001I'll go ahead and call for a Time extension now please I moved to extend the meeting 15 minutes without support trustee Berry yes trustee d'ambrosio yes Rusty mosa yes trustee petrikov yes trustee Thorpe yes trustee Watts yes president McDonald yes next action items are there any agenda items on this agenda which board members of the superintendent wish to discuss and vote on separately if there are we will exclude these from the motion below I have a question on number five I I don't need it to be pulled anyone else nope may I have a motion Within action items number one to 13 be approved as read as recommended in this agenda it's all moved support we have a motion by trustee Barry and supported by trustee petchlikoff um and of course you must have had
002a question on number five so I know we're moving now to a new security company and I I just wanted to make sure not just because they're the lowest provider but are they vetted references checked um from the interview committee can we can we get his books can we get his microphone one yeah there we go good evening yes we had um a committee that represented uh School diminished High School school administration all uh executive director and some supervisors and directors it was unanimous and the background checks came back very positive for this company and I just like that the only difference between the price and the others is that this company didn't charge um as much other companies per hour for the security guards that was vetted out during the interview process okay thank
003you are there any other questions hearing none may I get a roll call vote please trustee Berry yes Rusty d'ambrosio yes trustee mozep yes yes trustee Thorpe yes Rusty Watts yes president McDonald yes next item please I need to read the summary of action oh I'm sorry I do that every time a memory of agenda action items number one approval of warrants number two approval of an award to data image systems number three approval of an award to Burlington English Inc number four approval of an award to Wayne Risa number five approval of an award to Spartan six security Inc number six approval of an award to Mis Corporation number seven through ten approval of non-instructional and instructional Personnel items for p12 number 11 approval financial statement number 12 approval of 2022 2023 superintendent goals
004and number 13 approval of donations thank you next item please policy up the up and policy number 5518 use of celery cellular phones good evening board um I was very excited to see so many people here tonight to hear my presentation on policies and now I'm very disappointed that they all left especially the media I was hoping for some National Air time here okay of course the local guys will always take care of me it's coming tomorrow David yeah I'm waiting for the clock to start here so you guys again um so anyway uh our policy committee reviewed two policies one of them was the cell phone policy it really it was written uh a number of years ago when cell phones had a very different use a very different practicality in our lives and
005so we just updated some language to that policy the other policy uh merely talks about our requirements to report our fire drills tornado drills and emergency drills it gives some parameters on how many drills need to be completed and then a link to a website that shows the school's kind of reporting out of the last three years on those drills so those were the two policies that the policy committee uh reviewed brought forward and I believe the board had time to review those if they wanted to make any changes if not these policies will be brought forth at the next board meeting for approval any questions I don't see any questions thank you Mr Weston thank you very much next item please next citizen participation all right thank you Board of Education business acknowledgments of
006Correspondence we received a lot of emails we received a couple of letters and we're we're listening yes I'm sorry go ahead trustee Barry no problem on that note uh yes we did receive uh hundreds of emails uh a lot of support in those emails but I just want to clarify one thing if I or one of my colleagues don't respond to your email is because we do have a protocol I know president McDonald spent hours and hours and hours uh trying to respond to those emails so we are we we thank you for reaching out to us but always reach out to us to the board president because she's the one that's going to be responding to you so don't feel offended if my good friend here next to me didn't respond to you or
007I didn't respond to you that's just the protocol we've always followed thank you um if I can add to that I do prefer if if someone wants to send me an email absolutely but um I do want them shared with the board too so generally when they come to me and I answer on behalf of the board I go ahead and share them with the board as well so you're we're just trying to load up your account that's all yeah I can see that it's loaded trust me next uh next item please board member committee and organization reports trustee petlikoff on Monday we had a finance committee meeting and we had a couple of things that we discussed one was the preliminary audit report which we we have the initial draft the finalized draft will
008be reported out before the board with the full um uh paperwork packet that you'll get in November but we the initial draft they did give a clean opinion and um which means that they found absolutely no issues uh with with our uh business departments um Financial standings yeah we'll let Tom stay another year and then and then the next one something that um you are all familiar with through the college with the iemp project that we're doing um the district is also looking at a similar project and we had a presentation from train who also runs a similar program to um provide us energy saving efficiencies throughout the district while saving us money in return and it was a very interesting presentation and we will probably have more to um it had to be kind
009of a condensed because we had the board meeting we didn't have a lot of time we will go into further detail as they continue to move this idea forward I have one question and I'm assuming not but it's just a question would it be similar to the other program where there is an educational yes sir oh there is yes there is okay good and it's it's very similar to it looks very much like the um project we're doing at Henry Ford College where we don't we we can bind it not going to the community but using the money that we would then get in return for the Energy savings that we would realize from all of these upgrades so it looks like a similar promising project that we can move forward with thank you are
010there any others I have one real quick I recently went to a Wayne County Association of school board meetings and a couple things I just want to share with you there are some major new sections in the state budget there was a hundred and seven dollars per student per pupil student allowance for mental health also a hundred and seven dollars per pupil allowance for safety now the district must apply for this by um October 17th there are some other stipulations I've spoken to um to Dr Maliko about that and we're working on making sure that we've applied and have all our ducks in a row on that um there's also a 50 matching process program for SRO officers through the Michigan State Police and I know we're interested in that and so we're going to
011look into getting some of that money too one of the issues is that it currently um there's an issue with the date of hire and some of them are not retroactive but they're working on maybe amending that we'll we'll see there's more to come on that one uh one of the things that we were told watch out for predatory vendors um and I have absolute confidence in Mr wall and his team in our process but because there has been a lot of money flowing into school districts um after the pandemic and the other things they have made specific warnings that are there are predatory vendors out there looking to take money from school districts so I just wanted people to be aware of that my practice is when I get a solicitation for a vendor
012I just delete it because I know there's also go to the business office so I don't have to worry about that um on the federal level they need to make teachers this is a discussion they need to make teacher the teaching profession more attractive because when you know that we are having issues with them maintaining teachers one of the ideas and this is just one of many is the possible low interest housing loans similar to VA loans that kind of thing again these are just conversations at this point but it shows that they're thinking outside the box to possibly help us with teacher shortages and the last thing is there's an masb legislative priority oh that was tonight so never mind thank you next item please next item board member slash superintendent commentary trustee Berry
013yes I want to thank all the Educators parents students Community activists to address us tonight this is what dearborn's all about overall tonight's meeting was amazing there was a couple times where there was some miscommunication we heard from great some great speakers tonight I had my undivided attention some very intelligent people uh to where some people took shots at the board saying that we're undermining the parents that can't be any further from the truth I slash we sat here with an open mind listening to everybody we want to hear from our parents I you know since last Monday uh I've heard comments that I wish you know this amount of parents will come out during you know open house or parent conferences yes parents if you're still here or if you're out there listening get
014involved yes the Educators the teachers want to hear from you that's a that was a very good point don't just wait till there's a Hot Topic then come out and disappear stay involved stay involved we all of us up here have nothing but the greatest respect for parents we are parents we are grandparents of students in this District so you know I'm very proud of Dearborn today every time Dearborn gets tested Dearborn prevails and Dearborn will prevail Prevail again on this subject now with this subject we're trying everything possible we're trying to do everything possible to empower the parents again I'm going to say it we're trying to do everything possible to empower their parents over their parental rights over their students their children but within the law we have to hear we have to
015abide by the law of federal laws state laws uh this past couple weeks I know Dr Maliko and president McDonald was on the phone with our lawyers before we made every move I mean this was asked for at the last meeting by trustee Watson myself and everybody else supported it so no don't think that you came here you know addressed us and we weren't listening when people were speaking at this microphone this microphone I took a look around the table you had 14 eyes on you listening to you we're here to support obviously our children our students but we're here because we serve the parents we serve the constituents at the same time we also serve the taxpayers the investors in the city so we have to be careful we don't break any laws we
016don't want we don't want I mean I heard it a couple times today that the national eyes are on us we don't want to get sued because something we did or didn't do so I am very thankful this was this was this was a good feeling meeting there was a couple you know emotions were high it's understandable there was a couple of times where I was hoping it didn't go that way but overall this was a great meeting and I am thankful to everybody who showed up tonight may I entertain a motion to extend the meeting so mood support um the movement was made by trustee mosup is that correct oh trust me oh I'm sorry trustee Thorpe and supported by trustee Berry okay may I have a roll call please trustee Berry yes Rusty
017d'ambrosio yes trustee mosa yes Rusty petrikov yes Jesse Thorpe yes trustee Watts yes president McDonald yes um anyone else with Boyd commentary go first Chelsea petslakov on Monday a regularly scheduled board meeting lost its way rather than a respectful process of business that occurs every month we witnessed a chaotic and abrupt end without a conclusion we understood the concerns of everyone who was in attendance on Monday I will say that a concern brought to the board in the spring was responded to and acknowledged with thanks by the parent in August but this morphed into an angry dispute on Monday that became a very different message from the original complaint Dearborn has prided itself on defending our minority communities over the years but those minorities are not just reflected by race ethnicity or religious beliefs Dearborn
018has been held up as an example of how Community relationships can be built despite our differences and yet today we see a growing fear of divide and conquer we should not be veering away from the years of inclusiveness we struggled so hard to reach by this new imagery we're projecting now the argument oh wait we must share in the responsibility of valuing all of our community members and the argument appears to no longer be just about books and this is what is the disheartening events that have unfolded that we want to assure the community we are not deaf and dumb to what is the concerns of the parents we are all parents we do understand what's appropriate and inappropriate but we have a responsibility to represent the entire Community which is made up of a
019variety of community members who need to be reflected as well and while we balance those competing needs you have to understand that we have a duty and an obligation to be mindful and move with care and that's what we've attempted to do in the book and the book challenge is just one way of many ways of ensuring that only the appropriate and educationally valuable books are retained in our libraries you have to give us some time you have to trust in the system you have to be prepared for the fact that nobody is perfect and you have to accept the fact that our teachers are the ones who are responsible in the media specialist every day in the buildings and they deserve the respect and the consideration that they are not there to do harm
020to your children Rusty Thorpe I would Echo what trustee Barry had to say in regards to tonight's meeting there are very diverse views in our community whether it's on this subject or many others and for the majority of the meeting it went very smoothly yes there's some times it got heated but that's because we're passionate about things and that's fine but overall I want to thank everyone for the decorum tonight and I also wanted to thank the Dearborn Police for helping us with everything tonight the final thing [Applause] the final thing and it was alluded to a couple of times during the meeting is elections and before this board meets again we will have an election so please take the time to go out uh it's going to be a lot of things very important
021to all the residents the state of Michigan along with the city of Dearborn please make sure your voice is heard in your ballot trustee Watts um thank you and I think um many of us who are here in the audience are parents and um I thank you for taking time out um to be here to share your thoughts as a complete side note my daughter won her championship softball game earlier today so thank you and I apologize for being delayed but I know what that means to her and I think those are those times where as parents we have to say what what will my child remember and I have a picture of her with her teammates and they have this championship trophy and they're going to have you know days days to rotate it
022and and the Joy on their faces so um those are the moments that I remember um and I know that she's gonna remember so I apologize for the delay um and I'm glad that she won so um but with that I think there's been a lot of misinformation and even before I got on the board I thought I knew how this the process worked and I think that we have learned that we could probably do a better job and for those who want to know like if you have a concern what does that look like what is the process that you say like maybe I'm not quite sure what is going on I'm hearing a rumor the best thing I would say is talk to your teacher your student's teacher because even within the classroom
023we know the game of telephone my daughter comes home and says oh well this happened today did it really though like you're 10 and you're probably talking to your friend number one go to your to your students teacher if you don't hear an answer go to the principal if you don't hear an answer continue to Advocate email the board like we were saying if one of us gets an email I automatically share it with everybody so that we all know what is happening and Dr Malay goes on there as well and if you don't hear an answer maybe she does another one but you will get in a response shows you within 24 hours lately it's probably been a little bit longer we apologize but we want you to know that there is a process
024for that and if you have any questions as to like maybe how to move forward just shoot us an email because I think the more information that is valid and is not going to social media to find that answer the more informed we all are and I think as parents we all love our children as teachers I'm a former teacher I viewed all of the kids in that classroom as my responsibility and I would refer all to all the parents as my families and my children and I when I would speak to other non-teachers they would kind of look at me a little like how many kids do you actually have not not a lot but when they see me out in public they're kind of there was a disassociation I was like why am
025I not in the classroom because they thought I lived in the school but I want you to know that everyone here cares about your child teachers care about your children and I think the additional dialogue that we have will make us stronger as a community so I just wanted to say thank you um to not only the police but to our teachers to our parents so that we could have these dialogues because I think the more that we communicate directly and not through social media because there's a lot of misinformation but the more that we communicate directly I think this is how we grow those relationships and to build or rebuild that trust so thank you anyone else um go ahead Dr Maliko and then I have a couple thoughts as well yeah so I
026just wanted to mention you know um and it was mentioned by several of the board trustees uh you know we were listening to the parents we sat down with parents we started work I know Dr groover Mr Martin our entire team uh to come up with a process that's fair and as trustee Berry said we have to follow legalities and our attorneys and do what's right so we are listening to the parents we're trying to we came up with a process uh tightening it that we respect all and so I want to thank the parents for their input and again we were sitting down with parents and having a dialogue as trustee petlichkov said I want to thank um uh you know our team and I want to thank our staff that are all here
027they work tirelessly each and every day and they've done it especially during covet over the last two years and really what we've done is kept students safe and provided them high quality education despite some of the challenge so I want to thank the entire staff working with the parents and of course the students and then I also want to give kudos to Chief Shaheen the Dearborn Police honestly the last two days my phone has been they do an awesome job I know we have Chief Murray here our staff I know Michelle Ziad Mr Andrews everybody was really working hard over the last two days I want to thank um Miss abdulbaki from stout from allowing us to come here this is not a stout issue this is a board meeting for the district and wanted
028to thank all the cooperation but it does show how we work so well together so thank you Chief Shaheen for all the calls and then I just have to make a comment to trustee Thorpe trustee or president McDonald and I blew by that record that you and I used to have on the number of calls in the 24-hour span so um you know that 13 is way over the number I don't take it personally okay all right so then we got something new in the books and I've got three minutes so I'm going to make this quick um I want to just thank the community again everyone the police have been here the parents have done a good job um our teachers are phenomenal I just want to thank the community again this dialogue is
029important to us we are listening and I thank everyone that took the time to plan out your thoughts they were well planned out you presented a good argument you presented a good side um expressing your thoughts and your concerns and what you believe and there's a lot of different concerns in this community coming from a lot of different people we have to listen to everyone everybody has a voice everybody has a voice that counts and that's what we're here to listen to um I want to correct real quick trustee Watts I don't stand by the 24-hour time limit I try to I try to answer all the emails that I get I read them thoroughly I think about them I try to digest them I try to give you a good honest answer coming from
030my heart and um and I also have other things in my life that I have to deal with so I try to answer them in a reasonable time usually two days at the latest three days but I really really try 24 hours I cannot commit to and especially lately I'm answering them all so um of one other thing that I just want to say we all made mistakes at one point tonight the Clock Was forgot to be set and I'm up here and I'm doing a lot of things we all lie we're doing a lot of things we're balancing a lot of things there's a lot of things on our mind we have to make sure we follow the law we let everybody have the turn I did let somebody speak to the audience it
031wasn't malicious it wasn't it was I made a mistake and I appreciate you understanding that we're all human we need to work together we are a loving and caring Community we love our students we love our community let's work together we can solve these problems we can solve any issue we have if we come together treat each other with respect and listen to each other and that's what Dearborn has always done we'll do it we'll get through it we work together we're a great community and I think we'll have to call for one more extension unless do you have enough can you get through what in a minute motion extend the meeting five minutes support it's got to be 15. I'm fast but not that much Rusty Berry yes Rusty d'ambrosio yes trustee mosa yes
032trustee petrikov yes Rusty Thor yes yes president McDonald yes next request for information and or future agenda items yes trust he was so when one of our few of the speakers they had brought something up and and I was thinking if we already do this or do we have this process in place we had a child who mentioned something about or maybe it was his father about Broadcasting in Arabic and I believe on YouTube do do we have that option and the other thing is when somebody had spoken in Arabic I don't know what they said and is there a way then if we how do we remedy that so that that when somebody does come and speak in a different language what is the how do we have that translation so just going forward
033something to think about um and then the other thing is trustee Berry at the last meeting had mentioned bullying in the schools and I'm highly concerned that this continued dialogue as long as it's civil is constructive but I'm worried about how this carries over into our school and I'm hearing that we're have we're seeing an increase of bullying in our school system especially against some other LG Plus yeah students and so again with that nobody should feel unsafe in a school regardless of um their their race their sexuality their religion so I just wanted to make sure that we're keeping an eye on that but what can we do that's being proactive with that so trustee Berry thank you thank you for mentioning that uh trustee Watts I was actually raising my hand to bring
034that up I heard from a cheerleading coach she shared with me she wanted to speak tonight but there was something going on at her school yeah students are hurting right now as adults will sit here and debate whatever issue that you know we're going to discuss and we'll figure we'll figure out the solution but this is affecting our students so Dr maleko uh if at all possible I know Mike saley is here in the room someplace so if at all possible if we can get a report on has there been any reports of bullying is it the high school level is it at the middle school let's keep an eye on that please has it increased well I mean yeah I I think I can assume what happened the last few months but yeah let's
035uh let's see where it's at thank you anyone else trusty patrickoff well tonight we once again heard a heard some misinformation being shared um that the books were still in the library that they were at the elementary level that they that that students I want you know we've put out many many messages and I'm not sure what whether everybody has seen them has read them um and and how else we can communicate uh the fact that a the six books that the parent challenged who was a member of your group um that she pulled and she has admitted that she had found those books using a list online she's admitted it it's been reported out and that she then went searching our system to see if any of those books that she went and searched
036on a national site if they existed yes she managed to find uh several of the books that were part of this National list and she she made an effort to um bring it to our attention we immediately took action with the and started to work with her she thanked us for the work we did and then all of a sudden in September things went sideways with with the message and we want to make sure that you understand that none of this was ever ignored swept under the rug neither were our parents I read many things um on social media that they were you convinced that our stopping the meeting on Monday was a ploy in order to shut down communication with the community it was furthest from the truth we just recognized as soon as
037people were agitated by our reading the rules for citizen participation and became more upset that it was a very safe unsafe environment with that amount of people in that small space we never we are here today we found a venue that would work for you and we wanted to make sure that you all had the opportunity to to be in a venue that you could be heard and we did want to make sure that you understood that this was made available to you it's our responsibility at those meetings to make sure you have a safe environment to to come forward we never un recognize that it was going to be that size of a crowd and we had no way of anticipating how many people were going to show up that night so I just
038want you to understand that we are trying our best to communicate the factual information about the efforts we're making and that the the and the one teacher was correct none of those books had ever been um taken out by any student unfortunately now they might because they're not available to be taken out but they might show an interest in looking for it now that so much attention has been paid to it so I just want you to understand we have a process we have a process to protect everyone but it's not always going to work if if we don't have everybody cooperating in the communication so I I hope that you will find the time to work with us rather than um only criticize trust you just to follow up that something that reminded me
039that was said it was suggested that perhaps we take what we use in the press release and turn it into an infographic in both English and Arabic so that it could be shared on uh on Instagram and also on on WhatsApp so I think there's other things that we could do to make sure that there's nothing wrong with overly communicating right so um maybe some of us aren't necessarily on WhatsApp or Instagram but somebody has suggested that could be another way that it could be easily uh shared as well so someplace yeah it was a press release was yes yeah yeah the suggestion was to have all the different type some parents you know unfortunately they're not going to kind of all of it so maybe perhaps if we can you know think of another
040way just thinking outside of the box that might just be easier that's all right okay um just a couple of comments about what was said and then I do have a request for information um one of them is just after what um trustee petslikoff said we absolutely we're not trying to shut down any voices not only have we stayed here tonight and listened to you during covid we stayed and listened to and we read and if people couldn't come to us we read all of their their statements that they wrote and some of them were very long we care about this community we want to hear about you about your concerns one of my concerns the meeting was that not only was this a very large crowd of people but there were also children sitting
041on the floor between the board table and the crowd and it just really worried me that one of these children was going to get stepped on there was a lot of concerns that was a very it was a very unsafe situation it wasn't trying to cut off anybody's voices we are here to hear you um the other thing that I wanted one of the parents or a couple of the parents had brought up how difficult it is for the out opt out process and I understand that's a concern because they would have to know the the or look and check all the books in the library so is there a way that we can generate maybe a list of books that um are more in question or or get off some of the some of
042the lists I think if parents were to Google though unfortunately with Google if the if you were to Google a certain subject matter I'm sure that they could probably find because it that would give the parents the choice right well what I'm saying and instead of you know having to find each individual book have a list of books that might be considered for more mature students or whatever the case is I think there's several web and and um maybe opt out of a whole category of books or instead of each individual and I don't know that might be difficult um for the for the district to do logistically but it's just trying to find a compromise that helps with these students or these parents as concerns trustee Barry my opinion is we need to be
043very very careful going down that road because then we're kind of encouraging social media okay just I mean I understand because we do have to follow the law we're sitting here trying to I mean not to make people happy we're trying to figure out what is right for our parents yeah we understand where you're coming from this is like in the middle of the heat right now but we just have to be careful no I understand because we do have to follow the law but I'm trying to make it easier for parents to because right now they feel like it's difficult and cumbersome for them to work our process if the parents oh I'm trying to find a better way that's you know that's on now yeah that's the whole difference the other thing is
044we're our staff is going through a review process too so our staff is doing a lot of that work but again we also wanted to empower parents for their individual children we care and we are trying to work through the concerns Chelsea mosa says this is for agenda Martin again our next meeting to tell us about how this process is going if books actually have been removed because they are sexually explicit per our policies um they don't have to mention titles but they say x amount of books have been removed because they did not or they violated this policy and the other thing I I do agree I mean we're not asking parents to go out there and look up thousands of of books and and trying to say I want my child not to
045see this book or not to check out this book but can we also have perhaps an in addition to this process is to alert parents of what books their kids are checking out um if there is a process of doing that technologically of you get an alert that my child has checked out these books these books as instantly if they have signed up for this process so you would know what your your children are reading so that gives apparent then the freedom to say okay I approve this or I don't um or if we have a process of saying please ask me to approve checking out certain books um and they don't have even to name the the name of the books but they could specify genres and and subjects instead of asking them to
046provide authors and titles of books so that's that's kind of my feedback on that process but I'd like to get an update on our next meeting anyone else we do um look to our professionals our Librarians our media Specialists our administrators we're asking questions we'd like to find a process that works for all we'd like to find a better way we're just giving out suggestions but that doesn't mean that we know that that's possible or that's the best way to do things we're just looking for a better solution that works for everybody because there are some concerns with this one anyone else next item please future meeting dates Monday October 17 2022 hfc Board of Trustees policy meeting it should be 5 p.m here correction at the administrative services and Conference Center in the cabinet
047conference room Monday October 17 2022 each of C Board of Trustees meeting 7 pm at the administrative services and Conference Center in the Rosenau boardroom Monday November 14 2022 p12 Board of Education meeting 7 p.m at the administrative service center in the Frank franchi boardroom and there needs to be an addition I believe the audit committee for the college is still meeting at 6 30 unless something's changed six o'clock okay we're meeting at six next on the next Monday the 17th audit committee for the college 6 p.m I think it was 6 30. I thought 6 30. we'll get a clarification and get it out I think it's yeah I think it's 6 30. and I think um there was a policy it was at five correct yeah okay is that in anything else thank
048you we are adjourned