is working real well Mr goleski I think item 3B we can talk about what that solution is that everyone feels comfortable with okay any additional discussion on Mr Scott's Motion in 1130 3110 4110 again this is a motion by Mr Scott supported by Mr goleski to amend the original motion Mr Scott yes Mr goleski yes Mrs Coleman no Mr Keller yes Mrs Shaw no Mr Campbell no
125I'm a no that motion does not pass moving back to the original motion by Mrs Shaw supported by Mr I'm sorry Mrs Coleman Mr Scott can you repeat the uh motion is this to approve the it's the motion as presented on paper so it's the Board of Education upon the recommendation of the superintendent and assistant superintendent as presented no Mr gesi no Mrs Coleman yes Mr Keller no Mrs Shaw yes Mr Campbell yes am a yes that motion passes item 2C policy number 0166 agenda I move that the Board of Education upon the recommendation of the board president adopts policy 0166 as presented report motion by Mrs Coleman supported by Mrs Shaw any discussion policy 0166 agenda as presented so this is the one that was from the previous packet not the one I emailed
126correct correct the one you emailed I believe is uh 3A yeah so I I'll I'm just going to tell the the the group that I you know I'd prefer that we handle all these together so for me my vote is no and I will save my conversation till 3A okay any additional discussion Mr Scott no Mr galeski no Mrs Coleman yes M ker no Mrs Shaw yes Mr Campbell yes I'm a yes that motion passes item 2D policy number 1241 5611 and opt-in policy for racial harassment training programming and surveys I move that the Board of Education upon the recommendation of the superintendent adopts revised policy 1241 non- Reemployment of the superintendent as discussed and presented support motion by um Mrs Shaw supported by Mrs pulman any discussion just have a general question when when
127was this language for 1241 the that we're looking at was was there any previous markups or anything submitted to the board prior to the issuance of the packet because I looked in the previous packet and what's in februaries is different than what was in January so the item in the previous packet in February we're in February and January as we talked about on the phone Mr Keller was highlighted and I think you asked me in that meeting hey it's highlighted what are your edits and which I verbally had said and my edits being us putting ourselves in a bind I'm in agreeance that new contracts you know 3 years that's fine I don't I know there's a lot of discussion on that but I think putting ourselves in a bind to only offer interim contracts
128really isn't the the best leg plan I guess one of the points I was trying to make is that you know there's stuff that's discussion that we've had on the table for over a month and now we're voting on something that we've seen now for for three days so again just trying to understand the the rationale but it was discussed the language was not I mean the policies that I had on the table were discussed as well but these are discussion again we added the word the highlighted words correct at this at the table last month in discussion highlighted yes and I had to indicate they were being striked out right so why are we treating the two differently so with with a policy proposed and read last month and Mr Keller made Ed suggestions
129that is moved to discussion but this one is moved to action item what's the difference the difference is is that this was the sole discussion around that item in last month's meeting whereas in the previous meeting we discussed these it was then taken back there was changes made and so we're trying to separate them so we're not making changes in real time but these changes were already discussed but the language we're voting on is not what we looked at in January yeah this is all the same language I think the only word there that was uh new uh for the discussion I think Greg if I'm not mistaken you submitted you submitted this change uh this whole section somebody submitted that whole change no it was the whole wasn't it was that whole section and
130that was discussed and at the board meeting you guys talked about yes we agree that a new superintendent only have a three-year contract and so that's what this referen is a new superintendent it only gets a three-year contract correct yeah that's what we discussed for this policy but once again the point being we discussed it last month and we're voting on it but for some reason other things that we discussed last month we discussing again I'm again trying to understand the distinction because we discussed two different things I think we discussed originally we thought we discussed a postponement because you had not only grammatical concerns but then brought forward the additions and those additions weren't in those original discussions but it was shared with the board correct and okay so the originals were not in
131the discussion packet to for anyone in the public to know that anything was being changed in regards to that you get what I'm saying you and I had a 30 minute conversation about this the board can certainly choose what they want to do I'm I'm just here to facilitate at this point right now I have a motion on the table by Mrs Shaw supported by Mrs Coleman so how did the how did it read last month it was highlighted language and then I had to ask to clarify so everything that was in there last month is in here and stuck out I think the only word is new and that was part of the discussion any further discussion on the motion on the table hearing none Mr Scott for the fact that uh we have
132a discussion later about policies in general I'm going to say no okay Mr goleski no Mrs Coleman yes Mr Keller no Mrs Shaw yes Mr Campbell yes I'm a yes that motion pass say we have additional motions as part of this action item I move that the Board of Education upon the recommendation of the superintendent adopts revised policy 5611 due process rights as presented motion by Mrs Coleman supported by Mrs Shaw any discussion on 5611 due process rights just a question so what what do we how do we Define ponderance of evidence standard Kate you want to handle that or you want me to I can handle it it's under 56 of evidence is as you do the investigation the reality is there's so much evidence it's overwhelming that we believe even if it's he
133said she said we believe that this to be true and therefore we're taking action but ponderance of evidence is a lower threshold correct so legal aspects has to have proof essentially we get to interview kids and use that and review cameras and body language and everything else to create our preponderance of evidence Mr K would you like me to get a legal definition the next time uh no that's okay uh the other question I had was if we remove the language that's struck through so basically section c that was added or approved in December what what is the parents and students Avenue um how or how are they protected I guess if there's no ex suspension or expulsion because A and B talk about specifically suspension and B is expulsion what if there's a scenario
134that doesn't result in either of those two and if we strike strike through this how how do we cover those options well first of all this was added due to the tracker system and specifically targeted towards the tracker system that we are using to keep track of incidents and so minus the tracker system which we know is um not appropriate in this case we've made the argument to you as a board um and we have had Council make an argument to you as a board that is not appropriate for here that the reality is this this is not necessary this is not something that's going to that's going to hinder any situation at all the fact is preponderance of evidence is I believe it to be true and so it's it's done there if I
135don't suspend you there is no appeal process it is what it is if I haven't changed your placement remember I got to I got to keep that legal terminology in place if I have haven't changed your placement by suspending you or expelling you then there's not an appeal process nor should there be there's not there in in the law there's not an appeal process the school is given the rights to be in local parentis in place of the parent in the school system we're making decisions every day on what's right and what's wrong and how we handle things as a taxpayer and a resident prior to being on this board I stood at that Podium several times and criticize this board for failing to protect the rights of students that got caught up in these
136uh investigations related to the doj stuff um this may not be perfect but I certainly would not resend it without some other protections that we can put in place um so nobody's come to the table with with alternative protections or policies the parents of this community need to know that that this this board and this District takes the rights of their students seriously doesn't put a student in a position that they may jeopardize their ability to get a federal student loan their ability to get a job uh any of those things later on down the road because of how this District handled or mishandled information and certainly giving the parents and the students more rights in that process is a good thing and I support that so I do not support resending this especially without
137some alternative method by which we can offer protection to our students Mr Scott I would be more than happy I think that probably the appropriate Council um would be Mr comto to talk about what acceptable language looks like um we'd obvious it probably be a joint discussion between them and thr I'm happy to schedule that um to understand what language might be acceptable in the future as a followup well I I guess is again my position or my concern is that we're potentially taking this away without you know Mr Scott mentioned as well but that we're not replacing it with anything and there seems to be some I'll say fear that if we don't do this there's going to be something bad happened to The District in terms of legal ramifications and you know at
138the end of the day I think history has shown that if there is an issue that the doj has they are going to come to the district first prior to any sort of punative or uh legal course of action being initiated and you know I just I would hate to see this board make a decision that is based in fear as opposed to something that is you know putting the students and the parents first so I just ask for your careful deliberation before before you potentially resend this policy I I have to agree with that wholeheartedly any additional discussion on 5611 just just one comment um you you mentioned that you wouldn't want us to to put something in place or to take something away based in fear but I think that this this section
139was added to this policy with motivations that were based in fear as well just a fear of something different um and after having the conversation that we had that um Megan was able to set up with our legal councel that um both Jeff and Greg were able to participate in I felt that a lot of those questions regarding this were answered and answered well so that I feel confident that we can remove this because of the information that that Travis was able to provide us via the our contact conted the doj so I I feel comfortable with making this change that I feel the change was made in fear I feel comfortable taking it away so but the message that sends to our constituents is you know trust me and frankly I I don't think
140most of them do given the current situation so um maybe he was able to satisfy you maybe he was able to satisfy me but we don't have anything to put on paper in writing and pass out and that may be in the works but it doesn't exist right now so uh again I I will vote with the parents of this community I will vote with the students of this community to protect them in every turn every corner as much as possible and I'm not just going to tell them trust me I'm going to stand behind policies that protect and support them any additional discussion on 5611 I think that Mr Scott you said that maybe it satisfied you maybe it satisfied Mrs Coleman but we are the parents we were elected here by them to
141to feel good about what we're going to pass or not pass and I agree no one's coming up and saying We'll add this legal jargon so we don't have that I'm not able to do that I can't uh add that but if you're wanting that i' encourage you or Mr Keller too you're talking about that adding something be that person you know and Lead that so after we approve or dis approve this that we're going to vote on here in a moment follow that up with these other policies you know and I know I applaud you because I know you have met with Mr Hughes pre previous weeks on these policies but keep that going and and don't let it die here and just wait for something bad to happen where you think that there's
142going to be a disclosure just continue this and make it a discussion item later to add what you come up with for it that would be great thank you Mr Campbell I guess I'll just speak for myself you know I I heard the answers I don't as a parent you know I was acting as a board member in that particular meeting but I would say as a parent I'm not satisfied so I I can say that with certainty um with respect to the previous policy being created out of fear it was actually not that at all it was kind of along the lines of what you're suggesting Mr Campbell which is to put a policy out there to take leadership on trying to protect everyone so I again I I I think that's kind of
143what we tried to do it was proactive which you know the board has an opportunity to undo it if it wishes but again I I think everything you just asked us to do we did so you know how you vote that's I guess up to you to decide but again I hope you will take into account you know what what I strongly believe is what the parents would want and I think if it was your child you that was in the situation you would be thankful that you voted in favor of keeping this policy in [Music] there I also believe that uh there is a purpose for us to be up here at the board and that is to protect the kids that we represent and to have nothing in place is uh just another
144recipe for disaster and nobody wants to come back to the same policy four five six times revising it in in a year or two because uh we just didn't get it right so with that I have to say that uh I'm against resending it's more than than a purpose it's a ethical responsibility to do what's right for the children and uh students and resending their ability to have an appeal process uh is the absolute opposite of that so I I'm going to vote not with my morals but with my ethical responsibility to the students of this District to put them first and nothing else because that's what matters and if people at this table don't agree with that that's fine but um to to take away their protections without putting something in place otherwise is
145I I believe a ethical violation uh certainly a moral violation I also believe it's probably a violation to give them false hope that there's something that can be changed and so while I'm not opposed to language I think giving them making it seem as if our agreement aligns with the same language that would align with with I don't know I'm just giving it an expulsion hearing it it doesn't and so then we have to say Okay what does and this doesn't accurately reflect that and so then the the motion the policy presented could have been a modification to align that but that's not what was presented to the board what was presented to the board was just to purely resend it and that's not a solution uh to to take it back without offering a
146solution is a disservice any further discussion on 5611 have there been any community members reach out about their concern for not resending this zero um I don't I haven't heard I think we got a lot of I got I would have to go through my email but I think originally there was a lot of email traffic um but in the last 30 days um no and sometimes people lump policies together unintentionally without realizing what the policy actually says I think we've all experienced that any further discussion Mr Scott I vote with the students I vote with the parents of this community I vote no Mr goleski absolutely not no Mrs Coleman yes Mr Keller no Mrs Shaw yes Mr Campbell yes I'm a yes that motion passes Mr Scott if you would like to follow
147up with me I'd be more than happy to work on that Amendment with you I move that the Board of Education upon the recommendation of the superintendent resends new new policy opt in for racial harassment training programming and surveys parentheses Dei as presented support motion by Mrs um Coleman supported by Mrs Shaw sorry my brain must not be firing on all cylinders any discussion just to clarify and I want to clarify this with Mr Hughes the resentment of this opin policy does not resend the opt out policy absolutely not we've made that clear so I have a question on on this particular opt out sorry optt in if we were to resend it could we get administrative Buy in to at least send a letter to every parent sort of an acknowledgement that says you
148have the opportunity to opt out and have them return it they're not opting in or out in that letter it's just it would be a letter acknowledging their receipt that they know that they have that opportunity to opt out like a general letter or in reference to this it would be in reference to this saying dear parents you know here's some training materials that we're going to offer you will have the right to opt out if you choose not to take it please sign this letter that says I've read this letter and that I know my right as a parent to opt out would the team be willing to do that in lie of an opt in um what what do we just clarifying question before I turn to Dave and ask ask him what
149the letter actually says um what do we do about parents that don't return it right what I would point to is my recent uh communication with the parents of our 7 through 12 students on the student survey that we're giving uh presented the survey all of the questions and an OP out form for them to sign and return we get that form they're opted out we have Dave and I have talked and Dave you can jump in Ben and Kate cuz she's part of this as well is we have said to the board whatever program we provide we will get that out to the parents ahead of time if you go to my website you'll notice that I always have a resource page at the end of the superintendent update in my weekly update I'll
150say parents go to this link they can see everything just like at the beginning of the year when we shared with parents what we were sharing on see something say something or see something hear something saying do something uh we will provide that information for our parents with an opt out form for them to sign and fill out and send to their school or their child's teacher if they're the younger children but we will do that we made that commitment UPF front we've talked about it with the team that went to Indianapolis all of the work we're doing will be definitely available for parents to see and opt out of Mr Keller um understanding that there's going to be parents that don't acknowledge it are you more comfortable with two means of communication like email
151and hard copy or what does that look like yeah I guess I'm not sold or you know necessarily in love with either approach but again my whole point is I want to make sure that the parents acknowledge that they know they have that right because I think the concern on whether you are in favor of opt out or opt in I think the concern from everybody is that well the parents are busy they're not going to have a chance to read it so again my biggest thing is making sure that they're aware and if they sign a letter that says they again it's it's not a letter saying you're opting in or opting out it's just a letter of acknowledgement so whether that comes via email or whether it comes back home with the kids
152as a letter from their teacher I think you could do both or one or the other you know I I I defer to the district's discretion on what would be more efficient in terms of facilitating it does the team anticipate this will happen this school year so when you register your students right yeah you got do you do the opt out of you know social media photos and that's all part of student registration right having to read click no I don't you know I mean is it something we could add to student registration when you register your students at the beginning of each school year I think regardless it's probably a good thing to add there um because it would cover much more than just this just hey are the top everyone has to has
153to a parent has to log in or garden has to log in and example topics um I don't want to negate your point but I'm saying in general and I think it's important to understand that you know we don't want to pares put the topics I'm sorry um we don't want you know we think it's uh unfeasible to try to collect 5,500 pieces of paper uh one for each child or 5100 pieces of paper one for each child when the easier way to do it and certainly the messaging that goes out to parents is here it is read through it send the form if you want to opt out now we're collecting the number of people that absolutely have done their homework read through the information and filled out the form to say I don't
154want my child to do this and I think that's the best way to approach it excuse me I'm I'm a little baffled as to why this is even a conversation given the current situation the the district received a letter from the Department of Education last week threatening to cut off federal funds for any Dei in the school so and as Mr Hughes sent out to the board we received $2.2 million in Federal funds so to me it seems like we're trying to double down on Dei in opposition in complete opposition to a directive from the Department of Education to remove this completely from the district I I would say Jeff in response to that you don't even know what we're planning you don't know the the intricacies Glenn uh has been involved Kristen has been
155involved Dave and Kate has been involved um working with some um thought processes for what this would look like in Heartland um and how we teach kids to be respectful of each other and to embrace each other and you saw my email today so um you're right I don't know what we're planning because we have closed door secret committee committee meeting we'll see all this information it's not accessible we're not going back and forth we're going to keep on um so have we had a review from legal as it relates to the letter from the Department of Education last week or any of the executive orders related to Dei we have not had any review for Action um as to changing course I think you're very right Mr Scott that the original um executive orders
156obviously followed executive office and it's kind of trickling down from there and so much like with the title 9 revisions that we just hold still until we get some directive um and might mean remove that might mean that the agreement goes away it could mean 17 different things but I think we're not prepared today to understand what that looks like for our district and so so why is this in front of us we're saying we're saying in spite of executive orders in spite the Department of Education we are going to automatically opt in everybody's kids into Dei training when the Department of Education it says the policy provides parents and Guardians with the ability to decide if they will allow their students to receive Dei CRT and Seal training so what we're doing what we're
157voting on is to remove the parent and guardian's decision to be involved in that decision in spite of directives from the US Department of Education to discontinue this all together and we've received no legal opinion as to whether this complies with the directive from from the US Department of Education which puts $2.2 million of federal funds received by this District in Jeopardy well we all know that this policy was written without any District input legal input and it was passed by the board in in December so this deic CRT andal training that CRT including that was not language that anyone um you know vetted or to say yes that's what's going to happen and that's what's going to come out of our contract with the doj this was not written with any of those before
158it was brought to this board at 4:20 p.m. on the day of a board meeting two hours before the board meeting let's focus on and was voted on a month later let's focus on the motion at hand please everyone motion at hand so a a clarifying question yes you can Chuck um does the current opt out policy still provide parents and Guardians with the ability to decide if they will allow their student to to receive training absolutely thank you any additional discussion just for the record what would be the policy number that they could refer to do we know that there is no policy number because there was no policy number assigned to well to the question of um vice president Coleman what policy is there a number just for the record we're just telling
159you that that's what's going to happen he's referring to the opt out correct procedure there is no policy so my mistake it is actually a procedure or a practice that we that the district utilizes and it does not take away the ability of parents and Guardians to decide what their students can participate in so then for anybody who might be listening where would someone find that I guess is the question I have when we're ready we'll posted on our website and I'll but but you just said it exists already I'm trying to understand the existing I think the process exist the opt out we get it for middle school health okay never mind I'm done one last thing here Farm's Heth as someone who's part of this process of of what we've been told to
160develop I I will say this um from what I've seen and what in the direction that it's going I am getting comfortable however if there is anything at the last minute that's put in that would be anything even remotely resembling CRT language or thoughts or whatever I will preach from the highest Mountaintop and make it my life's work and go door to door to every parents home and just say look what your kid is getting into so with that because let's face it it's going to pass tonight it is um there's going to be three NOS there's going to be four yeses um and as long as we truly hariz it as the term has been used um it's not going to be that bad bad I saw a projected program in place that was
161startlingly lacking in in the kind of stuff that I would expect the doj would want to see which is um a good thing so um I think whatever we actually show the parents that has to be it and if it's not the direction that we've been going in these last couple of months well then we're going to we're going to raise a little uh awareness Mr goleski thank you for your comments I think I want to go back to Mr Keller's point before we move forward with a roll call vote in which how we're communicating this with parents I think we don't have a solution for what we do and parents don't bring it back or send it back in so would you be comfortable or does it make you more comfortable by providing it
162in two form so email and hard copy that way the parents getting it twice yeah I would I would be more whoops welcoming to that idea Dave is that something that you think our teams could do can it be done yes setting a hard copy of that whole presentation to every single kid that's a lot of trees no no no it's just it's not the presentation just the opt out ability it's a letter that says you have the right to opt out from this material you don't have to include the material it's it's an acknowledgement letter that needs to be signed and returned it's fine okay but did you hear what he just said you need to sign and return 5100 pieces of paper is what you just said I don't know that I I
163don't think it's realistic to sign in return but I think the multiple Avenues I have I have faith in our parents that they're going to care about their kidss education or they going to read it figure it out but I don't think our high school kids will that form will make at home to parents the paper form just past experience with my own I I thought we were referring to mailing again I I didn't make a suggestion on what method but I just whatever works for the district how we can get I hear yes so we'll send something I want to say this is the dumbest conversation I've ever heard I I I just can't believe that we're discussing this I with this is an opt out our parents are going to get it they're
164going to read it you're going to get it we already talked about it Glenn I'm hoping I'm hoping what I'm not hearing is that you're not trusting me that I'm going to add stuff at the last second no for the record I I think everything we should do should be opt in not opt out I think the social media should be opt in I think sex we would never get anything done well then you don't do those things we are you you know stuff that you know what our responsib we're going to focus on this agenda item thank you seven of us this moving on Mr goleski do you have one last comment yes I do no uh Mr bsker I am not saying that you would do that or anything like that um and
165I've I I've said this a lot of times my distrust is not in the Professionals in this room my distrust is with the government that tells us what to do and how to do it on a whim that's where my distrust Lo thank you Mr goleski all right moving forward motion by Mrs Coleman supported by Mrs Shaw m Mr Scott no Mr goleski no Mrs Coleman yes Mr Keller no Mrs Shaw yes Mr Campbell yes I'm a yes that motion passes item 2E resolution for civil case Authority I move that the Board of Education upon the recommendation of the superintendent adopts the resolution designating the board president as its representative to attend case proceedings as necessary and recommended by The District's attorney [Music] motion by Mrs sorry Mrs Shaw supported by Mrs Coleman before I
166open it up for discussion I want to be very clear that um I obviously invol indicated to the board after a conversation with M Mr Scott about um attending um a meeting we are not allowed to talk about the details of that meeting there is civil procedures that are protected under federal court so I do want to be very careful in that um I am not comfortable attending a single meeting unless I have the support of the board so I want to make that very clear that there will be no representation from me unless that is supported so um obviously as as president gach said we had some conversation about about that meeting and your attendance at that meeting there was some things about that that were misconstrued possibly and um I think put you
167in a bad position it put the board in a bad position and I certainly do not believe that any one person on this board should be attending any of these legal proceedings on their own um no matter who they are you know my first instinct was with this was to kind of come and say hey well let's let's make it me so everybody will vote no on it right amend it and then I thought about it and I said no I do not want to be there I don't want that responsibility it's not a responsibility it's a liability a giant liability cuz our presence will by its mere action condone whatever is done at that meeting and look like an action of the board you know a wink a nod a cough a sneeze and
168the attorney takes it as a approval or a disapproval of something that's going on and changes the course of action now that's a decision of this board that happens outside of this room I cannot imagine anyone wanting that responsibility furthermore I think um item number two um is overly Broad and uh and dangerous I think that if if we are even going to consider something like this which again I I think is a bad idea um it the language needs to be much more specific uh the other thing and and possibly the most concerning thing was this reviewed by District Council um this was both Mr comto and District Council because uh from our conversation with with uh with with Mr comto he did not want to comment on any Oma issues and so again
169you know me I have always preached about the open meetings act and this Board responsibility to make our decisions at this table with the seven of us and you know we can disagree like we did tonight but we made the decision together and we made it in public and I'm going to walk out of here and I'm going to stick to it and Obey it even though I voted no on most of this stuff but to have somebody in a closed door meeting one person of this board uh conducting business is is dangerous um the I printed it out so we have an option Mr Scott yeah we can have someone or we have no one that's our option I I think a third option that would be possibly to have a a a thre
170person um uh but how is that any different like the from an Oma standpoint um I guess if if I was if I was the one person in the room and somebody accused me of making a decision that's different than being one of three in the room and having two other people who could say no she didn't do that she didn't say that we didn't agree to that again I'm not I'm not she didn't sneeze she didn't wink she didn't notd I'm not in favor of this at all and I'm I'm going to vote no no matter how it goes but I'm saying for those of you who may pass it I think uh a single individual is uh dangerous dangerous territory and I you know if six of you refuse to go I'm not
171going um you know and so it really comes down to to President gach and Vice President Coleman if if they really want to put themselves in a position like this and expose themselves to you know in in frankly personal liability as it relates to the Oma in my opinion and I printed that out somewhere but it's lost in the giant stack of papers but um here it is a public official who violates Oma shall be personally liable in a civil action very well aware for actual exemplary damages Etc liability so um it's just a safe check and balance that's that I I believe that's what he's getting at but any further discussion just to clarify did I if I heard correctly it's either one person or no one so if this didn't pass we couldn't
172send three people or maybe there's an alternating crew if three people wanted to go that is I think they would consider probably two people they want to avoid giving the parents that the board as a whole like as a group is there and so I think that we could probably get support for a a pair of people to go um what is the necessary items what I mean this has been going on for a year and a half there hasn't been any necess anything necessary what what are these necessary I think it's just um any and I have to be careful because I can't talk about specifics but I think it would be any trials pre-trials mediation um that we would be allowed to sit in not participate in and and we can choose not
173to do anything so so where does the requirement the necessity of having a board member there come from I don't think it's a requirement nor a necessarily a necessity I am not attending a single thing unless I have some support of the board I want to be very transparent they can ask me all day long and I will say no I apiz I I wouldn't I wouldn't attend anything with I'm not trying to not do my job I'm not trying to but that's what is understand the danger of one person going alone right I'm happy to bring a buddy believe me if there is no necessity and we all agree that it's a giant liability I don't know why we would want to go down that road often the attorneys do ask for uh a
174board representative to be there to hear what's going on so that if there is something that the attorneys talk about over here the the board member can take it back as a resolution ution to the board as a whole so that in my experience I've had a number of cases since I've been doing this work um and the attorneys will ask for someone to attend and this allows that person to attend if they wish to do they have to no but it allows it and no one can say that they didn't have the authority of the board to sit in there and listen to what was going on so we could assign this to a third party and ask them to report back to the board I don't know that we can introduce a third
175party I would have to ask that question I don't have the answer I mean if it I think we already have one right right we have we have an attorney we have a superintendent I don't you know if there's something going to come to the board it's going to come to the board to have a board member decide if it's going to come to the board or not is a decision and is a violation of the OM I disagree I don't think that it's there's case law on that I don't think that it's a I think it's more of a and I think all of us that have met probably in close session with Council can appreciate that there is sometimes and and no offense to any of our Council or attorneys but sometimes the
176way that our brains work you know that aren't don't spend every day in legal terms you know it it provides I guess a different mindset again I don't care either way I'm just being very transparent with the board I want too I read this as it being a liaison from the board to bring things back like you say from what how you interpret it to report to the board as appropriate correct and there would be no so full transparency say um insurance company and Council come together to say that something should be brought forward to the board that's how it works right have a risk Med set seg that would still be closed session where we would have to debrief and do all of that so it's a it is just another mindset or viewpoint
177but that would still have to occur so I want to be very clear that doesn't negate that process I wonder if it'd be appropriate to pass this and choose to go just way have the option to go with who should go in place president or vice president in the president's absence um and then choose to go if you want to but if the president or vice president did go to Mr Scott's concern will there be any business conducted where you would make actions or decisions based on a y or nay a cough or a sneeze on the behalf of the board or are you simply a liaison no no and I mean I I coughin st up here so hopefully no one's taking any consideration as so what I I'd like to read from the
178OM handbook put together together by uh Danel Nestle in 2022 I think this is the most updated version and it says um to deprive the full public body of the opportunity to consider a matter is an exercise of governmental Authority which effectuates public policy and therefore subject to the OM and the citation is the case of I'm going to butcher the name schmidel dicki verse Clare School Board and in that case they had a committee or a subcommittee um who was evaluating something and made no recommendation to the board and they were held in violation of the OM because that person that that Committee in that case um essentially decided not to make a recommendation to the board and that was considered in itself a violation of the Oma that the board should have had
179the opportunity to decide whether to take action on whatever they were investigating so I mean I see a lot of parallels here that we send someone into this and they may or may not come back to us with something to consider and have the liability of if if there's something they don't report back we can't take action on then that could be an OM violation just as much as something they bring back that could be an action plus they added challenge of again having some action that I I I know for a fact I guarantee you these attorneys uh have don't care about the individual in the room and their their Oma uh violations they they care about getting this case rectified and and the personal liability of that person in the room I think
180is through the roof it's not going to be me any further discussion I I just I'll add I think it's a little premature probably to have somebody go at this point I think whoever it is whether it's you know draw straws or what have you I I think as colleagues I don't want to set any of you up for that kind of personal liability I know we're all concerned about personal liability based on other conversations that have been had in the past so again I don't I would ask that the board not put our president or our vice president in a precarious position and if there was a situation that is quote unquote necessary quote unquote required and it involves you know I I don't think anybody at this table as opposed to you know
181calling a special meeting and being disrupted on a Friday night or Thursday whatever to make an important decision on on whether someone actually has to go into one of these proceedings but in that case hopefully we would have a little more context about what was getting into what were the possible decisions or not decisions to be made and could give that that individual a little more guidance or specific Authority the blanket Authority really scares me I have a I guess a clarifying question um Megan you mentioned that you you weren't necessarily a participant in what went on but you were there to to watch but the way this is worded it says that you would participate in case proceedings as required so it's kind is sitting there okay so it was just to sit so
182that's that's what's intended by what's written here well how what would present be then if sitting is participating I'm sorry I guess I kind of agree with vice president Coleman participating seems to be more than just sitting yeah agree listen so when you say present that sounds like you're sitting to me participating seems like what we're doing now very clear that this like I I won't I can't understood this document was created by our attorneys for this particular resolution they do this all the time they wouldn't have anything in here that was a violation of anything uh sitting in front of you today and what they normally do in the court cases that they handle so again our attorneys briefed on the situation created this resolution to allow someone to be uh to sit in
183and see what's happening and and as I said I I don't think anybody set someone up for for liability I said I started this out with the mere presence can be misconstrued as as a representation a formal representation of the board not to get into specifics as president gayak said but I believe her Presence at this other uh event uh was misconstrued and so that is a real danger all right moving forward with item 2E for the resolution Mr Scott no Mr goleski no Mrs Coleman I got to say no Mr Keller no Mrs sha yes Mr Campbell yes and I'm a no you guys got me freaked out over here two five I I again will reiterate that I think motion does not pass all seven of us are willing to meet with short
184notice a special meeting if needed to do do what's necessary make it very clear we won't have any presence anywhere uh to do sorry with legal proceedings please show up at schools but not legal proceedings so in all uh in in seriousness um to the board uh in full disclosure uh if I'm invited to go to anything I'm going because I'm on the lawsuit and I want to hear what's being talked about what's being thrown out there so the Board needs to know that uh Kate and I as our names attached to this lawsuit while you may not want one of you to be there um the fact is that we will be there to hear what's going on I think expected and again I don't think it's that we don't want any of us
185to be there we want all of us or none of us to be there to be compliant with Michigan law and Our obligation to this I think I would um though I guess I'm asking the board and I don't want to vote on this or anything but if we come to a position where we need some type of representation um I think we just have to understand that it can can't be all of us and so as you guys are thinking of a future State we might you might want to have in your head who might be a pair to to go there and and sit and represent the board but again I'm happy to bring that forward when the time comes um just be prepared to take Swift action because again no one's going
186without any support of the board [Music] item 3A revised policies Mr K do you want to take them one by one yeah we can do this again but I'll try to keep it brief I think um we want to look at 6110 I think Mr Hughes highlighted some of the proposed additions so page one in yellow um I have requested that the board add all conditions of acceptance shall be included in board materials so it's the last sentence of the second paragraph again in yellow on your packet um if you go down one two paragraphs um talks about federal funds and as the usage by the district I think kind of reading the political landscape in Washington I felt that we should include um a number five so there's one through four currently the last
187would be five which talks about and anything that would you know promotee race-based curriculum I feel that that would you know potentially put our district at risk for some of federal funds the 2.2 million that we keep hearing about so yeah again I'm advocating that we consider that can I ask a question about that before you move on of course um and I'm happy to dig into this and but I guess I'm just concerned that race based is Broad because in American history and I have a kid in world studies right now um I think that it's taught but in the context of American History or world studies and so I guess just wanting to clarify are are you requesting that that's being taken out of the curriculum um some of that stuff that's already
188in there that mostly in our social studies classes if I can just maybe answer for Greg here sorry I I don't think it's the uh mention of other races I think it's the fact that um there could be race-based curriculum such as CRT or whatever where you get into uh identity politics and that sort of thing where um kids are being told that one group is good one group is bad that sort of thing I don't think it's you know the mention of any single group um history is history but um I guess that's my concern is is it so broad that it covers that and while we might have an understanding of it does the next yeah and your your point is valid it's it's how clear this is written and when we say
189race based curriculum um maybe adding a little bit to that such as uh race race-based uh this I got to be real careful with this but um um victimhood or um oppression or something to that nature um where you don't have it finding fault or favoring one over the other sorry Mr I just I think you have a valid concern or question Megan I guess you know the word I tried to insert was promotion of which which was I think kind of what Mr goleski is speaking to but I'm you know I'd be happy to entertain some uh additional language to to to help quantify that and whether that's through with working with Mr minsker or somebody you know making yourself if you're wanting to do that um I'm open to suggestions on that I
190wish left but I don't for today so promotion of identity politics or something like that um okay sorry to interrupt I just wanted to the question no good keep in mind Point um the board should keep in mind this this policy is saying that there's there is legal precedence there is law out there legislation out there says you can't use federal funds for acts so because this is not something that is in the law what you would be putting in here or adding to this which is not what is recommended is something something that there's not going to be a policing Force that's going to say oh you use federal funds for this and so therefore we're going to ding you for federal funds for next year so just keep in mind that that's not
191what this is about it's about the law saying you cannot use federal funds for these things okay but as a district right we can just how we want to use it right are you having that written in there though because you think that those in place in the district curriculum are going to bring that into education I'm just again simply reading the tea leaves in in Washington and I think that they're going to say we some of that stuff can't be in there so Mr Campbell I can tell you this um not from our work with the doj in them prescribing that we work with the Great Lakes equity center which was nothing more than a Bastion of CRT that that's the kind of scenario that I think we're talking about not that anyone here
192is going to secretly put it in or anything like that again it's not the mistrust of the Professionals in the room it's the mistrust of those looking over our shoulder it thank you can I give you all a little bit of perspective on this $2.2 million we use it to feed kids and provide math intervention support at the middle school and that's been pretty consistent for the past 10 years so just keep that in mind any other questions on 6110 from anybody all right so 6111 just had the one addition very first sentence of the first paragraph had asked that um we add some language that upon request of the Board of Education we be provided those documents I think my original request was just said provide to Boe upon request I did not add
193proof to the Boe again it was just it I think essentially reads the same way but that wasn't my original request Craig can I can I give you some context here please do the proof of effective internal controls comes from your annual audit that's your proof that the internal control are functioning the way that they're designed so having a sentence to provide proof to the Board of Education upon request that's it's it's it's already there I don't know if you need to have that sentence just for some some context okay anybody else with questions on 6111 so Rachel what you just said is if the board said hey superintendent provide us proof I'd say yeah have to wait until the audit's done and the audit comes out in October so your proof is in October
194of each year that's correct all right thank you so can I ask learning as I go on that then do you Mr Keller plan then to propose this on an action item as written then or what is your feedback from that like what for discussion item what's the intent now moving forward like I get I can see where everything's going with the previous ones you know there's reason to have those as maybe an action item but like that one in particular is that like a done deal or what are your thoughts on that just because I don't know again learn as I'm going do you plan then just to keep that and then it's an action item next time or what are the thoughts well I guess it's really not up to me to decide
195but we have to make a decision as a board how we would want to move ahead so I think for our usual Cadence if there's no suggested changes then it would come forward at the next meeting as written and we would vote on it and if the majority of the board says you know we don't need this language based on feedback from our CFO then that's I think what would happen so it okay my opinion I think is sort of ir relevant in terms of next steps I got you I'm just learning yeah like is that a done deal now or what's the feedback from your side but I get it it's just completely un learning as as we go okay the next one that was 6111 so now we're in 6325 and again hopefully
196none of this is any surprises because it was shared in January um if you go to P six page six of eight thank you Mr Hughes in in the section labeled procurement of recovered materials there's sections a b and c so if you read down in section c I had requested that we add language that stated as long which essentially it was saying to the ex practical that you would try to use refurbish reuse recycled materials and and my concern as a member of the health and safety committee is that we I would want to put in some language that said you know as long as these reused refurbished recycled materials do not present a greater health risk than other Market Alternatives and I think from a practical sense we probably wouldn't do that anyways
197and it we it even says to the greatest extent practical so maybe there's some potential to to capture what I'm after with that language but again you know people change move on so I to me I wanted to try to make an effort to plainly cover what I believe to be the greatest extent practical question who's um just is this assumed that whoever's leading that project makes that decision yeah I would obviously be our project team I mean majority of the time it's Matt obviously right but is is that who's making the decision that's all my question yeah it would be the depending on the project it would be Mr Marino and probably Rachel would be involved Mr Hughes would be involved yeah I think our biggest concern is you know recycled materials do not
198present a greater health risk than other Market Alternatives so we do our research we pick this product and then the board member comes back and says well I read over here that this is this we did the best decision we could make at the time based on board policy but then it's not it's not appropriate based on what the board sees so what happens from there so that's why we thought it was not necessary because the sentence at the beginning says to the greatest extent cable and consistent with the law purchase reasonable equipment so um we're just concerned that who's going to determine whether or not it was the best market alternative if you don't trust that we did the best job we could to get the best market alternative but I think that same
199concern comes into play when you use practicable right so I think a perfect example and Mr Kelly you'll appreciate this no one else on this board probably knows this even occurred but you and I went back and forth with white papers on weight room flooring this was probably two years ago but we both found evidence and so like then who's making that ultimate decision right that that's my concern and I think you had some white papers I had some white papers yeah I mean in that case Megan obviously the board would right because it's a high enough expenditure where we would then ultimately say yay or nay so then if if we decided to use that material then the board is ultimately responsible if it's under the threshold then I guess it doesn't make its
200way to the board and the board will trust is that we did the best job job we could if it was under the threshold just asking any further questions for Mr Killer on this you're good okay so then I think the last one sorry was um bylaw 0166 agenda and I know we just approved a an updated policy on this um but I felt that you know there was some some other items that I thought would be appropriate to add um and again these were provided on January the 27th so hopefully everybody had a chance to review that I know many of you did reach out so I thank you for those who did um I think the couple of the key takeaways from why I put this forth is that I wanted to include
201you know the language around supporting documents not just providing an agenda I think you know we we get that by practice anyway so again it's sort of putting in writing what we already do uh a Nuance that is not currently in the policy today would say that it has to be electronically searchable that's kind of been a pet peeve of mine is when I try to go through these packets you know as a scan document I can't find things quickly and it you know might be 100 Pages you got to look through whereas there's enough you know if you want to type in agenda 2A item you you got to scroll through and find it so I would like the district to to make things more searchable um I added some language in the third
202paragraph that as a board I think we should get you know as part of our monthly superintendent report out that we get I would like to see an actual report out of some of the key metrics right I know we do look at that now it's twice a year with the goals and objectives for for Mr Hughes but I I think I would rather see sort of a month-to-month update on those items and and you know some of these like for example test scores I do realize that we may not get test scores every month but I think this would sort of serve as a a check sheet or a dashboard for Mr Hughes to kind of report back to us on the the important things that you know the district I'm quite confident he's
203probably looking at these already but as a board I think we need to get monthly report outs of those um and I think maybe the last key addition is towards the very bottom is that I felt it was important for the community to make sure that we set um a requirement to post the packet it at least 2 days before the um the actual meeting to give members of the community time to review that and then come call to public or send an email what have you to ask questions so I think that's kind of the the spirit of all of the changes that I am asking for I have a few comments um one if you have the fanciest version of Adobe even scan documents are searchable which is the version that I have
204and even documents that are scanned in a PDF is searchable so um did your workplace provide that for you or did you buy it I realize not everyone has that ability to have that fancy version of Adobe but it is out there like these documents can be searchable you know depending on what what level you can I ask a dumb question if it's sent in that format is it automatically searchable or you have to have that individual license sorry if that's a that question that's a good question I don't know the answer no I believe you'd have to have the license on the receiving end yeah right and then it has to be uh converted scanned and converted and and even in that case like uh like happened this week we got two separate PDFs
205um if you look at the other top districts in and I'll just finish too I wasn't finish my comments but go ahead you can you can finish no go ahead my concern about this third paragraph um the super um the superintendent shall um what if he doesn't have test scores or what if there are no staff concerns I I just want to make sure that we're not setting up our superintendent to violate board policy if he doesn't have anything to report you only have if applicable or available for test scores what if there is nothing to talk about Bond expenditures um I realize this is probably just wish list but if we're going to spell all of these out the wish list could be you know 50 items long about looking at some of the
206things Mr Hughes has brought to the board under his superintendent report I'm not sure using the word shall um you know I think it needs to to be more if these items are applicable if he has an update for us not to say that he's going to hit all of these each meeting Mr Scott sorry you were next to no that's fine I didn't mean to interrupt I apologize uh I I just wanted to piggyback on Mr Keller's uh comments on the electronical electronically searchable agenda I think this is one of my top priorities and Mr Hughes and I have had several conversations about it I believe Mr Hughes is currently in in process of identifying various providers that could help us with that um there are two one of whom we already use who
207uh who assist districts in making their um board documents much more user friendly I feel if you look at our our website they get more and more complicated every month it seems um this month we had two separate PDFs as a board package for some reason uh last month there's three separate recordings uh it just that gets very convoluted and difficult as a board member to go back and review current and past stop so are there are um software packages that most districts are using now to organize their board documents their their meeting minutes agendas uh and um not not just current but past as well and uh and make it much much easier so we don't spend time trying to look through two separate packages uh and convert documents Etc are you referring to
208board docs there's board docks and what's the one we use now for um for our policies is that board dos uh yeah but it's um there's also another version of that and I can't there's yeah there's two providers there's board docs and board something U board book board book so board book is the one most of the top districts in the state have gone to board Doc is I think is our current provider for policy and offers an upgraded version which has um a genda management now I don't know if we're eligible for that because I think we're probably on some sort of Neola or masb sub license but I can bring um some thoughts forward in item 3B as well as we talk about policy um to get the board's feedback on but I'll
209wait for that one I can tell you that Scott Usher has been looking at this and uh it creates a lot of steps to have to go through a lot of Hoops that doesn't always work that you spend a lot of time and frustration trying to do this work um and the real question really becomes I mean if somebody really wants a searchable document there's a process that they can do and that is to have some software to do so but the real question is do these really need to be searchable documents when you're putting them on the website for people to see so I yes so I again that's my two cents but it's a very convoluted process and it's not easy to do I I think uh if you look at at the
210top districts in the state and the top districts in the county all of them do it so I think it should be accomplishable can we wait and talk about that item and item three because I think it flows into that sure any additional discussions or questions for Mr Keller I have one if I may um so if we have that 30,000 foot View and I don't know what we would do but you know enrollment if in a 30-day period enrollment goes up or down is that just for our own knowledge um you know staff concerns is that really our issue until it's brought to the board level um Personnel changes or vacancies people come and go in a 30-day period do we act or is that just for our own information and then we do
211with it as we wish I just don't know what we would do with if if some of these things came like I can see like upcoming Bond expenditures to me that's more of a board thing than enrollment in a 30-day period I think this kind of all in my opinion this plays into the strategic planning that we are getting ready to Embark upon so by having this data available it's you know it tends to be like a leading indicator it doesn't necessarily mean every month are you going to take action on something but I think as a board it tells us how we guide the district again we're not the one you know necessarily doing the dayto day but at the end of the day we're the ones setting the vision you know creating policy
212and so if there are concerns I think you know we need to have a way to know that there are concerns right I don't want to wait for the entire school year to know a trend analysis in any one of these areas I want to know where we're at now it doesn't mean we're going to take action or we're going to Institute some corrective action no it just simply gives us an indicator and a barometer of maybe where we have to beef up resources or um uh do we need to implement anything or does this just simply is this not even reflective of a of a milestone or are we worrying too much and then you know eventually if some of these are working out to where they're not telling us anything we can always
213change them I'm hearing a lot about I guess what my in in pardon my operation brain but I'm hearing a lot of like dashboarding in my head I go to like my operational dashboards of it's much different than obviously the school but I wonder too if we connect this to the Strategic plan so that our dashboard is reflective of the milestones and their strategic plan as well again just thinking out loud but because the Strategic plan in theory are going to likely change our goals for next year because it will be they have they should be lock in step and I just wonder if we create some structure around those items that are then part of that strategic plan in a more operational Savvy format just my two cents and to the super endent evaluation
214too like so we can have some formal benchmarking that's required by the superintendent evaluation right now is kind of you know a little loose I think I pretty I think I do a pretty darn good job getting information can we I I didn't what I'm there's no but but that's being dictated by you and what you want to submit to the board not a request from the board for certain information so I'm not saying what you don't provide information but but what we're saying is maybe it should be uh more a formal request from the board on items that we request in addition to the items that you want to share all right anything else on 3A moving on to 3B um Mr Keller I'm going to let you kick off this discussion and then
215um I'd like to insert some considerations into it all right well thanks president gach I did ask for this uh discussion item to be added to the agenda I appreciate it being included and thank you for also just for public transparency sake having our current policies in front of everyone for uh committee structures and committees um no necess don't necessarily have any language at this time to propose that we add but wanted to have the discussion collectively with the team um about kind of how how do we envision policies sorry committees going forward one of the things that I've sort of learned in checking with other local districts some that for example use niola others that don't but we're the only District that I found in Livingston County that doesn't currently have a policy committee
216um and I think as you know there's some frustration amongst the board on kind of we saw a little bit of that tonight with you know various changes of you know maybe it's hard to follow so I think one of the solutions to some of that may be to formally adopt a committee or sorry I keep saying committee a policy committee that would receive the packet from Neola we'd go through all the options we decide as a board what we want to present for approval and then ultimately that's those are what we're basing our decisions upon um I think so that that was kind of one of my biggest concerns that and I think in addition to the policy Committee just as in opposed to have as opposed to adding one more committee my proposal
217would be to replace the existing Dei committee with a um policy committee because again I I think that you know kind of reading the tea leaves and Washington I don't I don't think we're setting ourselves up to that very well to have one so this would allow us then to maintain the existing amount of committees today and and and replace that with what I think would be very helpful as a board I mean at the end of the day right we're tasked with setting policy setting goals setting the vision and I I think we're we've kind of outsourced that a little bit to the team and I think that's really our job to do so again that's kind of what I wanted to talk about today so I would recommend that we take them kind
218of in Step I think we need to Define what the policy committee is first before we say we're going to replace it because we'll probably need some direction as to what this executive order creates so I don't want to Cloud one to create another cloud and another but my question to the board around this policy committee is we do have options for policy delivery so we use Neola and other districts in the county some of them use thr um I know of a district in the county that just transitioned from Neola to thr um and really enjoyed thun's policies um do you all want collectively as a board again we don't need to to vote but I just want to get a feeling a proposal to understand what that transition would look like from a
219cost perspective outlining it it is a very large overhaul it takes a lot of time it doesn't it doesn't happen overnight it's not like they take your policies and say Here's new ones like there's a lot of work that needs to go into that um that would keep a policy committee busy for a very long period of time but I just need to understand where everyone's heads at before I Mr Hughes goes down a rabbit hole of trying to give us quotes and comparisons for the two what would be the reason to switch um I what's the justification for spending the money and the time and the years so if you guys would like an example um Brighton just did the switch and you actually their old board their new board docs are on the
220website their old policies are still active on a different website um I can send you guys the links because they're still archived on a different website um I have gotten some feedback from the Brighton member and have read some policy that there's a little bit more meat to the bones um as opposed to like 30,000 ft VI it gives a little bit more meat um again I just need some direction from what the board would like to understand what that looks like um if I can just propose an alternate um a neighboring District outside of Livingston County got rid of their committees all together completely and what they did was they uh put together a plan to meet um twice a month and I'm not going there just yet with that but instead of having
221committees when we discuss policies there's a lot of things that come up and I think a committee just isn't the most practical effective way to let everything come out if we could every other month maybe have a uh nothing more than a um an open meeting where we're discussing policies not making decisions but giving our our uh pros and cons um to do that I think would be a better version then to just let a couple of people be in a committee and then they bring that information over and I don't think that's going to solve what we want to get done here so it's essentially a committee of the whole yeah yeah it's it's all of us right you know but I mean but so it's still it's technically still a committee I mean
222or could be viewed that way you could set it up that way so that it's a committee of the whole and that meeting is a committee meeting to discuss policy and then the alternate meeting in the month so I me it's just a different way to look I I think what they've done is just simply not called it a committee just say we're having a policy meeting and then we're having you know our general meeting and that you know but the facilit um you mind sharing the district so we can watch some of them yes I believe it's Finn okay I'm assuming they record their committee yeah are there open one I I believe I can tell you our constituents would probably like that because we've spent a lot of tonight going over some of
223these minute details and it would be nice to have these Med you know still be a to go over policy in open format recorded for everyone to be invited and come see but the the constituents that aren't the policy wonks who want to see the action items and and those things can come to these meetings and not have to sit here for 4 hours um and to be honest the way our agenda goes some of this more important stuff is happening right now and as you can see not many people have have stayed for it so I I I think think something like that in that direction is a good idea I would say in combination with exploring alternatives to Neola uh and and even Beyond thrun because I believe there's several providers out there
224that do a little more thorough personalized job rather than this you know kind of take it or leave it on that respect um anyone who wants me to consider not me but the board so that we can do a cross compar comparison of companies I need you to get me the company name by the end of the week so then that we can do a cross comparison so I know of thr I know of Neola I'm not as familiar with any others so Mr Scott if there's others I just need them by Friday there's a one I know that I don't want so I won't send that one to you but I will look for some that I do like um what do we have any idea what the Neola cost is right now what
225is it about $1,200 update about that yeah I know th I think is a little price here I'm sure um in just hearing through the grap Vine um I have not looked into any other items was that a monthly charge Chuck no when they do updates so when they do twice a year okay twice a year yes what about the you know the website and the maintenance of that is that that's um so I think as part of like if you go and look at Brighton's old and Brighton's new their new is on I want to say board docks as part of a sub license must be under thrr unless they did a whole transition I guess I was asking sorry in in respective cost I don't know I'm sure we probably pay something either
226monthly or yearly to have them host all of our existing policies or or is it just you're saying it's that's free as long as we pay the no I think we pay them a retainer kind of like a retainer fee like we would through but I don't know that it's a lot yeah I don't think it's very much if maybe $1,000 doll a year maybe I'd have to verify that though but I'm happy to get the cross comparison to the board um just as we're discussing this because it probably all Drives together and these if we do to go with a kind of Committee of the whole type we we can really start you know combining all of this together and just designating time at those if we're having six meetings a year that are
227Committee of the whole we can maybe Focus some on policy and some on building a sight some on finance right obviously policy will take the the majority there there may very well be the instance of where we have one policy that is absolutely critical to look at and review immediately but if we just have that policy and we you know we just talk about that one item during a general board meeting I don't think that's going to be impossible to deal with but it would be nice to hear everyone's input on policies before we come to the board and before we vote on them to get an idea of people's ideas their thoughts um there may be things that I've missed that maybe um Kristen thought of and I want to know what the difference
228is and all that I just think it would be a better communication tool for us to handle policies in that regard I do we come here we roll our eyes we're ticked that people are asking questions it no one wants that no one wants to deal with that no one wants to be here till 11:00 and I think we need to find a better way to to to make it work any [Music] questions again my only ask is if you want to consider an alternate just get it to me by Friday so that we can do a cross comparison so kind of looking ahead to next month what does this particular discussion item look like from an action item next month I think that's kind of where there's a little bit of ambiguity still for
229me um I mean I appreciate everyone's opinions but I I guess I don't know if there was any and I know we can't decide you know vote on anything today but I'm just trying to understand if there's any sort of it's going to end up being I mean there needs to be a modification of policy um I'm just thinking out loud uh at this point I don't know if Fenton has a policy that dictates their open committee I'm not sure um and then there would have to be a motion to support that so I want to be very clear though just so the board knows so that there's no surprises Greg you probably should just indicate if you're planning to bring that motion forward as an action item well yeah sorry that's what I was
230I guess trying to get at because I think like with our current structure right this one I think that's decided by the President right so I think it's it's not difficult to understand how we would assign people but when we make changes to existing committees or add new ones I think when we added the health and safety committee my understanding was We There was a motion and the the board ultimately voted so I I think for March there would be a potential motion to add policy committee so perhaps you might want to take it in two motions though you might want to take it for the addition of the policy meeting and the addition um maybe Mr goleski brings forward then the secondary motion um about open policy meetings every two months and would that
231replace our normal meeting you're saying or that's an addition to that would be an addition to so um the rest of the board just so were clear you would bring forward your motion to support a policy committee Mr goleski you would then bring forward your motion to um around the open Committee just so the Public's clear everyone on the conversation is clear is everyone comfortable with that so that will already be then in the packet as um if you to something action item to yes would you like to indicate what language you'd like that'd be real helpful what langu oh motion language yeah why don't I send something out so in summary though your motion will be relative to policy committee Mr goleski your motion be relative to open policy committee or open committee that
232yeah that's it sorry probably just be pretty straightforward I mve to create a policy committee you know something like that so yeah but I can send that to you I I I moved to create a uh policy meeting every other month okay just so that everyone is aware yeah awesome item 3C Administration contract rollovers Mr Hughes I believe this is your item yep uh it's that time of year um that we do roll contracts um and and remember that this starts July 1st so the new contract contract would be a three-year contract July 1st through 28 again it's to U make sure that our administrators are shown that they're valued and um all midor evaluations are done I've shared that the board can come in and view those anytime in my office just make an
233appointment with me um again this is nothing new um Mr uh Campbell it might be new to you um uh the administrators listed below on the bottom portion have a new uh Master agreement so they unionized in the last year they have an agreement however they still have to have individual contracts that go with that uh just like the teachers have individual contracts and then all the other administrators that aren't covered under that agreement are in board policy 1410 uh and then we would offer them uh an extension of their contract starting you know um July 1st of 25 so this just uh again shows our staff that we appreciate them and at this point time I can assure you that I have no concerns with anybody that is on this list for might ask
234of the I have a lot of ask today apparently I'm sorry um but my ask with this is if you have concerns want to review them please schedule a meeting with Mr Hughes um to review them not necessarily concerned but just a question so there was I guess some correspondence about a possibility of adding um like a social media position would that position where would that fall in either of these two contracts uh it wouldn't that position would fall under 14101 when we're ready to present it to the board so um 1410 is the top group the new administrative uh Union is the bottom group but they're also covered uh they they used to be covered under 1410 and then there's 14101 which is director and Department chairs and other people so 14101 is where
235we'll put that when we bring It Forward when we're ready thank you item 3D auditing services for discussion that would be Rachel yep so uh we recently issued an RFP for audit services our fee has grown pretty significantly over the last uh two years I want to say it's been about a $20,000 increase over a two-year period so um personally not really feeling like we're getting $20,000 worth more of service for that fee so it was time to it was time to look um we received a number of proposals uh we re reviewed uh those proposals in depth and met with a handful of the firms um and at this point we're recommending that we move um forward uh starting with our June 30th 2025 audit um with mayor ceris um this wasn't an easy
236decision I'll say uh we have have been with plant Moran since the early '90s um I am a plant Moran auditor myself so this is a little personal for me too so um I I didn't take this uh decision lightly but um you know considering I I I do strongly feel that plantar is pretty much the gold standard when it comes to governmental auditing um but at the same time I do feel like um mayor is going to be perfectly capable of handling uh what we need them to do so um that's the recommendation uh quick question did did you come up with these three just based upon your Professional Knowledge or were some of these recommended by thr or or what what no we did a public RFP so it was it was posted
237um anyone could bid that wanted to um I did solicit bids from a handful of firms just that I had some professional um experience with and recommendation from you know some of my colleagues um but it was a public RFP and anyone could could bid so does that mean plant Maran had the chance to rebid it yes and they did rebid it um we actually got two bids late um and there's was one of them that was late um but considering that's who we currently had that and I knew it wasn't going to be a consideration they Reid it pretty much at the same rate Yes actually well higher you know higher so um yeah it's so they're right now they're at about 70 you said 75 is that no they're they were at about
23863,000 for 2025 and this will be 47 so well I I love the fact that that we're proactive and and getting these bids um because you saw the need so thank you for that um you mentioned plant Moran is a gold standard uh are there any negative consequen quences you can think of when it comes to bonds or anything like that that having a different auditor is going to AFF no because the the rules are the same right the the rules are the rules um the only negative I would see is just is just really getting somebody on board you know getting them to get to know us and and you know just the transition is never easy with with anything that you're doing but um but I I I I don't see there being
239a negative um you know plant Maran has the the the knowledge and they have the depth and they they have the expertise um but I feel confident that mayor has that same knowledge and depth and expertise there might just be fewer of them yeah um but still still there they carry the weight people are going to look at that audit and be confident just as they would with a plant Maran audit yes I believe so and I know you mentioned some of the um intricacies of of our unique arrangements with leesa you think there's a chance that the Auditors assigned to the district could have other leesa districts they will be the same they will be the the the uh the the they don't call them the partners at meor the the principal is is
240the person in charge is the same uh will be the same for our district as is for leesa as is for Brighton and fville great are they this is a local firm then oh they're based out of Lancing laning okay so we're not looking to massive travel costs to send in Auditors from you know Albuquerque and you know yeah okay yep yep they're pretty local all right thank you if anyone wants any additional specifics or wants to dig with this um I'm going to send them your Rachel item 4A future meetings March 17th if you guys don't wear green we're gonna have some issues um March 17th right here at 6:30 maybe we'll have some leprechaun show up um item 4B does anyone have any informational items they would like to share as part of
241this board meeting hearing none we are adjourned oh