001wow [Music] foreign good evening thank you all for coming to our board meeting I appreciate you taking the time to join us this is the redwood 12 meeting of the Dearborn board of education for November 14 2022 may have a roll call please trustee Berry care trustee Danbury here rusty Mosa here before here rusty Watts here press here next item please pledge of allegiance to the flag Mr Dave mustonan and Mr Bob Addy will lead the Pledge of Allegiance okay sorry pulling double duty there audio and pledge guy sorry I think he had to step up okay I know the words so we can go without them I pledge allegiance to the flag of the States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice
002for all foreign next item please superintendent's update agenda items thank you I'm filling in for Dr Maliko today he was under the weather and I know he wanted to be here but I get the honor of running the board for our side today we have several retirements we have Mary baji 25 and three-quarter years of service Amira dakala 21 and a half years of service Armenia Espinoza 18 and three-quarters years of service Geoffrey Del Judas 27 and two-thirds years of service Mark Kent 31 years of service Mike kastavowski 24 and a third years of service Edward Missouri 20 years of service and Thomas Toth 36 years of service congratulations [Applause] district and our students all right move on to non-agend items we have a couple of items uh we were uh awarded the electric bus
003Grant of roughly 18 electrical buses from the Department uh of um EPA which is good uh we just got notified of that uh those watches obviously will be a long ways out because of the backlog for electrical buses right now but that was good news uh the covet update we're continually to monitor that uh right now our numbers are not very high but we're continuing to monitor that I just have one other one I'm going to turn it over to Mr Martin to give a quick update on our book review process foreign Mr wall Mrs Harris president McDonald trustees um just wanted to share with you guys as requested at the last board meeting kind of where we're at and where the media Specialists are underneath Dr groover's guidance unfortunately she's not here she has
004strep throat I talked to her today we'll barely talk to her today she's got not not able to be here so I wanted to fill you guys in kind of on the whole process and to go backwards remember the process is internal weeding kind of going through an inventory number one everything we have and then looking at all of the different titles and books that we have on our shelves going through those internally and then we did also have some books that were brought forth by community members that had some concern and we went through the internal review process I will tell you going through that process was great we identified some areas that we needed to make some slight modifications and changes on to hopefully uh put us in a better situation so with
005that being said I'll kind of share where we're at in terms of uh total numbers and this is referenced in a memo that that you guys also received so in terms of the initial weeding process so that's where the media Specialists are just looking over there looking over their their books on their shelves uh all 300 000 of them in terms of books that were removed for poor conditions so this doesn't mean that they were completely gone it means that the title might still exist but we did have some that were in poor condition that was around four thousand two hundred books and 3 000 titles that were removed just because they were in poor condition again that doesn't mean the title is completely gone it just means the books in in bad condition we
006had a hundred titles that were removed because they were outdated some of the information might in there might have been um not true anymore books that reference Pluto as a planet might be one of them just for an example we had one lost title and then there were five titles that were removed because they were not age appropriate so again as your media Specialists are going through they're looking at age appropriate they're looking at condition they're looking at whether or not the things are outdated or otherwise in terms of the internal review process again this is the process that we were revisiting and was shared with this group I think one or two meetings uh ago I want to share those results the initial results and we do have some others there so there were
007two books that were deemed inappropriate and will be will be or are removed from Dearborn Public School libraries uh and on our do not purchase list those books are push and red white and royal blue so we also had two other books uh that came to us that were at both the middle school and the high school level they were deemed inappropriate at the middle school level and restricted to the high school level those two books were Eleanor and Park and the haters and then books that were determined to be appropriate um were The Lovely Bones and flamer we also have books that are next to be reviewed there are three of them that were on the Sora site that were e-books so because we didn't have them the media Specialists were not familiar with
008them they hadn't seen them hadn't read them those three books will be next up uh that those are and they lived this book is gay and all boys aren't blue and then there are there's a series of four other books uh Captain Marvel Carol Danvers the secrets of boys summer boys in a court of thorns and Roses that's a whole series that will be the next group that will get reviewed by the media Specialists internally so remember the internal review process is just the media specialists in two groups either Elementary or secondary um they they review them then those results or these results will be get communicated to the parent or the Community member that asked for them to be reviewed that Community member then at that point has kind of three options option number
009one okay it is what it is option number two I'm gonna opt my child out or option number three it would go to the reconsideration which is the nine person panel of teachers parents and a student if there's permission for them to read the book and then make a a final determination in terms of should it go should it go should it go on our shelves or not thank you please continue Mr Martin thank you and then last thing there were just some uh minor tweaks and modifications to the internal process but I'm not going to go through through each of those so that's where we are today thank you thank you Mr Martin they concludes the superintendent report oh tomorrow answer a couple questions so this is the internal mostly country on the internal
010process yes this is just a media special so there's the opt-out there's the book challenge if this is going to continue I would like to know what are our rights if we keep getting interrupted right this is a public meeting you need to listen to what's going on and when you have your chance to speak you will be able to come up and speak now is not your turn it's not your turn to speak thank you so sorry about that Mr Warren that's okay so there are other options for parents yes my question is there was two books that were deemed appropriate with the first phase so now can you explain yeah so the do you want a second face please second phase is that community that information will get communicated to the Community member
011parent whomever it is that uh had some concern initially with those books and then the parent at that point if they want to um take that book to the reconsideration committee then we'll choose the reconsideration committee um which will be nine different people they'll have a round um 45 days to be able to read the book and then they'll come back and vote on the book um to determine whether it should is or isn't appropriate for our whole collection and should or shouldn't be there the parent could also not go that route and just opt their child completely out of these two books or the parent could say hey it is what it is and I'm I'm good with whatever it is uh I'm just going to tell my child not to check those books
012out as well so if I'm hearing you correct if I'm that parent that challenged one of those books and I still feel very strong that it's an appropriate book yep you can actually just explain I've got I cannot always use the up top what you just explained is quote unquote like an appeal process yeah and it goes to that reconsideration nine nine person committee correct and then they'll they'll all read the book they'll have some dialogue and then they'll vote on the appropriateness of it for the The Collection obviously we have that information in front of me right here I just want to make sure it's out there too so thank you very much for clarifying that thank you trustee bear thank you so question um trusty website selfish trustee Watts Mr Martin you had
013said that you had um that they had started the review the internal of looking through the books and getting rid of um several titles that maybe have been outdated and just kind of worn yeah worn down so with 300 000 books how many books do you think we've gone through what percentage uh right I I don't even want to take a guess there not very many uh the first the first process was inventory number one just what do we have on shelves and mind you all 14 of our media specialists in addition to monitoring and taking care of their media their libraries many of them are shared between buildings and all of them I think are at least teaching at an elementary level for a full day um so the time that they have to
014put here um it's not 100 being able to be focused here so we started with inventorying and then the priority was starting with high school weeding there and moving our way down um I could I could try to find out for you but I don't even want to try to guess all right thank you my guests wouldn't do it justice I have two questions yes sir the first one is after the nine member committee makes this decision what are still the options that can the parents still ask for reconsideration from the superintendent from the board members the way the process and policy is written no at that point uh the review has gone through an internal review of the media Specialists who are experts on being able to determine appropriateness for our selection they'll they
015have been familiar with it they've looked at age-appropriateness they've looked at reviews then from there it goes to the nine and the nine is a really well-rounded well-rounded group from there the decision is at least the way the process is now the decision is final uh the other question is if those books are being challenged for sexually explicit materials how is that being determined and especially even the new orders are there guidance that is given to the library Specialists of yeah this this book is has a lot of sexuality sexual explicit materials that should be removed right so that that's something that we've been talking about a lot in terms of the weeding process which is hey I have 20 000 books in my collection and as I'm ordering following the same set of guidelines
016in terms of age-appropriateness uh reviews and then collaboratively having a discussion by level so similarly how a team of algebra teachers would talk about hey what do we want to teach today and how are we going to assess it our media Specialists have spent a lot of time as a secondary group as an elementary group really kept collaborating and calibrating in terms of what the that order process looks like to ensure that we're maintaining the whole selection as one group right so we aren't just individuals making a decision based on our specific Library we're making a joint decision based on um the whole District so yes using those same guidelines trustee mosa to make those decisions and doing that collaboratively not in isolation just one more question about the parents that are on this committee
017I believe uh yeah they how are they hand-picked so we sent out that uh that form for anyone that's interested um and what the process is at this point is parents will just be randomly selected once you're selected once you won't be selected again until all the parent the full parent list has been exhausted and then it'll cycle back around to them again the expectation on that reconsideration committee is everyone reads the book right and then has a decision or makes a decision based on age-appropriateness and the ratings and ultimately should this belong on ourselves or should this not but they are going to read the book and so the expectation when people signed up on the Forum to enter their name in was hey I agree to do this we will have that part
018that expectation again when we meet with them outside of having them write a book report which I don't know that I would want to do as an adult it's going to be kind of hard to to do that but the hope is that they're invested in this just like we are absolutely trustee petchlikov well to there and I'm assuming then when they get ready to vote that there's going to be some kind of discussion amongst all of them about all those points yes and and why they've made the decision is this going to be a um a public vote with the nine or is this going to be a uh Anonymous uh Anonymous okay Anonymous and there will be an opportunity sorry trustee petrocock an opportunity when they reconvene after they read it to have
019some discourse around uh around the book that's where I wanted to make sure so that everybody understands where the perspectives are yes and and why conversation is going in a certain direction or not when it comes time to uh make that vote absolutely Chelsea Thorpe is the expectation that the parent have chosen is just going to be on the committee for that one book uh so it'll be book by book right um so the the parent who put the complaint won't be on that committee um it'll be another group of parents um so that parent the parent who made this suggestion or had the concern may serve down the road on one of them but not on the one that they um that they had an issue with or challenged correct and then the other
020question I would have on that is uh how often will we open up the uh a process for parents if they want to be a participant of this so that it's uh on the form that was shared I think two uh board meetings uh before it is still live that form is still live so if parents are interested they could be signing up right now on their smartphones or at home thanks yep just to follow up on the second question from trustee mozeb a few meetings ago I asked for you know are legal to get involved to see to make sure that you know we're working within the law and I believe trustee watts and others supported me on this I did a little bit of work uh with uh this is a case of
02119 1982 Board of Education Island Trees uh School District versus Pico and all the way to Supreme Court and almost I would say like the super majority of the the the judges wrote an opinion on this and it was very very clear that the Supreme Court said School boards the Board of Education must work within the first amendment I mean we actually take an oath to do so every time we're elected to this board and just I mean it's a long I'll be able to share if anybody wants to see it it says justices were very clear by saying school boards could not remove books to suppress ideas so why is that important yeah School Board seven people shouldn't be making decisions for the you know when it when it when it comes to the
022books it's a parental right at every level local state and federal parental rights are the most important rights and last time I checked parent right parental rights or god-given rights that god-given rights so we we respect that but at the same time we have to work within the law we can't allow people to to judge other people judge books at the expense of others so I mean I don't mind people coming up here and screaming at us and telling us what we're doing wrong I'm personally okay with that I don't like interruptions but I'm personally okay with people I want to hear from people but this is where we're at we can't I know I know I just said don't interrupt me when I'm talking I don't know what else to say anyways yeah yeah
023okay so so let me finish let me finish there are some districts there are some districts that are jumping the gun and secretly doing what they need to do but you know again this aclu's all over that and most are back pedaling most are back pedaling now that's all I wanted to say thank you for you do not have the flu floor when it's time for you to talk you will be called up and you'll be able to speak until then please be respectful and listen to the person who has the floor I'm done I'm good thank you and I'm tired of warning you next item please is everyone's good recognition and acknowledgments accommodations I will adjust this since Mr Martin is a little taller than I am a lot of people are taller than
024I am all right accommodations for this evening first from the district we want to give commendations to Rory Gill and Bill Needham for making the in-person DPS virtual science day possible at the administrative Service Center thank you to Jeff Murphy and sfe for preparing breakfast and lunch for the for the virtual K-12 students as well from the high school accommodations to Dearborn High School's marching band the band received a superior rating at the msboa marching band Festival in October band director Brian McCloskey also received positive comments from parents from other schools at the event praising DHS students for their positive encouragement for other bands who were performing commendations to the etzel Ford counseling department for organizing the college and career fair for the Dearborn Community last Thursday many colleges participated in the event had a
025great audience and great attendance students and families had the opportunity to learn about their options after high school thank you to all the colleges and trade schools that attended accommodations to Dearborn High vocal music students who competed at the Michigan vocal music association Music Theater solo and Ensemble say that five times real fast Festival on Saturday the festival was held at Oxford High School students prepared and memorized two Music Theater selections congratulations to students who earned first division ratings Julius Owens solo with a perfect score Savannah Caputo solo and Ava Ava azenbacher and Elena because dito uh who did a duet commendations to Jeff Del Judas Fortune's athletic director he was recently named the athletic director of the year for region 11 by the Michigan interscholastic athletic administrators Association at the middle school level commendations
026to DPS virtual science teacher Nancy Haddad for ordering packing and facilitating the delivery of science experiment supplies to 138 middle school students Ms Haddad spent time after school on three days and traveled to several buildings across the district to make it convenient for parents and students to pick up supplies and finally at the elementary school level commendations to Lindbergh Elementary School which was recently named a lighthouse academic honor roll School the honor roll the honor recognizes Lindbergh for going above their Leader in Me goals for leadership culture and academics the award was given to 26 out of 5 000 Leader in Me schools across the country those are recommendations for this evening acknowledgment of donations Mr Mustin and I'll move it back up thank you a donation of 500 has been offered to Oakman Elementary
027School by the Dearborn Education Foundation to be used for televisions a donation of 5 244 has been offered to gear Park Elementary School by the Dearborn Education Foundation to be used for two projectors a donation of one hundred dollars has been offered to Woodworth Middle School uh by the Dearborn Education Foundation to be used for endangered species adoption a donation of two thousand dollars has been offered to Henry Ford Elementary School by the Dearborn Education Foundation to be used for purposeful play a donation of 450 dollars has been offered to Salina Elementary School by the Dearborn Education Foundation to to be used for binoculars a donation of 780 has been offered to Miller Elementary School by the Dearborn Education Foundation to be used for Legos a donation of 305.22 has been offered to Howard Elementary
028School by the Dearborn Education Foundation to be used for tables a donation of two thousand five hundred dollars has been offered to Salina Elementary School by the Dearborn Education Foundation to be used for inside out literacy a donation of 326 dollars has been offered to Bryant middle school by the Dearborn Education Foundation to be used for academic games Awards a donation of thirty thousand dollars has been offered to Salina school by the Dearborn Education Foundation in partnership with Cliff bells to be used for an outdoor classroom atrium a donation of two thousand five hundred dollars has been offered to Dearborn High School by the Dearborn High School class of 1972 to be used towards a golf cart a donation of one hundred dollars has been offered to Salina Intermediate School by Judy Beale to be
029used for field trips for fourth and fifth grade students and finally a donation of one hundred dollars has been offered to Salina Intermediate School by Ramsey shauzer to be used for field trips for fourth and fifth grade students thank you next item please approval of minutes approval of minutes of the following Dearborn Board of Education meeting regular p12 meeting October 10 2022 board report 22 hyphen 46 recommended action make any necessary Corrections and move approval of these minutes so moved support we have a motion by trustee Berry and supported by trustee d'ambrosio I have a roll call please trustee Berry yes Jesse d'ambrosio yes dusty mozen yes Rusty petrikov yes trustee Thorpe yes trustee Watts yes president McDonald yes next item please special reports p12 audit report Mr Thomas wall thank you Madam Secretary uh
030as required by law we're required to have an annual audit annually for our July 1st through June 30th time frame and plant Marine Crest or plant Moran performed that audit this year I'd like to introduce Mr Higgins and Miss tack for the auto report thank you and good evening as uh was mentioned my name is Jeff Higgins with me as Laura Tech we're with plant Moran We Are The District's independent auditing firm here to discuss the results of the district's audit for its financial statements for the year ended June 30th 2022. so there's three documents that come out of our audit to the financial statements there's the financial report with supplemental information which contains the district's audited financial statements there's a separate Federal award supplemental information which includes our audit or separate audit for the
031federal programs administered by the district and finally as there's the report to the Board of Education which provides information and insight into the audit process and results itself so it's important to keep in mind that the financial statements include both the p12 school district along with Henry Ford college and the Henry Ford College Foundation of course we're here tonight to talk about the results for the uh the p12 um audit so as a District's independent Auditors it's our responsibility to express an opinion on the financial statements based on our audit conducted in accordance with auditing standards generally accepted in the United States of America I'm certainly pleased to report here tonight that as the result of our audit procedures we've rendered what's known as an unmodified or a clean opinion on the district's financial statements
032this will be the highest level of assurance that we can provide on a set of financial statements and again there is no difficulties disagreements with management throughout the conduct of the audit and no material weaknesses or other significant deficiencies in internal control identified so overall a very clean outcome for the audit for this year again ended June 30th 2022 and Laura is going to lead us through a few of the highlights uh for the financials this year the primary focus of our presentation is going to be the general fund which is the district's primary operating fund taking a look at the balance sheet first you'll see that total assets as of June 30th 2022 is approximately 110.7 million dollars the main categories of assets are cash and Investments of 57 million and receivables of 38.5
033million those receivables include approximately 35.6 million dollars due from the state of Michigan for the July and August state aid payments moving on to liabilities you'll see that total liabilities as of June 30th in the general fund were 71.6 million dollars the main liabilities are going to be employee compensation payroll related liabilities of 31 million dollars and due to other funds of 27 million dollars overall you'll see the fund balance decreased year over year it decreased from 40.5 million as of June 30th 2021 to 39 million as of 2022 representing approximately a 3.7 percent decrease year over year next we'll take a look at the general fund income statement which is known as the statement of Revenue expenditures and changes in fund balance you'll see that total revenue in 2022 in the general fund is
034approximately 242 million dollars the main source of revenue for the general fund is State sources followed by local sources and then inter-district resources these interdistrict resources include categoricals from the state and various amounts received from the ISD for special education moving on to expenditures you'll see that exposures are broken down by function so instruction is obviously the main function this relates to direct classroom and classroom related activities instruction is approximately 62 percent of the district's expenditures followed by support services at 35 percent and then other at two percent now taking a look at this kind of overall you will see that that increase in revenue from 227 million in 2021 to 242 million in 2022 is largely driven by a nine percent increase in the state Source Revenue foreign just to tie it all together
035we wanted to spend a couple of minutes just talking about the general fund fund balance so again as was mentioned it's you know fund balance is basically the assets minus the liabilities for the general fund and the annual difference between your revenue and your expenditures either adds to or subtracts from the fund balance on an annual basis and again as we just saw that there was roughly a 1.5 million reduction in the general fund balance uh for the year ended June 30th 2022. so again fund balances important because it represents essentially the financial reserves for the district it allows the district to fund for unplanned expenses that might occur during the year and also helps insulate the district against you know unexpected revenue losses and funding instability and so then the question becomes well how
036much fund balance is an adequate level of fund balance fund balance is often assessed as a percentage of expenditures so if you take your fund balance at the end of the year as we've talked about of roughly 39.1 million and you divide that by your expenditures of about 233 million that gives you a percentage of about 16.7 percent as of June 30th 2022. so you can see the the Gold Line there represents the state average for the last few years now again the complete data for 2022 isn't available yet but you can see from for 2018 through 2021 the district's historically been just above that state average level as another reference point the Michigan school business officials or msbo recommends a fund balance percentage of about 15 so you can see the last several years
037you've been right around that recommended level of 15 percent and that concludes our presentation for this evening so thank you thank you are there any questions trustee Moses I just want to make sure and clarify the decrease in local sources from 2021 to 2022 is that because of the hold harmless that we were not able to recoup I can answer that one but yes you are correct because we had to accrue back because the change of Law and when they passed the budget in August and we've already collected our collections from the city of Dearborn which is 100 summer so therefore we have collected it and that's why this year in 2223 we are not loving old harmless to basically pay back that money to the taxpayers and that gave taxpayers some savings correct on
038their tax bill so just making sure that's clear why there's a decrease and where where that decrease came from thank you just you Berry another question I have a comment uh year in year out you come in front of us and you tell us all the good news I just want to give credit or credit to do with Mr Tom wall and his team so we really appreciate all the great work that you do for us thank you very much communist team thank you I have a very good performing team that I rely on heavily on and they always well perform and we rely on all of you so thank you for your work and just a follow-up to the parents are out there we're just we're just discussing some big numbers 200 million dollars
039300 million dollars this is your money so yes we want to be concerned with issues current issues but it's probably a good idea to get involved and ask questions there and there I go again being interrupted thank you very much do I need to have you removed I hate to do that but you have to show some consideration to the people that are here trying to absorb the information that is being uh given to them you need to show some self-control no you don't apparently I oh you disrespect every person in this room by continuing to talk so please please be respectful when someone other than yourself has the floor everyone in this room can hear you so please keep your thoughts and your comments to yourself until it's time for you to come and
040speak with us everyone in the room can hear you everyone in this room wants to hear what is going on in this District your continuing comments are disrupting our meeting please show some self-control thank you next item please special reports social emotional learning Mr micasaily uh greetings president McDonald executive director wall I'm board trustees welcome and thank you for this opportunity today to talk about social emotional learning here in Dearborn Public Schools I'm going to briefly give you guys an overview but before I do that I have some two incredible colleagues here and leaders truly in social emotional learning here in Dearborn we have Dr Ola bezie Gates who's a special education coordinator in Miss Miriam Alloway who is a behavior specialist within the special education department uh very blessed to be working with both
041of them before I get into social emotional learning I do want to talk a little bit about whole child and whole child approaches here in Dearborn Public Schools you know a lot of time we think about schools we talk about the rigor of the Academia math reading so on and so forth but we also want to talk about whole child and what it looks like from a social emotional perspective mental health perspective and just from a restorative perspective within our district last year if you recall we trained the entire staff in what we call trauma-informed instruction we actually created a train the trainer model to where we have over 70 staff members who were certified trained trauma presenters who continue to train other staff members in the district on what trauma-informed instruction was we felt
042that was important especially coming off the pandemic year we definitely know you know that a lot of our kiddos and a lot of our families suffered some trauma just during the pandemic but even before that we really those are some approaches we really wanted to look at for the district obviously we have some of our schools within the district where also PBIS schools Positive Behavior Support schools and a lot of the things that I'm going to be talking about today or the team we'll be talking about today kind of fall under that umbrella in addition I kind of already talked a little bit about restorative practices restorative practices was an initiative we took on I would say about six years ago and I'm happy to kind of report it's still very strong within the district
043and restorative practices or restorative justices as some of us may know it is really about building culture and empathy with within our schools and just truly understanding perspectives of one another thanks to the board and Dr maleko and the entire cabinet an increase in school social workers I believe now we have more than 50 School social workers in the district I know that's something that we've mentioned a while ago I could tell you when I started back in 2016 in special education Administration we were just at about 29 I think 30 School social workers so we've done a really nice job at making sure to increase those supports but in addition to that trying to ensure with some of the programming we have with some of those supports to meet and reach as many children
044as we as we possibly can um I also want to kind of thank mde and executive director faraj executive director Martin and executive director swore whereas if you look at Effective Education and social emotional learning right now it is part of our my kit process which I'm going to talk about a little bit which is really the school improvement process in the district where again it incorporates the academics along with the whole child approaches we've also partnered with great organizations I'm just going to quickly talk about access to where we have some school therapists within some of our buildings now some mental health therapists obviously there's a process there we would have to talk to families get some consent if there's a specific need however we're very very happy to provide those services in our
045schools finally before I turn it over to my colleagues I just want to talk about the mykip process which is the school improvement process here in Dearborn Public Schools you're going to see two major goals one of them is going to be an academic goal the other one's going to be an effective goal um and we're going to use the ntss process to kind of discuss both of these specific goals in fact this past Tuesday a lot of our building teams at the school districts were working on their school Improvement plans or they're my kit plans for their individual schools and kind of using this framework to where not only are we talking about how we're going to close the achievement Gap with language arts and math but we're also talking about Effective Education and
046education educating the whole child we're really going to focus with social emotional learning on the castle competencies which are five social emotional competencies which were adopted through the Michigan Department of Education and that's where I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Dr Bessie Gates who's going to talk about those things good evening everyone um but as Mr assay you mentioned about the importance of SEL when we talk about SEL what social emotional learning it is very very important um you know an integral part of education and human development this is way of teaching our students about uh you know uh core values character how to be a productive citizens it's also the process through to children learn um you know and acquire apply knowledge skills values morals uh you know to to feel
047with others to have empathy and also to establish and maintain a supportive healthy life and also building resiliency so when we talk about castle castle stands for collaborative for academic social and emotional learning and we use it we implement it in our school district throughout throughout our staff um the first um you know um competency is self-awareness when we talk about self-awareness it's important to teach our students about uh you know understand your emotion their feelings their thoughts and also you know how they impact our behavior when we talk what we feel with others you know and uh for example when we know about ourselves our biases you know and our prejudice and have an open and my open-minded and growth mindset the second one is about self-management self-management how to regulate your emotion your
048feelings uh you know and if anything make you stressed out how you identify you know how you feel about things the third one a responsible decision making uh for example when we make a decision how we make a decision whether it's personal interpersonal you know open-minded you know relationship with other and social problems so when we solve an issue so it's very important to teach them responsible responsible decision making the fourth one is social awareness for example um you know taking others perspective understanding how people recognize their strength their weaknesses and feeling with others and the last one is relationship skills which is very important as well for example how to communicate with others and you develop a positive relationship with others I'll turn it now to my colleague to talk about the three-tiered men
049TSS framework earlier one of the focuses this year for um may I ask you to move a little closer to the microphone sorry thank you so one of the focuses this year for the my cap is the a factor and um here are some of our goals for the a factive um and our goal is to work on making them consistent across the district so I would like you to Vision the triangle and at the bottom of the triangle we have our tier one which are our Universal supports that um that provide supports for all stakeholders involved within tier one we have our Trails which is a research-based evidence that provides supports and early intervention for mental health um and we have ongoing PDS that will focus on the five competencies for SEL and um
050just the beginning of this school year we um trained all staff on the five competencies and we will continue to do so and then we are integrating SEL and in the academic instruction so then we have our tier two which is our middle tier which is more targeted interventions and as you see listed we have Trails continued this is just to show a visual of how each layer of how each layer is an additional support to the next um mysteriously you mentioned restorative interventions before and restorative interventions really goes hand in hand with the five competencies because it not only focuses on the individual's self-awareness and having them understand how they felt in the moment of a situation and what they can do later on but also how they've affected the other person involved um
051check and check out is a research-based intervention that focuses on positive interventions and supports and it allows allows that open communication between the staff the family and the student then we move on to our tier three which is that top tier that provides more intensive um and individualized supports and part of our tier 3 is our wraparound which coordinate which is a coordinated meeting between the staff the family and also any outside organization that the family is working with this truly looks at the child as the whole child and ensures that we are using the same words and that you know all our interventions are you know working together and then we have embedded Community Partnerships with safe access and so many other Community Partners and also continue Data Tracking we plan on you know
052looking at our data from the beginning to the end to see what is working and what we need to continue working on so in conclusion when we talk about the 5 SEL competency as I mentioned the self-awareness self-management responsible decision making social awareness and relationship skills are very very vital and important um you know to the teaching and understanding our our students in the schools so the same way we focus on academic we focus also on the social emotional learning for our students um so our goal as you know as to uh to really develop our students to live a happy and positive life thank you thank you this is Dr bazzi Gates favorite uh slide I don't know if the trustees could see it but hand in hand together we can yes thank you
053all and I don't know if any of you have any questions or comments trustee Watts um one question because we know you cannot have you can never have enough acronyms in education um can you remind me what does mtss stand for it's a multi-tiered system of supports uh formerly the district used to call it RTI response to interventions and basically what the multiple tiers system supports is it breaks things down into three different tiers of instruction where your tier one would be Universal what's good for every single child as you get into tier two and three would be more individualized thank you Justin Moses a question about teachers training so General ads are being also trained on social emotional learning yeah and I apologize trustee Moses I meant to mention that on my very first
054slide um in fact the very first PD we had this year was so the castle five competencies with social emotional learning um and hopefully it'll be an ongoing as well as we continue to traject to the entire school year and I can tell you there's some things being done at the individual level in individual buildings too depending on their needs there but the very first training we did have for this school year was the five competencies with SEO and aside from special ed parents also General ad Tower the parents how are they being informed of this type of instruction this type of instruction are we doing that at individual presentations at different buildings um so some of them made to have that during some of their parent meetings their title parent meetings within the building
055the SEL uh Focus I know that we do have some groups here within the district to where there is a strong push for some of the family peer training um as well to where we're incorporating some SEO I know Dr bazzi Gates works very closely again with the El Department through some of their parent trainings too thank you Jesse petrikov I don't know if you can do this or not just off the cuff but how would some of this be incorporated into a day-to-day classroom setting yeah what would it look like because a lot of people are concerned about so much as trying to be put into a classroom day and we just want to see how how does this naturally fit into the classroom setting that's a great question and you know part of
056part of kind of our goals was how do we embed social emotional learning so there isn't an additional prep and there's so many things going on during the day I'm going to use the restorative practices as an example A lot of people believe that like restorative practices is that Circle we do when we want to restore a relationship but it's so much more than that it's how we interact with one another um you know modeling how we can speak to one another I think is a way where you can embed some of the social emotional learning I know in a lot of classrooms you do have what you call bell ringers or you know the first few minutes you know incorporating some social emotional right in there within the first few minutes I think could
057be very very powerful I know some high schools are using some of their um what we call traditionally tea time uh where whether it was silent reading or whatever the situation is maybe to do some tier two and tier three social emotional work so it's something we're very very cognizant of we don't want to give more on the plates of you know specific staff members including teachers um I could tell your social workers also do a very nice job pushing into classrooms and having um social emotional learning lessons I know you heard the word Trails here a couple times which was actually supported by the University of Michigan and almost adopted I believe now Nationwide I could tell you they're very short 15 to 20 minute lessons but I think the goal is and we're
058continuing to work with this I know within our school Improvement committee on a district level led by Miss fatmi farage on how we continue to embed some social emotional within our daily lessons as opposed to having a separate standalone okay thank you you're welcome anyone else oh yes I just want to thank Mr assaley and his team and trustery watch you'll be happy to know that they applied for a three million dollar grant for additional social workers and for that funding now it's it's a national Grant so it's very competitive but we're starting to look at these additional grants to help offset our general fund money so I want to thank their team for doing so thank you well we needed some of Tom's help so I know he's always very humble but uh yeah
059thank you hopefully that works out thank you guys very much thank you thank you and again thank you for the work that you do it certainly benefits our students