001next item please before we move on can I add two things sure um number one that we have many of our student athletes who um from the Dearborn student athletes but who are swimming through drd that have qualified for States for next weekend so I wanted to say congratulations to them and my daughter is one of them um and then the other thing is I just wanted to um I'm wearing this pink shirt today um in support of one of our staff members um Miss sisti is an ol Smith educator um a coach and a the previous athletic director um right now she is going through a fight um for her health and they are doing a fundraiser for t-shirts um so if you're interested in purchasing a T-shirt be greatly appreciated um she's fighting
002for her Fight Like A Champion that she is and she has olive oil Smith and our district cheering for her so um just something to keep in your thoughts and prayers for her so thank you thank you next approval of minutes approval of minutes of the following Dearborn Board of Education meeting finance committee meeting February 13 2023 board report 22 hyphen 90 executive session closed negotiations February 13 2023 board reports 22 hyphen 91. regular p12 meeting February 13 2023 board report 22 hyphen 92 and study session February 28 2023 board reports 22 hyphen 93. making the recommended sorry make any necessary Corrections and move approval of these minutes so moved motion by trustee Barry supported by trustee dambrosio any corrections that have not already been submitted seeing none can I attach a unanimous role all
003right so ordered next item next next special reports accreditation findings and Dr Sue Stevens good evening everyone this year we were due for renewing our accreditation by cognia formerly known as advanced ad we've been going through the process since August of 2022 and today is the report about our findings and we will receive the report a few weeks after that I'm gonna give it to Dr Steven who led our accreditation for this for this round and she will go over the report thank you to cognia because really their findings and Powerful practices that they identify for us and opportunities for improvements are used as valid drivers for our next steps I'm gonna give it to Dr Stephen thank you all once again you are a leader in the state um I'm not sure if everyone
004is aware of that I want to first of all make sure everyone can hear me [Music] um you are first in Michigan once again um just to let you know you were the first to go through this new process and new protocol I also want to thank my team all four of us who are Michigan regional accreditation evaluators had the pleasure of reviewing all of your evidence and all of your practices and it's our recommendations that you're going to be hearing about this evening um the other thing that I wanted to do is to thank you bought me the team all of you for your commitment to continuous Improvement and to your dedication and your thorough preparation I'll tell you that pad live the uh botany shared with us is a model that I'm planning
005to share with other schools that I work with around the world um the way it was organized made it so easy to find everything that we needed so without further Ado I wanted to let you know that you are part of over 35 000 schools in eight uh 80 countries around the world using the same 30 standards the same protocol the same process um and you are to be commended for that because of the work that you're doing to improve um and sustain learning for your students and for stimulating not only Effectiveness but efficiency throughout your organization what we did was examine all of your evidence and the analyzes that you've provided and to gather that first-hand information in order for us to provide the feedback to your institution that helps to focus and and
006guide your improvement during I wanted to make sure you know that there are several areas of noteworthy practice that we noted and the first one that we want to highlight is directly tied to your mission and vision that exceptional learning environments Empower every student to succeed in life both today and in the future and that you put students first with your vision of inspire educate and celebrate learner well-being is at the center of every decision that's made in this District that came through loud and clear and let me tell you some of the evidence that we noted first of all that strategic plan that you have for Dei for diversity equity and inclusion where 60 of your students are English as their second language Learners and the fact that you have 30 percent of your
007staff who are already ESL certified and you've built into that process a tuition reimbursement so that other staff members cannot obtain paying that ESL Prudential the other point that I wanted to make sure you're aware of that let us know that learner well-being is at the center of every decision you make is your mtss structure your multi-tiered system of support that includes both the academic and the effective which is so important post covet and just to point out some of those things that you currently have in place mindfulness hassles cognitive behavior therapy therapy just to name a few and that leader in need programmer you have students who are engaged in goal setting that's another phenomenal piece that you have in place and the way you use stakeholder feedback as part of your long-range planning
008these are all indications that learner well-being is is is the center of what you do those PLC structures for staff to engage in conversations around classroom practice your Universal preschool your summer learning loss program that is co-proactive to make sure that you're not just intervening and providing remediation but providing acceleration for your students and the way that you're now currently aligned with the state's my tip plan all of these tell us as regional accreditation evaluators learner well-being is at the center of every decision you make the second thing that I wanted to bring to your attention that's also an area of excellence and adult-worthy practice you've carefully crafted several leadership structures and processes that drive continuous Improvement in the district and you don't see this everywhere the first one of course is your CNA your
009comprehensive needs assessment for your District leadership teams engage in data analysis and synthesis and that is used to guide the development of your school Improvement goals your activities providing a data story for every one of the buildings in your District another structure that you have in place is that theater system where you have three traps for assuring consistency and Clarity of focus and the Equitable allocation of resources you should be very proud of them not every place has that the other thing is your grow your own philosophy that's extremely impressive your aspiring administrator program and the way you park though with so many businesses and universities providing interns making sure that your students have employable skills when they leave you and growing your own future teachers especially in this very highly competitive environment that we
010live in with that early college program that you have another one is that Dearborn activity implementation tool that you have in place assuring River rigor in this curriculum and your technology plan is also impressive the way it's connected to your strategic plan it's connected to curriculum alignment it's assuring technology integration collaboration and rigor and personal relation and choice your last review recommended an aligned curriculum and what we were so impressed with is now you have processes in place for assuring alignment with nationally and Technology standards making sure it's integrated into classroom practice you also have an outstanding learning environment sip walk through tool of which you should be very proud and it's geared toward technology integration as well the next thing that I wanted to commend you on another noteworthy area of practice is that
011your leadership ensures that Learners pursue individual goals acquiring academic and non-academic skills that are crucial for their educational Futures and careers what I what one of the things that we noted is that in your last review it recommended an expansion of the opportunities for students and now you have a plethora of opportunities for students preparing it for their Futures you have that Universal preschool you have several Early College Programs you have a multitude of Partnerships with Wayne State University Henry Ford Community College the University of Dearborn if you have a Partnerships with businesses that all of these things pardon all of these things train your future teachers and help you help them to acquire college credits and employability skills so that your students can be hired right out of school the other thing that we
012noted is the way you track your graduates with those 15 million dollar scholarships that your class of 22 2022 received and the way you track them six months later to see how they're doing all of these things suggest and that suggests they are evidence uh that you are making sure your individual your students are acquiring the skills that they need we also noted that 75 of your English language students did not make adequate growth but what you put into place were all kinds of acceleration and interventions to help close that that Gap you have an emphasis on acceleration instead of remediation making sure that you have tier one more than just intervention the other thing is then I've seen this in a lot of stem schools because I I work in other states as well
013in other countries you have those my learning plans that I see a lot in others in other places but the way you've Incorporated them throughout your district is really impressive you've Incorporated steam into your curriculum in response to that earlier review and that step learning environment walkthrough tool where you have students engage in goals that are there as well now we are still making some suggestions that we want to have you take a look at um and some of these actually are were part of your plan to begin we're suggesting that you align your stakeholder perceptions with the Criterion analysis that's already part of your learner observation tool we noted that it's undergoing some revision based on stakeholder feedback from your teachers um you currently have annual surveys that your staff students and your communities
014indicating high levels of satisfaction that you have respectful welcoming warm and safe environments but the questions that we were asking is What do teachers say is happening in classroom what do students say happen in classrooms and what do parents say happening and how do these perceptions compare and are they in alignment um do teachers and students folks say yes we're engaged in project-based learning yes we're engaged in collaboration those are suggest some questions you might want to consider we noted that student engagement is under your learning environment walkthrough tool and it's very learner-centric and The Spits fight nicely with that another suggestion and this is new in the standards this year but it fits also with the collaboration and collegiality and standards five and six is what's called action research and you are poised to
015do that because of your sophistication you currently have PLC structures in place and are and are working to strengthen those we noticed uh you have that CNA structure in place and we're suggesting that as they meet and work together to discuss classroom practices strengths and challenges maybe add some data points to determine through their collaboration and their conversations if it's having an impact on student learning and engagement kind of setting where we are with a benchmark as far as student engagement and student achievement and setting some intended outcomes um it's not something that we prescribe something that you as a staff would make that determination what it might look like another area is that we're suggesting that you assure the measurement of student engagement during your classroom observation one of the things and I've been
016doing this for a long time I've been working with cognia probably for over 20 years um and the standards this year I think there's so much more sophisticated as you look at the ones through the key characteristic of Engagement standard 16 through 23 you'll notice that they have words like diversity and equity and lifelong skills of creativity curiosity risk taking and collaboration student voice and responsibility uh self-confidence and love of learning and digital resource and integration as as just this a few your tool is currently undergoing slim revision slight revision you have some outstanding criteria that impact achievement and it's aligned with your strategic plan uh you look at learning targets questioning techniques digital tools and your create working on creating an even stronger alignment between the tool and your plan so we're just suggesting
017that you might want to think about some of those words like diversity and Equity as you engage continue in your continuous improvement work the last thing we're going to suggest and this actually came for you to invent to evaluate your instructional programs leveraging bills that have the highest impact on student learning we noticed that in one of your themes for improvement you said you wanted to have systemic evaluation of all of your programs you currently have that Dearborn activity implementation tool in place and you have that learning environment tool that's for strategic implementation and it's this was identified as an area for improvement um evaluating all your instructional programs to to leverage those that have the greatest impact what we notice wow you have a lot of things taking place in your District leadership development
018student performance learning environment observations the use of stakeholder feedback your academic and affective interventions your PLC structures your sip walkthrough tool your numerous student opportunities and your curriculum and Technology alignment what we're suggesting is that you want to make sure you measure measure measure measure what kind of impact are they having on engagement and achievement and and I've you probably have a lot of that in place um I wanted to let you know that uh uh this just is a snapshot of what the big report will look like and it will go in within 10 days and you'll have the report the final report in about 30 days it Compares you to all of the standards just as you did yourself um and it gives you what's called an index of Education quality that shares
019with you where you are in comparison to some other schools that are going through the process as well and I wanted to let you know that if you have any questions about the report please contact me please please please I'm happy to be of service to you um and of course Michael Doss who is with me this evening as well he's another person that you can meet with and as you know knowledge is opportunity and the way you are engaged in that process you are to be commended I wanted to stop the share and I wanted to congratulate all of you for engaging in this process and I want to thank you again for your commitment to continuous Improvement and tell you what a pleasure it's been working with all of you thank you very
020much questions for me any questions from the board trustee Barry yes sir thank you if our buildings were in over capacity I would say I would tell David uh put this report out of the commercial but uh uh thank you for the report I'm a big fan of tooting your own horn telling your story my name is Michael Knox and I'm the state director here in Michigan for cognia and I just want to uh acknowledge uh document let go and your dedicated team and the work that you do to set such a very hard high bar for accreditation in the state of Michigan and know that your partnership with with Dearborn schools we very much appreciate that and that your District success is acknowledged throughout our state and across our cognitive organization we very much
021appreciate working with you and we get better because you're getting better so thank you thank you trustee Barry I should I should have asked like you did Dr Stevens can you hear us there's your problem she's muted looks like give us a thumbs up if you can hear us okay thank you very much here it's gonna feed me I appreciate it thank you so you mentioned you mentioned uh stakeholder feedback you said a lion stakeholder perceptions with the criteria analysis this comes understand at three are you at the liberty of elaborating on that now what caused you to say this Nissan obviously we can always improve in every department but why here why did you say that here kinds of stakeholder feedback um and you use the perception feedback exceptionally well the recommendation is simply
022that you use feedback regarding classroom practice very very specifically classroom practice um I'm going to share with you what I heard um at an International Conference for cognia where the schools that have been using Elliott for a long long long time ever since it started probably six eight years ago where they ask teachers what kinds of things are going on in your classroom and teachers said our students are engaged in collaborative work and when they ask the students the exact same question what they found is we listened to our teachers so it's important as you're engaged in using your sip tool which is a wonderful tool to perhaps incorporate something like that to ask teachers the kinds of activities in which they're engaged ask the students what they're engaged in what the parents are saying
023and then do a comparison that's the suggestion we know that your environment is outstanding it's warm it's safe it's respectful we're just suggesting that you might want to dig a little bit deeper into classroom practices to see what kinds of comparisons are being made among your stakeholders thank you any other questions thank you very much for the presentation we look forward to the next steps next first budget amendment 2022 2023 Mr Thomas wall thank you good evening again I see this three-minute citizen participation so I don't know if I want me to follow that one or not is going to count down on me as required every year we when we have a substantial change in our budget we should be doing a budget amendment and we usually do at least twice a year once
024in January when we know what a final state aid is and what our student enrollment is so this is our typical format so I'm not going to read obviously the screens but um this is just kind of a highlight of our budgetary numbers of all the numbers that how many schools we have what the budget is for all funds the students there are percentages that come into play of why our budgets is the way it is I always again like sharing this screen this kind of shows the buckets in a visual approach with the most restrictive on the right hand side and the least restricted of the left-hand side so our philosophy has always been to work from right to left when we set up budgets which remains our general fund which our most versatile
025fund is where we spend a lot of our operation experience expenses that aren't covered in the other areas so some of the significant changes uh we received 450 increase in our foundation perfume pull poll this year uh we estimate around 4 30 originally in the original budget that is roughly about a 4.7 4.7 increase based deal with inflation uh we have our levees and we'll go more into the levees about that about our home harmless and non-home our operating Villages um the increase in our foundation allowance had a direct tie to our bargaining contract with our Union so they got a you know a equal increase in the compensation based upon our state revenue and again you know dealing with all the the things we've seen a lot of increases one of the big things
026we saw in the last year was absenteeism obviously with a pandemic people being off on health issues we've seen a significant rise in that you know we are around 1.1 million dollars before the pandemic our absentee costs are now up to 5.4 million it's not just absenteeism but also we had to raise our costs like everybody else in the area due to staff shortages so we had to have a higher fee to be able to retain our substitutes working for us in our district and obviously the sr3 fund so this is the year we're using our operational side of our sr3 funds so that's included in the budget so we always want to look at the three big items so taxable values that increase 3.4 percent this year we had an adjustment for our hold
027harmless milit which we'll get into a little more later our foundation allowance has increased obviously the 450 as I mentioned earlier our student accounts we did not get the student accounts we expected we roughly estimated about a 392 student increase and we actually resulted in 170 student decrease and those are representative in this budget and also we have some new grants that were given to us roughly about 2.2 million in Safety and Security that was issued by the state back in August when they adopted the state aid but we just got the information that we how much we were going to spend in February so obviously that was our included not included in this budget because it wasn't included what numbers we were going to get and how we're going to spend it and the
028requirements so you'll see that in the Second Amendment as we go forward through the year so I just got a quick visual of our state aid Revenue history going all the way back to 2011-12 as you can see the blue line is the actual dollar value and the yellow slash orange line is actual based upon the rate of inflation so even though we're getting more money you can see that the rate of inflation our money isn't worth as much so you always got to be cognizant of that extra dollar value as we go forward it might be bigger numbers but it actually doesn't go as far as we would like based upon inflation this is just a pie for reference of where our state 80 money state aid money comes from a majority of it
029does come from state state and use tax you remember passing a proposal a a two percent increase in sales tax was approved by the voters to actually help fund state aid we also have the individual income tax a portion of the income tax goes to our state aid pi and the last part is the six Mills that are from you know the everybody state to help fund state aid also and there's a lot of smaller parts um the only one I always like to point out is the lottery even though 100 of the proceeds go to the state aid fund it only makes up roughly about three percent of our total budget when looking at the school budget three items Staffing is obviously one of our biggest items that makes up 80 85 percent of
030our budget annually and that 4.7 percent increase in our state aid actually we also went to the staff on a reciprocal basis the instructional program we went back to the traditional program we do have a virtual school this year and this is the second year of that program but most kids are in the traditional program and it's infrastructure will obviously put aside a lot of money for our infrastructure program this current year with uh money also from the sr3 funds that extra three funds will be spent over the next couple of years but the rest of S3 this year so and we're also looking at the finalization of the purchase of the hfc buildings for the Early College to give them room now and for expansion later and we've had a lot of claims that
031happened this year we had a lot of frozen pipes in December that are included in here and the floods from back of June of 21 some of those costs are actually coming through now because they took so long to order the parts and get them repaired so we see a large increase for that so this is the look at the militaries this is the l4029 that we do every year if you look at where letter a and red is that's our whole harmless millage we'll go into that a little bit more in just a second and then the debt millage of 3.5 mils which is area B those are the ones that get voted on by the voters every 10 years and that one's coming up in 24 right so we'll be seeing that one
032and next year about how to go about and renew those millages and what they mean this chart is from one of our programs Community trucks where it shows our actual Levy if you can see the light blue on the bottom that is the hold harmless millage you can see that in 22-23 school year that actually is gone so when they pass the funding for this school year are actually last school year they gave us another 400 roughly number increase in August September when they approve the budget well when it got to this Department of Treasury they found out there's a little caveat hidden in the law and they told us about it in October that said we could not continue to Levy the hold harmless millage at the same level if we want to get
033the full increase in our foundation allowance so they required us to lower a levy hold harmless millage in October of 21. unfortunately majority of our Tech space comes from the city of Dearborn and we have a 100 Levy in the summer that's why at that point we've already collected all our funds for that summer and they gave us several options of how to correct that issue and one of them was to refund the money well unfortunately I don't think I want to write a check to a thousand households of a little bit of money for that so one of the options they allowed us is for the following year this current year 22-23 not Levy that and basically give a refund back to the taxpayer is by not paying that tax for the 22-23 school
034year so it's not a voted issue it was a statement Department of Treasury on the authorization of what Mills we can love based upon the state aid Act as you can see there's nothing in there for 22.23 going forward at 23-24 the calculation will be determined again it'll be much less than the 6.17 mills anywhere between three to four mils and that will be based upon our student enrollment and our tax base because the formula is taking a certain dollar value of 313 dollars previously it was 593 with a reduction went down to 313 times the number of students divided by our tax base so that will determine how we determine what the actual millage rate will be and that's form we turn into the State Department of Treasury every year and they approve it
035and that's how we determine the whole harmless millage I know we might have more questions on that so do you want to ask those now or do you want to wait I would love to ask them for them okay go ahead if you don't mind trusty Barry so without going back to 1993 and I'll hold harm you know supposedly in Rich districts and poor districts without that history to 99 of the people listening to us what is the whole harmless so without going to a long history without no no need for that so back when they originally approved proposal a they took a look at all the revenue a district was living and they said anything over a certain dollar threshold I think was like five thousand dollars back then you can Levy additional millage
036to make sure you don't have a change in your revenue from that year to the next year and so that number is carried forward over time and so that's what the hold harmless Millie comes up so Dearborn was one of those old harmless districts old harmless meaning he was a rich District means like decades ago every time uh the Denver public schools needed money they would go to taxpayers and the taxpayers understood that you're investing in education helps your property values and you know spending money on students so with proposal a the way I understand it uh not wanting to hurt districts like ours and others nearby that's where that came up from correct and that's roughly about 11 million dollars for us annual basis for us yeah right so last year whatever what I
037heard you say is that it was an advantage for us to take that per pupil fund right but we already collected the whole harmless correct and that's why this shows zero right here right okay so there was no tax break or tax cut or anything like that reason I'm asking is because eventually most likely this coming year we're probably going to be asking not for the full 6.127 whatever 6.17 6.17 I knew there was a seven in there but we might ask for a portion of that depending on what the per pupil moving forward that's something that's passed by the taxpayers a while back correct it's done I think in Dearborn every 10 years we have yeah it's gonna be coming up next year so once we go ahead and make the decision that we're
038going to go out to for let's say for example 3.6 Mills to kind of offset what we're not getting back that's not a tax increase by doing Public Schools correct it's going to be putting back in a place that to handle that change in state aid for the 2122 school year okay I just wanted to make sure it was out there that there was no tax caught last year it was just you know your decision and we all trust you here right and you said it was I remember in finance you said it's more Advantage for us to take the per pupil money right because that money stays forever in our foundational out which is better for us long term okay and hopefully the 99 that do not stand at least now at least five
039percent understand it and if you have any questions I'll push I'll post your phone number on that that's all right I'll translate I'm just joking but no thank you thank you for the work you do because this is not easy stuff and when people hear this and that and there's some some narratives out there that's out there just to confuse people that's wrong too but I I I'm sure all of us appreciate what you do thank you I get several phone calls every year around tax time when the militants come out and I sit down and work it through with them you know the community members that ask make sure they understand it okay yep thank you because if anyone just looks again at this year it will look like an increase but it's because
040we had to pay back what was from the previous year correct now the other thing on there you'll see in the green is the debt millage right now we're allowing 3.5 mils from debt uh two years ago is 4.82 last year it dropped to 3.5 this year is 3.5 after this year the 2002 Mills go away and the debt millage will actually go down to 1.3 mils that's what is estimated at obviously we don't know what our taxable value is at for this upcoming year but you'll see so it's going to be kind of two factors that are going to determine what our new rate will be next year so it's going to be more confusing as our old Harvest smudge will go up but our tax debt rate will go down so unless you
041actually look at your tax bill and look at the individual lines you'll kind of get confused again what what changed on there so we'll cover this again as we do our budget amendment or budget adoption for 23 24 we'll go through this again as much as we need to to make sure people understand just give you a heads up our taxable value is going the other direction just FYI so yeah it could go up or down it all depends this and we don't control those values those are determined by the city what we're seeing yeah yes all right again this is just showing our foundation allowance as it's been increasing just kind of give a visual of that and again you know obviously our student counts are very important just giving you the student accounts
042we're done twice a year once in the fall which is 90 and the winner in the previous year at 10 90 in the fall 10 in the spring make sure I said that right and so it's based on a calendar year basically so the Calendar Winner count in 23 and the summer account or the fall account of 23 will be for next year's 23 24. this is just looking at the Esser funds as you can see we spent most of this fund so if you look at the 2223 school year that we're spending after three funds all the other extra funds in the district have been spent and accounted for and this is just showing you the different funds that we have that we showed in the pictorial while go into a lot of detail
043before that but for those that like numbers they can look into and see which of our funds and how much they are for all that this just breaks down the general fund because the general fund has the general fund the enhancement Village that we get from the county and Athletics is all in that general fund number those that really want to get more into it this is the special Revenue funds that are Grant funded they have their own Revenue source so the expenditures follow that so just you're aware of that and so key issues going forward obviously staffing issues that's something we look at every year is a big part of it since that's majority part of our budget and we have to be careful of Staff shortages so uh also we gotta obviously Monitor
044and close out this current year uh the fall instructional program is basically still going to be on a traditional form and I think the the pandemic versatility of what we had to do it before is kind of hopefully gone and we'll be looking at Staffing adjustments because we're in negotiations this year obviously all our contracts expire at the end of this year for our Union contracts so that'll be a big piece of you know kind of estimating unknown until we get those contracts settled and obviously infrastructure I can't speak enough I think this is the number one issue that we're going to be facing the next couple years is how to what we're going to do with our infrastructure because the more and more we wait and longer the prices get higher our buildings continue
045to be maintained but some of them is just age and they're going to need to be addressed we might have more issues of schools closings because of electrical issue because of a plumbing issue those are the things that we're going to start dealing with that really have to focus on and figure out how to have a long-term plan as you're aware of we have field International working with us on that um I believe we have a study session later this month we originally expected to be done in March but I think everybody's asking for more input from the public so it will be at least until April until we get a more general idea of where we're headed with all that and that's it any questions additional questions yeah I had a question about the
046number um for the you said it's going to be determined sometimes later as far as the uh hold harmless when when is that so it's the taxable values are supposed to be out in March from the county but Wayne County is very complicated so we don't usually see those until mid to late May okay so once we get those numbers and we have a estimate of what our pupil account is going to be then we can determine the military so usually by June 1st I send something to the state showing what our estimated revenue or millages are going to be and that'll be part of the budget approval process so you'll see it in the first meeting in June the estimates and then final approval in the second meeting in June we adopt a budget
047okay because they usually come out early may but they get readjusted adjusted and adjusted and adjusted until we got the number we're going to have to use yes and I have a second question about the the EPA grant that we got for the buses that that's not reflected on this year's but no no not yet well we don't even have our award letter yet we have the email approval of it and they said use that until we get the award letter um that is going to be for 7.1 million dollars for 18 buses uh we had a conversation today at the building and site meeting to talk more about that because the buses had to be ordered in April so you'll probably see the bus purchase in April uh there's obviously a large infrastructure side
048that's going to cost a lot of money to figure and they're estimating that out of that 400 000 per bus that 25 000 can be used for infrastructure that is going to be nowhere near enough to be able to handle that so that's what we were starting our discussions with at the building and site committee today okay thank you any additional questions from Mr wall thank you very much thank you