001[music] Heat. Heat. Hello. Good evening everybody and welcome to Tuesday, January 6th, 2026 regular board meeting, our first of the year. Thank you all for being here. Um, sorry, board meeting at West Central School District. If we can begin with the pledge to the flag, if I could have the students from Westell come on up, please. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Thank you so much. Just going to have you guys hang out right there for a second and we'll start with your presentation. Um I want to go through uh Zach is running behind today and Sarah is excused or may join us later. Do a quick roll call.
002Mr. Maloney >> present. >> Missal Scott >> present. >> Know how to say your last name. Charlotte >> present. >> Adam >> Preston. >> Carl >> present. >> Lorine >> present. >> Marla >> present. >> Ed I'm here. Of course our wonderful superintendent >> present. >> Excellent. Thank you. We want to go right into the >> Sure. Happy to have students from West Elementary here to present to us tonight. So, I will turn it over to them. Thank you for being here. >> Hi, I'm Michaela Sutton and I am a third grade teacher here at West Elementary. This year, we started West Elementary's Wildcat Council. It's a leadership group made up of students in third, fourth, and fifth grade. At the beginning of the school year, students were able to apply and then each home
003room elected their own representatives to serve on the council. So once the council was formed, students were given specific roles, responsibilities such as president, vice president, and secretary, and then some other leadership positions. In total, we have 35 students who serve on Wildcat Council. The goal of Wildcat Council is to help students develop leadership skills, learn responsibility, work collaboratively, and make a positive impact on our school and community. I have our cabinet members here with me today to introduce themselves and to share some of the work we have accomplished. I'll start by turning it over to our president, Hudson. Hi, my name is Hudson Tiger and I'm a fifth grader here at West Elementary. I'm the president of the Wildcat Council. As president, I work closely with the cabinet and Miss Sutton to help run
004meetings and plan projects. I help make sure meetings stay organized and that everyone has a chance to share their ideas. I am really proud of the projects we have been able to accomplish by working together. At the beginning of the year, we worked on creating school safety videos. We have already shared our cafeteria safety video with the school and we are still working on our bus and playground safety videos. Being part of the being part of Wildcat Council has helped me become a stronger leader and shown me how much we can accomplish when we work as a team. Next, I'd like to introduce our secretary, Juliana. Hi, my name is Juliana Pingo and I am a fourth grader at West Elementary. I'm the secretary of Wildcat Council. My role is to help keep our council
005organized. I take notes during meetings and work with other council members including our historian who keeps track of our projects and takes pictures and our data tracker who keeps help who keeps track of information and data we collect. One of our biggest projects this year was helping the West Lions Club by organizing a soup can and canned goods drive. This drive helped the Lions provide Thanksgiving dinners to people in our own community. Wagat Council was in charge of making announcements for the school, creating posters, collecting donations, and making and counting them. All students were involved in every part of the drive. Together, we collected about 1,000 soup can and cans goods, which was very exciting and rewarding. Next, I'd like to introduce one of our vice presidents, Delaney. Hi, my name is Delaney Derome and
006I'm a fourth grader at West Elementary. I am one of the vice presidents of Wildcat Council for soup can and canned good drive. I work closely with Juliana to create a news article that shared our service project with others. We wrote about the process, the total amount of donations collected and included pictures to show the work students did. This project helped us reflect on how much effort went into this drive and how our school came together to help others. I learned how important communication and teamwork are when working on a big project. Now, I would like to introduce our other vice president, Aiden. Hi, I'm Aiden Gavanti and I'm one of the fourth graders here at West Elementary. I'm also the vice president of the Wildcat Council. Our most recent project was $1 spirit day
007to support Jamaica after damage was caused by a hurricane. This was something myself and several fourth graders were passionate about supporting. We brought the idea to Miss Sutton and shared ideas on how we could fundra. Once we decided how we wanted to raise the money, we planned three spirit days and worked together to organize them. We presented the idea to the Wildcat Council and as a group we made posters and announcements to inform the school. Because of everyone's hard work and participation, we were able to raise $280 to donate to the Red Cross to help support relief efforts in Jamaica. This project showed how students can make a difference when they care about a cause. Now, I will turn it back over to Miss Sutton. I would just like to also show some of the
008slides. This is the data slides that our data tracker Nicole Davis collects. And then that is the video that Hudson talked about and one of our members tracks all of our projects. Emma Doy do. And that's all the pictures that we have. On behalf of the Wildcat Council, I would like to thank West Elementary staff and students for their continued support and enthusiastic participation in all of our service projects. None of this would be possible without their willingness to help and get involved. At Westoell, we believe student engagement means helping others through service. And what better way to feel connected to your school and community than by helping others. We take the district's mission seriously. Nurturing our full potential means building an educational community that fosters kindness, inspires confidence, and instills the belief that together
009we can achieve anything. Finally, thank you to the board members for your time today and for listening to our students share their hard work and accomplishments. I am very proud of what they've have achieved through Wildcat Council and I can't wait to see what we accomplish in the new year. I know Aiden did say he would answer a question. If you have any questions, he volunteered. So any questions? >> I have a couple. How often do you guys meet? >> How often do we meet? What? >> Uh we meet every Wednesday. >> Every week? Huh? See, you guys want to go for every Wednesday? Great job. Do you guys know uh in another plus or minus six years you guys could get a seat at this table with our exeicio position we have? >> How
010cool would that be? >> They're looking out for it. >> Catch catch them on the way out and find out uh find out if they like it or not. >> Perfect. I just >> Thank you so much. That was great. >> Love it. [applause] [applause] We move on to our student exeicio board member report. And today we'll start with C. Oh, you know, we'll give it one second just for I think we're good. >> All right. >> Thank you, sir. I only have one thing since I think we've only had five days of school since the last meeting. Today or this week, uh, National Honory Society put on our returning grads event, which is when recent West grads, typically within the last 5 years, come back and talk about their college experience and their some
011of them their workplace experience. Uh, they field questions from students and teachers. And my favorite part is that it's during the school day, so no one can miss out. And uh it's a nice break from class. >> That's great. Did you Did you attend? >> I did attend. >> How was it? Was there a lot of lot of students? >> Uh yeah, and it was different each day. Today and yesterday. >> Okay. >> Total maybe 20 students. Three grads. Yeah. >> I'm assuming a lot of positive experiences coming back to tell you about. >> Yeah. Good advice. Yeah. >> Nice. Great. That's awesome. Unfortunately, East doesn't do that program, but there's only two weeks left in the second quarter, so we're almost halfway through the school year. Well, we're over halfway, but either way, um
012the juniors won the holiday hallway competition we had, unfortunately, but it's great for them. Uh and then East is holding the high school information night tomorrow at 6 for the upcoming freshman from for 8th to eighth graders. And that's all I have. >> Excellent. Excellent. Thanks. And uh if you maybe you can get someone else to uh lead the way and get that set up. I think it's a great program. I think >> Sounds like it. >> Yeah, it really is. I'm now realizing my kid was in from college and he could have participated, but he's you know, we'll leave it on him. Um it was a you know, I mean it's really cool that they do that. >> Yeah, >> I like that. >> Tomorrow night when they come in for the orientation, is
013that mandatory or is it is it voluntary? >> I honestly have no idea. >> No idea. volunteer. Okay. Well, I hope we get a lot of people turning out. >> Well, we got one more person on our list for a report. Dr. Krueger. >> Thank you. Happy to share my superintendence report with you. Um, is it ready to go? Thank you for your help with that. So, I wanted to highlight first and foremost that with the start of the new year, we have launched our new website. So hats off to Jessica Shanahan and our technology department for their tireless efforts in migrating the content of our website uh to the new website and so many thanks to them. So please do check out our new website. We are still ensuring that all links work and
014that no content um was misplaced during that migration. So if you have trouble finding something, don't hesitate to reach out. But kudos to them for all of their efforts. I'd also like to congratulate Taran Nicicoia. Taran is a teacher here at West Elementary School and she was recently recognized as the West Senica Chamber of Commerce Educator of the Year. Um those who know Taran know how much she works um not only to support students but to support her fellow colleagues. She's an exceptional special education educator who really uh has an impact on this entire school community. So, a great honor for Taran and we look forward to celebrating her at the dinner that the chamber hosts on February 11th. But Taran was not the only recipient that we had. Our very own Zach Armstrong was
015also recognized as the West Senica Chamber of Commerce Citizen of the Year. So, congratulations, Zach, on that honor. And Zach will also be recognized at the Chamers's dinner on February 11th. So great recognition of two awesome people in our school community. Uh extending what our awesome students from West Elementary shared, uh the month of December was just a beautiful time for a lot of service learning opportunities and an opportunity for our students to give back. So throughout the month of December, we had students that went out into the community and spread holiday cheer. Here's a few pictures of both elementary students and also some of our high school students who visited. Uh, one went to the Eden Heights Assisted Living Facility. We visited Mercy Hospital and also Roswell Park Cancer Institute to spread holiday cheer
016to the patients and residents in those programs. Um, also Allenell Elementary hosts their annual turkey trot and that is a fundraiser. They raised about $2,000 through that fundraiser. This event that you see photographed here is when the top fundraisers from the Turkey Trot and their families were able to go shopping and use that $2,000 to purchase items to give back to our clothing closet. So, they did buy clothes and toiletries and supplies that are muchneeded supplies for our clothing closet. So many thanks to the students and their families for all of those efforts at Alenale Elementary. I've also photographed here some of the service learning projects that several of our elementary schools participated in to give these little gifts of joy to the patients um at both Oshai Children's Hospital, also to those that attend
017the West Senica Senior Center and City Mission as a way to spread holiday cheer. So great learning opportunities and service projects to give back. Wanted to recognize our very own Ava Gunnels who reached 1,000 points, 1,000 career points um for her amazing career in basketball. She reached that milestone and is only the fourth overall uh athlete in West Senica's history to do so. So congratulations to Ava. Really an impressive athletic milestone. And then lastly, I wanted to draw your attention to some upcoming events. Later this month, January 22nd through the 24th, West Middle School will be hosting their drama, Between the Lines Junior. And I have highlighted some other upcoming events throughout the month of January, um, including our board of education work session. Um, one of our student members mentioned the information night that
018we have coming up at both East and West Senior. And then we also have that community awards dinner on February 11th that all be board members are invited and welcome to attend. Just let Melissa know if if you can join us. So many thanks. And of course, as always, for a complete list of all of our athletic events and musical events, please check out our new and improved website. Thank you. >> Thank you. And check out the link the website like you said. I love it. It's really >> Isn't it beautiful? >> Great job. Thank you guys. It's beautiful. The the photos and and also I think just the ease of navigation um is a bit more intuitive than than our past website. So, it's still a work in progress, but it is so beautiful.
019And kudos to Jessica and the technology department for all of their efforts. >> Thank you. We'll move on to our public comment section. And I believe I have someone signed up here, so I'll read the statement. Um board the board will now entertain public comment for 30 minutes with each speaker given three minutes. When called please step up to the podium and state your name and address. Please be respectful in your comments and do not divulge any personal or confidential information. So we'll begin with Ken Thompson. Ken. Okay. Now I am going to wonder if I left this here from the last meeting. which actually I'd like to hear from two meetings ago and I think we called up Ken at the last meeting and >> sorry about that. >> No, it's my fault. I'm
020the one that didn't file it. Sorry about that. We'll put it right there. Okay. Unless Ken pops in and he changes his mind, we'll move on to the consent agenda. To uh make a more efficient use of meeting time, the board of education authorizes the use of a consent agenda as part of the meeting agenda. All matters listed within the consent agenda are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion of the board of trustees with no separate discussion. Items may be removed from the consent agenda and placed on regular agenda by any board member. That being said, may I have a motion on the consent agenda, please? >> I'll make the motion to approve the consent agenda. >> Chair motion to approve. May I have a second, please? >> I'll second
021the motion to approve the consent agenda. >> Moren, a second to approve the consent agenda. All in favor? I anyone opposed? Passes 6. Thank you. At that time, we will have some introductions. >> Yes. Thank you, Mr. Be. And the board just took action on some uh personnel items that we'd like to highlight and recognize. Dr. Civone is coming up to assist us with that. Um but first of all, we have a retirement that we'd like to recognize. Kathleen, who most recently has served as a UPK teacher at Winchester Potter Elementary, and congratulations to her on her retirement. And I will turn it over to John for some other personnel recognition items. >> Thank you. Yes, congratulations to Kathleen. We have two tenure appointments tonight. So, congratulations to both Megan and Grace. Megan, I believe
022Megan is present. Megan, congratulations and uh what an accomplishment and thank you for all your work as a special education teacher at West Middle. You have some family with you. Do you want to? >> I do. >> So, this is my husband, Dave, and this is our daughter, Lily. >> Lily is being great. So, congratulations on this accomplishment and look forward to working together for many more years. >> Thank you. >> Congrats. Uh, we can clap. [applause] We also have several appointments. I'm aware of one in attendance today, a new speech path from that'll be split between East Senior and West Senior. Jade, I I think I see you in the back. Jade, please stand. I had a pleasure to meet Jade and we're excited uh for your experiences in joining the West Senica family.
023So, CONGRATULATIONS. [applause] That is all I have on my list unless someone that was appointed tonight is present. I apologize, but you can be recognized if so. >> Okay. Thank you very much. >> Well, those watching at home, thank you for you're on that list. >> Okay. What we'll do is we'll take a approximate 10-minute recess. Our wonderful tech department will throw a timer up there and by the time it hits 10, hopefully we're all getting back to our seats and we'll get to uh continue on with the meeting. >> And we're going to move on to new business. Um we see number eight. Does anyone want to make a motion on all of eight? >> Let me make a motion on all of eight. >> I'll second. >> Loren Loren, a motion to approve
024all to approve all >> Marlo was a second. >> Second. Yeah, >> Marlo was a second. Um any discussion on anything on eight? >> Um just want to thank we have um for 8B we have some donations. Um, we have a a donation for $4,197.30 from the West Senica East Spirit Booster Club to the East Senior Girls Volleyball Team. So, thank you for that donation. Very much appreciated. >> Awesome. That is great to hear. I love that stuff. Any other discussion? Okay. All in favor? >> I. >> Anyone opposed? Motion passes 6. Number 10, board of education discussion. Uh long list of items there. We'll start with though anyone who wants to begin. Anyone have anything they want to discuss? >> Yeah, I still want to have discussion on the audit report discrepancy. >> Excellent.
025Um did we discuss that when we got together? >> We did. We did. Um so on December 22nd, I met with Ed and Mara. We mapped out some topics for upcoming board work sessions and we've allocated some time for the January 20th work session. So if in addition to the question that Jeremy has, if there's any questions regarding the audit or school finances that you'd like to discuss, feel free to send me those questions in advance just so we can be more fully prepared for that. But we will be uh carving out some time for that on the January 20th work session. In add in addition, the other topic for that agenda item are the athletic fees that came up at a recent um board meeting and discussion. So, we have some time allocated and
026I spoke with our athletic director Marissa regarding that. She'll be joining us on January 20th for that work session. >> So, if anyone um is going to email Dr. Krueger on the financial part, copy the board in if you don't mind. um anyone with anything concerning the thing the other the second part we're going to talk about if you want to email the board on it and I can kind of put together um the list of ideas and things we want to talk about um that way you know there's not a million different things coming through we'll get that coordinated um is that good anything else anyone I'll kind of do a self promotion I think we've got a little mini quorum going if there are four of our kids in the musical at best
027metal right am I right on It' be great. So, we won't go to the same show as we'll keep it. I'm just kidding. Um, but self-promotion, I'm excited for that. And the kids seem to be picking them up after practice every day, watching all them come out. See, it's going to be like a great show. That's just uh my own two cents. And the last thing I'm going to throw out was um Lisa was kind enough to invite board members to join her before the holidays and handing out pencils. Um so, that was awesome. Um, again got a opportunity to meet virtually every kid who uh is an elementary student in the district and that's not that wasn't sick. Although there was one class had like nine kids absent. Um, but it was it was
028really cool. Um, so we really appreciate the opportunity for that and next year you know let us know and um I mean it was just an amazing fun time. So thank you for allowing us to do that. >> You are very welcome and thank you for making the time to do it. There is no greater joy than being in an elementary school the days before the the winter break. So, as you can imagine, the energy level was high. Kids were bouncing off the walls. Um, but it was a ton of fun. So, was happy to do it. We had some administrators join us on the first day to meeting to um visit the schools and between two days we went to all five elementary schools. So, it was great. And um I'm sure the board
029is aware Melissa sent out invitations. We have visitations coming up this month to both East and West Senior High School and then in February looking to do East and West Middle School visitations. So hopefully if your schedule allows, we'd love to have you join us for those visitations. >> Thank you. Anything else? Student exeicial board members, anything else they want to discuss either? Nothing. Good to go. Okay, we will move on to Well, there's actually nothing on the list. Did you want to uh add anything about um the thing or are we taking care of that later? The um superintendent >> the evaluation >> the midyear evaluation. We're all set. We'll >> talk about that later today. >> Okay. We'll go over that later. Okay. Um but thank you everyone for participating in that. Um
030I appreciate that very much and thank you for doing for doing that. >> I think that's it. Am I missing anything right? >> I don't think so. Okay, great. We'll move on. We have So, we have an exe anticipated executive discussion or session. So, when we move into executive, we're going to go somewhere private and when we come back, we're not going to conduct any other public business. So, anyone here um when we're done here, feel free to head out. Um and if I can have a motion to go into executive, I would love that. >> Anyone? I'll make a motion to go into executive session to discuss the employment of an individual. >> The per to discuss a personnel item. >> There you go. >> Excellent. And a second. >> I'll second. >> Second.
031All in favor? >> I. Anyone opposed? >> I'm putting that down as the passes 6. Okay. Thank you everybody. I appreciate you coming tonight. >> Thank you.