001education meeting. I don't know if you guys said that. >> Um, and Mrs. Welty, can you please take the role? >> Starcher >> here. >> Goodight. >> Yes. >> Kleinhens >> here. >> N >> here. >> Deacon >> here. >> Will you please join me in standing for the pledge of allegiance 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. >> Can I please get a motion to approve the June 2026 board agenda as presented, amended? >> So moved. >> Uh Degan, >> yes. >> Nare, >> yes. >> Pinhands, >> yes. Starcher. >> Yes. >> Good. Right. >> Yes. >> All right. And a motion to approve the minutes of the May 19th, 2026 regular session.
002>> So moved. >> Second. >> Uh N >> here. >> Kleinhens. >> Yes. >> Starcher. >> Yes. >> Degan, >> yes. >> Good rightight. >> Yes. >> All right. At this point, we're going to move into recognitions. Um Mr. day. Our athletic director will introduce the student athletes and coaches that qualified for state track and field championship. >> Good evening everyone. I want to thank our board for the another opportunity to honor our athletes that qualified for our spring state championships. So, at this time, I'm going to have coach Bennett and coach Mscotti come up for our track and field. It's coming check. All right. Um, thank you again for also, you know, I want to reiterate what Mr. Day said about I really love that you guys recognize our athletes. They work so hard
003and we appreciate that. So, um, my athlete is Tegan Hafner. If you want to go stand out there for me, I'll get Can you do that? >> Where am I? There's so many things that I could say about Tegan. Uh she is an outstanding athlete and individual. She's a coach's dream. She will do everything you ask her to do. Uh mostly with a good attitude. Anything. I mean, just she wants to be better. She wants to work hard. And it's been a true pleasure to have an athlete that actually really loves track and field. Like that's her game. She wants to do it all the time. So, she's just a tremendous young lady. She has supportive and knowledgeable parents who are also on our staff. Jesse Miller Darling, who was a former record holder for
004us in the pull vault from 2004 until 2021 when Cassidy Brown broke that record. Um, and then her dad, Randall Hfner. Both of them were um outstanding athletes at the University of Akran. So, we have some great genetics here. So, we're hoping for um great things in the future as well. Um as far also on our coaching staff, uh people that you know are there for Tegan every day is our sprint coach, uh Marlon Racer, wherever he is right there. And our um sprint and hurdle and high jump coach, Brian Questelle. He was unable to be here. He's with his family in Cleveland tonight. uh and our other long our high jump coaches Lonnie Harper and Emily McCreary and our long jump coaches Duke Price and myself and it has been a just a joy
005to to coach her and see how successful she has been. Uh some of the things that I feel like um we need to talk about Art Tegan's accomplishments besides just you know not just but achieving the great thing of being you know qualifying for state in three events. So, I waited for this and and I asked about giving it, but this recognizes all of her accomplishments and has her school records on there, but I had to wait until our season was done because she every single time some we had a meet, something big happened. So, you know, so some of her honors were she was first team OC in the 100 hurdles and the 4x400 relay of which uh we set records there. And as long as I've been coaching, that's the first time I've
006seen meet records be set by us. So that was outstanding. It was the first time I think she cracked into the to the 14s. So she also set a new school record that day as well as a meet record and beat the girl from Ashlin who's still wondering what happened because she was the favorite. She was second team OC in the 300 hurdles and was just 800s off of the record there. I believe that she will hold that record before she leaves here. district champ in the 100 hurdles in the high jump. She was district runner up in the long jump. Regional champ in the high jump, regional runner up in the 100 hurdles, fifth in the long jump. Um qualifying her to state in the 100 hurdles, the high jump and the long jump
007of which she stood on the podium to earn a medal and be all Ohio in the 100 meter hurdles as a freshman, which is an outstanding accomplishment. So Tegan, congratulations on that and your three school records in the 100 meter dash. Thank you for for winning that at Orville. 12.56. That's a 45year-old record uh set by Angie Norris in 1977 and then tied by Barb Davis I think in 80 81 or 82. So that was a great accomplishment. We need to run more 100s. And then 100 meter hurdles of 1461 that she got that time at the at the regionals and was that was runner up to our state champion in our division. And then the long jump, she tied Stephanie Walton's record of 176 and a half. So, and she's knocking on the door
008in some other ones. So, congratulations, Tegan. Great job. >> Congratulations. >> Hey, congratulations. Good to see you. >> Thank you so much. Thank you. Amazing. Okay. I'm Doug Bennett. I'm the boys head coach. It has been my pleasure this season to watch Kaj and Willie uh improve and get better all season long. They uh I don't want to say surprised, but I want to say uh that it was an amazing journey that turned out the way we wanted it to turn out. It it was a really fun thing for us all to watch. Uh, I think one of the standout memories that I have as a coach is it's exceptionally fun for me and pleasurable for me to watch a kid develop a relationship with their coach. And sometimes they're up and sometimes they're down,
009but in the end, uh, it's it's like a family, you know. Sometimes they're good times and sometimes it's a little rocky, but most of it was really good. It was fun for me to watch uh the event coaches come together with these two. Uh for Kaj, he was a 400 meter runner. His best this year was a 4911. And we have not seen that time uh well I want to it's been almost 25 years. We we've had kids that have approached that time in the 49 range. Um, that being said, Willie also did a great job with discus and shot this year, but he uh did qualify through in shot put and finished 11th at the state meet. And Kaj 11th, buddy, yeah, both of them. 11th out of the whole state. I like to
010remind myself, there's 11.9 million people in this state. And for you to finish 11th, that's a pretty good thing. So, at this time, I I I would be really remissed if I didn't bring these event coaches up because they know these guys better than anybody. They see them every day. They they suffer the bad days and they regail in the great days. So, come on up here, Coach Gerber, uh, our throws coach, and Coach Razer, our sprint coach. And whoever wants to go first, I don't care. Hi, I'm Marlon Racer and uh just to add on what uh coach just said. Uh he said something of a surprise and we uh Kaj was out for track last year. We saw the talent, but at the beginning of the year, if you would have said to
011me he's going to be 11th in the state, I I wasn't sure that was going to happen. But he kept getting better and better and he kept asking me for harder workouts and he just everything I gave him, he just ate it up. And uh if for those of you who don't know a lot about track, there aren't too many people that want to be good in the 400. Like they don't really want to be good because that means they have to run it a lot. And uh the kid never backed down and was never scared of any challenge. So that's my addition to that story. I'm Drew Gerber. Uh, I think Willie learned a lot this year. Um, I think a lot of it came from he's looked at numbers through middle school. He's
012watched the rankings and going into regionals. I think he was just looking at the numbers because we have one of the toughest regions in the state. Um, and if you're looking at numbers ahead of time, it was just like, I don't have a chance. And what happened was what they do is they take the top five placesers and then they take the next three out of all the state, the next three best throwers. Well, looking at the numbers ahead of time, they're a bunch of 60 foot throwers and high 50s. And Willy's thinking, okay, well, I'm not going to get I don't have a chance at that. Like, next couple years that's going to happen. But what happened was Willie went there and what so happened was didn't finish in the top five but all
013three at large bids came from our region. So Willie qualified for state and then as he went down to state he ended up finishing 12th or 11th out of there's probably 2,000 throwers. I don't know about the million people but there's probably at least 2,000 throwers in the state right now. And Willie learned some valuable lesson like don't look the numbers. He came out, his best throw of the year was his very last throw at state where a lot of people go to state and they fall apart and Willie had his best day on his last throw at state. So I think he's learned a lot. Uh the most important thing he finished academic all Ohio so congratulations Willie. I want to say they both are awarded academic all >> your shirt is the best.
014>> Yeah. >> But Okay. >> All right. So, now we're going to transition to tennis. All right. >> All right. If I could have coach Krooks and Henry come down for our state tennis qualifier. All right. Thank you, board. Thank you, Mr. Tutor, for having us. And I'm really excited to recognize Henry Pazki tonight. Um, he is he was a state qualifier in singles uh this year. He was our first state qualifier at Worcester since 2008. um he won his first match at state, so he got into the top eight, which hadn't been done since 2004 or five or something like that. And he actually gets uh second team all Ohio honors. So, it's like a culmination of all his work, just like they talked about, just all the work that these student athletes have
015put in. Henry puts in all the work and he plays all the tournaments and he loves tennis and that's what he focused on this year or the last probably like eight years to be honest, 10 years. But um and it all culminated into an amazing season. uh as a team he led us uh to an OC championship for the first time since which like Lexington has won everyone except two um since like 2003 or whenever it started 2002. So um it was the biggest accomplishment of our season I thought until Henry decided he wanted to go to state and so he got to state. So, he was a sectional champion for the first time since 2008 and he has a district qualifier. Uh, he was our number one singles player for four straight years. Um,
016and has a lot a lot of wins and a lot of amazing matches and memories. So, I I was it was special to be his coach and um sad to see him go, but I'm so excited that he gets recognized as all Ohio. Thank you very much. Good job. >> Congratulations. That's awesome. >> Congratulations to you, too. You were >> I know. I was wondering who's >> Thank you again to the board and to Mr. Tutor. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you to the athletes and coaches for being here. Certainly fun to celebrate them. Um, now moving into reports. Um, so Superintendent Gabe Tutor and Dorene Osman from the impact group will present the proposed new strategic plan. >> If I I Is that okay? Thank you. That's fine. >> All right. Thank
017you everybody. Um tonight I am going to present a draft of the strategic plan. Um just a little review on that. We are uh we finished our previous strategic plan uh right before the end of the calendar year. Uh there's a presentation we have on our website for that and uh really felt um really good about some of the things we accomplished over the last three and a half years in that plan. Uh and then we went to work here this spring on gathering feedback in order to develop a new strategic plan. And really, just as a reminder, a strategic plan is really that compass that helps drive your decisions, right? So, it's it's to it's the thing that we we utilize to help us as we kind of navigate the day-to-day and also the
018uh large initiatives that we work on. Um so, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the feedback and then describe the plan. Uh and then as um Mrs. starter mentioned, Darina Osman, who uh we partner with at the impact group, um is going to actually uh come up and we'll have a little bit of a more of a working session um with the board to talk about u any potential revisions that we might want to do to our mission vision statement. We don't have to do anything, but it's been a long time since we've done that, and so we thought that that might be an appropriate uh conversation this evening. There is no board action on the strategic plan this evening, right? Uh so uh obviously if we have feedback from you if
019there's anything we need to tweak um in and the thought is the strategic plan will go on the um uh board agenda for your consideration for approval at next month's meeting. In the meantime, we will make sure that this draft is um made available to the public. Obviously, it's on our board agenda, but we'll we'll also send that out through our different um avenues. and we'll also uh attach with it um the feedback and data that was used um throughout the process to develop the strategic plan. So kind of a kind of like we do when we do our curriculum adoptions where we present it and then there's time for you to review it in the community as well before there's a considered approval. Okay. All right. So our process with the strategic planning um
020was uh pretty vast. We did uh surveys with staff in the community and you can see the numbers there that we have. Um we also did 13 different focus group sessions. So two with students, several with staff, um several with uh parents that were open to anyone. Um and then a couple with some key communicator groups within the um within the district. Um we also did an administrative one and a board uh uh uh kind of analysis as well. Those are those SWAT analysis. SWAT stands again for uh strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And so just, you know, what are those things we're doing well? What are areas where we need to work on? What are opportunities? A lot of times those work on areas connect to opportunities. And then those threats are those things,
021what are those things that are challenging your opportunity or ability to have success. Um, in the board's visioning, um, we we really talked about how we want to, uh, we want to be a top 25 district in academic performance. And on top of that, we really want to be able to focus on the holistic uh child development. U one of the things I always mention at graduation and it's also mentioned here is we really try to honor all three of the pathways that our students can take. Um workforce, employment, en enlisting into military service, um and then or enrollment into college. And we want to be able to help our students in all three of those areas reach their potential. Um continuing to develop our stack staff excellence. There was so much praise for staff
022throughout the strategic plan process um that we um we wanted to make sure that that was incorporated as well. Facilities, no no secret there, facilities was a major topic throughout um the board sessions, the community sessions and our surveys as well as how are we going to continue to move forward to address our facility needs um in 21st century learning. And then culture, community inclusiveness was very important. School pride, systems of support, those were things that were mentioned by our board of ed. So some themes as we work into the surveys and the other focus groups. Um again, real world application. And I think this is something that we have improved upon a lot in the past 5 years is as one of the things you'll see if you compare this strategic plan to our
023last strategic plan. They really do build off each other as some of the focus points and some of the things we do are they're we're not recreating the wheel here. We've we've wanted to address and make sure that we you know meet whole child needs and we're continuing to do that. So practical skills, college connect to real world experiences. Uh we want to sustain our academic excellence. We've really improved academically in the last four years. I think some of that is actually because of our strategic plan and the efforts that we've done uh intention intentionally through that and we want to continue to that right and so what what those core strengths in reading writing and math um you know our hands-on that was mentioned a lot and I thought that was neat um it
024definitely came up in our survey results and things the importance for um you know screen being careful with screen time and play and outdoor and some of those things that you know um we definitely have learned through the panic pandmic are that are really important to student development. There was great pride um but also an importance of continuing to focus on that as we develop the strategic plan. So pride in our extracurricular and art uh programs um at the same time trying to uh utilize and capitalize on areas of growth that we want to. So maintaining that focus while continuing to also focus on other things outside of the classroom that give students great experiences that really do help them learn as well. Um there was the strategic plan made it very evident that there
025is strong trust among our community, among our staff, among our students, uh for our educators, so for our staff. Um and that's a great thing. They should be trusted. They work the most with our kids and they do a wonderful job every day. Um and so really continuing to try to boost that and make sure that we can do that. Well, there was also some good opportunity as we definitely recognize to build better trust and relationship with the board and more of at the district level, right? So, one of the questions on the survey is uh who do you like who do you get the most information from? And not surprisingly, most parents put they get the most information from their teachers. That's the one that work directly with their students. that's the ones they
026have the most relationship with. Uh and that's a good thing. But how can we bridge that gap so that we can be um you know build trust uh through our through our transparent uh way that we operate? Um as again facilities continuing uh to be a focus there. How do we how do we modernize and maintain our learning facilities? Um and doing that with intentional planning that both is short and longterm, right? And so the strategic plan really um the feedback told us a lot about that that we did incorporate into this strategic plan objectives. Um also recognizing that probably more than anything else that we have on our strategic plan in terms of is that there is a lot of diverse perspectives on how best to meet our facility needs, right? And so trying
027to incorporate that to make good decisions um and address the issues we have to. While again I love that we have that up there by staying very student centered in the end that should be our focus always throughout the strategic plan with anything but specifically here with our facilities to make sure that it is a student centered approach and continuing that dialogue to make sure that we make the right decisions while keeping that student centered mindset. We talked a lot, it it came up a lot, grade configuration came up a lot in our strategic planning feedback. Um, you know, how best do we meet the needs of our students with whether with through neighborhoods, through grade configurations? Obviously, we've made some of these decisions as we've continued to work here throughout the spring. Um, but,
028you know, um, how do how do we do that to increase um, student support. And then another thing that you're going to hear me talk about a lot with the strategic plan is that key transition. We do recognize that even in our current structure of a K4 57 that transitions are really important and now with the decisions that we've made with moving into a more grade level approach throughout the district those transition moments are going to be more important and they're more frequent right now as well until we get a long-term solution with our facilities. So that's going to be a key part as we work into our strategic plan. um again transparent communication to build that trust with our constituents um is very important and specifically related to our our kind of fiscal stewardship.
029uh something that we've been working on even this spring is Amy if you've noticed there's been uh more presentations and pieces of information put on the website and other things to just try to explain the complexities that is school finance um because it is really challenging um so that we can help our community better understand the decisions we're making hopefully agree with our decisions but ultimately just be be able to always at least better understand the decisions that we're making as a lot of the decisions we've been making in the last six months are very directly related also to uh you know our finances as well as obviously what's what we feel is best for students. The high school is an asset that came up a lot um in the fact of it's a very
030nice building. it's also a community and really a regional hub for so many and that we want to continue to keep it uh well-maintained uh and have pride in that as that's so important both for our learning but also just for our community uh and really our uh the um the greater Worcester area. So that was feedback that we received and again we'll also put the actual raw data. Um so the survey result data along with kind of the feedback summaries those will also go on um the website and be sent out as well as we'll be working on that in the next week or so to get all of that out. We wanted to present it to you guys here this evening first. Um but that information was then um worked on to create
031um goals and under each goal there are kind of what I would call sub goals or we call them objectives where over the period of time we'll work that all are related to the goal that we want to try to accomplished. Again, if you go back, I mean, our board is well aware of this, but if you watch our last strategic plan, that final presentation in the fall, um you'll notice that's really where we talked through and we went through all of those different things and we achieved most of our goals and objectives uh in our last strategic plan and that will be our full intention to do as well. As again, this is transparency, but it's also accountability, right? As this is what we're going to be working on uh in the next several
032years and and we want people to know that and they should expect us to uh achieve those goals. So our first goal is really is focused on academics and it's empowering every student through engaging in relevant academic experiences. One of the things I feel very passionate about, I think our board does as well and I know our administrators and teachers and staff do is empowering every student. There are so many different ways uh that you can be a successful student. Traditional college is a great option, but it's not the only option, right? And so how do we continue to make sure we focus on supporting those students that have you know higher ed as their focus at the same time also with a career path enlistment um you know just being a success successful citizen.
033So we want to elevate instructional excellence to ensure all students are consistently challenges challenged and support their own personal pathways that that are right for them. So some objectives that we have under there is a data-driven instructional framework. Um that's something that's very important. So why are we doing what we're doing is is as is you know if you watch our report card presentations and instructional presentations, they're directly tied to student data and we want to continue to do that. The pathways and those life skills and real world learning experiences, excuse me. Um and a refined system of support for targeted intervention. I I love that when we talk about that is when as we identify students that have needs throughout their time, making sure that we have targeted specific intervention that meets their specific
034needs. Um so that's very Thank you. So that's very very important as well. >> Um we want to strengthen our vertical and grade level alignment. So we want our second grade team to understand what our third grade team is doing and that the third grade team is building off the second grade team. um we already do that. Again, these aren't a lot of these things are not reinventing the wheel. A lot of these things are not even things we don't already do, but based on the feedback that we have, we are just confirming that that's a really important thing for us and our community. Um and we want to be held accountable to ensure that we do these things right. Um technology AI was a big discussion topic throughout the um feedback process. We just
035recently did um adopt some AI guidelines and again that mindful use of screen time. We do obviously computers are and AI is a huge part of the future but at the same time making sure we don't forget about um you know all the things that we learn when we're not on screen, right? Our second goal is I would call more of the culture safety uh inclusive goal. We had a goal like this in the last plan and I think we always should. Uh we want a school where all of our students and staff feel safe, respected, and connected. Um and so the objectives on this are related to things that will help ensure that happens. We want to continue our MTSS process. So what is that? That's the data process that we do in each
036building that helps us identify students that are struggling uh and then develop appropriate supports for those students and be able to track their progress to make sure that um they continue to do um you know to to meet their potential. Um, this can be MTSS can be the first step towards possibly a need for a 504 or an IEP or it might just be breaking down some barriers and making sure that kids have the support they need to succeed. Um, refine schoolwide behavior expectations and make sure they're consistent throughout. We do have a PBIS program for positive behavior support, but continuing to build on that and encourage those practices. Address peer conflict. Um I I think with growth that is responsive to students within the process, I think we all could learn from 0 to
03799, we could learn how to better uh work through conflict and disagreements, right? As uh and how to do that uh with care and uh professionalism and kindness. Um we SEAL or social emotional learning and support was a big focus of our last strategic plan and actually um it bec through it there was several staffing additions that were made in our last strategic plan. It doesn't surprise me this continues to be a big focus for us. Right? So expanding access to mental health, social emotional and student support, making sure that our kids have the resources outside of school that they need to succeed. Um, and again going back there, that last one, that student transition continues to be a focal point. Um, and I think that's going to be a continue a thing we're going
038to have to work very hard to do well as we move into these, uh, you know, closed cornerstone and move into this new grade configuration. The third goal is about staff. Um, and it's really it's utilizing the great staff that we have well and and also supporting them, encouraging them um, and helping them grow. Um, as that's really what this goal is all about. We want to increase their collaboration efforts. Our staff are our biggest experts, letting them be experts for one another. Um, create a collaborative and respectful workspace um, that also allows them to share their thoughts and and ideas. I think our um curriculum adoption process is a great example of that, right? As our as our staff is very involved in that process and uh usually come and present and are very
039passionate about that and that's that we want we want that staff voice. You do those three things, you increase collaboration um and respect and make people feel fulfilled in their work and incorporate good uh strong staff voice, then 3.4 is going to naturally happen. You're going to get people that want to work here and want to stay working here, right? And so and as that is you know we are in a market not just in Worcester but partly in Worcester uh and partly in Ohio right now um where there are not as many educational uh candidates as there were 10 20 years ago. So we've got to make sure that we are an attractive uh partner where people want to work and want to continue to work and doing those things will help us continue
040to reach that. Goal four is um communication or a communication goal very similar to our last one as well. Um and we want to foster that trust through transparent and consistent communication. We want to do regular norms that people can expect uh so they can know how to get information. We also want them to be able to know where to go and get information easily. And those are things that we definitely have some opportunity to continue to grow in. Um we want people to understand what we're doing and why we're do and why we're doing it. Um, and so transparency I think is a really important crux of this uh this plan moving forward. So again, we want to be timely and accurate and we want it to be easy to understand. One of the
041questions that was asked on the in the plan and I found this interesting because it's always a fear that you have as a school district is how much information, you know, are you giving? And one of the fears that you you have is that you're giving too much information. our st our our survey results showed very clearly there was very few um res responses that said we were giving too much information and so that's good that means we're not and so that maybe gives us some opportunity where we can continue to give even more and maybe be a little bit more mindful of some cyclical norms that we can do that our internal communication is staff making sure our staff's informed I think that also connects to our uh third goal that sharing financial and
042fiscal information that's a real priority for Amy and I to help our community better understand the financial place that we're in. Uh, which isn't all bad. It's not that we're in a horrible financial place, but it's definitely I think, you know, it's we're in a challenging time and people need to understand that and because those that financial position is going to have a big impact on the decisions that we make. Um, we want to make sure that we promote opportunities and resources, you know, things like putting community partnerships together and making sure our families know about those and giving opportunities for feedback and dialogue so that we continue to understand what people are feeling as we make decisions. And some of our uh in our last two goals even connect to making sure we have
043that feedback. And I think it goes back before I go to goal five, that transparency piece is I think in and our is we we need to continue at the board and district level to help people understand what we're doing and why so that we can build that transparency and trust as we as we said lots of support and lots of understanding for teachers, but they don't hear from us as directly. And so how can we make sure that we can kind of build that bridge? I think that's a goal of ours. Another goal in in in communication is reaching the people that are harder to reach, right? So, uh if you think about, you know, parents are typically not your most challenging demographic. They're paying attention a little more. Maybe um you know, people
044that are involved in a sport or a play or something like that. Your challenging people are those that don't have kids in school anymore. Uh maybe don't even have grandkids in school anymore. Uh maybe didn't go to school here at all. Um, but they're a very important part of this community. Um, and how we continue to make make strides so that we can get more information to those that maybe aren't following our social media or different things like that. Goal five is uh strong family and community partnerships. Really connects to our service coordination approach that Heather Olsen has presented on in the past to enrich student opportunities. Uh, I love that we have in our objectives here that word welcoming. We want to make sure that all of our families and our students feel very
045welcome here. Uh, you know, kindness is a is a is a is a crux of all we do. Uh, and I think goal five and that welcoming approach is a big part of that. We want to build partnerships with local businesses and organization to continue to expand those opportunities, our mentorship opportunities, uh, internships, different things to give kids opportunities right here within Worcester. Um and even ourselves even on the our side. So flip it back on our side. We how can we as a district uh participate more in community organizations and you know uh Rotary Kowanas you know different volunteering opportunities is I think that's something we want to continue to look at both for staff and um um and our students as well as you know there are there are districts that have you
046know service requirements and different things. I mean we're not making those decisions. That's what this is all part of. But I think we need to think about that as I think that was an important piece that came out. And then goal six is facilities. So we want to support uh safe, healthy and future ready uh learning environments. Um huge aspect of feedback within our strategic plan as you would assume. Um uh so how do we best address our our you know health, safety and maintenance needs to support our aging uh uh infrastructure? You know, ventilation was mentioned, you know, just as we have some old buildings, some without uh air conditioning and different things so that our environments are supportive for student learning. You know, one of the things we talked a lot about with
047Cornerstone and and and I think ultimately led to one of the reasons why we uh decided to move out of the building is it wasn't just that it was costing us money, it was impacting student learning. And that's really kind of when you start to you think about kind of the crux of that decision, that's what the crux of that decision was. It wasn't financial. um we've got to do both short and long-term planning. What do we do right now? We kind of have already started doing that, but at the same time long term as we really, you know, intend to uh get our master planning uh back, you know, discussion uh with the community back together to really determine in the long run how are we going to uh permanently address our facility needs?
048um as right now we're kind of in that short short range mode and uh we want to engage people in that process and so we'll be doing that as well. Uh physical safety is always of utmost important and uh continuing to look at ways that we can um update our safety infrastructure. uh secure entryways was specifically mentioned as most of our buildings were all built um or have not been renovated uh since uh Coline uh which is kind of a time period when we start to see the schools were starting to be built with more uh ways to restrict people from entering um uh as uh you know student threat became so much more of a reality unfortunately about that time and has continued. Um, and then doing all of this with uh our fiscal
049or our finances in mind as we make those decisions and figure out what we're going to do um based on where we at financially as we are getting closer to an operating le levy. We've talked about that a lot. Um and so as we make these decisions with facilities, how do that how does that connect to our finances? So, um I guess before I go into uh I'm almost done here. Here I'm just going to talk about how we in actually once the plan is approved, how we actually go about tackling it. Are there any questions, comments, anything that the board would uh like to share um as we you know has really again this is a draft. We can make any revisions that we need to um prior to um next month's meeting. And
050again, we doesn't have to even be approved next month, but that would be the the plan of right now if there's feedback. And if there's not, that's okay. There was a lot of feedback that was created to create this plan. So, not to put you on the spot, but is there anything that you guys would like to share before we kind of move forward? >> The only thing that I thought of so first of all, I think this is great and um you know, I do see similarities from the one we did before, but there are, you know, new items on here, which is which is good. We're continuing to grow and and move forward. Um, I was just you made a comment but I it's not really represented in represented in the objectives and
051I wonder if it should be but when we talk about communication should we include something like to all stakeholders? I mean you mentioned um you know that we want to get to those people that are harder to get to. So I just wonder on like objective 4.1 we talked about deliver timely accurate easy to understand communication um you know should we add something about to all stakeholders? So it's very clear that that's our our goal. >> I would be fine with that. I wonder if we could say something like pay special attention to um you know the dem non-parents. >> Yeah, something like that. Just I mean because again that continues to be our our area that's tough. >> Yeah. As one of the things we talk about a lot is 70 76% of our
052uh constituents don't have children in the home in our district. Right. And so that is a target of how we continue to increase there. So I think we can we can add something like that for sure. >> We obviously want to maintain what we're doing with families. >> Correct. Yes. And then add to it. Yep. Yep. So, >> anybody else pick up? >> Thanks. >> I'll offer one kind goal two. I think go two is really important. I don't know if we want to have something and I think there's behavior expectations, discipline management. I thought bullying. I was kind of surprised at the prevalence in the survey responses. Is there an opportunity in goal two to maybe have a a purposeful anti-bullying bullet point? I don't know what that looks like if there's a program
053around it, stronger discipline, whatever. But to really address that aspect of it among behaviors. >> Yeah. Oh, for sure. I think we can do that. I think we can whe we can say something that in an attempt or in an effort to and and and literally put that I think it would be important to put that word in the actual plan. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Proactive. >> Yes. >> Proactive. Really proactive strategies for bullying. >> Right. >> Anti-bullying. >> Yeah. Anti-bullying >> until you get to that point. Yeah, we'll add something there. >> Yeah, >> thank you. That's good. Joy, you were going to say something. >> I mean, my comments are always going to be more global. Um, it is clear, I believe, um, and it covers the range of what education is,
054right? We've got learning, we've got social emotional status, well-being, staff, community. I so it's broad. I It's very broad. >> Um >> the goals are a little in more intentionally broad than >> I'm not saying that's bad. >> No. And I think that I think that's good to mention. We Darren and I have talked about that as well. And I think there was two reasons for that. One, the last plan was the first strategic plan that this district had really done. And and I don't know there was no strategic plan at the time. So we wanted to do a strategic plan that had some very specific things that we knew we wanted to accomplish. We also in that strategic plan set a fairly aggressive timeline which was only about three three and a half years.
055This strategic plan is again we want to continue to improve but there's not not everything is new right at this point from teachers administration myself Amy. Um on top of that uh we would kind of like this plan to go a little longer. As you notice, this is intended to be about a five-year plan. And so it it um also it leads, as you'll see when I go through some of the like what do we do next is that some of the um some of these objectives will get better defined in the actions that are taken. Yeah. >> Um it's very ambit it's interesting is what I want to say. Um it it is ambitious because when you sit down and you write the list of the eight billion things you need to do every
056day, it's overwhelming. It's a tsunami of things we do every minute of every day with kids. So it is very ambitious, but it also is wonderful that we're doing this process whether some things go perfectly or not as perfectly as we want because our goal is for these to be all the things we do every day in small ways ultimately. Yes, I guess that's also what I want to say. >> Um, so I I I like this process for that reason and I do believe you know we're everybody starts to move in the same direction then and that is what we need and I think we I said that at you know we want people to just internalize the small things. Um so those additions are lovely. Um it's a lot >> and it's important.
057Um, I don't know if I have a specific thing. I just want to say that I think it's important to invest in our staff and for all the people to continue to internalize our goals for what we believe education is. And I'll leave it there. So, that's my typical type of comment. Um, but I think it's ultimately very very important that we do this. Um, I'm also going to say I it is difficult at times to engage with our community and our families and there's a wide range of skills we need to accomplish that and it varies a lot and um I don't need a specific bullet point for that so much as I believe if we keep doing all of this we will better connect ultimately to the best of our abilities is more
058what I want to say in terms of like what you said Jod it it it is a difficult job to get to everybody. So those are my comments on this process. Sorry. Thank you for listening. >> Well, let me show you a little bit guys of how what we do next um as well. So once the plan is adopted, which could be in July, I mean really it could be whenever you feel it's the plan you want to adopt, but when it's once it's developed, um we will start diving into how um uh we will try to tackle and accomplish these things and we'll do it very similar to we did last time. It's a very kind of strategic effort that uh has accountability and teams that are developed along the way. Um and so
059but really the the the things that we we do is we so we look at each objective and we establish a baseline. So where are we right? So with every objective so if it's PBIS where are we with PBIS right if it's you know if it's fiscal transparency where are we with fiscal transparency um and then we think about where we would like to be right and so that's where you kind of so looking at the goal so we would you know uh we would like our PBIS to to you know greater impact student behavior norms that would then ultimately reduce poor decisions bullying all of those things. So that would be that's where we want to go. Then the implementation is how how do you get there, right? So how do you you know
060and that's where you start working into the strategies that you're going to do um in order to try to get where you want to go. Um and then measure is you know measuring your outcomes could be quantitative data which is more of your actual numbers like we reduce discipline by x percentage. uh could be qualitative based on maybe survey results, how kids are feeling um you know and staff is feeling in terms of maybe you know what they're experiencing. So you would do both of those. So those are kind of the four things where we are where we want to go, how do we get there and then how do we measure it or how do we determine if we if we're succeeding and then what we do last. So, we'll do this right now.
061We're attentively planning on doing this if you guys approve the plan in July at our August uh admin retreat meeting um where we go through every objective and we will assign administrators to be responsible ultimately responsible for certain objectives and then it's not an administrative the strategic plan is not an administratively done thing. Then administrators work with staff, parents, students, you know, to in order to achieve their objective, right? But it's everybody has ownership and we go based on strengths and things like so Mr. Madigan, he probably is going to have something to do with facilities, right? Molly's probably going to be working on some of it with instruction, right? It's I mean, it's within your your areas of strength and and what you do on a daily basis. And then we regularly at our
062monthly meetings, we review every objectives with reports out. Some months it may, hey, we didn't we didn't have a meeting this month. We didn't, you know, it could be like a a lot that's, you know, accomplished within a month. And so there's accountability there and it kind of keeps the process moving so that we're able to achieve our goals. And that's really what worked really well for us when we did our last strategic plan. So, we'll be doing that again uh with this ultimately. And then the very last my last slide here is once this is approved and we start working on how we're going to get there and what we're going to do, we are also going to communicate uh this significantly. Um we'll make sure that it gets out on all our sites.
063We're also this will be printed. Uh this is just an example because ours is obviously not ready. We will print this um on posters and other things. We want our community to recognize this is our strategic plan. When they see this, I'm not saying that, hey, if they can recite all six goals, that would be awesome. But at the very least, I want them to know we have a strategic plan. That kind of the general gist of it, and that that's what we're doing. And so when they see these around, they're going to know that's our compass and what we're doing. All right. So, that's ultimately kind of the communication step, that last communication step. So, that's kind of where we are. We I I really appreciate your feedback. will add those few uh tweaks
064um and get a final draft for your consideration on the July board agenda. Um and then we'll continue to work on it from there. You could probably expect at least yearly if not uh you know by uh by annually um updates on where we are with our strategic plan so that you can obviously hold us accountable to make sure that we're accomplishing those goals. And we'll get all of that uh also we'll get all this feedback and that data available uh as well so people can you know they heard me say it tonight but they can truly see what this how this data drove the um objectives and goals that were created. >> So I guess if we have any other thoughts we just get those to you and then >> you see a refined
065if any changes that are made before. Okay. >> Yes. I would send that to me um and then I can work with Darin to to get any of that. So, if there's anything else as you review, again, that's what we that's why we're presenting this tonight. It's not the final document. It's so that you can look through it and if there's anything else that you think we want to add, we would do so. And if we're not ready to put it on in July, we won't put it on in July, but that would be the intention at this point. I >> mean, it feels like that would be the ideal so that you can have it as part of your August. >> It would I mean, because that's a we carve a day for that.
066>> Right. Right. Right. So, I mean, the only thing the thing is, again, I'm going to repeat myself, but I think this is great. The only other thing is just so there's fiscal responsibility under like goal six which is around which is around school facilities but I don't see anything about fiscal responsibility anywhere like more broadly than facilities and I don't the thing is if that didn't come out in feedback from the community sessions then then maybe that's not why it's not here but I I guess I'm just thinking as much as we talk about how funding is changing for schools property tax reform form like I guess it feels like it would be a big gap to not have it as part of our strategic plan on how we're going to manage over the
067next five years. I don't know. It's just a thought, right? >> I don't know. Is that part of I'm sorry. Is that part of uh 4.1? >> I mean, it's it's very broad. Maybe not as detailed as what you're >> Yeah, that's more information. >> You coming up because you're I'm not ready to introduce you anyway. >> That's okay. Um part of this though the your administrative team have looked at this many times. We had a a pretty intense session um with the administrative team. So we went back and forth where where does this belong >> and so because um I I call what's happening in our legislature right now is it's been a roller coaster with those four >> bills especially in December that passed it >> it is this roller coaster and so
068being able to even understand and communicate that. So we I I I believe we even put it from six to four in the communication piece of it. We can make it more prominent. >> Well, I guess I mean to and maybe I need to think through this a little bit more. It's not as much about the communication of where we're at, but it's again how are we being how are we constantly looking at cost savings and being fiscally responsible and those types of things. So, I do believe that like anything that's happening with changes falls under 4.1, but just I don't I don't know the intentionality. >> What you're trying to say is I think you're trying to capture that well because ultimately during this strategic plan we will go out for an operating levy,
069right? And that and that connects those decisions we're making connect to that. >> Yeah. And maybe it is I I'll spend a little more time with it and I'll just send you something if I >> we can work on a we could understanding what you're trying I do understand what you're saying. Um, I've heard it from other boards. Um, it a lot of that discussion from the community and from teachers were really centered on facilities and I don't know if the >> the facility um discussion in the time just the timing of everything kind of pulled away from that. It's it's something that the treasures are you're holding they're responsible for um and you all too, right? >> Um if you want we can work on something and give you a few options. Um, so
070that is more called out. That's that this is why you're here. This is why there's no action there. You are not considering any kind of action. It is still very dra in a draft form. >> Yep. Let me think on it a little bit. >> Okay. And then um if you send those Yeah. >> Because sometimes you have to marinate with it a little bit. >> Yeah. >> And then you're like that two in the morning um thought if you ever get up at 2 in the morning um and you're thinking, "Oh, I should have said this or I should have said that." You have there's time. >> Yeah. >> Mrs. Pence. to follow up on that for under my understanding only I have no veilance on my thoughts but so like when I think
071of measurement and progress like of course me I'm thinking about MTSS and PBIS and because that's where I go and I don't mean that so Jody made a wonderful point about what our obligations are so I'm asking the ignorant question like how to differentiate and I don't I'm sure I'm crazy but like how how are we differentiating in this kind of process between our our primary role as educators and I guess I don't know um the tasks and obligations we have in the way we do them that I guess that's what I'm trying to understand to follow up on Jod's question like I see them so differently and I don't even know if I know how to rectify that now that Jod asked that which was a wonderful comment so that's what I'm toss I
072don't need an answer maybe that's just my comment to add you see what I'm saying like >> I don't know how to measure those things all the same and I don't know if They're all I mean not that one is more important than the other but yeah >> is that meaningful or am I missing the boat? Maybe I'm missing the boat. >> I think in the end you're gonna you know we would communicate all of them. I think ultimately I mean um you know instruction was goal one. I mean that's the number one thing we do and that's where all of it all of it relates to that. I don't think in the end you should expect a report out differently on goal three than you would goal one. The only difference is is sometimes
073there's more there's more data in certain goals especially quantitative data. >> Sure. >> Um so but I think you should expect that throughout in all >> okay that that thank you that's your answer >> and when you go back to um if you go back to those four steps that we work out so things can change in four or five years. Think about what has changed in education over the last four to five year. I mean from take 20 to your current strategic plan. So this is why it is a four to five year plan quite honestly. And so when the when the administrative team under Gab's leadership, Mr. Tutor's leadership, um you're going through and saying what are where are we today? What are what what information do we have? We have so much
074information that we report to um the state on achievement on costs per meal alert the labor hours. I mean there's a ton. So based on each of those objectives, um the team will be identifying the baseline, the recommendations, implementation, and measurement. And then we map it out. Um it's hard to I hate when I say this, but it's hard to see here, but you can see that this is colorcoded. B is for your baseline, and you map it out over the years. So those top priorities, Mrs. Klein, honestly, is that's where those rise up. And so that second tab on the spreadsheet is really by goal. And you can see that there's a this organization I was an ESC wanted to do chair and co-chair some people say lead and co-le it doesn't really matter
075what you call it so they're the people that are owning it and then driving it that might mean that they are you know incor using their teacher leaders or you know their facilities team or whatever but there are two drivers for that objective so that timeline is where some of those priorities start to um rise up Mrs. Kleinhens because you're not going to do if you do everything at once it's going to fail. Yeah, of course. But no, no, it's good. Yeah, cuz I'm grappling a little with Yeah. >> Yeah, that's how that's is important. >> There are purposeful in our last strategic plan, there was there were certain objectives that we purposefully didn't start until you year two or three. And so, you're going to have that as well here. Um, you know, you'll
076have to prioritize and determine. That's good question. I did not clarify that when I said that. >> I'm just taking over your >> Yeah. No, you're good. Well, Darin is actually up next because um >> we felt and you guys has actually have given me this in feedback in my evaluations that hey, we wanted to at least revisit our um vision and mission statement. We really don't have, you know, you can have a vision and a tagline. We really just have a mission statement that uh says inspiring worldclass academic achievement. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a good thing. Um but our you know we have changed a lot as a district in the last 10 or 15 years and we've now went through two strategic plans and so we um we wanted to at
077least revisit and either confirm that we would that that continues to be um kind of our vision um or if we want to tweak that at all to better reflect um kind of the work that we're doing. So if we come to any kind of conclusion as Darin works through this that'll be on the agenda for your consideration in July as well. Um if we if we don't if there's no action needed then then we won't then we won't do that. Last thing on the strategic plan what I will do anything that we change on this from this document till next month. That's what I'll highlight for you in July. I'm not going to take you through the whole plan again. So I'll just those few pieces that I'm hearing as feedback. I'll tweak those.
078That's what we'll kind of highlight when you see it in July. Okay. All right, Darin, I'm gonna give you the mic and I'm gonna go sit down and just be a participant. Okay, >> great. >> Jump in. All right. So, first of all, I'm so I try to I try to capture your notes. So, that's why I do um I do have paper I have my post-it notes um on things that you have said and given feedback already. So, first of all, I have to say thank you. Thank you for sharing your the Worcester uh the Worcester school community. Um your students um when I was able when I talked to them, they were um amazing. Your staff was um engaged. Um the focus groups engaging um it was mostly it was all community members
079at the focus groups. Um so it it was just it was a pleasure and an honor um to be part of this uh team um for this for this project. and your administrators are extremely knowledgeable and they are dedicated. Um without them um that that leadership it's it's it's really the whole team steering the ship headed by you and the and the board of education. So I want to thank you for what you all do. Um, Gabe, like Gabe said, those themes that he took you through um were really a compilation high level of what was heard because you can't address everything in a strategic plan and that's really not the intention of a strategic plan either. It is to set those guard rails and to stretch and to have that that top aim line.
080So talking about that stretch and looking at what does capture um um a vision and mission and a tagline process. So a mission is um what do you do, whom do you do it for and how do you do it right now? It serves as your guide for those daily decisions and actions. So it's it is your general guard rails on day-to-day. Are we doing the best for students? Are we focused on um and doing the best for students all also means supporting the the the staff that are teaching the students. It is what you use for the um the general's uh is it the closet? It's not the general's it's what you know how you serve the kids that need is it general's closet. Okay. >> All right. So, but that's incredible. That's unique.
081So, those are the kinds of things you want. Your mission to to to say that and the vision is what the world looks like if you succeed. It is definitely future focused and it is meant to be aspirational and a tagline. More and more of our clients are are having a tagline. Sometimes it changes every year. Sometimes it stays for the the intention is to have it stay for their strategic plan. It's short. It's like a it's the spark. Um it's a powerful expression and then it's your essence in a heartbeat. My mom was an English teacher so um I'm tapping into her inner energy. Um does anyone have any questions about mission, vision or tagline? All right. So, um, looking at, um, I'm going to take you through a quick protocol to get your
082feedback because it's important that a board of education has that individual reflection like you that you're charged with now until um, when's the next board meeting, Mr. Tutor? >> July 21st. So, maybe get that feedback to Mr. Tutor like right after July 4th or right before the holiday. Um, and then we can get those we I'll start to work on the revisions that we talked about tonight. And so, you can consider that. Um so we also want to look at that reflection as from a board member. Um so I'm going to take you through there's three options. Now you're again um we took this language these three options when we did that that the SWAT analysis and looked at those um cultural aspirations um for the two groups the um leadership team and the board
083of education. And then the leadership team um in I think April or May whenever it was whenever I think it was May when we met they looked at I had um they had six options and we whittleled it down because there's a lot of repetition to three for the board to consider. So I am going to give you if you can take one pass it down. >> Absolutely. >> And if you can take one of each one of each. >> Yep. So, um, we're going to go through three different options. Um, and I'm going to read them and I'm going to ask you, um, I'm going to ask you to highlight words or phrases that you feel that are strong, clear, or important from your perspective as a board member. And then, um, green. Um,
084I didn't count my highlighter colors, so I had to do an, um, on-site edit. So green if the ideas that reflect the dis district district's desired future and then you're just going to put a question mark on something that you feel um um mark next to anything that feels unclear or generic or misaligned. So again you have your m you have the key of what you're going to do. Um in option one is the vision is a united school community where every student is valued and in inspired to succeed. And the mission is we partner with families in the community to provide meaningful learning experiences for every student fostering curiosity, creativity and resilience. And the tagline would be learning today leading tomorrow. So, what you're going to do as individual reflection, yellow for words or
085phrases that you feel are strong and clear and important and green that reflect the desired the district's desired future and a question mark with anything that is unclear or generic or misaligned. We're just doing one soon. Are we going >> Dorine? Are we supposed to do all three? >> Yeah. Okay. >> Oh, yeah. We'll do all three. >> Yep. >> Me in the classroom working ahead. >> That's okay. >> Thank you, Mrs. Kleinens. How did we get these? Again, we looked at um really all all the stakeholder feedback, but especially from the SWAT analysis. We went through an activity with the board about cultural aspirations and then also behavioral commitments. So there were there were words and descriptors um for that. So it it really is steeped and then your administrative team looked and revised
086them already. >> Thank you. So this is not the first city schools administrative team ultimately took I'm not being disrespectful in any way what you gave them and put Thank you. I just want to make sure. >> Yes. They beat it up which is what I want that which is what what I want. Does anyone have any questions? Okay. What's the next step? we supposed to >> I kind of cheat because I've seen these before. So, >> so if you're if you're done, um I would like to get a collective view of what you all said. So, if you could bring your highlighter up and actually code these now. So, it's a board. I mean, this is kind of a mini work session. Um I can if you give me number one, I can do
087it for you and then Yes. Thank you, Mrs. Mayor. >> That's my one. >> Yeah. >> I'm sorry. You gave me the impression you're about to >> Oh, that's okay. I can I I can code him also. Can I have an administrator help me code? >> Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. on your way. >> I think if you're willing to highlight the things you believed in that she'll accept that is what I heard. Yeah, >> you're good. I think >> Yeah, >> one's okay. I think two two and three are really similar but in slightly different ways. >> I would That's the only vision statement I >> That was the only one I wanted. That's the one I looked at. I'll be fair. I really don't I don't care all that much. But >> supportive schools community.
088>> Yeah. Do you know what the vision mission are today? >> So it can be that all of us >> agree on three words. So, I'm gonna wait till the end, right? >> I did. >> Well, no, no, no. But yeah, like if everybody highlights the same word. Yeah. >> Yeah. No, no, no, no. >> Aspiring world class academic achievement >> because if there's something left, I'll do that. >> There you go. >> Mine mine are all marked. >> I'll fill them right now. So, I need >> the word the word that's scrolled that I I scrolled wordy over those. So, those are both I guess question. I'm sorry. I have I have solicit for you. >> Okay. >> I I felt like >> Well, I think I did though, but like future and strong.
089I felt like we're the same almost. >> Okay. >> Don't pick yellow. I just think it should have some type of academic achievement. >> That's it. I think for all the things it says there should just there should be an element of academic achievement because that is what we are here for. >> I don't vision. >> No, I do. I don't think I personally I kind of like our current tagline. There's nothing wrong. >> Yeah, it's simple. >> It looks good against our little logo thing, right? >> It it works. No, no one's arguing that inspiring world class academic achievement is not a good thing. >> Yeah. Even though it's the one on the bottom of this, they don't. Yeah. >> Do we have everyone's >> I think so. Yep. >> Okay, great. Thanks, Bobby.
090So, we'll start with number one. And really the purpose of this again is for you to have your own private reflection um and then looking at where there are some commonalities. So, in option one, if you wanted to consider a new vision, did you do yours yet, Mrs. Pensson? >> I didn't, but I can wait. No, that's okay. We can >> I can help you. >> No, no, no. I know what I'm I'm going to wait. >> Okay. >> Because I have, of course, a lot of strong thoughts, so I'd rather wait. >> Okay. So, some of the commonalities here, what we're looking for is some commonality. We're not we're not voting on anything. Um, but it's to give you feedback to get feedback if we need to go back to the drawing board or
091keep if you want to keep the current vision and mission. That's this is the whole goal of tonight. Um so we have right there option A isii the the the yellow um which is your phrases that you feel strong or clear. Um so united community um every student valued inspired. This is for option one. Um and then we have learning curiosity creativity and resilience. And then we have yellow and learning today leading tomorrow. So, that was a pretty common. Um, we have an X on the word school, a united school community. Um, that did anyone want to explain the green on that part? >> I thought school kind of made me was a generic addition. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other comments on number one that you'd like to share? >> Definitely in general, you
092could see it has the most Yeah, >> five of us highlighted that in some way, >> which isn't a surprise. I I I think there's reason for that >> for for option one. Um, I mean I I'm not sure how much we're supposed to share like in detail, but >> yes. >> So I think Bonnie, you had the X on school. I I wasn't crazy about the word united. I don't know why. >> Me too. >> Um but but I like everything else and I think just tweaking that word um in then this this kind >> Yeah, but I agree >> like like connected or just a different a different word. Okay, >> I agree. And I don't know the word and I totally agree because you want you >> we want people to feel
093good. We we want that connection piece. That word is vital. There's no doubt about it. And >> we want them to feel united. But right >> somehow, I don't know. >> I guess yeah, we have >> and that's this whole purpose, your feedback so that we can go back and and and edit and play with it before any kind of approval. This is your feedback. I like the uh I like using both meaning not united. I think take united out and you make that a connected and supported or supportive school community because we did have supportive on >> other ones. I love the word resilience. I think that's a huge thing for our students and and that that and you can see that throughout all three resiliency was um was highlight >> and the word
094curiosity and creativity really came from that that hands-on learning those meaningful and authentic finding their pathway whether it's in the in career or it's in CCP whatever it is. So those curiosity is something that we want our students even our staff and people that we want to be curious about learning. I was going to ask about curiosity though. I'm for it. Totally for curiosity. But I just feel like is that a dated word in education? Is that something we believed like 20 years ago and now we're looking for it differently? I'm just trying to >> Oh, I agree. I agree. >> I am I am I am totally for whatever everybody wants. I'm just trying to be really discerning. Like I feel like creativity is something or curiosity was an old thing and we're you
095know that was like >> I think it's making a resurrection. Um, okay. >> But I I would I would that would be something I would want to look like >> I don't know. >> I want to look at the Worcester administrators for that curiosity. Is that dated? >> I'll share an opinion. I I think it's not dated at all. I think you can't be a serious academic without curiosity. >> Right. But I don't know that our school I mean please with love. Like I don't Are we producing academics? Like I feel like that's an assumption that I personally in my private life might appreciate for my family, but I don't know if that's the entire role of education when you look at the range of learners. And curiosity is kind of like, you know, like
096the liberal arts education that demands a PhD before you can go to work. I'm not against it as a concept. I'm just trying to say that I'm trying to think broader about our role for all learners. And I do emphasize all learners is the only reason I'm asking is not because I don't love your group. I'm just trying to do what I >> No, I No, you're >> I don't disagree with you, but >> you're doing your job quite honestly >> with respect. So that's the only reason I asked about curiosity because that's what I feel it alludes to is like, you know, like why do we live? I mean, I'm for it. I love it, you know. But I think they can be kids can be curious about how a plant grows and the
097life of the cycles of the moon and they want to learn more. So they might do a non-fiction >> in second or third grade. Right. So, and then also as the students get older, um you know, when I talked to your your um um the middle school kids, they were all about like this learning um potentially more options for electives. They were just they were so excited about the opportunities that especially starting at the middle school and you know, or intermed. Um, so I that just come that kind of came up over and over again. Maybe not the word curiosity, but those opportunities to learn something new and they jumped on the opportunity. They didn't have to take that class. So, and it's good. So, I'm just I and I'm not I'm just giving you
098the rationale. It's just something to consider. >> I think it's a good tradeoff for not directly saying academic achievement >> in the in the same thing. It doesn't say that, right? So the curiosity could lead you down any of the paths we're talking about. >> I I like the tagline a lot in option one. I think I mean that's really when you start thinking like that what you want your people to remember and learning today leading tomorrow. I mean that's really what we're trying to do, right? We're trying to make successful people after high school and we're all leaders in different ways. Um, so I really like that connection. And then when I look at the options, I was kind of inc. So, no secret, option one was in general my favorite coming in. And
099I've seen these, right, and worked with them. Um, I think there I like some of these tweaks, but what I I like is it seems like we've affirmed that as well, you know, with the resiliency and creativity. I think curiosity was I'm fine with that because I think we all are curious in in our own way. You could use the word like discovery or exploration. I I don't know if those are better, but you know, those are if we um you know, if we wanted to, but I think it's maybe tweaking a little bit of the first line of the vision from united to something more with connected and supportive. I think Dorene, if we could connect that. >> Yeah, I have that >> for that one. I feel like we're going off path because
100you didn't get to go through option two and three and we're >> it's okay. That's totally but but really um there's not a ton of feedback on either of those but the word wordy on um for vision and mission it is a little bit it is a lot wordier um and then the tagline um so and then but there are highlighted words here um uh supported and prepared um for the vision on option two I will show um advance my screen and then Wooster uh school partners with families and the community to create meaningful learning experience that supports student success prepare students become responsible and productive citizens and build a strong foundation for pursuing their interests in leading happy fulfilling lives. Um I remember I when I was a teacher as a a superintendent said
101if you can if you can um recite the mission I'm going to give back in the day iPods not I didn't say iPads but you know some of you some people might not know what an iPod is but um you'll get but anyways um so that one I would never be able to even come into a into the contestant of being an iPod holder and then tagline prepare uh preparing students for success uh purpose and fulfilling future. There was a question mark there. Highlighted words in the mission are student success, a productive citizens, strong foundation. Is there any other comments about two option two? I I would agree that it's a little too much. Um but at the same time, I do like probably what I feel like is missing in one is talking about
102them becoming responsible, productive citizens. Like something about their future like there's it's it's creating experiences that are fostering curiosity but it doesn't lead to >> you say we are by fostering >> an actionable end like an actionable end >> but in the tagline it's not a mission >> right >> learning experience >> just fosting curiosity creative it doesn't talk about >> oh we talk about employed >> educated um the military what's the other >> um college but it's Like I mean there's nothing about we talk about that so much and to me there's nothing in option one that takes you to that. >> You know what I'm saying? >> Yeah. >> Trying to think it would probably >> take you to the military work or >> Yeah. school. >> Yeah. Like to what we expect
103like so so we were supposed to do green and what we see in the future, >> right? >> I just it's not what what I'm saying not making sense. >> No, it is. I'm trying to think where I would I'm trying to think how I could add it to miss to option one without making it too wordy. >> Right. I mean I do um >> to become >> becoming responsible and citizens period. >> I mean for me that's enough. >> Yeah you could do to become like so after resilience you add to become responsible >> responsible and productive citizens period. For me story >> not that the other things aren't but it is long. We don't need a strong foundation for pursuing their interest. could move that to this is what >> it could it
104could just I think for me >> to become responsible and productive citizens after resilience >> and that stays it's it's that's not too long it's getting closer but >> but it's still very clear and it's working it remains very clear which is why it does because again I love that tagline the leading tomorrow it actually then you're describing you're describing the leading tomorrow at that point >> okay >> all right and number um three, excuse my back. Um, option three is a connected and supportive school community where every student is known, valued, and inspired to grow, lead, and succeed. Again, both the vision and option three and mission are um comment wordy um highlighted is in yellow is connected, known, valued, and grow where um yellow highlights mission um resilience and opportunity and then a
105question mark for fulfilling life. And then connected, inspired, empowered was in yellow, too. That that feedback. Any other general feedback about three that because it seems like option one is is like our base and maybe some tweaks >> um based on the feedback. >> Frankly, I think all all of them are too long. The only thing that you can remember are the taglines, but when you have that many words, people don't know what they are, what they currently are. So, I think weeding some of the words out is fine. But um option two and option three certainly are just word they're just word word salad and then um a or option one I think we could pair that thing down if you want to bring some of those other words over but I think those
106missions are too long in the visions I don't think that vision statement should be longer than eight words >> my opinion so it is what it is but we're you know we're wrestling over this word and that word you know you put the words in there we really know what those are >> do your staff in the district really know what those are. I can tell you that if you have those currently in the district, 80% of the staff don't know what they are anyways. So, not that this is not a a good exercise, but I think less is more. >> Thank you. >> I do I I this is maybe a question for clarification for me. Like when I envision whatever we decide here, like when I think about like what I put on
107the letter head, what I put on my right >> um my my cards, I'm I'm thinking that's typically the tagline, right? Correct. Correct. Indeed. >> Okay. >> And the tagline in number one is wonderful. >> Yeah. >> And I you're you're not wrong, Rick. I we could spend a thousand hours on I so I don't agree. However, I do want to say I like I like the addition to mission because it does expand it what you said Jod and the only other thing we could say and it's adding a word but we could say inspired to grow and succeed and again like I'm going after everybody and some of our students will grow more than anything and that's valuable right we have a lot of students who are going to grow as their benchmarks So,
108>> right. I I >> No, you're succeeding. So, I'm just trying to like again >> I'm I'm broadening it that way. I do agree with Rick 2 million%, but I'd love to maybe think about grow and succeed because that covers our students whose primary thing will be growth. >> Yeah. >> And I'm wondering can you uh we'll we'll work through I'm just talking about ideas. I don't know. >> Can you like we I think if we're a connected supportive community, we're partnering with the families and community. I wonder if you could take all that out and start with providing meaningful learning experiences to every student, you know, and just take out the first because you're really already saying that at the in the in the vision and that that shortens you a decent amount. >>
109Totally. Yes. Because partnering with families feels like >> tricky thing. >> We can Oh, I'm going to be watching the recording of this maybe a few times, too. >> I love that. I'd love that. I love that. So, change, too. >> Yeah. Okay. So, we will take this feedback. >> Yes. >> Probably try to create one option that looks kind of like option one with a little tweak >> and then we'll we'll bring it to you with the strategic plan. >> Yeah. And maybe maybe before I can work on >> I'll send it to him. >> Yeah. Between this week and next week to just looking at >> you, please. Thank you. >> Okay. I understand Rick's thoughts about it being too much, but I also understand the importance of an effective vision and mission
110and like I you know you have them I assume that our vision is our vision is here I went our plan is to put these around so they're visible and then I think as your staff is doing objectives and doing their work this is what we should always be going back to and this is what we should be focused on in theory right Yes. >> And so I it has to be meaningful and it has to be representative of what we want to be. >> I I agree. And just like any paragraphs, but >> yeah. No, I I know I I it's you can have the most beautiful vision and mission, but if it's not the commitment to live it, >> right? >> It's honestly it's meaningless. And what I hear from teachers and staff
111and in with in different organizations is this just another poster on the wall. >> So what does that mean? And what does that mean in a in a preschool classroom? What does that look like? It can be this could you know especially the tagline or this vision and mission it fits I hate I mean like even looking at some of the teaching practices and Charlotte Danielson's framework about engage the uh domain too um it can easily be integrated into the practices and and discussions what does that look like so um I again if you have a strategic plan that just sits on a shelf it's it's useless but it's how you live this is the important thing and that's um and Mr. Tutor and the team. I'm just they're you have a great great team
112here. >> So, >> does anyone have any questions for me? >> Thank you for um sticking with me in that activity. I appreciate it. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. Thanks, Darene. We'll talk soon. >> All right. We have two more reports, >> but they're connected. >> But they are. So, so we are going to hear from Mrs. McMillan, uh, the director of student services. She's going to pre present information regarding the use of student wellness and success funds and disadvantaged uh, pupil impact aid. And then she will then uh, follow that up with information regarding the use of federal special education part B um, individuals with disabilities education act funds. >> Thank you. All right. Good evening everyone. Um actually I have it in it's in reverse order. It is all one
113presentation but um so I'm going to start with federal idea B funds. Um this is a a requirement that we have to do every year where we review how we spent the federal dollars that we received in um the most recent fiscal year. And then we use any we have to provide um a period for public comment and then we use any of that feedback or public comment that we received to draft our new plan for the next fiscal year. So, um, so what is idea B? That's part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Act. Um, and federal funding just, um, allows us to provide an extra layer of funding, um, to expand opportunities or provide extra help for our students with disabilities. So, for fiscal year 26, we had a little over a million
114dollars. Um, I don't know if you remember, uh, last year, our federal funding was delayed when we received it. um we received an amount it was a little less than that and then um they gave us additional um dollars and then also any carryover dollars that we have from the year before get added um at a later date. So that was the amount that we ended with. Um we did earlier than we normally do got our projected funds for fiscal year 27 and it's a little less. We are anticipating that if they allow us to carry over funds um from this year, we'll probably be sitting at about the same amount of dollars um overall when it's all >> and we do think they are going to let the carryover happen. They we weren't sure
115for a while. >> We weren't sure. And we really tried one of the stipulations that they're putting on carryover is you can't carry over for multiple years. And so we tried to be really intentional about spending those dollars first um so that we wouldn't lose any money. So, as far as budgeting, we are allowed to um budget in the way that we want to prioritize as a district. These are the allowable cost principles that we have to align our funding and expenses with. Um the supplement versus supplant, we have to um we add to what we're already providing. We can't replace. So, we can't say, "Oh, we have this extra money. we're going to use that uh money to um you know save from the general fund and um maybe not use taxpayer dollars for
116a building project or something like that. So it's we're supplementing with what we're already doing. We're adding to what we're providing. Um we would kind of the um rule of thumb for um federal funding is we would have to provide those services whether we get the funding or not. So it's just really an extra layer adding to what we're already doing. These are the areas of priorities that we are allowed to um consider. And so prioritizing our funds just allows us to invest um strategically where the needs of our specific students here at Worcester um might um be seeing those needs yeartoear. We typically have very similar percentages um that we spend our federal funds on. Um instruction is the largest one. We use we have um some salaries for some of our intervention specialists
117come out of that um that pot and then some of our specialized pair professionals. We try to offset costs um for staff members that maybe um have more years of experience and costs a little more so that we can ease um the burden of our general fund in that way. Um we don't do that. Uh we try to spread that out also across the district. So, it's not just because you have a lot of years in the district, we're going to take that um salary out of our federal funds. We try to spread it so that we have um a teacher from most buildings um coming out of that fund. Also, um instructional supplies and materials come out of the instructional fund. So, when students um it's student specific or um maybe um grouping specific.
118So, if we have a student that um maybe needs an adaptive swing for the playground, that would come out of this fund. or if there are sensory needs for a unit, we had, you know, the mold issue at Cornerstone. We use some of our instructional supply money to um try to build some of their supplies back up for the students in that room. So, um support services is our next largest um that equates about 6% of our fund. Um that goes for our thirdparty providers for um different contracts that we have to provide various um therapies and supports. So we have a couple of providers that we work with. Um 6% of the federal funds go to them. Professional development um is about 5%. This would be the professional development itself, any kind of associated
119costs that come with that. So paying for subs when teachers are at professional development. Um the cost of the development, mileage, food, anything that comes along with that. Um, also the any supplies that would go along with professional development would be taken from this fund as well. Uh, we want to make sure that it's high quality researchbased training that we're providing either within the district or when we send um our staff out to other trainings. Non-public, this is a um this is an amount that's set by the state. We don't really have a say in that. that's based um on the number of non-public opportunities or school choice opportunities are within our um city school district. Um I'll be interested to see what this number looks like for um the fiscal year 27 because Worcester
120Christian moved from Worcester City Schools to the Triway School District. Um so it'll be interesting to see what um adjustment is made there in that non-public section, but that's um set by the state governance and administration that helps offset the costs for our coordinator of student services. Um that's just a percentage um of that amount goes towards um that salary and benefits. The rest of it um is funded through the general fund. Indirect cost is um again that's something that gets set by the federal um state grants management group um that also um adds into coordinator student services. Again it's between those two um pots. It doesn't cover the entire salary. The rest is paid by general fund. Safety is something that we haven't really done much of in the past. We did have a
121need in one of our buildings for um a se it was a um a carrier for a student um in case of emergencies. And so um we we added an allocated um funding for that um for the building. So I would imagine that um you know as we're planning for this next school year, we might need to purchase another one of those. It's an evacue chair is what it's called, but um we might need to purchase another one. Um, so I can imagine that maybe we'll see the safety come up again. transportation wasn't included this year. It typically we're um allocating some funds. Sometimes that was um in the past that was going for summer school transportation. Um that has been reduced and we we've been able to provide transportation in other ways. Um, also
122we didn't, um, in the past we hadn't really spent all of those funds and because our allocation was lower, we decided not to allocate money for transportation. I would assume that we'll probably see that um, come back just because that has been an increasing need that um, it's put a little bit of pressure on our general fund. So, I would anticipate trans transportation would come back. Are there any questions on idea B? Okay. So, student wellness and success fund and the disadvantaged pupil impact aid, that's um lovingly referred to as DPIA. Um those funds um have dwindled each year and so we don't know what those allocations will be for fiscal year 27. Um I'll talk about the amount that we got this past year and the difference between the last two years, but these
123funds are used to support wraparound services. So mental and physical health um are big targets to just address um the whole child and support the whole child. We this is a big push for our community partners. These are not all of our community partners but just some of our largest partners where the these funds help um support the contracts that we have with them. They expand our capacity to just deliver comprehensive services for our students. So, our student success and wellness, our funding level for fiscal year 26 was $287,000 and some change. Um, in fiscal year 25, we were looking at $344,000. So, that did reduce pretty drastically. Um, you'll note that the amounts listed on the paid to amount um that is not obviously that amount is greater. that doesn't equal our um allocation,
124but the rest of that um that amount is paid out of the general fund. So, it just really offsets um that's where our part of our service coordinator salary and benefits comes from our contract with Anna uh which each year we've tried to really refine and not really reduce services but reduce costs um in the model that we've been using and it's been very successful. and then also our partnership with Akran Children's um hospital for our nursing services. For our DPIA, our funding level was a little over 335,000. That was a little more in keeping with um the amount we got in fiscal year 25, which was at 325,000. So, um we got a a little bit more Oh, no, I'm sorry. No, that's right. 325,000. So, we got a little bit more in DPIA.
125And I think that there was a revision, Amy. I don't I think we're maybe we got a little bit more money after our initial allocation for that. So, we started out a little less than what we had gotten and then I think maybe they had um I don't know if they had extra money or maybe districts didn't utilize all of their funds. >> Oh, school. >> Okay. >> That could have been. Okay. Um so that was a little more than what we had received. I don't know, especially since we're not participating in the C. that might be a little different for next year as well. Um, again, those things, um, like our credit recovery for summer school and then through the school year, we pay through out of that. Um, our literacy coaches, we have
126some funding coming from there. Um, our structured literacy specialist, um, oh huddle, some of that, um, funding comes from there. And then also our surrogate parent payments. Uh, we did see an increase in those payments this year, so um, I would imagine we'll need to allocate a little more for that. Um, again, we don't know what our funding is for 2027. I'm not I haven't seen anything that has said when we can expect to um know when we'll get th those funds, but um you know, we'll continue providing those services and hopefully um they can come back and give us some additional funding. just for understanding. Um I did have one question above um payment of excess costs for preschool and school age children with disabilities when direct services are being provided by district. So
127that is just if we is that it um how can I say this? Is that because it has been determined the child must spend attend another school or is that when the parent wishes to attend another school? excess costs for preschool and school age children with disabilities when direct services are being provided by a district other than is that when the students requires them or is it like oh I just want to open enroll to Madina because I like it better or both >> no it's not open enroll it would have to be related to like decision need thank you that's what I wondered respectfully and then so with the other the Anna children's hospital Um so um these are not necessarily mandated the way special ed is mandated though. >> Correct. >> So for
128example, a huddle is we believe it to be a wellness activity. >> So how how are some of the like I understand about credit recovery that has an objective. It's like if the student needs to take the class again. So that makes sense to me and the literacy coaches makes sense. So, oh huddle could just depend on how many mentors there are and how many students meet there. Like how big or small can Oh huddle be made? >> That's a fee we pay per year. >> I'm sorry. >> It's a fee we pay per year. That fee is determined after oh huddle uh staffing is determined and how much grant funding they have. And then all districts pay um a prescribed amount after that. And that's what ours is. And no matter what you pay,
129you might get one manner or 20. >> Um, >> no matter we're we pay 24. Y, >> we get No, I mean it's not >> or is there kind of like some kind of ratio relationship? >> It's like you're going to get a site coordinator at the middle school and high school out of that. You're going to get like a, you know, like they kind of outline that in that. And in general, some of those things we could choose to just pay those out of general fund and then but always we want to utilize this funding first. Absolutely. And then obviously Diana's you know this we have to in order to use these% >> support everything I want I'm just I just like to understand that's asking and then surrogate parents. So like if somebody
130acts as a surrogate they get a small stipen. >> Yes. >> I didn't know you guys did that. >> You have to to be a surrogate parent you have to train. I know that. I just not all surrogates I just didn't know. >> Okay that's lovely that you do. >> Thank you for clarifying those. >> What if I can just add >> Yes. I I just like to know. >> Yes. all of our restricted funds, >> we have to be able to identify how we're using these. >> So, you know, we get X amount of dollars for our gifted for these two funds, you know, are gifted. >> Um, and we have to say that >> indeed. >> So, hence, you know, these two funds we have to report on the other funds we kind
131of do and actually everything out. >> I have no doubt. >> Indeed. No, no, no. This is this is a way that you know it's lovely. >> And they're very specific on what you can pay for. >> This is outstanding. >> So, do you just list what we pay or do you have to prove the value to the child in some way? >> Um, I don't think we've ever had to submit anything beyond just um our expenditure reports. >> That's coming. I'm certain >> quaking. >> I know. It's very awesome. Awesome. >> Any other questions? >> Thank you so much. >> We are transitioning to section four uh public participation on agenda items. Good evening. I'm Barb Freriedhoff, 4457 Woodlake Trail here in Worcester. Um, I just want to tell, you know, I'm a frequent
132flyer here at the board meetings and when I looked at the agenda, I was really confused about the strategic plan draft. I'd never seen anything like that, a working draft. And so, I was just curious and I guess maybe it just hasn't never been done this way before. But I was also kind of surprised at the amount of time taken up at the meeting. You know, this is hard because the comments come after your presentation. Um, it feels like it should have been a work session in my opinion so that tonight could have been cleared for other topics like the two parents who left. You know, this was just a lot of working as the board. Um, so anyway, that's my my two cents. Um, I wasn't sure if it was presented for public part,
133you know, feedback, but clearly it's a working document for the board. So, I'll leave it at that. And my other question, which was sort of answered, I was wondering if the compilation of the parent and community survey results could be presented and as they weren't, you did say that they were going to be available. And I'm really curious about that survey. And I I just needed to share and I shared this with um Darin back when she did the focus community focus groups that I just thought it was such a missed opportunity to survey community members. The the questions on the survey. I couldn't answer them because I don't have kids in the system. I'm not in the school buildings outside of one. And if you look at the questions, just put that in your
134head. How would I answer this as a community member? You could have done us so much more. You could have asked about their current involvement with the district, what events they attended, how they would rate the communication efforts, which there was a little bit about that, their history of supporting levies, you know, think about the information you could have gathered that would be really useful. And so I just encourage you in any future endeavors with the community to put a community hat on when you look at things to make sure that we can respond in a way that's really useful to you. So thank you for all your work. >> Thank you. >> Um all right. So now we're transitioning to um the consent agenda for the treasurer. Uh so a motion please to approve
135the consent agenda. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Tonight I Oh, tonight I have the financial report um for um the end of May. And um if you remember last month I also brought a updated forecast to you. Um, and I actually was surprised to see that we're still behind on state revenue. And so I'm doing some deep dive into where we are on state funding. really it's the unrestricted um and you know we get we receive two payments a year or a year a month with state funding and um um I feel like every month it changes the the total amount that we're we receive and a lot of of it is based on the reporting that's done um through EMIS. So want to look into that a little bit more. So we are
136trending behind our revenue. Good news is we are continuing to watch our expenditures and um you know I'm I'm confident that we'll continue to do that through the month of June as we're looking to close the fiscal year. So we will be looking at those final documents for appropriations at the June 29th uh financial meeting. donations tonight. Um we have uh money that has we received from neighborhood bridges, from student fees. Um actually we received an anonymous anonymous donation for delinquent lunches and of course um we ha received money for our volleyball team and um we have received money in honor of Maddox um to support the wrestling team. And Gabe, do you want to talk about um the the donation that came from >> Yeah, I think it's pretty um just neat to note
137um that um Mr. Grazer, Maddox's dad. Um there there was an overwhelming support obviously um through GoFundMe for that family and uh Donald specifically made two very significant donations back um to both the wrestling and baseball program as Maddox played on both of those teams. And um so just says a lot about Donald and the family and we we really appreciate that. But um and uh you know just that um uh such a tragic event but really appreciate the support that um uh so many people gave uh to that family and then that family gave to us. >> Great. Thanks. And then the last thing I have for you tonight is the approval of our Ohio school plan um membership contractor agreement. So this is our school insurance. Um we go through the high school
138plan but work with um Whitaker Meyers who is our um agent. Um we uh saw like a 23,000 we'll see a 23,000 increase in our insurance this year. Some of it is based or actually majority of it is based on the fact that we high school plan or highland came in and did an appraisal of all of our facilities and they only do that every 5 years. So, we are actually questioning some of the uh value of the appraisals that were done and uh Gabe and I are going to be looking at maybe uh having an independent appraiser come in and and um do the appraisal on our facilities because uh the value of some of those are excessive. Um so, we're going to potentially be looking at that, but for now, we need to
139have insurance for the district. Um, and then our cyber policy uh about remain the same at $4,000. So that is my consent agenda. >> Very good. Any questions? Mrs. Welty. >> Uh, Kleinhens, >> yes. >> Degan, >> yes. >> N, yes. >> Starcher, >> yes. >> Good. Right. >> Yes. >> Then moving to the consent agenda for the superintendent. A motion, please, to approve that. So move. Second. >> All right. Fairly uh fairly light um consent agenda tonight. A couple resignations uh there. Um uh Jessica Shaner there was a assistant principal at the high school. She is going back to her home district as a building principal. So um I wish her the best and appreciate her time with us. Um and then on employments, a lot of summer school things. Um, uh, Shanley Fair
140moved from a title position to a third grade position. And then speaking of Mrs. Shaner, uh, her replacement is here with us tonight, Mr. Chris Sber, uh, who's been patiently uh, waiting in the back. Uh, Chris will be an assistant principal at the high school, uh, and also will be helping out with some of our, um, rental processes as, um, Mr. Casseri, who's on the classified agenda, he resigned. And so we're going to try to absorb that position right now. Um and so Chris is going to kind of help us out with both of those. I've known Chris for 20 years. Um Chris is a Wadssworth uh resident as well and we've worked together at different times. He most recently was at Triway. Um and so we're excited to have him here in that role
141next year. So thanks for coming tonight, Chris, and uh for being a part of it. He sit through a few board meetings in his time. So Pat Hanza called to let me to give you uh to give me his take on you. >> I said Pat Hanza called me to give me >> I appreciate that. >> Yeah, he's a wonderful person. >> Yeah, he is. >> Um on our classified, like I said, Alex Ceri resigned. We had another resignation there and Miss Arnold on as a parapro. Uh and then summer positions primarily uh as well there and a couple uh new ones for for the year and some just moving into insurance. Overnight trips always uh have you approve those on the consent agenda. The drama club trip, they go to Broadway every uh two
142years. Um and this will be in March and so it kind of describes that and they'll be fundraising uh for that as well. Uh love that we are going to have a best buddies program at Cornerstone as well. That's a great program as we have here at the high school and middle school. Corus has pretty much been doing it, but now they're going to officially be a chapter as well. Um, and then speaking of Best Buddies, the couple leaders of the high school organization will go to their annual leadership conference they did last year as well, and that's paid for by the Best Buddies Club. So, free for them to go. The next five are all related to special education services for specific students and their needs. Um so whether that's to go to the
143UCP school. Um Cardinal Rehab actually does our third-party um speech and language uh for like uh our students that are um at local at schools around that are not um Worcester City schools as again if they're IEP needs. We meet most of our kids IEP needs and most of our kids do stay in house and we've actually brought more back over the past few years which is a great thing but there are students that just their needs um are defined that they do need support from uh another organization. So those are pretty annual and just defined here so uh this year. So that is my consent agenda this evening. >> Any questions? >> I do have one question just real quick. What's the evolve? >> Evolve is a behavior And it's in Madina. Okay. >>
144Downtown. >> Okay. >> Likely. >> Thought so. >> Uh Degan, >> yes. >> Ner, >> yes. >> Kleinhens, >> yes. Starcher, >> yes. Good. Right. >> Yes. >> All right. Nothing for the regular agenda for the treasures. We move to the regular agenda for the superintendent. Looking for a motion to approve the resolution approving a ground lease and lease purchase agreement and related documents for modular classrooms and construction improvements. So moved. >> Second. >> All right. So take just a minute here and make sure we kind of understand what what is in front of you this evening. So um you know last month we approved the purchase of the the modular units and the configuration. Um the what we have before you today is the option if you would like uh to do that through
145certificate of participation uh which primarily I guess is is in a school word it would be uh if we wanted to do a loan instead of use our general fund dollars to pay for this all upfront. There are pros and cons to either way here. I think the importance is I wanted to bring it to you. I think it's an option that you need to understand and you need to understand kind of what you're what you would be voting on and how it will impact our future decisions. So um what is included in this is the purchase of the modulars contingency of about 10% just for things like you know extra sidewalk or awnings or you know anything like that that we want landscaping um and then the other work necessary for the modulars only.
146So, that would include the road at Park View, the electric upgrade at Park View, um, and trying to think, was there one? Um, no, I think it's just those those things because what we removed from it, we originally thought about putting the HVAC project at the high school in that and we removed that um, just to make that simple. So, we think that total um it it goes up to 12 million, but we think it'll be $1.3 million is what we would be doing. Um and so the reason we bring it to you is because if you select this again and also to try to compare, I think it's important because we have talked about using cops to build a building, right? Um you know, which was an option. However, obviously to build a building
147with cops would have been 40 plus million. Uh so you know but but we have talked about it before but I think it's a good delineation there. If you choose to go with this Amy and I feel fairly confident that based on current spending and reductions that we're continuing to work through and do um the again now there is an if here because there will be another bianual budget or bianual budget by the state. So, and you never know what that's going to be, but if if things would stay status quo with the state budget, we would need to go out for a levy in May of 2029. Hopefully, we could extend that farther, but May of 2029. Okay. If you vote no to this this evening and you don't want to go the cops
148route, um we would then use general funds to spit to pay for these projects. So basically we would take about 11.3 million out of the general fund um to pay for these and we would need to then go out for and that would then make operating levy of May of 2028. Okay. Um, so really it's um you're kind of trying to determine like and that's why this matters and we think back to strategic planning and how we're thinking about fiscal, you know, like all of this connects and so because you're kind of starting, you know, Amy and I have talked that that really this is kind of the first step towards the path towards when and how we're going to go out for an operating levy. Um, you know, we put it on here. you
149know, my recommendation. I think that um I think it gives you more time u as we have a lot to do with revised master planning and and other things. Um but at the same time, I think, you know, I can understand if if we did not go in this direction and we would just move out in 28. But I think uh felt like we needed to bring it here to you this evening. Um uh and uh depending on your answer, we'll either move forward with cops or we'll uh um work through it with our operating and then obviously either way um Amy will reflect in the next forecast. >> What will be the what will be the payment on the cops? I I just looked and it's 30 30year. Is that right? >> No. >>
150What what did I read here that I >> It's going to be we're going to do a 10 year. You can do up to 30, but we're going to do about 10 years. >> Okay. Okay. Okay. Did you already say that? I missed it. >> I did not tonight. No. >> Oh, okay. You probably said it before. Okay. >> Amy, is it 1 point It's 1.25, right? >> I'm sorry. >> Is it 1.25 million per year? >> Yeah, >> that's what I put in the forecast. >> Okay. >> Yes. That's what's currently in the current forecast, right? But we would obviously change that. >> That's a 5%. >> Yes. >> So, I guess my question I I thought about earlier was um in light of the economy, uh should that go down? Do you have
151a chance to um renegotiate that or is it probably for the 10 years? >> I don't think you really It's not like that's a good question like a mortgage like where you would refinance. I don't think that's the case. We I will tell you that um the the information we've got from our bankers is they're anticipating just a hair over 4%. >> But that doesn't but you know we've kind of budgeted for five the whole time and this actually has up to seven just because of the leeway. But they actually believe that it would be I think we we got three different figures and everything was between 4.0 and 4.25. >> Okay. >> But no, you can't renegot I don't think you it's not like a mortgage in that way. >> Okay. >> It's worth
152a try. >> Yeah. >> Any other questions? >> No questions for me, but probably just my my thoughts. Um, you know, I I do know that we've talked about we talked about this for um a building and we were really kind of anti. Um, but I am open to doing it here, I guess, for for two reasons. Um, first of all, the when we did talked about it for a building, it was a lot a lot more dollars for something permanent. This is something not permanent. And I think with the proposed savings that we're expecting from moving out of Cornerstone, we'll more than pay for this every year, right? What we're planning to save versus the payment. >> Yeah. >> Um >> and you can pay it off early just like you can in >>
153Yeah. Yeah. We can pay it off. Um and um I had another thought. >> Can you just the fact that it is extending? Sorry. The fact that it is extending when we will need the operating I think it just gives us a little more time, >> you know, to plan. Um because I think it's not only planning for the operating levy, it's planning for the bond levy. Um, and we're going to need again time to plan for that and socialize with that community and you know potentially we can do two levies at once and um, you know, if we if we plan appropriately and um, so to me the extra time is is worth it. So >> So like you covered two of my questions, but first you you made the comment that the savings
154we would realize from moving out of Cornerstone would pay for X. Could you please define X more specifically? >> Make sure I said that right. An annual payment that we have to make for this >> annual. We're expecting >> we're making an annual payment back to cops once a year. >> Correct. >> Well, you can do it monthly, but I don't Right. That's >> it equates to an annual number. >> That's Yeah. >> And so, >> and we're expecting our savings from >> to be the total >> to to be a one and a half to two million annually, which exceeds our payment. Right. >> Just want to make sure I understood. Yeah, I I think I I mean we've kind of roughed it about a million initially when we thought. Um so I think
155it'll be close. The other thing you have to remember too, regardless of whether you do cops or not, uh we do think there will be uh a market to sell uh the modulars when we're done using themdeed for, you know, 20 to 25% of the purchase price. So, >> but I overstated the annual expected savings, but it's it almost is a wash then. >> Yeah, >> I was more just making sure I was clear. I don't No, no, no, no, no. So that makes this a a wash or am I misunderstanding the math? >> We're saving a million a year and turning it over. I'm just trying to make sure I'm understanding. I I'm sorry. >> There will be additional cost savings because of the closure of the building that would offset the cost of
156the payment. >> I'm not I'm sometimes I hear things and I kind of conceptually get them and then I'm wrong. So I'm making sure I'm clear today. And then yes, the the bond is my big other thing, Jodie. So like I don't know what more thoughts you have on like the timing of this all cops in this instance I does not scare me. Um I want to reiterate that I remember people were upset about us using cops when we were going to use it to build a building >> and we backed off that respectfully >> because we wanted to listen to the people and that is why we walked away from that plan. And I want to make that very clear that I agree with Jod that this feels different to me because of some
157of the math that was just presented to me and other things. So I do agree with you that they're different, but I want to acknowledge that I do know that people had that concern. But I still think it's the smarter move as compared to the general fund. And I know sometimes that gets tricky and messy when things change. And I'm doing my best to clarify my personal choice and why I believe what this makes sense for me >> because I want to be transparent about the thinking and acknowledge how people feel because that is deserving. >> Yeah. I'm not sure I'm thinking about this right, but um I guess I also feel like what we were talking about doing a cops loan on before was something that the community was going to vote on. >>
158Right. >> Correct. and and so a lot of the comments we got was we're doing we're going to go ahead and spend the money when we said no. I mean the modular was something we decided. So it's I mean it is a little bit different right in some ways. >> Yeah. >> Yes it does. But the some people might not like the idea of >> I'm not trying to justify it but it's some of just again being transparent about how I'm thinking through it. >> No and that's wonderful and I am too because I recognize everyone might not be in favor 100% of this choice and there's just it's a complicated issue. I'm genuinely wanting to acknowledge how people feel and to own my choices publicly and I'm happy to talk about them any time
159respectfully because this is complicated and people deserve to be heard and the topics need to be addressed. So that's why I'm saying what I'm saying and I trust you Jod 100%. But the bond thing then so like when would we like what is even all those answers yet right >> yeah I think I don't even know how to like think about those two together. Yeah, this really again I I I I put it on here because I I think it's a valid thing, but I don't think there is a completely wrong answer here. Um it's just really determining um how you want to start to tackle those next steps because ultimately what we decided last month is a temporary solution, right? Indeed. And so we are we are just working through the temporary um and
160how we you know we want to do that and this would would uh give us a little more time um as we kind of determine those things. So, so the we are are we anticipate transitioning into modulars in August 2027, >> correct? >> And if we pay for the modulars out of the general fund, we will be going for an operating levy right then and right then and there practically >> one year later. >> Well, May. Yes. >> Yes. Yes. >> However, I don't mean that rudely. >> Yeah. >> And so that just it feels like a lot. And I again I don't I don't know the right answer, but I mean I >> Yeah, I trust Gab's judgment and our treasur's judgment and I think it's just the first step at getting off the
161pot. >> I understand that and I can personally agree with that sentiment. Yes, I just want to make sure I'm thinking it through in a transparent manner. But it does make sense to me to need more time in the modulars to even have an understanding. I mean, I guess the cops make sense to me because it's different and because it gives us more time to have understanding about how that transition works and what our bond will be. We don't know at this moment, do we? >> I mean, I guess to be clear, this isn't about timing the time to pay for the >> No, but I'm also saying that we will be we will be in the for a certain amount of time and we'll know how that's going when we plan for both a
162renewal levy and a bond. like what will we do? >> Will we do a K to5? Will we do a three to I'm not trying to get in weeds, but like wouldn't it be nice to have more time with students in modulars to gain an understanding of how families feel, how things worked, what did work, what didn't work. Maybe that will help inform what we believe ultimately as a board is the right thing. Maybe we'll decide >> grade banding while very stressful in certain ways. I acknowledge Bonnie what you have said and I'm saying it again. However, we may find some benefits to the concept of grade banding that may become more apparent and it may make us want to look at the K to5 more strong. I mean, we don't know what the modular
163experience will yield. So, more time in the modular allows us to plan for our facilities better because we will then have data and experiences, lived experiences. So, I like more time is what I'm saying. >> I'm sorry that didn't make sense. I know I'm caught up now. >> I apologize for being me. I think you the bond is not as close in mind because they're going to open in 2027 and they're warranted for 5 years. So the odds of us doing a bond before 2032 is like not very high in my mind. So the operating levies is the key. And then I will probably suggest that we use the money that we intended to spend anyway to to fund this. the money we put in the PI fund, the 23 million that we just moved
164back. Like we were going to spend it from that fund. Like, so that's probably what I would prefer to do, but that's fine. I'm not against any. >> So, so you're saying five what what did you mean respectfully when you said it'll be 5 years? >> So, we we were going to install the >> for fall 2027, right? >> They come with a 5year warranty. I I can't see us passing a bond while they're warrantied. So, you're saying in your in your thinking, we would be in the module for five years >> at a minimum before we're really like, "Okay, they're out of warranty. Now, our costs are going to climb. Now, it's time to think about a bond to replace these things." >> I think it's a hard sell. If you go to two
165years in, they're under warranty and you're saying, "Let's spend a bunch more money to replace these things we just bought." I don't I don't see that really getting much legs when they're out of warranty and our costs are about to really climb for them. So you feel people would be more willing to pass a bond levy for a new building if we got our money's worth of the trailers in essence and I don't mean disrespect I don't think money out they're going to right >> no >> I think if the sentiment is we just got these I think it's going to be hard to pass a bond >> even though people want us to get out of them they don't want us to get out of them too soon once we spend the money on
166them see this is where I get confused and I mean that >> I think a bulk of people vote their wallet and say that again I think a bulk of people are voting their wallet and the modules are a satis satisfactory solution for people voting their wallet because it didn't cost them anything today. >> Okay, there you go. >> That's a good >> Okay. Wow. >> I just will later on when they're going to start to climb in cost and start affecting then we can balance the bond versus the cost. But in the meantime, I I think that the people voting their wallets are going to be pretty satisfied at what they get out of this. >> I agree. >> Okay. Well, that's okay. I didn't think of it that way, but no, that's a
167very good point. >> So, I think we'll have time to your point. I think we'll have time in them to see how those things go. >> Yeah, indeed. Based on that, for sure we would. And I just think that's useful. No, no, no. That's a great comment. Thank you for clarifying. >> This conversation has been helpful to me. >> Thank you. >> And I do not have any more questions, so I'm going to turn it I don't know if somebody else does have a different thought or something they want to say. Any other thoughts or questions before we vote? >> Not for me. >> I'm good. >> Good. Good. We're good. >> Okay. So, to clarify, we are voting yes if we approve use of cops. >> Correct. >> Just to make sure I understand
168the language and the veilance. >> I'll reread the the motion. So, the motion to approve the resolution approving a ground lease and lease purchase agreement and related documents for modular classrooms and construction improvements. That is what we're voting for. >> Thank you. >> Goodight. >> Yes. >> Searcher, yes. Uh, Nar, >> yes. >> Degan, >> no. >> Kleinhan, >> yes. >> Um, public participation on non-aggenda items. I don't think we have anything. >> We do not. >> Okay. >> What was that? >> Uh any any comments or questions? >> He didn't come said right. >> Any any comments or questions from the board on anything? >> Yes. That went very well. >> Went very well. It was a great day. The weather was great. We celebrated 271. >> Yep. >> Great. So, it was a
169great day. Nice day, too, wasn't it? Perfect. >> Perfect. >> Yeah. >> I hope all the families and students are having a great summer. >> Yep. >> Good start. >> Definitely in the full swing of summer right now, which is nice. >> Although, I can't figure out where my kids are half the time because I at least knew where they were for seven and a half hours a day and now I don't. >> Anything else anybody wants to add? >> All right. Future board meetings. Um, we do have a meeting on Monday, June 29th, um, at the board of education office at 8 a.m. for the fiscal year end meeting. So, it's uh to approve uh the appropriations uh for the treasur's office. And then our next regular scheduled board meeting is July 21st back
170here in the LGIR and then August 18th also here at six o'clock. Uh the uh fiscal meeting will be uh fiscal and then we may have staffing just because of July 10th uh because after the 10th if we have anybody from another district we uh they by law they don't have to be allowed out of their contract. So there could be some uh some personnel as well but it would be a very short meeting other than maybe >> we're doing really well actually. Um we um you know Mr. receiver, that administrative uh hole I was a little nervous about when uh with Jessica. Um but other than that, we are at this point we have one certified teacher opening. Uh we have our title reading positions, but that those always happen late because of funding.
171>> Uh and just a few uh classified employees. We're knocking on wood, we're in the best spot we've been at this point in the summer. So >> for having full for being full staff >> for June, yes, for being full staffed. >> All right. A motion to approve adjourning the board of education meeting today. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Uh Degan, >> yes. >> Ner, yes. >> Goodright, yes. >> Kleinhen, yes. Starcher, >> yes. >> All right. Thank you everybody. >> Thank you everyone. >> Have a great night.