BOE Meeting 3 7 2022

001good evening everyone this is a meeting of the board of education in the republic for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and it's not to be considered a public community meeting there's time for public prosecution during the meeting on the agenda and upon request to the superintendent the districts will make this physical accommodation for persons with disabilities to be able to participate in this meeting 7 o'clock i will call this order mr oliver mr arnold here this is literally here this is greater ex here miss kangas here mr bundy mrs here mr naughton mr um next on the agenda is the meeting of minutes the meaning that it's from february and moving on to the approval of the agenda that the board of education approved agendas presented i'll is there any discussion all

002of us in favor of improving the agenda is presented say hi bye and follow those opposed the agenda has been approved on to school presentations this whole presentation okay reactions were our first opportunity for public participation the board of education recognizes the value of public comment on educational issues and the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves undisturbed manners matters to permit a expression the board shall provide two periods of participation in public meetings periods of public participation at community meetings and the board shall publish rules to confirm such participation in board meetings um just to remind um you're addressing the board just the board not anyone spoken uh or in the audience or any of the staff funders and um each speaker is allotted a maximum of five minutes for a

003little thirty minutes otherwise notified at this point but meeting those interests on the same subject during the single meeting and those wishing to receive your personal responses must complete a dream sheet or a public private form that's available in the meeting or on our website is there anyone who would like to speak at the first opportunity i will move on to our next item on the agenda which is the administrative and report updates superintendent first uh to start off we have uh ryan reuter talked about the visit we had today working with nwda and senator anna tyson's so we've met today to talk about data processes we have in our district and how we use this system brian's got more to share yes we were really glad to welcome senator tights this morning uh she

004brought a few members of her team as chris said we had some representatives uh from nwea many of you are aware and the va is a partner that we use for an assessment on kindergarten through eighth grade here in dexter uh swedenborg we had a great visit with them she wanted to see our young five through second grade learn a little bit more about the literacy work we are doing how we're utilizing assessment uh she is sharing some bills that she would like some district input and some feedback from our teachers and administrators as she considers uh the language of the bill uh so we had an opportunity to walk her through the deck explaining that at the dexter early elementary complex of 741 students uh 71 young five students 235 kindergartners uh 224 first

005graders and 211 second graders we talked a little bit about the literacy platform and the literacy uh tools that we're utilizing at young five through second grade which includes lucy caulkin's use of study reading and writing reading horizons which is our newest clients program uh which is orton gilligan based our heritage phonics and young five in kindergarten we talked about some of the esser funds that we recently received and how we've been utilizing them including uh purchasing hundreds of decodable books for our youngest readers uh we talked a little bit about some of the phonics training that our staff have received throughout this year and have continued to receive as well as data rounds which is something that we've been implementing in young five through second grade uh working with our instructional coaches and our

006interventionists to look at data and to inform instructional practice we are really excited the state of michigan has been offering letters training l-e-t-r-s letters training is really the gold standard for early childhood literacy uh traditionally it's a multi-thousand dollar training per person and it's why it's it's pretty cost prohibitive to get a number of staff the state's been offering it and sponsoring for free so it's something we talked to the senator about that it's something we would like to see encourage the state to encourage to continue to provide for our staff we've had roughly 25 first pipe excuse me 25 of our staff either are currently enrolled or enrolled for a fall cohort of letters training uh this is going to pay huge dividends for our kids and for our instructional practices so it's so

007wonderful that they're able to provide that opportunity we talked a little bit about our assessment schedule here in dexter so we are utilizing the nba map three times per year reading and mathematics and we also this is our first year we've been using the fluency assessment and the viewing fluency uh that's a new assessment it's the first year that they've rolled this out there have been a lot of positives with it as well as some growth opportunities so part of the visit was the nwa higher-ups were there and we had an opportunity to provide some constructive criticism and some feedback and they were really receptive so there are things that they were already planning on doing for fall and there are things that our team was able to share and good learning opportunities for them

008so we were excited to be collaborative partners in the process talked a little bit about some of the more local assessments we're using are utilizing in building including our reading horizon local assessment spontaneous and our our lucy caucus needs to study running records in dexter we have pretty thorough screening process uh the team from nwa as well as the sander and her team were pretty impressed with the process that we implement here in dexter to screen for and to support students with reading so we're using formative assessment all the time but during those testing windows we have all of our students take the nwa map and fluency screener from there we're able to get a really good view of where our students are at and the assessment tools help flag students that we might need

009to gather some additional data at that point any student who's flagged we administer another assessment called the acadians which is a dibbles-based assessment and it provides us not only a baseline uh but also a little bit of a diagnostic tool to us to figure out how we can best support that student like any assessment we know it's important that we're triangulating data to verify what we've seen uh so for some of our students the canadians shows us that hey we didn't think you needed reading intervention or you wouldn't they're qualified maybe it was a tough day on the nwa and the acadian theta shows us that or at times the keynote it points to what the nba does as well that this student would benefit from some additional support uh as a reminder at the

010deck we have three full-time interventionists so two of our interventions are true reading interventionists uh heather green serves as that literacy liaison which is one of the esser funded physicians her role is really unique uh chris has described it as it's kind of that jolt of energy that we needed for reading and helped get us back on track so heather's been focusing not only on providing intervention to students but also supporting staff and families with intervention uh so between the three of them they're able to see about 60 to 75 students for reading intervention regularly they have been doing some terrific work and we're seeing some really nice games that canadians tool is a progress monitoring tool so they're administering that assessment every week to see is the plan that they're putting together for each

011child working uh and all in all they've had a lot of great success so we're really proud of that from the fall into winter uh we have administered the nwa twice this fall our kindergarten first and second grade in the reading test scored 95 97 and seventy eight percent respectively absolutely so that's our the whole grade average is in the 95th 97th 78th percentile which are just terrific uh this winter the same assessment we scored the 96 92nd and 80th percentile so you see pretty consistent numbers if not growth uh and as chris bluetooth that's national so it's really terrific high performing district a data point that we look at that we we like to look at the data but we also understand what the data the bigger picture it tells us a growth measure

012in terms of every student is given the number that they are to grow now for a student in the 15 tile there's an expectation that they make they might make more growth and suit than the 99 percentile it's also a little bit more obtainable for that student in the 50th percentile to make the growth as opposed to the student at so because our scores are already so high the growth measure doesn't always reflect the growth that our students are making uh but despite that our kindergarten first and second grade again respectively 59 47 and 61 of those students have already met or surpassed their growth measure so they're well on track uh all of this points to the bigger picture that we're doing a great job getting back on track uh we understand there have

013been some limitations in the past couple years because of covet uh but the support of the board the support of the district to put a lot of energy and money into uh lower elementary literacy is really paying off uh and like i shared the sander and the nba team was quite pleased to hear the plan and to see the progress that our students are making uh all in all again like chris said it was a great visit it was really great to have some open ass dialogue with her to talk about some potential legislation and how the bill would uh positively impact a community like dexter and how it might be difficult for a community like dexter and to help give some feedback as she considers bringing this uh senator tys previously represented our district

014in the 22nd but no longer does there's been some redistricting so uh she was really here on the fact-finding mission because we have a relationship with her from past so like chris said it was great to welcome her great to show off the great work that our staff are doing with students we had an opportunity to go into a kindergarten class and watch a phonics lesson and she was blown away she was pulled away at the teacher and she was blown away what the students were able to do our new finds program is working really well it is truly a go slow to go fast methodology and that there's been some discomfort uh and then we're not moving at the rate that we once did and we continue to remind that that's okay that's okay

015uh because we're building a solid foundation that's gonna allow us in first and second and third grade beyond to really flourish so i got a great visit from the senator i appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit thank you so much you're welcome one of the biggest challenges with that piece of legislation is it specifically lists the current i think s1 the most recent substitute bill was the most recent to go through a committee what it does is it lists exact teaching strategies to utilize and the challenge is brain research continues to evolve and it's put into law it's hard to change it so when the research comes out it says that's not actually effective based on what the newest research says then if it's in the law it does really restrict what educators

016can do so it's trying to figure out where that sweet spot is there is a need and we several years ago adopted a dyslexia intervention program the sunday system years ago and we've been able to put that in place for students that we've screened and identified as dyslexic but there is a need in the state to identify and have school districts formalized because not every district looks to see which kids really are dyslexic or not and it's pretty challenging to screen through because it's more of a medical diagnosis than a school diagnosis but we need to continue to work on the process in the bigger picture we have the third grade literacy bills which we had four students last year that met the threshold we worked with all four families and all four they're able

017to move on and put in the supports etc so this year we'll start that process the next steps of the process numbers look pretty similar so we have these pieces in place but it was great to actually spend some time talking real instruction and uh we have the instruction happening every day it's great to actually spend time really breaking you know um another quick update craig's here he's been really busy uh he can talk about a couple things he's got rolling if anybody knows craig he has one speed yeah yeah hello thank you everyone thanks for join tonight so you have a couple things in the hopper here of the fun things happening um the first round of video from our asphalt bid is up wednesday so those events all come in wednesday um from

018phone calls and conversations been great over seven companies said that they were gonna bid on it which is great so hopefully we get really good competitive bids in there to get those um that's for the asphalt work to do in the visitor bleachers here at albert we just put last week we got the mechanical building bit out for the equipment coming in we know right now that that's the biggest thing with the lag of stuff coming so we got that bit out to start getting that mechanic to work in to get the at least the boilers the chillers the everything we need in here to sweep it out the next one we're finishing up here hopefully by tomorrow i'll give it all set on the state website get out is also for the uh turf

019bathroom and the storage building so that's our next one get up get set and get out um another fun thing we did is we went ordered uh at mill creek we're looking at how we can upgrade i think we talked about their tech rooms in the tech head rooms and it's like we want to know what they're going to use they've always done the co2 cars so we saw this incredible like uh it's by kelvin which is a compressor it's compressed air so you're not using the little cartridge anymore it's like an air compressor that pumps it then it tracks the speed the rate the launch all of that so we we ordered that for them here today as well so that's something we know that they use and they can use that day one

020they're still working through ovens for the food glass it's amazing how many model numbers there are for microwaves and stoves when you want to prepare apples to apples to oranges and um trying to get people to um answer you better and one of the things we know was with supplies especially kind of what you were as far as supply chains with steel um with all sorts of different parts it's been hard sometimes where they're the companies are just being very honest it's nice like it could be a long lifetime before we get stuck but at least it's been some great conversations and yeah those are the big things we got going on he's trying to wrap up bleachers for the turfs got a plan for those hopefully they'll be ordered tomorrow wednesdays oh you got

021them all right we're chasing down getting up it's kind of a niche industry especially the size it's a nice kind of job so trying i i i don't have any more to talk to about that jennifer about where it is as far as looking at a pricing out where they all the permeable surfaces i know when we looked at it before and the people i talked to was that i mean it was it was way more expensive um i could still have somebody um yes yes all right um a couple other things we have uh kindergarten tours tomorrow from five o'clock until seven o'clock [Music] of all weeks last week was [Music] so we decided to do zoom info night tour the next week so that there's multiple opportunities um we have school of choice

022window opens today to accept uh for this year for the first of two windows and then on your tables this just was sent out we have a dexter early middle college and school enrollment information night next week so the early middle college was approved just prior to the endemic and we started with the group of students that we identified that would be the mission of the original program which was looking for students that really having the supports getting an associate's degree or a technical certificate under our supports would really be a game changer for them but at this point we we've already met with those families now we're in that phase where we originally wanted to be where we're expanding it out to families that are interested the way it works is students are high

023school students at extra high school for five years so that fifth year though they're at washington community all year and we've paid the tuition over that five years they are able they still walk with their graduating class they only need to complete a math credit that fifth year they're usually really close so that if they decide they don't want to do the fifth year we finish that up pretty quick but what happens is they have several options so the students starting as early as ninth or tenth grade most likely ten based on their skills would um be able to start taking college classes to either get a technical certificate any of the washington technical certs they could get the michigan transfer agreement which is 24 transferable credits michigan university or they can get 60 transferable

024credits or they can get an associate's degree whichever fits their plan so the student wants to go to welding they don't necessarily want to go for the associates they just want the welding cert they may want the welding associates and academic would be able to handle some of the general ed classes to be able to get the associates so it's ability for us to provide the tuition and the payments and the support so we get a coach over at washington's campus and then we have our own team here that works out of the syrian building to be able to support the students as they go through the program we bust the kids over if they need rides we run a shuttle and take some scheduling work to make that work but we run a shuttle

025we get lunches opportunities over there um we have our first set of first year seniors our seniors right now that are over and then out of that group 20 20 to 30 so many of those students will continue that fifth year and then go finish up next year and they'll only have a bad credit that they could get through a washout class as part of the way we can set it up by law a student in their last year of high school has to take math class so that's the final requirement so because it's their fifth year their graduation year still shows up with their general class they walk with their class they get to play sports and do activities with their class they can't do a fifth year but they can uh it does

026provide an associate's degree that we pay for that's significant for some families in addition we have dual enrollment dual enrollment is more one-off classes it's not an organized program it's if you want to take one class here and there students can technically take up to 30 credits in new enrollment starting as early as their freshman year it's a challenge as a freshman to get back and forth and try to figure it out you do have sophomores that have done it um and every year we give information up but we haven't done the formal here's the presentation here's all the options so this year we're uh lauren thompson's leading the session on march 15th it's at 6 30 actually over at creekside it's just major space there's lots going on high school so it's an opportunity

027for kids and parents to come in we just sent out something to eighth graders or any interest and they come and learn more and it's just a great opportunity it's one of the many pathway options we offer when they go over the strategic plan proposal this is part of it um elementary schools march reading month has begun anchor beacon wiley they're doing their march reading activities they do every year and then uh in high school pretty much for all great fantastic games on march 20th will be limited to just fifth and sixth grade bands to really give them a chance to perform because last year with no minister abigail they're not getting as many concerts it's hard to stick with the program then as well the high school jazz man will play and the little

028mini marching band that comes out every year just to give the kids something to look forward to but that'll stay limited and then recently for a high school district band festival and orchestra festival all high school band and orchestra programs received all straight one ratings which are the highest ratings possible so like our usual dexter music programs are doing pretty well that rounds it off that's the let's do an update in that band extravaganza we had to make the decisions a while back and plan it accordingly and the priority in the music department in band orchestra empire all meant to talk about what concerts each group has been able to do over the last two years and really the fifth and sixth graders haven't really had an opportunity to perform and the challenge we have

029with fifth and sixth graders is grandma comes grandpa comes handsome it is and even if you've been if you've been to the band extravaganza on a normal year it's two to three thousand people there all the time it's really uh quite a production the fact that our fifth and sixth graders haven't been able to perform we really anticipate having some really big crowds and it'll probably just fit the sixth grade items which starts off with our summer encouragement and the fundamental success of last year's pre-summer programs has led to many requests for repeats this year the foster dread strong summer learning program was too high to repeat without additional funding however the district would like to offer free recreational athletics and arts camps this summer based on last year investigative bus offices camps for approximately

030100 000 these camps target physical mental and social well-being while also providing contextual learning encouragement dr kim recommended this item was discussed in february it was presented for action this week move that the board of education approve up to a hundred thousand dollars of funding for the summer recreation and arts camps for 2022. a second it's been moved and seconded is there any discussion i already planned it to be slightly higher built teachers that possibly were interested in something that they don't know where they were the way that this is written is funding athletics and arts camps this summer i would i would be fine if we expanded that we'll bring a separate proposal for academic support we have to figure out how to structure it and how to staff it so these are easy

031because they're like what we know is if we do academic supports in this format these are three hours a day for three or four days in a row that will have zero academic impact as far as in terms of interest in some other potential activity that works but if we want to do anything that'll have an academic impact we need to have sustained programming that lasts over a period of time it's gotta be more than three or four days so that's a process we're still working on it and we have to figure out what we can actually how to identify which students and every year we run reading and we have support over the summer for our younger students so we just have to figure out based on and when we run our summer programming

032every year we struggle the fire this [Music] that would be meaningful so that would be a separate thing i think i thought it was a worthwhile programme as well okay next action item is okay so i've been asked to update the chair on smitty to summarize in the dexter board of education has completed its annual evaluation of superintendent dr christopher tennis his appliance with michigan revised school code section 1249 music superintendent evaluation tool development initiative association of school boards very correct um the superintendent timothy's overall feeling of highly effective scientific possible is based upon the board's assessment of this performance in the following areas governance and work relations community relations staff relations business and finance instructional leadership student growth and progress towards the district-wide goals dr timmis has met or exceeded the board's expectations in

033all areas of world review in january 2021 which was amended in june of 2022 the board ratified and amended student growth and achievement goals which are part of the three-year plan which was originally set in 2019. the goals are in the areas of social of one social emotional community and engagement to graduation rates three personalized learning and four growth degree and math the board is pleased with the adherence to an execution of the plans especially in light of the academic which caused destruction for districts throughout the country the board commenced dr tennis and the district for working diligently to support our k-12 students in so many ways social emotional well-being has been supported through the addition of five counselors social and social workers surveys mental health programs additional training and support for staff peer-to-peer programs

034new courses and other initiatives are all examples of the extensive work the district has done towards this world graduation rate has improved from 92.3 to 2013 to 97.6 across all district programs in addition to programs such as dexter early middle college alternative education eca wave etc provide support for more students the graduation rates for students without disabilities was 59.6 and for students with disabilities was which is up from 50 percent in 2013 and is one of the highest in the country in spain personalized learning initiatives continue as the district works to expand learning faculties from pre-a to 12. examples include exploration of a new learning environment on spark and new course offerings throughout the district birthday reading and math has been difficult to assess with the fact that most students were learning revolving from march

035of 2020 through most of 2021. as a response to concerns around learning laws the district has added multiple reading and math intervention and honor support for students and continues to pursue multiple methods to inspire and engage all students this continues as an area of focus the board recognizes and values the leadership the doctor over the past year and the work that all employees have put forth during these difficult times the talent of our team defines the solid financial foundation helps ensure success for our children the district is well positioned to continue to continue our students under an umbrella of a caring adapted vibrant department thank you guys the board of education approved the summary statement um for dr oh sorry is there any discussion um there is no discussion all those in favor of approving

036the attention statement two discussion items tonight starting with the 2021-2026 strategic plan the adoption of the 2021-2026 plan was laid due to the pandemic but is now ready our package contains a memorizing the plans development and it's approved 2021-2056 strategic plan is items presented for discussion first up i want to thank you for your continued support and support of the district we have an incredible administrative team's teacher team our employees are great the community is great it really is it just makes everything possible as a district thank you um strategic plan so i'm going to take over the screen and do some background this is for discussion tonight so back in 2014 we created a previous strategic plan it was actually framed as a creator as a framework and the way it operated is there

037were six strategic initiatives or directions and anything we did any new initiative had to fall within two three or four of them building forward is how it was structured so that framework served as our plan that has guided us up through 2020 right everything was ready to shut down so since we've and this one it had out of the uh the goals which are on we've listed the goals in the board packet but the goals were strengthening human capacity through the design and delivery of high quality learning opportunities for students to have parents and community both inside and outside the classroom walls this led to a lot of training a lot of community outreach community learning we used to be at the time we were doing parent workshops we were doing community book readings etc

038so it was that concept um redesigning our educational program to focus on students capacity to think creatively solve problems analyze and navigate information that was the starting point of moving to the health it was the early iterations of trying to work through that process and then increasing organization effectiveness we had a lot of streamlining to do and cleaning up some processes so that we could spend we were always good with our money we wanted to make sure whatever we spent it was focused on instruction and we wanted to make sure that we cleaned up processes and this led to creating really strong hr processes changing in the technology department we had a lot of technology but it was we were running with two or three people we really eased up how we run technology our

039coaching models it really changed our organizational effectiveness monitoring and evaluating existing learning spaces and ability to support learning needs if you look at our learning spaces compared to what they look like in 2014 they look drastically creating personalized learning opportunities for students that involve advanced programming for students we i'll talk about that a little bit not creating a robust early childhood program for dcs residents one of the things that we've seen out of here is we set a goal and then we received the jenkins donation and we were able to expand prior to that we're in two or three classrooms total in early childhood they were usually three or four-year-olds then we ran some playgrounds we now have this whole program that we help and we serve six week old babies all the way up

040through the time they start kindergarten it has become unintentionally one of the best recruiting and retention tools for staff for k-12 staff because we give our staff that we hire a discount to be able to enroll their children and they can take them right across the street which has actually turned into a great draw for young teachers that are maybe in another district who are paying child care costs or can't find child care and to be able to do it right where they work is it's really helpful and they don't feel like they have to move to dexter they can still be part of dexter but close enough which is great for our staff one of the other goals was establish strategic partnerships local domestic internationals that support student learning and increased capacity for us

041to provide learning opportunities for students and staff so we have out of this plan we've had multiple international exchanges we've had students go to germany france china we've had students come here we've set up some really unique international programming we've been able to increase access for kids up until the pandemic now we have to revisit how we're going to do this um fostering an internal culture growth mindset so we if you had throughout those years you would hear growth mindset over and over and over the idea was that we could continue to evolve and grow as individuals so out of this plan we expanded early childhood over with jenkins and at this building we [Music] transitioned this entire campus if you think about what it looks like it continues to go through iterations but if

042you can think about what it looked like in even 2017 so since 2017 we built beacon elementary and attached it to anchor we built those flex spaces in the middle which were directly part of this planet to create innovative learning spaces we put flexible furniture in all of our schools and as you've gone on tours of the buildings our furniture is extremely flexible these were actually part of a pilot that they were deciding we were determined too big for the classroom so we repurposed them but we did instead of ordering furniture in every room for these we piloted we went through a purposeful process to pick the best furniture for each age level and to learn from our each other on what worked we built the syrian building which is now housing alternative education and

043it houses it's the hub for deer and middle college we actually have kids that move from the high school over there throughout the day and just need a little different setting for a couple hours we put it strategically close enough yet and separate we change the traffic flow across the campus if you look at pedestrians and vehicles so the roundabouts significant difference on traffic if you think about how we used to be stalled at shield road and trying to turn time to baker it's awful and then so with the roundabouts we changed right at the entrance degree excited so we changed the flow into creekside but then meanwhile we changed and made it walk so we had during this plan and put in what's coinfronter island um over here on baker because it just reminds

044you of oh not a log but the issue with it is cars would run over it all the time we've got the rapid flashing defense we worked with the city to get two crossings on dan hoey at logical places to be able to actually cross the street and then to move over near kensington over on dexter ann arbor street across the street so we made it so our kids could move around the campus and you see it to this day now you can see when we used to be panicking when creekside kids were trying to walk the bus up now it's a regular stream we have crossing guard there we go flashing beacon it's just part of how we operate we built the twin turf fields at the high school we had serious space issues

045so we built the biggest most flexible space we could it is it's got lines for soccer field hockey girls lacrosse boys across different dimensions uh football it has baseball and softball tick marks and it has band tick marks we can do anything on that five and a half acres of turf with lights we constructed the quad fields across the street so the local little league in our softball program i think our softball program this year is finally going to be able to host a tournament or two they're so excited when they run practices instead of trying to work off one field there and then two that were always underwater over here we raised it up four feet sloped and different so the infields are generally pretty dry and they can run their practices with bad

046engages in multiple fields it's great we have a middle school softball team program starting up we're able to really run the program um we always could but this is way more efficient and then we created the flexible learning spaces at anchor and beacon which are absolutely phenomenal you can see the picture there we have one at wiley that is shared between the wiley classrooms and the dread box so we move the dread bots into the back garage area so that in the evening they can use the flex space we use this hard floor so they have room to be able to work in the room and they can roll the robots out there and drive on it um we have creek side we have the innovation room there where it's like 40 foot of drop

047dry erase wall it's similar to that wall but way bigger multiple projectors invitable tables that pull the nest we can fit 65 people in there we at mill creek we built four rooms off the back as much rooms one we're using for player but the other was the full flex room with partition walls like clothes they're writable furniture's flexible it's the one upstairs requires is probably the best view of the entire district it's phenomenal so then we created programming to increase the graduation rate including alternative ed and the graduation coach system that we put in place where we have every school has students that aren't necessarily have an iep or on any kind of case load where they have an adult that's really trying to help them academically um and they're kind of in this

048place where something happens in their life or they just need a voice and they need someone to order between being their personal coach kind of the one that stalker someone that's constantly following him and going hey i need you to turn that in um and just staying with them developing a relationship with students in the family that carries over multiple years and eliminating barriers for these students to be successful everything from finding gas parts to help jobs to we've had some of the early graduation coaches we had to help them get a birth certificate and a social security number and cards so that they can actually get a job where we can help them help themselves and help their families so we put this graduation coach program in place we're able to help case manage

04925 kids or something here with that it's made a huge difference for kids we have a very low rate with maybe one or two that we have not been successful with in their four-year period we still don't give up on that's been significant and then the dexter early middle college creation so we are finally at the point that we get to expand it out and we'll have the first group of fifth year they're washing our students next year which is exciting that'll be our first cohort and then we'll be expanding it from there we created personalized learning options throughout the district with technical apex and summit options we have uh the pathways through the middle school we've worked with spark and we're working on in the youngest grade it's kind of this uh a sprinkle

050of spark a down horsepower or an app or sorry a shower smart or an actually depending on which classroom they're so innovation throughout the district so we expanded our place-based learning partnerships with everything from the bridge project to all the we sent an article making waves last week that listed a whole bunch of different place-based opportunities which is taking advantage of our location and so that it's really meaningful for kids one to one technology when this plan was adopted for our creative bank in 2014 we were just starting at 15 to put ipads in k2 to the program now we have boy am i happy we have technology in the last two years but it was it was a challenge and we were able to scale it up and we had to build the digital

051ecosystem to sustain it so our system is set up that can handle two or three devices per individual interview builder because people don't show up with one-to-one devices they have a phone they have a tablet they have a computer they all want to get on the network and we have redundancy we have additional uh systems so that the county-wide fiber goes down we can still keep phones alive through a separate system we've built in the infrastructure so we can function innovative instructional practices throughout the district we're doing some incredible things continue to push and grow and then remember the emu explorers camp for sixth graders it was so cool we were able to do that it's been um we've increased student achievement across all grade levels we created this two-way international program and one of

052the coolest ones we said against china for spring break several years ago they didn't really they paid for the flight i think and then we've had a german exchange we've done several years that we put a pause on because of the pandemic but they'll start back up where students generally by ninth graders they host students from uh from aventinous gynazio and bird housing for about a week and then they visit and are hosted with those students for a week the cost is really the airfare and what a great opportunity it's a very similar community in school and it's tied with biker chemicals just moving into saline harbor area um and we're able to we've had we had a french exchange going we had i know our uh orchestra they would italy they've done some other

053other churches but we've been able to create some truly international experiences throughout the pandemic we had kids from multiple countries studying with our kids last year online we're you know we're doing what we're going to do otherwise we'll do we have at any given point 20 to 30 international students at the high school and if we're going to run an international baccalaureate program it is impossible to run a world and a global mind in this program without talking to people around but it's really ideal to be able to have that interaction we've been able to create this program um we have uh our mental health and social emotional learning supports have been expanded throughout the district continue to expand the challenge that we have that all school districts are trying to work through is work

054with the community groups and with the hospitals and say okay what is each each entity's role are we screeners or are we service providers where where do we go and where do we stop so that is what is going on around the country it's just trying to figure out in our 1098 hours we're trying to teach reading math science social studies english developing social emotional skills but what is our role and that's what we've been building supports to try to support until we get to clinical needs and then try to help them out on the clinical clinicals where [Music] reading and math interventions for students um so when i first came we had like one and a half people i think in elementary staff significantly more now in different roles so we have coaches we

055have um as brian was like heather green's role is really building that bridge with families if we're going to try to intervene with with kids it can't happen just during the school day there are times that parents with little kids are meeting with their kids there's simple strategies we can teach them that will help reinforce skills math-wise in fifth through eighth grade we're working on acceleration this year and pacing so kids that could go a little quicker or they need a little help we're working on how to pace it different for them so that we know that we have kids that could continue to go forward if we build the system so dutcher is left in the classroom for the year and is working through that process and not only ever is doing the same

056thing over at mill creek and working together to try to make sure that we can help kids work on their pacing so that was like the last strategic plan yielded so now where we are is in 2018 we knew this plan was going to expire and it was time to build a new plan the goal was really having done by 2020 um we were we were getting there um so in 2018 we partnered with knowledge works which is a national nonprofit and we had them come in and they did they came in and they held focus groups with stakeholders so they held parent focus groups student focused groups staff focused groups they did classroom visits through every building they walked through classrooms everywhere and these what the challenge that schools and every organization always has

057you walk through your own buildings all the time you're like yeah it looks great but you need someone from outside to look at it with a critical loss we actually hired people to come in with a critical eye to visit schools all over the country so they came in they did their classroom visits and then they held a series of surveys they built what was called the opportunity analysis report so they told us some of the areas that they saw where we had some issues where were strength where our strengths were and where areas we had to improve that were truly opportunities it wasn't a it wasn't a deficit-minded approach it was these you have a lot of pieces in place here but you're not quite there if you do these things you're there so

058they came in they created this opportunity analysis we then ran um we had ran several feedback sessions so we did community feedback we did teacher feedback groups and we did leadership feedback we broke through that opportunity analysis these initiatives one of the big ones that stood out was the vision statement of champion learning develop education inspired everybody knew the words nobody knew what it meant so that was that's something when you're in the organization you have a sense but when you have someone from the outside go and ask about specific questions um nor what their role is in that network so we then work through several iterations of groups we probably had i think i i started ballparking and counting we probably had at least 70 individual reviews it may have been over 100 but

059i stopped counting in 70 on the little charts that i was keeping before the pandemic and we continue to work through so what we ended up with in the end is we went through this process where we would um we knew we needed to re-energize the shared vision we needed to collect data and do some analysis we need to prioritize and determine strategic initiatives with your design goals we need an action plan but in every step we have to move back with stakeholder involvement i'll talk about how we use that process when i go over the learning continuum to show you how this took shape so the plan the draft right now and what i would recommend is i have uh it's no longer 2021. so we probably need to update that here and you

060might want to just say this for 27. so in five years it took three years to get this far hopefully there's not another pandemic so through this process we've identified five strategic initiatives so the first one is that the dexter schools community will work together to develop educate and inspire students for an ever-changing world that's the vision work that will foster a culture of connectedness by focusing on social emotional needs and building trusting relationships throughout all levels this is our internal culture we'll transform instructional practices to support social emotional learning life skills and content that provide our students with flexible pathways for learning we'll enhance the learning environment for all students by providing educational experiences within and beyond the classroom will stand for justice and equity by promoting meaningful and sustainable actions to create an

061inclusive learning and working environment that embraces diversity of ideas experiences and voices so when we look they fall under five key areas there's vision culture learning continuum extended learning and diversity equity and inclusion so vision our strategic initiative would be working together to develop educate inspire students for an ever-changing world so we need to develop unified collaborative and supportive teams internally and externally the vision what we found is through this process is first we had to unpack what development what educate went what inspired and when we did it we found that we were able to engage we did i remember the postcard but we ended up we withdrew some deep process we had to identify and find our own so we tracked down 10 000 next year and we were able to identify how to

062contact alumni we were then we internally we asked uh we asked our staff we asked our kids we asked our parents and we asked what characteristics knowledge and skills do our students need when they graduate to be successful we then sent out the same question to our alumni and our entire community we did an exchange and we were able to kind of flush out that it was these nine competencies that continue to come up and at the same time we were working with a group through ed leader 21 which is a national uh national group that was coaching schools on how to identify graduate characteristics that every school would aim for that fit their community and we're working on it and they happen to kind of meld together so we created what we call the

063help which is this wheel and under develop we have defined develop as collaboration critical or creative and critical thinking and communication that's what we're trying to develop for students educate information literacy content knowledge which is what we generally only focus on and one of the highest rated areas from all of our groups externally our parents our alumni etc was financial literacy which is an area in traditional school instruction is not really covered so we identified and educate we really need financial literacy too and then inspire what we define that by is kindness and empathy personal responsibility and resilience and initiative so we were able to unpack in terms of the vision now the role is we need to develop these unified collaborative supportive teams and help every level of the organization understand their role in

064what it means to develop educate inspire including at the board level what does that mean so then in terms of culture our strategic initiative is to foster a culture of connectedness by focusing on social emotional needs building trusting relationships throughout all levels of the learning community and as the school district will build build trusting relationships and connectedness throughout our learning community and daily practices i have to tell you this has been one of the biggest challenges throughout the endowment trying to work in this environment and develop connectedness and culture is a major challenge and we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel where we can start to pull people together and have conversations that aren't in 140 to 200 characters they're not in some email or in a social media setting they're actually people

065talking in person and connecting and we're really excited to get working on this area internally and external because if there's any sign in our entire country we need to work on our culture so this is a it's an even more important strategic initiative now than it was when we wrote it two years ago learning continuum so this one i want to pass down copies so the learning continues so the strategic initiative is to transform instructional practices to support social emotional learning life skills and content that provide our students with flexible pathways for learning the goals are that we'll create and implement a p through 12 learning material that defines competencies and social emotional learning life skills and content common language by 2023 and share it with all stakeholders that's your community school for the dexter

066schools community will identify and define instructional strategies that support multiple pathways for students to navigate along these strategies will be fully implemented by 2024 we're on ace we're cruising along so what this means if we if you look at the district website on the district website we have a tab for an order profile on that tab we have a help if you click on the helm [Music] so in the box next to there we define exactly what we mean by kindness and effort and then to keep it fully transparent we have the learning continuum same document i just passed out and what we did is we started this during the pandemic so in may june july and august 2020 when reported that we were all locked in our houses we asked our staff who would

067be willing to help build the develop and the inspired portions of this because educates a little higher tougher look when you get into content knowledge because you have so many different content so we asked who would be willing to work on this so we created a zero to eight continuum not a grade level journey zero is preschool one start in kindergarten two and three early elementary four and five working early elementary elementary later years into middle school six seven high school eight is ideally graduate and we identified what collaboration what um creative and critical thinking what communication every one of these competencies looks like at each level this continuum because what we know is that kids don't have born on date and exactly a certain year in time they're going to be exactly at the

068same place in terms of their ability to communicate what we do know is they'll be in a in a range somewhere if they're developing and we're able to help them develop at an appropriate pace and our goal is that level 8 by the time they finish that's what's in that in the helm definition so we worked with our staff to develop a draft we then met with parents and community members and some business people etc and we had them hack it up and they hacked it up and then we sent it back to the groups that spent all this time working on their houses on zoo trying to be connected in the most in one of the tougher environments to do it and they looked at it and they had to take the feedback and

069revise and then we took it back again so that's that cycle constant feedback to revise so last year we were able to start the year with the develop and inspire drafts in pretty good form and last year we had we pulled the research and development group of teachers and administrators out for that semester to develop spark they worked and one of their first tasks was to hammer out the educate portion and try to work through what would that look like because it's pretty technical in terms of okay what does it look like what's it look like for english and then they did a couple iterations with external groups and we've been able to create it into this version right now this year we're working on the kindness and empathy part and trying to really roll

070that out and it's been it we go in spurts there's times it goes well there's times that we go yeah we could have done a better job of that that's the learning that's the work and what we know is that as a district a strategic plan is a living breathing document and then the best plans as you're creating the plan you're already putting pieces in motion to actually execute on the plan so that's where we look at learning continuum oh i want to get back the next part is the flexible pathways so i'm going to pass this out i want you to look at the side that has the elementary is listed and i'll explain where we're at there's two sides to it go to the site that is preschool at the far left and

071i don't have this project i don't want everybody to watch me slides and find it but if you look here's what we've created so far on flexible pathways so in preschool through the early grades through anchor beginners we're doing it especially anchor beacon while we have these we run these workshops and we run some spark initiatives and we run some place-based work and we have a personalized learning model that they're working through but grade wise it's they're they're still learning some basics we're trying to help kids figure out what they know what they like what their interests are and then when we move into creekside we give the kids a choice between clinical and science and they don't have to stay in it in whatever they choose for even the whole year they generally ask

072them to try to make staffing easier and balancing classrooms building culture and trying to build community better but they can move between so we give them options and then when they get to middle school they have the choice between clinical apex design and then when they get to the high school we have alternative education we have advanced placement classes we have the early middle college we have dual enrollment classes we belong to the early college alliance as a county which is an early middle college housed at eastern michigan where students just they go starting in ninth grade they go to eastern for school for high school but they're still dexter students but we work with students we work with every district and they're coming on it um we have international baccalaureate we have consortium courses

073which are career prep courses and career technical edit where we host graphics at our high school soon we don't even talk about adding a class here that we want to replicate an existing one so it might be a unique process we got to follow because it's a consortium class that we host here we send kids over to chelsea for robotics and health careers over at st joe we send kids to cosmetology which is currently housed in ann arbor we send kids over to celine for a series of other courses they built the high school they actually built the spaces for us so we work as a collaborative to be able to create these courses and then we have wave which is the washington alliance for virtual education which is a it's an online kind of

074almost like alternative ad but it's housed in person classes are at ipsy in yfc but then it's a lot online they send a handful of kids there just we give options on the other side though you'll see what's really one of our issues our pinch point is that our options kind of hit a point in ninth grade when we get every ninth grader takes american history or american studies so american history and english time they take biology they take whatever math class they're in and the delivery model is the class so what we're working on is how to kind of give an option through there and what that would look like it's pretty close we're still working with staff we met with a bunch of staff last thursday meeting again on wednesday we're working with

075staff on what they look like to bring something to the board but that's the concept of pathways so we can have kids kind of well in and out based on their interests or their needs we have sent groups all over the country to look at schools that have different pathway options as a district we're not the first in michigan we're not like but we're not the last um we have one of the models we really like is a model in wisconsin that kettleberry what happens is kids are part of this micro school in the high school so a fraction of the kids are in this in these academies almost in the school that are focused on different career paths but they're able to learn at their own pacing and they're able to do external certifications

076and some unique experiences we think we could create something pretty similar it's just going to take us a little while they're about 10 years ahead of us i think we can catch them but there are programs like this like we have been to schools all over the country we've been to rural kentucky to go to a district that was about the same number of kids for an entire county and they had a 100 graduation rate and and it was rural kentucky and it was amazing what they did without the resources that we have here and to think and some of what we've learned there we've been able to put in place here we've been to schools in arizona we've been to schools in california we've been to schools in ohio i florida i mean we've

077been all over looking at schools you know okay how does a flexible pathway work and especially how do you do it at the high school level so that's how we move to this point so then that brings us to the next strategic initiative which is actually i think is the most exciting when we look at what we like to do for kids so it's extended learning opportunities and the initiative is we'll enhance the learning environment for all students by providing educational experiences within and beyond the classroom this was part of our original our last strategic plan it's trying to extend outside the classroom walls that's where the bridge project came from some of these odds like we did the science setting the third and fourth graders that was pretty cool so they've got they've had

078opportunities but we want to take it to scale and the goal would be to establish and implement a system-like plan for all students to experience extended learning opportunities or elo's as aligned to the learner profile by september of 2025 and elos are defined down here and i'll pick up three different screen here so extended learning opportunities are opportunities that enable learners to gain knowledge and skills outside of the traditional classroom often community based with partner engagement these flexible opportunities involve include rigorous authentic problem solving and inquiry that connect with learners interests and passions these learning activities can be learner driven designed by the learner and credentialed by the teacher so how this works is on the health we have these competencies that kids are trying to meet we also in the educate portion under content

079we know what equates to algebra one what standards does the kid have to prove that they are able to do in order to show that they know l number one it's just an example we have to say we know english nine what equals english not what do they have to know and be able to do if we look around the community there are opportunities for kids to get an experience it's 15 to 20 hours it's not a full year internship it is a co-created experience that the learner can identify what they're going to prove competent on or their competency on and how they're going to do it in that setting which gives them a chance to explore so i look at right across from our campus over in the industrial park we have mc3 creates

080high technology medical equipment they have a clean they have it's incredible you can see the windows from our schools you go back in there we have a robotics company that creates robots and programs robots to be able to build just about everything our kids should have access to 10 or 15 hours of visiting these programs and working with community partners to develop skills that they can demonstrate here instead of only sitting in a class because we know the world doesn't work sitting just in a classroom you learn so much by getting out we have to create a structure for kids to do it we have an opportunity that kids could get a certified nursing assistant certification without having to take a two-year-old class to do it it's not that hard it doesn't take that long

081we have emts we have kids that could get the lowest level of emt certification and see if that's something they might want to do and if they don't they still can save someone's life one day we have opportunities that we can create that's what we'd like to do right now we're working with um standing tools stanley black and decker over at and we have a couple students doing something some work over there trying to help us work the bugs out how to do this it's a couple kids at a time we like to scale this and make it an opportunity for all of our kids and when we look as a community we have a couple huge advantages compared to almost anywhere else i've ever seen we're an 84 square mile district all of our

082schools are in a 360 acre continuous campus all of our kids go to school together their entire career and they may be an anchor or beacon they're still going to the same drop-off but they're in school together their entire career we're like one giant one-room schoolhouse house in a community with assets everywhere you look at the mill creek running through we have some great great assets right in our campus you go downtown you look at metro parks you look at the businesses we have you look at what means and experiences our community has an industry and an education that we can provide what we want to do is operationalize that for kids and that's that that's this one this is the one really this one's kind of exciting but this one doesn't happen if you

083don't do the other three that's the challenge so then the last and not the least important this is extremely important especially given our demographics given where we are as a country so our strategic initiative is we will stand for justice and equity by promoting meaningful and sustainable actions to create an inclusive learning and working effect that embraces diversity of ideas experiences and voices the goal is it will increase cultural competency for all staff and students minimize peer-to-peer discrimination and embrace diversity of ideas experiences voices as measured by evidence of training baseline survey data administered in the spring of 2023-2025 conceptually we have to get to a place where people can disagree and still talk about it and we have to set up the environment that our kids can learn in that setting and our community

084can have that dialogue the goal is to create that opportunity so we can have as a community some real discussions the other challenge we have as a school district is we are just over 96 percent caucasian the world our kids will go into will expect them to be able to navigate multicultural settings and they don't live in them we're trying to help kids prepare for life if we don't have an environment that looks like the world they're going to work in in a world that's going to assume they already know how so we have to figure out and as of this strategic initiative we have to create an environment where we can have that true dialogue and we can help kids create and embrace diversity of ideas and experiences and still know how to work

085together and we have to do it and we worked through we created the it's took it till late summer to get the goal and strategic initiative in the right way now we have to do the work so that's the proposed plan today is just discussion it's big it's it's uh not gonna be easy but it really does if you think of where you want your kids to go to school what we want for a community it's pretty old we have the means both we have the cognitive ability we have the willpower and we have the resources to actually make this happen but the next step is we've got to get to a point before to doubt something so you give us the efficient build we're already as you see it's a living breathing process we're

086already in works of a lot of these because as you're creating you can't tell people don't wait till we adopt you can't do anything we have to we just continue to kind of work forward because instructionally it's the direction of instruction we want to get to and all five have to have to make the other ones work and it's not been for anything it's not something where we just sat in a room and wrote it up it has been eating after meeting it polishing after polish i actually went building my building another new staff and got their feedback firsthand i mean at a time it was in january in january i think about where we're in the omicron rush we actually had to hold school down this is the most polished version i can bring

087thank you it's really impressive and um different parts like i know a couple of you were in some parent meetings at different levels um a couple were in like we met in the creekside innovation room there we had board members that we met there and he has versus city little dynamics here let's just shut down and forget about it because you have to keep going a strategic plan can't just be forgotten or shoved to the side because you've got to keep going so very impressive i mean i know to some small extent because so thank you guys so much thank you mom that's really impressive she even is the title so molly's job description strategic initiatives i think the focus is an ongoing process of polluting bringing back something really embraced a lot of organizations

088[Music] think about look into it as the technology growth and because everything's going tech and there are so many opportunities in the tech world we don't need degrees i work for a tech company previously worked at a big company that had a huge tech department and the world is moving towards hiring people practical experience certificates training outside of the traditional education to work in cyber security tech support networking it's really a world based on certificates and short training not so much a traditional educational valve and those can be done tech companies are almost all virtual now so we don't need to have google google in our backyard we've got duo we've got other big tech companies here but those could be tech companies from around the world and it's great that you mentioned that because

089we're in the first semester of working through a group of high schools kids that are our student tech squad that conceptually we're trying to create a model for the clo system with a group of kids so we have a class that released during the day to work on technology district but then i'll do some after school hiring but we'd like to figure out how to build this the smaller iterations for kids and they're part of our thank you for helping us figure this out and to create opportunities because if you think about it as a district we have significant and if we can partner up externally for kids they can learn a lot some incredible things and we're in that process and i i'm kicking myself doing whatever i didn't talk about that was one

090of our first [Music] so we went through interviews set up uh if we weren't saying okay oh i have to decide to go to michigan to study computer through certifications and not so much i would think about looking into offering different types of certifications like microsoft certifications security certification networking certifications all these certs that if you look on linkedin year some of those types of things that we can get kids while they're still in school and providing for texas services that will give them a leg up when they get auditors and we the board approved a course recently called integrated studies that's our shell to give yellows [Music] focusing on social emotional needs etc and sometimes um there's a lot of discussion about whether one of texas is age appropriate you know especially for the

091younger kids whether they should be you know there's there's a lot of data that shows that when you're writing things you're reading on paper versus a screen that um different people learn differently and it's some learner better in that way but i think for younger ages it's um and for everybody and if you're actually handwriting something out you can you know remember a little bit better so there's a lot of value to um having print and to maintaining the different types of learning um and so what sort of concerns me when i hear us you know sometimes and i don't have the survey results in front of me and i don't know if i've ever seen them but um pinnacle apex and summit in grades seven through eight i know this parents are given a

092survey i don't know whether you know whether the ones that don't want double summit sometimes they're quick and pull something out of anything like that it's interesting to me to make sure that that families who don't want to be in or who want the traditional learning environment um are able to access that and that we're not expanding to high schools um at a huge rate unless it's really important we have capital parents really so that's just a concern and then also from a um from a support standpoint i know as a parent it's more difficult when everything's online and i'm trying to ask my daughter you know those are all very valuable but being able to so many one-on-one as you were talking about holding eye contact interacting with each other on a personal level

093is is very important and i there's also research out there that is showing that kids are not you know the most of your social media but there's a lot of downsides of being on our devices all the time for all of us whatever we can do to encourage face to face so overall i guess i would say i'm really excited about this strategic um i think the fact that we have one is really important and really notable i think you know i i read i remember reading a number of years ago um something which talked about what is the purpose of school and at the moment i read that question i literally was like i have no idea what is the purpose of school other than you know kids are supposed to go and the

094answer the article closed was preparation for life and ever since i read that it changed my entire and i was an adult reading this but it changed my entire framework for what i expected out of my kids what i wanted from them what i wanted out of classrooms um and i think that you know as a board our job is to look at the you know the 50 000 foot view and i think from that standpoint this strategic initiative is wonderful i i love what the graduates would look like at the end of going through this program you know whether whether the details you know and the smaller pieces are still being put in place or are already there um i think for me is less important than looking at the overall structure which i

095think i i just i really appreciated like others have said i've had the opportunity to be part of this over different years and different roles um with my kids at different ages in those roles so um i really appreciated getting to sort of see it all packaged together tonight again um and just looking at sort of where we as a district are um i hope that what people sort of get out of this is a really um you know as parents or um you know parents of little ones who are looking at our district and go to our website and can really look at all of the intentionality behind all the different concepts that our district is really trying to put together for people and i think that's a really really positive and important thing

096you know our goals are very strong and i think you know if we can and all of our kids along that pathway i think that the sister should be really proud so thank you to everyone who's been involved in it and i am really supportive of the fan and the concept is intermediate school district wisd fiber network is owned and operated by wisd on behalf of all constituent districts this is a shared governance and cost agreement to maintain this resource for educational endeavors of the county this agreement covers the actual fiber optic cable shouldn't manage the network and a portion of staff costs network is also connected to the statewide education network which is a statewide private network that allows the reduction of internet costs in addition to transport for other statewide services our packet

097includes a draft masculine service agreement which is required this item is presented so several years ago we uh collectively created a technology consortium so historically districts helped co-fund the creation of our fiber network back in the 2008 stimulus right around there um there were federal funds to expand broadband and broadband throughout the country and that allowed the parent network to run through university university and we were able to tap into the merit network um we have fiber that runs through our buildings that are that network is connected to every public school district when so collectively we manage this through the tech consortium there our firewall is through there our security systems are set up we actually house powerschool on a set of servers that throughout the county we utilize powerschool housed on servers we have

098we have a need that comes up to be able to upgrade equipment upgrade security um with cyber security needs and different attacks and things like that we have to build several layers to be able to protect our own data and our own networks we run through this we actually run our finance software it's all county-wide we've got most of our big software packages are set up with the coming by network but it's all tied to this technology consortium so there's changes in the pricing every year things get more expensive we have a bunch of equipment to repair we upgraded a few years back the firewall significantly which was really expensive and spent on everything we had on balance myself and one other superintendent on the committee that oversees this it is and our tech director

099is also on it so we're pretty involved it is um it actually we didn't always operate this way the isd used to pick up because the isd was entered the way isd funding is set up they have a special education fund and they have a general services fund their general services fund was pretty small they were paying for the technology infrastructure through the general services but they couldn't keep it up because there just wasn't enough money and they were operationally struggling they were about five percent upside down every year on expense over revenue and districts started to push back a little bit including ours of one point years ago said hey you gotta get it in order in order to get it in order we ended up having to create look at what are the

100needs and technologies chewing up a huge chunk of expense and it was disproportionate so what was happening is we had some districts were using more bandwidth than what they were set up for we were actually sending we have way more capacity for bandwidth and what they were giving us so we needed to up the entire network so that we could actually use the infrastructure we locally have and we've been able to do that through the consortium this is just an update the agreement so that we can change the funding a little it's going to cost us more we'll build in the budget we can't function without it and it really is done well our system works collectively very well um and there have been districts that without this would have been in trouble with districts

101that have had ransomware attacks and had their entire network taken out and without this kind of infrastructure in trouble but it cost money to do it as i mean the tech world was really expensive oh well this is one we were talking in friday to friday thursday or friday we had a meeting we're going to take this support board meeting monday send me the document and i didn't look at that part of the words we so just to clarify this is an update of an agreement we already have in place there are some increases in costs due to sort of natural changes in the tech world different environment and the cost of everything um and i'm assuming that all the districts the same document so every district is the same agreement except we're going to

102update the address right okay thank you for the clarification yeah it's so what happens is we have consortiums so for example we belong to what's called we can see educational options consortium whenever that agreement changes the boards to approve it we also we also belong to a consortium for health care um and that is like we act as the entire county the healthcare consortium is us saline lincoln manchester if that's it for career technical ed we belong to southwest washington career consortium so it's manchester chelsea dexter gypsy lincoln celine island a part of that consortium if any time the agreements change the local boards because the boards or members of the consortium have to approve the changes so several years ago i remember five years ago four or five years ago we i remember talking

103in the meeting rob had some great questions about the structure of the consortium that was the first year and we're at the point now we need to update the structure because we have the initial tech consortium on the ground and it's working like it's supposed to so now it's time to update that's this new it's an update of the already existing agreement they set up the servers support powers will support on the back end through this count so they provide significant support through this consortium [Music] may speak more than once on the same subject during seeing no one rushing to the front of the group we'll move on to word comments i just want to thank griffin for this update and to congratulate all of the fans and orchestras for a wonderful performance at a

104festival this year i know everyone missed the opportunity last year and i'm sure that i hope that all of the performance groups are really excited to have done so well this year [Music] he comes up and he tells us a story about how he used to teach band in the czech republic and how they had a word for something that brought you to tears and he was actively crying as he told us that so not only did we do well this year one of our bands brought an official judge to tears think his band parents and works for parents we all missed that every time that opportunity was just amazing for me is such a great thing because we saw last name just um so it was all right um there are informational ads including

105the next job notes negotiations after we shall take a three-minute break