001All right. Good evening everyone. Um, this meeting is a meeting of the board of education in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not to be considered a public community meeting. There is time for public participation during the meeting as it did in the agenda and upon request to the superintendent, the district shall make reasonable accommodation for a person with disabilities to be able to participate in this meeting. Hopefully you follow. here. Here all right, we have meeting minutes from March 17th in our packet. I'll move the board of education approve the attached meeting minutes from March 17, 2025. We have a motion and a second to approve the minutes from March 17th as presented. Any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Moving on to the
002agenda. Board policy provides the superintendent of schools shall prepare an agenda for all board meetings as directed by the president of the board of education. I move that the board of education accept the agenda as presented. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? I will just note that this agenda has been updated from when the packet was first posted last Thursday. Um all those in favor of approving the agenda as presented say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. First up is a school presentation about the career fair. career development facilitator Caitlyn who will share information about the first DHS career fair that took place on March 10th, 2025. As the slideshow is going up, um I want to thank the board for all of your support with um all of the career and
003college readiness um efforts. It is making a huge difference in the um lives of our students who either are reconsidering what they thought they wanted to go into or solidifying the choices that they have made especially some of our seniors and juniors who are um further down that um journey. So this has been essential work. We see the need and so we want to continue growing and building. So we thank the board for your support in that. Good to see everyone. Thank you for having me tonight. I'm excited to update you on our career fair that we hosted on March 10th and go through um what the uh day looked like u some of our student feedback, speaker feedback, um what the outcomes were, as well as um areas that we would like to um
004next year. Before I get into the slideshow, I just wanted to revisit um our college and career readiness board goal, which was the district will implement a robust post-graduation planning process engaging all high school students and parents by the end of 2024 2025. Um we have been working diligently this year uh on many different ways that we can align what we're doing with this forward goal. a few of the things that we have implemented um school links that we discussed back in January. Our students have students have been diligently working in school links creating college goals, career goals, taking assessments and interest inventories um as well as using as a resource and tool for exploration. I am also uh currently meeting uh with families individually. I have 12 parent meetings actually scheduled this week. Um
005so we can sit down and talk about their students uh planning process, how I can help guide and support, provide resources so that way they have um that added layer of support um as they navigate their students uh post-graduation plans. We have also um worked on students with their EDPs, their education development plans. This is a requirement of course the state of Michigan that seniors graduating have a formal education development plan that really is um a roadmap of what they plan to do when they graduate. So this um document holds different components. has uh their career goals, their college goals, learning style assessments, resume as well as um smart goals and um mostly just a formal document that is really going to say what they're going to do when they leave um Dexter schools. So,
006we worked with our seniors last Thursday during the testing window and they um zoomed with myself and one of our counselors and they were completing their EDPs and submitting them and I am currently reading through them and approving them and our seniors are going to be emailed um their documents. So, tonight um what I would like to start with is really go over the goals and purpose that we discussed in January. Um the main objectives that we had by hosting this career fair was exposing our students to various careers. We wanted to highlight the Dexter learner profile and have uh show our students direct application on the competencies that they are learning in the classroom and how those are transferable in various careers and then networking opportunities. We wanted to connect our students with professionals
007um so that way we could create the mentorship in internship and uh employment opportunities for them. So overview of the event um this event took place on Monday, March 10th. We had approximately 1,000 students in attendance that spanned from grades 9 through 12. We had an overwhelming response from family and community members that would love to have participated in this event. Um, as we started to confirm all the participation, we had 117 uh presenters that morning. Career clusters represented. This is a really important piece of information because our students are learning about careers and career clusters in school links. And career clusters are related occupations that share similar skills um knowledge and industries. And it serves as a framework for our students to start to explore career options based on their interests, strengths and uh
008goals. So we wanted to make sure that we had 16 with our 16 career clusters that are identified in school links. We wanted all 16 of those clusters represented so our students had um all their wants and needs of met for the um for the event. the session structure. Students were emailed in February during advisory um a Google form that had a list of all of our participants and we asked them to select their top three that they would like to rotate through and then we built the rotation schedule based on their requests. So the day of our students participated in three 30 minute presentations. Some of the careers that we had um we had a retired Air Force pilot, a special agent in charge uh in Homeland Security, the director of environmental health at
009University of Michigan, a forensic scientist, physical therapist, construction project manager, um and a few attorneys that represented uh different uh legal specialties. The next few slides are going to show you um direct quotes from our uh students uh on the feedback that we received. Our students and staff as well as our presenters were sent an exit survey questions were worded a little differently depending on who was receiving it. But we wanted to really gauge um what how the overall event their experience was um what went really well and what we could improve on. So these are some quotes from our 12th grade students. I am mostly interested in civilian aviation rather than military. So having airline captains speak made me really happy. It provided me with a huge amount of relief. I picked careers I'm
010seriously looking into for my future and each presenter did an excellent job explaining the career and what they do. It made me love the career fields even more. One of the questions in the survey was um asking our students to rate the quality of presentations. Uh 46% of our seniors said excellent, 50% said good, and 4% said fair. our 11th graders. Different jobs in the medical field require less schooling than I thought. Some of the things said in the journalism presentation really uh seemed really applicable and the marketing sales presentation gave some insightful perspective. 31% of our juniors found the quality to be excellent. 60.7% said good and 8.3% said fair. Our 10th graders opened my mind to careers I didn't think I was interested in. And it's okay to not have everything figured out
011right away. Sometimes it takes a while to find something that really resonates with you. Overall, 27.6% of our sophomores found the presentations to be excellent, 59.6 good, 11.3% fair, and 1.5% poor. And finally, freshmen, I realized that early childhood education is something I might want to pursue, and learning about cyber security was fun. I would love to learn more about it. 33.6% excellent, 57% good, 8.7% fair, and 7% poor. Some overall quotes. My favorite was the film presentation. I have been trying so hard to get into this industry, but haven't found anything any helpful information until now. Thank you. And the design and pre-construction presenter really opened up my eyes as a project coordinator. So, overall student feedback from our uh full student body, 33.6% 6% excellent, 57% good, 8.7% fair, and 7%. Our speaker
012feedback, um, I thought it was executed perfectly. I felt the organization was great and the communication was clear. I really enjoyed the experience and I love that you're doing this. The registration process was slowed, but that was because of the amazing response of volunteer presenters. Thank you for having us. their overall experience 60% uh excellent, 37.9% good and 1.7% fair. We also received some parent and community feedback. Parents were not um in the building that day, but students went home and were raving about the day and the careers that they got to rotate through. And we re received some really nice uh parent emails. One parent in particular, I just wanted to send a quick note to say thank you for hosting the career fair last month. The making waves just came. I know a
013ton of work went into that, but it was definitely worth it. Uh, our student came home and told us all about his sessions, presenters, and the careers they had. It was definitely an impactful day. We appreciate everything you do at DHS, and the DHS staff does on a daily basis a special thanks for going above and beyond career day. I also received an email from um a my counselor at my high school. Her husband participated as a speaker on career day. she connected with me and wanted to know if there was a potential to partner up with Milan High School because they would love for their students to be a part of a career day like this. Um, we haven't had discussions about it, but it just I think really just shows that there has
014been a positive um ripple effect in the community that people are really appreciative of uh this opportunity that our students were able to um experience. What were the outcomes of our events? Career exploration, excuse me. Students gained exposure to a variety of career paths and industries. the educational pathways. They were able to learn about the education credentials and degree requirements, enabling them to make more informed decisions about their futures. The networking opportunities, our students were able to connect with professionals um for mentorship and to build relationships that can benefit them in their future. The community engagement piece. This career fair and future career fairs are going to really help um tie and strengthen ties between our schools, local businesses, and organizations. just fostering more collaboration and support. And then the skills development and learner profile
015connection. The students were able to engage with professionals and utilize communication skills, professionalism, and other soft skills that are essential for career growth. And then highlighting our learner profile um really deepened hopefully deepened their understanding of the competencies that they are learning in the classroom and how our learner profile is an actionable guide for success. So, areas of improvement, we are going to streamline the check-in process next year and make it more efficient for our speakers. We want to uh have more clear directions on the forms that our students sign up for when they are choosing their rotations and the speakers that they would like to rotate through. We would like to limit the number of total speakers and utilize the spaces available. We had an overwhelming response, which is a good problem. It was
016a great problem to have. Um, next year we would probably limit the amount of speakers to make sure that we have comfortable space and AV capabilities for every one of them if that's what they would like. Um, and then also have alternates so that way if somebody inevitably had to back out because of a scheduling conflict, you would have some alternates available to fill in those gaps. Um, bring in more college, university, military service and trades training information sessions. And then the after session connection time. Um, an example of this is currently I many of us know Mrs. Melanie Reyes, one of our local photographers and DCS parent. She has graciously and generously offered an hour of her time a few Saturdays from now for students to walk around Dexter and she will show them
017the craft of photography. She's going to allow them to ask questions, show them how to use a camera, um, and really build on their skills uh, if they're interested in that as a career. So, we want to create more of these opportunities for our students and then create panel sessions. There are industries and careers that a lot of our students are interested in. An example would be uh a lot of our students are interested in law, a lot of our students are interested in health sciences. So creating a panel session that students could choose as a rotation that will have those different specialties available to them that they can learn about in one session. But ultimately, we were really pleased with how the event um ran that day. We're pleased with the feedback that we've
018received. And really looking forward, we just want to build on the foundation that we have um and just improve your career and hopefully also expand the scope of uh careers and industries that we can um bring to our students. So I appreciate your time and support and if you have any questions, please just want to commend Caitlyn and Melody and the entire team for pulling this off and making it so it was a great great event. First time doing it. It ran honestly tougher on yourselves than it should be. It ran pretty well. Was impressive. Thank you. I was impressed by it. I hopped in present, but I kind most of the students I talked to was really good. But some of them were appreciative of they were class too. Yes. But they they definitely
019seem to like it. and the presenter that I heard I thought were looking good to to what extent did we provide guidance to the presenters so there's some uniformity in how things are presented or are we going to in the future we did um and I'm actually happy to share that document with you I can pull that up um we did we provided all of our speakers a professional handout that was a guideline um and really outline their role as a speaker so right here your role as a speaker we wanted continuity in all these presentations so we wanted there to be guidelines. Um they wanted them to share their career journey. So um how did they get started? What steps did they take in their education? We wanted them to highlight the key skills
020and qualities. Um highlighting our learner profile, any important qualities that a student would need to know about that um career field to be successful. We ask them to describe daily responsibilities, debunk myths about their career if they have any um and then provide advice for aspiring professionals. And we also asked them to leave um a couple minutes at the end uh for student questions. Our students were in advisory um when they first got into school that day and were given a note card to write down questions. So they received their schedule, the rotation schedule. They saw who they were rotating through and we asked them to write down questions because we wanted them to engage speakers. We even had tips for successful interaction which a lot of them did read and brought you know giveaways
021and and just things to kind of keep them um engaged. Some of the the best I would say presentations were ones where students got to actually like make something. Uh we our homeland security he's our neighbor. He he wrote test um you know they they love that stuff. They love the ones where they're like oh I can get up. I can try something. I can make something. So um something that we are going to improve upon this um speaker um guideline list is add some teacher notes if it's um you know someone coming to careerfare that is not um accustomed to comfortable presenting in front of kids all the time. We we talk to kids all the time because that's what we do. We're in education. Some people who came to the career fair were
022how am I going to talk to kids? How do I relay this information? So, the next time we do this, we're going to add another um page of like here's some tips on how to talk to kids specifically or um how to relay information or um sometimes PowerPoint's not always the best way. Try this instead. Like Caitlyn said, you know, the lie detector test that was great. Um we did not ask any of them their thoughts and their principal that day. Um you know, but things like that to really get them to interact. So, those types of things. I thought it was great. I sensed Thank you. We appreciate you participating. That was great. Great. How many out of the three session get signed up? How many I get all my top three of my
023dream choices? I I got one out of the three or was I that ballot or were they partly said those ballot points too? Yep, great question. We I had a little over 700 students that submitted their requests and if they submitted their requests, we really did try to honor them. Um going through and balancing the sessions that was a little challenging, may have to move some around. Um there were about 300 students that did not after multiple attempts to get them to submit their forms, they were placed in rotations. Those were mostly after going through the feedback, any of the negative feedback, if it was constructive, we took it and we added that to our areas of improvement. But I would say a lot of that feedback was from students that did not submit their
024forms. So they did not feel like they gained knowledge that they were looking for. Um, but building their schedules from scratch, we wanted to just make sure we put them in different types of specialties. So if they had a business management rotation for session one, we put them in health sciences session two, information technology session three. Um but we really did try to keep the schedules um based on what the students requested. Although we never would expect a 100% um reply from the students. Um we do want to work on the student response to make it a little bit easier. And if they don't respond, we're going to do some more one-on-one um meetings with the students before the event so that we really make sure that we are speaking um and reacting to every
025single student and what they want. You have to start early. I um I would like to Yes, I would like to pretty pretty short period of time. Yes. Um having gone through the process, there are definitely things that I will do differently. Um starting earlier and u now that we have also data from schooling. So, we have really good concrete data that we can really work off of for next year that we did not have when we originally started planning this event. Yep. And that's why on um some of our um adjustments for next year, we talked about adding some careers, adding some more clusters, or adding panels. Um there was an overwhelming response from our student body that um the majority of our students are interested in medical or criminal justice. Okay. So, maybe
026those are career um fields and um career clusters that we need to bring more people in and maybe less of some of the others, but also have all 16 represented in some way. So, this is really fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing. Thank you. Right. Um we are moving on to public participation. Each speaker is allotted a maximum of five minutes for a total approximately 30 minutes. At this point in the meeting, those interested in making a public comment will be as anyone like to speak to the board tonight. We will move along to our administrative board updates starting superintendent. Right. First, uh, Mil Creek demonstrated page that Kim Kings retirement through the internal interview process position who would the assistant principal at Anchor. She actually was hired to teach there. So, now we
027need to find an elementary assistant and a that's process. um wellness center agreement. It's in the packet um extending for two years with five monthly towns continue operating it. We currently have just shy of 3,000 members at the wellness center. So to give you a perspective, the city of Dexter has about 35 res. So it's a good number of community members. Um the agreement about two years seems it's been um in align with power of wellness agreement for the other centers. So that there's still reciprocal use of the presenters between members. Um we are going to pay 1500 operationally monthly but we were so far last year just shy 20. They made a bunch of changes and it's increasing membership. So we'll continue to see some positive returns. Uh no, as part of this agreement,
028we set it up so that they had to take part of the reserve loss possible. So we worked that out. We're asking them to basically so we're giving a small amount of their personal but in the end they're going to end up donating back to the center. Um the FAQ for the bond we've updated several topics updated in the last couple weeks have been local district mill rates of all the surrounding districts Mil Creek and Creekide building grades switch and the timelines a comprehensive timeline um whether can change or plans change after a bond passes athletic facilities parts and sciences and purchasing bonds and uh so we've done just ton of updates on there. The other thing we've done, um, just real quick, I wanted to give a few bond facts. So, we're at 8
029and a half mills have been since the 90s. If the bond doesn't pass, it's still going to be at 8 and a half for a couple mill. If we went for the original plan that the committee came up with was 330 and that was actually reduced down to the 241.8 if it was any smaller. So say it was in 150 years would still be 8 and a half months for several years. All it does is this extends out to 2033. The lowest would be like 3031. That's we're in the school buy loan fund which actually saves our taxpayer a lot of money. Um if we did run the numbers as part of the treasury app what happened the school loan fund and the initial buy we moved to 8.66 then 9.78 9.2 2 10.12 drop
0307.4 it goes like this over an average paying it off that's like 8.6 six. So, it's actually one of So, we ran it so it made sense. And overall, I know I've heard questions as I've been around town, the community being asked, uh, like you get this every time I have a question. How are the academic? Well, we have one of the three highest grad rates in the state. So, we graduate all our schools time, one of the highest rate schools in the state because of our test scores. So what happens a lot of times is schools will have so say a neighboring school that has a little bit incrementally higher SAT score they have 10% of their kids not graduating so that's 10% of their kids not even taking that test so we have
031100% of our kids taking the test and they graduated at the time and our scores are really strong. Um, overall things are they're cruising. We're in spring. Weather is nice today. So, we're cruising along and we're all so you just said that if we were not in school, so how would that happen? So they had an agreement with so they changed the law years ago and have an agreement every district has and our agreements to be at 8 that's our so while the outstanding bonds are paid on there are other districts that have agreements that are slightly lower but we can't just change ours They actually cap the funds. What it does for is allows us to keep that stabilization of the part of the payment. So we're able to kind of flow money back
032and forth cash so that we're always paying steady. What we can do from that fund is when we're waiting on tax revenue to be collected to make payments quality pay for almost every district the extension of the mill we're just improvements just improvements. Right. So, right. So, we're talking about um basically rebuilding a school, getting a whole new school versus this. This goes back to our original presentation which was we have the choice either to repair which would cost 3750 and just repair the whole all all the the whole package just to repair is 200 or we can have a new school and some other um also repairs but for 240. So, so the extra $40 million gets us much further ahead and we're still at the above like this. So, if you look at
033the website, you put the other districts. So like at 9 something 9.75 I think Chelsea is lower they're at 6.9 I think last year but then they have almost one Seline is actually lower but we combine their recommending their over so we're all in the same that's how you Thank Um, I don't have any official updates, but while I have the floor, I am just going to take a minute to say that the board has received feedback and comments about with questions about the bond, about things happening um in the district, about things they've heard. And so I want to make really clear community that the best way to get information about what's happening in the district is from the district website. The board is always welcome to field questions and to help get your
034question to the right person. And there is a fantastic talk to us button right on the website. And then if you hit it and you send your question, it will get directed to the right person. Um, I just know I've had a lot of questions recently, things that people have heard or seen on social media, and we've all played the game of telephone, and I just want to make sure, especially in this time when people have real valid questions about the bond, that the accurate information is getting out. So, please feel free to email the board, send a question through, talk to us or look at the there is so much information on our dempster um web page, especially the bond page. So, I'll get off my soap box there, but I just wanted to
035make sure everyone had accurate directions for we do not have student representatives here tonight. Um, so we will move on to our consent items. I believe that the board of education approve consent items. Second. We have a motion and a second to approve um new hires retirements and temporary appointments of presidents involved. Um any discussion? All those in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? Moving on to our agenda items tonight. Uh first up is some policies uh for first reading. I move board of education approved 3305 and 4330 for first reading second. Uh we have a motion and a second. Uh any discussion? So the policy uh committee met and we went through we're trying to finish the roll out of the room and table but specifically the one the the policies that we
036kind of have leaded on for finance because Dexter has a robust set of very specific finance policies that clearly work through the board for our CFO and so we want to be very mindful of what we want to change if anything and what we want to break over. So really when we if you look at the policy minutes that were that are in the from March 14th that are in your packet, you can see all the things we talked about, the things we wanted to keep, and really we're just bringing to you guys some combinations that make sense. That's really where we're trying to make it most sense. So it's clean, it's succinct, and it's any questions. But there I left it as it was. I didn't feel like I had the right answer. Yeah,
037we don't have to include it. Sometimes we want to cross. Yeah, I think we I think we were not accurate. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay, since this is an action item, let's do a roll call, please. Hi next up uh we have the remaining 2017 bond projects information. Um, we previously discussed this item at the March 17th meeting and is presently for this. Essentially, we are acknowledging the um additional money that is available after the projects were from the last bond. I'll move that the board of education approve the use of remaining bond funds projects to support allowable bond funded projects for any currently owned school district property or a second. We have a motion and a second. Any discussion? We have a list of funding requirements. We were this is going to be
038set up for emergency. restroom building. Oh yeah, we got a project for turf building for the twin turfs. We've got switch gear unit that's coming in in July. That one's coming in. Remember we that was a while ago, but that's going to come in and be finalized to switch gear as well. And that one set up. We know we got a price, but when they start up with some two weeks ago, they still said they were good. Nobody said anything about that, but you always know when the rubber meets the road. Any other questions? Arnold. Hi. Hi. Hi. Um, administrator salary level placements. It is time to approve level placements for administrative staff for fall. Our packet includes a memo superintendent recommending approval of the attached level placements. Motion. I'll move the board of education
039approve the attached administrative level placements for the 256. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any questions? Pretty much everybody would see the highest level. We have a really experienced team. We're going to hire a couple new people so that we can begin process. Questions? Do public please. I Moving on to the filter first upgrades grant. Um this packet includes a bid tabulation and recommendation from operations mala regarding the first healthy hydration grant offered by the Michigan Department of Education. Let's put a motion on the table as we can discuss that further. I'm board of education contract John 51% of $2457 total not to exceed $18,19 second. We have a motion and a second. And can I just ask that you provide a brief overview for the board and members of what we're doing?
040Yep. So, um, a few years ago, the MDE came out when there was a lot of issues with Flint water. MDE wanted to ensure that all schools had filtered water bottles in their filter system. So, um, about a year ago or so, they put out the option for us to go all approved for the grant or to apply for the grant. Um it was a competitive grant. So we went and broke down the cost of where we feel they needed to be when we look at replacing all the water bottle or meeting the requirements of the filtered first grant which is one water bottle filler per 100 students right that was in the building. So we went um I looked at counted that gave us 45 here in Dexter. Um so that touched every school
041building including Bates and Jenkins and the transportation building of where it was. We went through looked at the costs for at the time what Chris was like we wanted to make sure we hit the mark to replace them. So we figured it all out. We did replacement filters for a year. All this was allowable in the federal grant. Um it was also pitchered water bottle fillers for Jenkins the time. So we went put in the cost the funds for it. Um thought we had enough hope we had enough to replace them all. Um the filter first grant has very specific specifications too about what types of water bottle fillers come in, right? They meet certain standard filter standards. Um not only do they have the water bottle um filler itself, it also has to have
042a bubbler. It has to have on it a filter to show when the filter needs to be changed. Um it has to be acceptable. You have to do all the checks. So um we wrote our our we wrote our RFP with all the requirements of the first grant in there. Um, again, it was 45 separate stations. Put that out for bid, put it out for the RFP. Um, not sure where we were going to get to go. Um, so we literally, so the companies on here, local companies we brought in, we walked them through. Um, pretty much they put their eyes on almost all the spots for the where the water bottle fillers are going to come. Part of the reason um, they didn't see everyone as we have some spaces where they have them
043now. So, it's really going to be just a plug-andplay. Um, we do have some water bottle fillers and filtered ones in spaces, but we wanted to have the same piece of equipment so it's easy for us to go replace ones. So, um, we ended up getting five bids. Um, our lowest bidder was John Dar Mechanical. Um, so after the fact, we met their bid was lower, a lot lower than what we actually got from the grant fund. Um, so we'll be able to touch all 45 of the grants there um, and give some money back. We were really surprised in Yeah. shocked. I I was knowing the price and everything else. I was like, you know, part of the conversations and as we wrote in there that depending on where the bids come in, we
044knowing we had some that were new that would meet the standards, we we said, well, let let's just see where we are. So, we're happy to be able to place them all. You're answering my questions. We're turning money back in statement. No. Well, we'll have to see. We'll have to see. Yeah, we'll work through the process of where it went. We try not to get a Yeah, exactly. So, the how long is the warranty set money and then prior and then filters? Yep. Yep. How much does it cost to replace 45 and can we Right. So, that's the thing. Yes, we can purchase other filters. So, the cost of um this part of the grant will just be for this for the 45 water bottle filter. We can still use funds then for filters as
045well for them. We still can use the funds for the water filler pictures. So there's other costs we can put towards we'll go through the steps. So this first turn we get everything we apply. Yep. Yep. Yep. Father John, um, this this is really nifty, but the the addition of these two numbers just add up to 679. Might want to change. You're right. I'm a penny. I round up. I think I probably I know sense wise they definitely don't like it. I I must when I round it and put it there. I was going to say we would be rounding up to an even number. Yeah, I suggest that we I think that's why I'll amend my motion to not to exceed amount 190,000. Okay, any other questions? Let's do a photo. Hi. Um, our
046last action item tonight is the superintendent evaluation. At its December 16th meeting, the board conducted the superintendent's annual evaluation and approved rating effective, the highest rating available. Our packet this evening contains the 2024 superintendent evaluation summary statement and this I just presented for action. I just want to note that the delay in getting this to the packet was partially my fault we have lost the thread there. Um but this was written and completed um at our December meeting. Um, and so I'm going to turn it or I guess we need to first board of education approve the attached summary statement of Dr. 2020 I know right 2020 second. All right, we have a motion and a second and I think you need to read it out loud. So I'm going to turn those over to
047Jennifer who coordinated our evaluation first. Okay. So again, we um we performed evaluation December 16, 2024, close session, came out of the meeting, came out of close session and approved it as a board. Um it opened back open session and this is the summary. So the DEX board of education has completed its annual review evaluation of superintendent Dr. participants in compliance with the revised school code using superintendent evaluation instrument SEI developed by Michigan association supports SEI was revised for 202425 um period to include three categories needing support developing and effective as as just a reminder there used to be four categories superintendent Timus' overall rating of effective which is the highest rating possible is based upon the board's assessment of his performance followed areas governance and board relations, community relations, staff relations, business and finance,
048instructional leadership, student growth, and progress for district five goals. Dr. Timus has met has met the board's expectations and all areas of review. The following are recaps of the 2024 to 2026 goals that were set by board. The board set a graduation rate of four-year graduation rate um meeting or exceeding 95% and the actual achieve last year was 99%. Uh the board's goal of math and reading achievement that DCS students will achieve growth in reading and math is compared to peer schools. The actual is that state data shows that DCS students are growing in ELA and math at rates equivalent or higher than county schools. 76.4% 4% and 73.8% of students achieve average or above average growth ELA at that respectively. Uh post-graduation planning the the the goal is that the district will implement a
049robust post-graduation planning process engaging all high school students and parents by the end of 24-25 and expanded to engage middle school middle and elementary school students and parents in 2526. Postgraduation planning is currently underway. This includes changing to a comprehensive career college planning software which is school links and a career day schedule for March in 2025. Process will continue to be refined. Um the fourth goal was facilities planning. The district will conduct a comprehensive analysis of our current future facility needs which shall include a 10-year facility study and analysis of environmental and sustainability impacts. Sorry. Um progress is that comprehensive facility plan was completed and presented to the board on November 4th, 2024. Sustainability continues to be a focus. The board recognizes the work that all employees put forth to support our learners. We appreciate
050and value the leadership that Dr. Timus provides. The talent of our team combined with solid financial status helps ensure success for our children. The district is well positioned to continue the strong adaptive and caring education and environment for our students. Thank you. Thanks. We need to vote to accept this statement. I All right, moving on to our discussion items. Um, first up tonight is discussion of the annual check registry and a change to this transparency or the change in our district's um management use of the transparency law 388.1618. Um, and this packet or this evening's packet includes an executive summary regarding the MDE budget transparency requirements. I think I'd like to turn it over to Dr. Timus to start and sort of lay the groundwork for everybody. So I provided a background and history in
051the board package just so back in the recession back in 08ish um we had gone as a state with general increases in people funding for several years from early 2000s up through 2007 and then we received a cut significant cut about $470 a student. There was not unlike during COVID the COVID pandemic there were stimulus funds sent to all the states. So in the stimulus funding there were every year was a new best practice it was called and every year you could see whatever politically was being pushed. So privatization and all kinds of school choice we were one of the handful districts that at that time did not participate in school choice and then opened up because of best practice. um on a very limited basis. So, one of the best practices in one of
052the years was I think for $100 a student is the district had to do four things and one of them was this either the either the accounts payable check registry or the statement of reimbured expensive expenses. The background on that the legislature was mad at urban districts in those state and they were finding that there were all these reimbursements board members that were pretty excessive. Um so they were saying okay you have two choices either publish a check registry or you publish board member reimbursements along with this whole other based on MD guidance. So MDE every year it's going to be involved and then they stop practice passing all these best practices things the funding but it went on for several years. So there was an iteration where you had to do like one thing
053then you had to do four things they had to do like six things they had to do two things and it was every year a new list. So at that time the Dexter board decided to post the board member and employee reimbursements and one of the other things that had to be posted is still on the website under the transparency is our reimbursement policy. So it made sense at the time to put the reimbursements because we write very few checks out of the whole budget. I mean, you know, a year when we're doing lots of bond projects, our budget's 100. I mean, we're running through projects. So out of that, you're running through a handful of checks, all things considered. So that's how we got to where we are. The MDE has clear recommendations and
054they actually bold in there that you have to put either the accounts payable check registry or the statement of reimburseed expenses and they used to audit this. We used to get like the nasty grand letters you didn't have the updated link or your u they actually at one point during the best practice the little icon with the state of Michigan on it. There were lots of iterations of how you post that icon. Then they gave us the actual exact size and pixel it had to be. So this goes way back. As a board you can decide to change what a previous board did, but you have to it's just not something we generally wake up and yeah let's just do that. Um what I would recommend is to think through like send it to one
055of the committees like finance or policy because some of the things that happen on our check registry. So, I gave you a sample of just the printed checks from fiscal year 24. Some of the things on here are reimbursements kids, reimbursements of the parents for lunch accounts for their kids, they're reimbursements for like the swim parents who go and do breakfast all season. It's reimbursements for their pancake mixes. It's things like that. There are uh items in there and there's people's names. And why what we didn't want to do was put in the board packet for now was put names of community members that had no idea their name was going to go on website the public board packet they bought. So we just have to decide how we want to manage that. Do we
056want to leave them on? Do we not? We really don't want to change our processes internally because we keep good records of what all these are but you got to click on it three times to find out what it was for. But we put exactly who was written on the check. But getting I would not recommend to put it monthly because checks has have appeared by then. And check fraud. One thing that happens with check fraud for big institutions is that someone steals a check, they find a number. So, if it's an open number, they'll find the number, they'll recreate the check for some amount that would be listed on the website and then they find someone else that could fraudulently cash it for and then they go withdraw from that account that they fraudulently
057create. So, we don't want to be chasing this. We do most of our stuff through EFTs, but we want to be thoughtful on how we what we do with the publishing. It's not a problem push a button, print it. It take a little few hours to figure out what we got to take names out of someone's name. Um it just we really should think through and then there's things like petty cash. Petty cash is a good example when we end up chasing someone going why you get all this petty cash. We do a program with our special ed students. When they get into the community they have to go board the bus for the wave bus and they have to go somewhere. We give them money to learn how to do that. It's part of
058our process, but it has to be cash. So, we have to track cash. There's times we write checks to ourselves. That's so we can move from one fund to another. Um, there's lots of nuances and one thing I would be hesitant um and actually not hesitant. I just want the board to think through is I was once when I first started as administrator, I was in another district say I was at airport. We would print the checkouts sitting at a board meeting. They're the airport jets. The wait room is called the hanger. It's right next to the field. It's really cool thing. It was paid for by donors. On the check registry was a check for $20.78 or something for bricks for the hang. 20 minutes of discussion. Why would we buy bricks for a
059brand new building? What kind of brick can you buy for $20? Da da da. Finally, someone in the crowd who worked in the audience who was our facilities guy stepped up. He goes, "I got to tell you, I'm tired of listening to this." He goes, "They're urinal cakes. You guys just spent 20 minutes talking about $20 for urinal cakes." So, that's the other thing to be conscious of is how much staff time we spend answering questions. So, annually it's manageable. Um, I put in the narrative, we model ourselves on efficiency, sometimes to an extreme. So we're the lowest 90% of all districts in the state on spending for business administration. We run at some years off points of hund00 million out of an office of about 4ft FT. We're efficient. We want to spend money
060on the classrooms. So we spend we're the top 20% on instructional salaries and the top 8% in instructional support. That's where the money is supposed to go. So we can spend it. It's not a problem to change check registry. We just want to have I think the board needs to have assign one of the committees. I think we're nuances on how we want to do it. So annually would be the recommendation but how what I put a list of questions to really think okay what do we do with employee needs reimburse what do we do with the kids what do we do with the parents do we tell them when we're writing a check by the way you're going to be on the website that you received um $29.39.35 for the lunch account. So you
061just got to think of but it's not problem to do. I'll say I was interested in this and so I actually just last night just went through and looked at a bunch of different schools but the kind of cross-section of and I will say it's not it's kind of the order I would say you know and if they do do it for the most part they do do it annually. So for instance, Brighton, Chelsea, how ones that I didn't find at all. So I don't want to say it's not there, but I either put it in their search or I looked on their finance page. Bedford, Bolt, Vicki, Tom, I didn't see any of them. Um, so I I would say there's not a clear answer that everybody's doing it and outliers. Like I said,
062I mean, no one I found that was looked at. That would surprise me. I could say I've been administer by one person and I guess I would you know we're gonna send it to a a committee. I don't think it's policy finance because policy put together a new policy on this as a recommendation if we're working out are we are we not how are we doing it that's more appropriately I agree it's ris I will say we do the financial narratives part of the board's reasoning we were doing before narratives which is way more than anybody any other district really provides like by department where we are on spending every quarter. Um and it went from nothing in most districts to get to choose. We were already doing quarter quarterly. So that's part of their
063decision making at the time and in the end whatever you guys want to do I just spend some time thinking through how you want to name somebody look at sense none of us were made that decision into whether we should or we should have so interested comes up with the burden on us but I do have concerns like I somebody else's check registry and I saw things that a privacy lawyer I would not want on there so we have to evaluate all of that but you We are a public institution. So to the extent something at least look at it make an educated decision to proceed. That's what it's really I don't think it's just one more thing to have there is and track because like we have to track to meet the MBE requirements
064like for the reimbured expenses. We have to track that in separate in separate ways. We'll have to do this in a way that we have someone that's going to take hours of their time to go through and pay whatever we decide name. Right. That's my question is what how I know there's a couple people that have brought this up pretty regularly over the years. Um, but I don't know that that's a lively leap. So that's the question is is there is the community is there community um outreach or whatever desire to have this thing and are they actually look at it? The reason I say not literally gives us a checklist of what we have to so it's easier just go down whenever there's new people. Remember this was from 09. So something in 2035
065or 2040, whatever you guys decide is going to still be going in some way, shape or form. My biggest talk this came up years and there was an election. So people in the community they didn't really care that want to talk to some someone really someone just said I'm tired of hearing about it just publishing so that's one item but what I am also worried about you publish this but don't publish the other then you're going to have same not publishing anymore that's more valuable to the community and I don't know how you sense that they don't see it but that's my that's my biggest concern They're publishing one publishing and take it away and publish something else or used to seeing something that they may or may not look with this journey of privacy
066and everything. We should definitely look at you know what we do to is there more benefit how we currently have it that information to us because we're I'm not advocating so we're going to spend staff resources to check register is what people want to think should look I think employee reimbursements and board reimbursements to me are more interesting to see that you know they can't get a lot. So it would be all included to say finance you want to talk through just checks. This is only 1.5 million. Yeah. What what is a check? It literally just checks and that's likely technically checks. Technically checks. So you would be misquing. Oh yeah. Yeah. Do others that publish their check for several hours. I think we haven't tried it yet. Well, and I do just want to
067be very clear to board and community. I have seen the undrafted check register. These are absolutely student names and parents, individual parent names of students. And to Brian's point, I think one of the most difficult jobs we have is balancing like real serious values here. And while I think all of us really do value transparency, I also think we value privacy and individuals rights to not have their name everywhere. So these reactions were made with my support because they ended up in a board packet. This didn't have to be any letter of any law to show it here. Um, and so I do think that we do need to really be thoughtful about last names of people in our district. I there are all kinds of reasons that people don't want their names to pop
068up and and I just think we need to be really thoughtful about family names who are part of our school. I'm not making an argument to not do it. I just want to be really thoughtful that privacy needs to be just as important as trans. It is and this is why the board decided and we found the actual September of the October. I still remember this from the state. You got some thoughts you want to share? No, I think I you know what you guys have all said is what I what I was thinking as well. I think we need to balance the need for transparency with the public that being able to have point of order. Um yeah having transparency for our you know being a public institution but then also protecting the privacy
069of people that trust in us not only uh student and parents but also uh maybe not so much but businesses. It might not be the law that they can't be you know published but there's relationships that we have with businesses that could be jeopardized by publishing how much we paid them. Hey there people in our community. It's just one thing though. The other thing I would add is that this information is available if anybody wants to come in and see the information. So there's a there's a difference between mandated publishing of of all of this versus if somebody's always that's my understanding that's a great way to check it's not just sorry I was asking where the stage of reimburse transparency. Yeah. And I do want to just bring that point up too that the
070transparency page is very long. There is a lot of information and continuing to add more information I think makes it less helpful to our community. So I think we should be thoughtful about how we structure just adding things. It used to be like three things or two things and four things and it was four things drop down and then we have but if someone wanted the if someone wanted the check register they could either come to the office to request to see it or they could submit a foyer either as if it's not available right yeah what they will have to do is talk to the party like if they come to look at it. A lot of times it sends us some especially like during the shut down and we do refund more than
071others because we run the we we do in house. Um we do everything in house but the best practices best practices came out. We're supposed to all privatize it. Well, we kept transportation in house food service. So most districts privatize the food service we're running in house. So when we give lunch deposits, we're the ones giving it not or Sedexo. When we do um community, we're most of the districts around us have a city with a recreation. We're the recreation. So, anything that happens like if there is some kind of clinic and we get a community member that says, "I'm going to go run a youth lacrosse clinic." We're paying for a 1099. We're running a check because they're not going to set up a business to go run a Saturday morning lacrosse. So, and
072we end up doing some kind of thing on our end to make sure that we're making sure that we're paying for our administrative overhead but not gouging our community. We're just trying to break. So, that's why we have lots of checks that those people didn't know they were getting. Just one other piece of information, right? We are auditing each year requirement and a lot of um Some of the audit procedures are called testing. So they'll actually make selections through our general ledger or through our vendor listing and um you know ask us for supporting documentation. So a lot of these transactions are selected in a way whether it's random whether it's part of a grant single audit um or um in the past I know we've talked about elements of unpredictability right in and they
073do something different just to kind of make sure that you're not used to exactly what's happening. um is a test I performed in the past about looking at vendor totals and then creating um a test to ensure that they made sense. So a lot of there's a lot of analysis already performed on these. Um so just so you guys know other people are looking at our transaction and our vendors um through a multitude of the audit procedures. What I like most a lot more was this and I ran to the board in 105. I started going back and back and back and back as far as it go back and we never increased always been that low. Uh even as our budgets increase, new budget increase business. I talk about our business administration. Yeah. The
074percentage going from business administration to funding the uh the cost on top of funding education basically instructional education stuff that need to do to run school. If you look at our schools, they have now districts too. I kind of like being. So when we discuss that how much does it how much will it take out of us? We can solve one problem but create two other not wish but make you upset. So it sounds like what I'm hearing is that there is general consensus that we are open to the idea to changing which transparency metric that we use next year. It sounds like people's main concern is on balancing transparency and privacy. And it sounds like most of us feel like finance is the appropriate committee to dig into some of the details and processes
075that we would need to make that change. Is there anything that I'm missing? Yeah. The change is beneficial or not. Um, so you'd like to So, yes, it's it seems like from a personal standpoint, it seems like this is worth looking at further because I think it's also important to show our community this is what's being asked for right now and this is what's going to feel um reinforcing then I think it especially I mean it's just it's just honestly the era that we're in is that people are looking at line item things these days and if this is a way to help our community understand that we are also looking at lighting things and we are also caring about what we need to care about then maybe this is the right move for us
076right now. Um but I just I think we need to really be thoughtful about how we do it. We can certainly take this up and find you have a meeting on the agenda so we can we can talk about this and back make a recommendation. Any example this register? Yeah. And I mean I think there's been a lot of questions brought up today for you guys to think about in terms of like check registers like how what is the scope of what we're providing for people at least have you received that request for um not specifically. I'm aware that it's been discussed on social media and because of that I'm getting feedback. Um I think as I say I think that the impression I'm getting is that the era we're in there's just a lot
077of concern about making sure that everyone is being attentive to everything. And so I I do want to honor that. But I also I mean I I know from looking at check registry here I believe we missed a student on our phone. But what we had to do this is the problem we do it after the fact is we had to go into our school try to find the parent name or the kids name and see if they were currently a student. Um and then when you do it after the fact they've already graduated. So if you don't do it the c certain way it doesn't show up. So if we go to start publishing it, what we'll want to do is somehow this is why I ask oh keep some kind of track as
078we write checks just oh yeah by the way these this is our list of student for parent reimbursement his so we have it handy so it's a little more efficient at the end but that's a whole process change and I mean honestly mainly I bring it up just to say we tried we intended to not publish any student names on this and we still miss them. So that's a concern and a worry for me. So I think what I mean I'm happy to this as as I'm sure the whole finance committee is happy with this but I think that what Christy just pointed out was also going through my we the auditors spend a lot of time going through this and when they when she says that they do a test they might pick you
079know 50 items. If one of those items is is not correct, they're then going to double that the next time. They're going to then ask her for a 100 items or 200, I don't know. It's huge. It compounds. And so, so it's very the audit procedure is a very um formal and thorough process that we are fortunate um to have as a board rely on. So, you know, there's always stories of fraud, etc. Um, and we obviously don't want that ever to happen, and we do pay close attention to a lot of this. So, so I'm not I'm not opposed to, like I said, anybody can come in and look at any of this at any time. But I don't want to open up privacy issues and and I I think that I don't know
080correct me if this doesn't seem right but I think if going through all of the risks that's what the committee decides I think that's important to bring back and then we can have further discussion at that point I'm one person so we can talk about it really think it's previous boards can tie the hands of future boards, but you also as a current board you want to look at they did something for a reason whether they and sometimes you get your hand at this thing and you're like okay and then it plays out over 15 years and then you go okay what we should do I mean at the time when this was passed right this I still remember paychecks. I don't Christy didn't work in a business office. We used to do that. I
081worked in the Kmart cafeteria. You know how they knew at Kmart? When you got paid, you got cashed out at Kmart in the back of the store and you had to walk through with all your cash. And then inevitably, as soon as we all went to pick it up, the blue light would start. I was in high school, but I'll never forget it. I'm like, that's kind of brilliant and manipulative. Yes. And Jennifer, I do also just want to say I also think you guys can think through whether there are processes that would be changed going forward. I don't want to think that about doing anything retrospectively like that's not fair to any of the business office but thinking about if you think about making a change having it be forward facing perspective so that
082should know what's happen. Sure. Okay. Okay. Anyone else have anything else they want to say on that? All right, we are going to move on then to our WISD election information. Um, our packet tonight includes information regarding the WISD budget timeline and board election. Each highest member, district board will need to elect one trustee to pass the district vote in person at 6 PM on June 2nd at the ISD, which is over on Ber. Um, the complete list of candidates will be available after Mayip. The board needs to consider a resolution to appoint a voting representative and designate the district's chosen candidate at at least one meeting prior to adopting the resolution, which must happen between May 12th and June 2nd. Item is for discussion. It's gonna come up all the time is the glooiest
083process. So tonight you have to decide who might go talk about it in person. Okay. So I think is the person. Well, so any of our anyone on the board, anyone on our board can go and cast a vote for Dexter or the candidates that we decide at our next meeting. Just need someone who's available. Someone who's available on June 2nd at 6 PM, which is the fun day. Yeah. I will say last year I did make an unofficial policy that anyone with a graduating senior does not have to be that representative. So that applies to you. So I will uphold that bargain since I I paid that. I'll do it. I can back up. Do it. I don't have anything else. Are you? Yeah. Okay. So for now, let's say that Mike is the
084primary and Melanie will be the ultimate. Just so you know what you're thinking about. So it starts right on time. Vote for whoever the board decided you're voting for. If there's any form of tie or tiebreaker, there's like this long process. You could get caught there. You're gonna be smoking. It was written in the 60s. I think the process of imagine how they and they are very they are very set on it. Um okay so all we have to do is kind of identify at the next meeting we will like as an action. All right perfect. Um moving on to our next opportunity for public participation. Is there anyone who would like to I like the creation of an Otherwise, it's just we're just receiving. Um, have any comments? Um, in your packet we have
085information items. We have policy minutes. Um, we have nice job notes from February and this district really rocked it out with the policy notes or the nice job notes this month. Um, and then we have the wellness center agreement for everyone to peruse. And with that, we have no close session tonight. So, we are injured. Thank you everyone.