Board of Education Meeting - 01/20/2022

001the mission of the big one local schools is to inspire and guide each student to his or her maximum potential i like to call the order big one school district board to order and would everybody rise for the pledge of allegiance sure name sophia sophia you want to lead us in the pledge there are two yeah cabela would you like to come up you don't have to do it alone now there you go i pledge 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 thank you roll call here district goals are in to improve academic achievement promote whole child development optimize capital and human resources and demonstrate financial responsibility item six it has recommended the

002board approve the december 9 and december 16 regular scheduled board meeting minutes mr fuji yes yes under recognition miss smith i apologize oh you're my yes oh i'm sorry that was my bad i jumped again we've got some recognitions this evening sophia oakes from highland southern elementary who is the student school student of the month would you like to come up again boy oh boy yeah so sorry thank you we have a technical difficulty yes master fuji thank you well ladies and gentlemen my name is steve i have a pleasure tonight of honoring miss sophia oops as the big one local school district student of the month [Applause] and i understand that you are a little bit of a legacy in this moment your older sister was also student of the month when she was

003in fourth grade wow how about that big shoes to bill now be honest with me who's the better student don't fall for it that's right sophia is the daughter of mr and mrs oaks kevin and kate and she also has two siblings there's 10 big one local schools all of her teachers did a really nice job of saying so many wonderful things about miss sophia but the one that i really want to focus on i'm going to read one here from miss betts she uses some words that i really like too miss bet says sophia is the epitome of what every teacher would want in their students she not only pushes herself to be better daily but she inspires her peers to be the best versions of themselves as well sophia is kind she is

004inclusive and comes to school with a growth mindset every day she's extremely deserving of this award and has been a joy to be part of her journey isn't that super sweet that's very nice i'll also say that mr cox your building principle has some nice things to say also he talked about on a previous example he talked about all of the things that your teachers say about you and how much they appreciate having you in class and that you represent all of the things that equal pride really is about so on behalf of these folks uh i really want to say congratulations to you and say keep up the great work [Applause] yeah they can go into the next room and get a picture who's taking the picture okay okay cabela mcclary do you want

005to come up here cabela is the big walnut middle school student school student of the month so is proud to um cabela mccleary daughter of amy crompton and jason mcclary as a student leader an individual who soars and all that she does at school in the community you have two siblings as well and um apparently you're known for being very welcome welcoming and friendly and checking in with not only your classmates but staff members um do you want to tell us a little bit about your career goals no okay well i'll just read one thing here that one of your um it's actually a couple of your science teachers have to say about you but then i'll let you take this whole sheet so that you and your family can see all of the awesome

006compliments that um cabela is a hard-working and dedicated student she is diligent in her work and always puts forth the utmost effort in all she does cabela strives to do her best in all areas of science class and takes every opportunity to improve her grades she sets high goals for herself and does not stop until she cheats she is polite and respectful to all those around her and is a true leader in class she works well in groups motivates her classmates to do their best and sets an example for those around her cabela is an absolute pleasure to work with to keep up the great work and that's from mrs kincaid and mr varsity on behalf of uh [Applause] and next we have natalie mullins who is highland southern elementary school art student of the

007month not here we'll make sure she gets that next we have carolyn lust who is big walnut middle school art student of the month caroline can you tell us a little bit about this okay so for our project it was the peace poster contest lions club and so um the prompt was um we are all connected and so i decided to draw different like monuments and landmarks all around the world and um each one has a little white belt which symbolizes peace so we are all connected well we are going to keep this and display it until the end of the school year if that's okay with you all right and then we'll just take it back oh caroline i apologize for murdering your name next on the agenda is item number eight superintendent's report

008thank you um start with just a few quick communication items um i wanna say a huge thank you to everybody that has helped make the start of our semester in the new high school go so smoothly um i shared last week but just with a different crowd being the evening meeting wanted to share again that we do have our new school resource officer that the board approved last week we were able to hire that position instead of paying the special duty rate that we would have had to pay just for traffic duty so now we have a half-time person who can help with traffic in the morning which we are required to provide for our grieving sunbury but then also is available to do some other work with our kids we're really excited about that

009um and for sunbury's request initially when we talked about having traffic help out there um the officer was going to be out at one of the intersections but instead they've moved him up to the traffic light he's actually controlling that light in the morning so they are monitoring and adjusting that but just wanted everybody to be aware so if you remember sitting back at a sunbury meeting or a school board meeting a few years ago you might have heard something about where's that officer that the school said they'd put out there so he has up the light and then has been able to help us the rest today also want to thank the sunbury police department and delaware county sheriff's office for having extra officers around the last few weeks just as we kind of

010get used to the new traffic flow as well thank you to everyone there thank you to our staff and students for such a great transition um a few other quick items that mr carano you've reached out on we i ironically just had a meeting tuesday with our admin team on a couple of these topics where we spoke um parent-teacher conferences we had already scheduled as virtual this year we are looking at making those optional to go either way in the future our ieps have also been virtual we've got a lot of positive feedback so we are going to look to do a survey to see what people prefer um and then maybe be able to offer both options as we move forward next year they're looking at a march first date at starting to have

011some parent volunteers come back into the buildings and uh indicator working with our k-6 principles on what that would look like as we move forward in march any questions on those two before i go to the next topic just how would the parents that are interested contact you to get on a list or no please that's why i asked the principals will communicate their newsletters but as a reminder anybody that volunteers does have to have a background screening um we actually implemented that i think maybe a year now before the pandemic years before i have no sense of time anymore um and we have a lot of parents who uh may have done it but it's only good for the two years of free market it's good for two years so if you did it

012when we first implemented it may need to do it again and the point of that is just to make sure we're doing everything we can to make sure our kids are safe so very rarely do we have issues but we just want to make sure we're doing our due diligence there and that cost is covered by uh district still covering five is it five years answer i'm okay so for five dollars you can have a background check and obviously if that's a financial difficulty reach up your principal but um that's been a really good system a lot of the districts around use and so we'd look to make sure people are clear just to be in the building working with kids and the principals will be communicating uh what opportunities there might be for the

013rest of the year i've heard a lot about uh have you heard anything from the staff in terms of number of parents that they're able to meet with in a virtual setting versus in an in-person setting roughly equal based on grade level i think it depends on the level but i think the transitions are quicker than they are in person because you get people lingering and still want to talk in the doorway and now the next person's behind it was always it was nice with for working families i think to make you know sometimes those parent-teacher conferences start at 4 30 or 5 or something like that and to try and get all of those things scheduled i've really appreciated the virtual option yeah i enjoyed it as a mom too we've gotten a lot

014of positive feedback but there are some people that one of them person so we're going to look at what that would be to have a hybrid approach and i just didn't know what the teachers thought about that so thank you um that's a good question i mean i i've anecdotally heard positives i haven't heard anything negative but that was part of when we looked at doing a survey so we can check with the staff as well i know the ieps and etrs have been awesome we do almost all of those virtually a lot of those happen during the day when you know we can get a child's entire iep team together and you know mom or dad might work downtown columbus it's nice for them to just be able to hop on and not have

015to take off working right and so that's been um gone really well the last couple of years any other questions on that i have a question has the participation improved on parents being on a virtual conference versus person in person i don't know if we have that information right now i would say that it's every time that um i've been involved in one it is everybody showed up for it so i don't think there's going to change whether it's in person or whether it has been so typically at the elementary it's most parents at some point right it's a little different in one of those um either in person or virtually so we decided to be able to offer them the option but then it's nice to be able to give them just talking when

016you work downtown or when you are busy with kids at home we've the other thing with the parents of little ones is they don't have to get a babysitter i can't really talk miss next about the um iep meetings or etrs but i can say in terms of the parent-teacher conference the opportunity for both my wife and i uh to be able to attend in those moments and actually see every teacher where you know sometimes if a conference runs long or something like that you're face to face uh there's sometimes those hiccups it's been a really seamless approach to be able to see every teacher during that time and again that's just an anecdotal one family perspective out of the 5 000 families we have but the other thing that we've gotten good feedback on

017is that there are um divorce families that they can both get on there and not have to say people all right um the other topic that i was asked about is back to vaccines and buildings so um like pretty much every school i know of when they initially came out we did offer vaccines in the buildings there were some concerns expressed so the last couple of rounds um were here we did do some at a building on a non-school day because there was a concern expressed by some community community members that um kids might be embarrassed or like you're getting one and i'm not so we did an awning on school day for parents that requested it and then um we've also done flu vaccines in like as a drive-through where they just kind of

018drive to the parking lot or able to get that okay i don't have any questions is this mike on can you hear me um i do want to speak you and your staff and the teachers have worked hard to keep our schools open and i appreciate those efforts and realize the difficulties associated with the decision my concern is the use of school property being used for clinics due to potential liability the pharmaceutical companies are not are protected from liability due to the act national childhood vaccine injury act which was in 1986 but what protects big walnut school district from any logistic move if something happens to a child i am also concerned about the potential injuries caused by this drug and if you go to bayer's database coded website you can read the cases of

019vaccine injury related to covet shocks many parents are not even aware this information is available on november 8 2021 the students of the department of education sent out a letter outlining the format for opening a school clinic it really tells the schools how to be a marketing agent for the coveted shop hosting a clinic where this holding a clinic for your school is simple the cdc as well as our departments have developed resources and the easy to follow tool kit for schools to use is standing clinics up there is ample funding and resources available the american rescue plan acts elementary and secondary school emergency relief known as the arp and esser fund as well as reimbursement through the federal emergency management agency which is fema to ensure you can cover the cost of housing a

020clinic including on-site setup and operations as well as outreach and engagement activities end quote so my first question is how much money did big wanted local schools get for housing these clinics take note that i am not an anti-vaxxer person however i am against our school district being a marketing manager for the cdc and the department of education or the ohio department of health or the delaware county department of health by promoting this covid 19 shot phase two of this plan is to have the schools distribute information about coveted 19 shots to all families with children ages 5 through 11 years old again asking the school to be the marketing agent phase three of this plan is to hold conversations with your school community on the covid19 and ho host community engagements on the kobe

02119 shot with your parents and school communities in partnership with local pediatricians and other trusted medical voices in your community they tell the schools to partner with community or faith-based organizations and others to get student and families vaccinated they also tell you to encourage others to collaborate with student leaders to make efforts fun and get young people to participate marketing the covid 19 shot should not be the responsibility of the school district especially since we have a delaware county health department office two doors down from kroger and cbs has a clinic available for receiving the shot based on this documented information i am requesting that big walnut local schools no longer provide clinical space on any school property for the administration of this drug coven 19 to anyone any age would that include flu vaccines

022or the immunizations we give 7th graders and 12th graders that have been required for years covet is the one that i have the most concern about and i i suggest that everyone in here go to their website to see what the recorded and documented side effects have been to date and on bears they say that really represents only about one percent of the population that's been affected certainly i'm not looking to solicit giving vaccines we were asked to cooperate with the health department as i said like every other school did i will defer to whatever the board wants is a if you all want to discuss it and let me know right i have with me the documentation from november 8th if you would like a copy of it so you can see anything else

023on that i guess i i'm just i don't know that any marketing has been done other than a you know a notification yeah we weren't trying to persuade anyone it was like here's an opportunity we had parents request it we do a clinic for the kids so we just put out the information certainly was not my intent or do i think we marketed anything did we have correspondence dc no we had correspondents from the health department we worked through the health department i mean megan may have i'm sure we have things but as far as running the vaccine clinics we coordinated those directly with our local health department the rest of the county okay i just wanted to mention too i i made a note in there about if there were any funds received for

024providing a clinic and there were no funds like andy said we just provided the opportunity and um the parents wanted it so i i did want to mention that that we didn't there was nothing specifically tied to having financial one clinic yeah i think there's a rumor out there that the us funding is tied to that that is incorrect you don't have to provide a clinic to get or require mass thank you sure all right with that we'll move into academics and please have dr cox our principal from highland south sauders elementary i know he has some staff members and students here as well so i will let him make those introductions mr fox secret squeeze [Music] here's another microphone on the podium too showing up over here uh what first of all i want

025to thank uh miss hamburg president crowl and the entire board for letting us present on behalf of sauders elementary tonight the theme of our of our presentation is going to be leadership tonight and as i shifted from being a middle school administrator to an elementary school administrator one of the things i looked for was some opportunities for our kids to lead and i'm really really lucky and blessed to have a staff where several staff members have stepped up to lead and also our student council so i'm going to have them present here shortly but before they do i also wanted to recognize i have several staff members here so i do appreciate mr wilson and mrs stotler and this is fair and this [Applause] it is it truly is a team effort so again want

026to thank them and then i'm going to introduce the students and turn it over to mrs keep so i have a kate shop ella shop cooper gavigan lily alsasser and sophia folks they're five of our fourth graders that are on student council and just to tie this to the eagle profile the focus of our presentation or what they're working on is collaborating and problem solving so they'll talk a little bit about student council leadership piece and how their projects are collaborative and problem-solving hi i'm amy keith i'm the student council advisor and i'm lucky to work with these students each and every day in all of their efforts to make saturdays a better place what usually happens in a student council meeting is that these students find problems in our building student problems and they

027want to fix them they want to make salaries better for everybody so they'll come with some problems and we brainstorm and brainstorm and come up with some ideas when they finally land on a project my job is to then voice back to the teacher so i'll work with a variety of committees and then we decide as a team how to best implement them and then i bring it back to student council so that they can be successful in their projects so today what they're going to be talking to you about is how they problem solve the founders and how they have come up with some new projects this year based off of their student concerns to make saudis a better place for all students some of the other projects that they're working on are fine-tuning

028some past projects that have been started um so i'm going to i'm going to give it over to them because they're the main reason that we're here today but i am honored to work with them they are true leaders in our building and it's really cool to collaborate with them every day is um [Music] or um so that's just kind of a snapshot of our kindness card again completely student driven idea but this is keith guiding a little bit so cooper's going to talk about our keys to success in our prize wheel and he just came up with the prize with the last couple days and asked me if i maybe add something the prize will i'm still thinking on that one kind of like what uh sophia said where they could put it in

029a bucket for a chance to win something but we only draw one name out of that and we'd throw maybe 20 20 something names away after that so i thought well maybe we could use those keys so from now on instead of throwing the rest of them away at the end of each month whichever class has the most keys to success we'll get the spin the wheel uh the wheel is full of uh class prizes and then um we have just class um a bunch of stuff such as pizza party dance party craft day because a lot of kids uh specifically in kindergarten would put a lot of their keys in um a raffle and then not get anything so we thought well what if even if they didn't win the prize in the raffle

030they could still get something awesome and then the other picture just while we transitioned to lilly they also suggested or wanted to start to read to the classes so they've been going out and reading to the different grade level classes and that's just starting the last couple weeks weeks again something that they came up with and wanted to start and then lily um oh um so basically um uh this um i made a school cleanup club that like um so basically like students can like clean up crash trash on the playground on the playgrounds and um how um how i first made this um school cleanup club is that like um i um first i um well cleaned up trash alone because nobody wanted to join [Laughter] um and then um then i made these

031posters even though i didn't know if people were gonna say yes to this so but but um they have actually accepted it and then then um i started cleaning up cleaning up a lot then and um why i clean this up is because i mean i mean made this it's because that like trash is bad for wildlife and um and yeah [Music] yeah like animals could get stuck inside inside um like kind of like how cats get stuck inside boxes sometimes and um other bottles and yeah they could get their like legs and heads stuck inside plastic and yeah um that's all [Applause] so we just wanted to give a couple examples and again of a student leadership group that truly leads and they're coming up with ideas and it's it's just fun what they

032what they come up with and you never know what they'll think of next but they're really solving real world souter's problems and helping out and again i think miss keep has done a wonderful job of giving them an avenue to truly lead and looking forward if they're doing this in fourth grade i just imagine what they'll be doing in high school and then imagine how they'll be changing the world so very very excited and again very lucky to work with such a great group uh before we step aside are there any questions mr cox i can't i can't let a moment like this go without asking some sort of question first off thank you to both you and miss keith for thinking about this leadership being so instrumental today that i actually look over here

033to my right and see our student leader for those who don't know we really promote student leadership not only in elementary but you know throughout the district so perhaps someday you might aspire to also be the student board rep and have fun at meetings like this all the time uh because that's a student council opportunity or offering i don't know if you'd like to say anything about that ms smith or talk about leadership i'm sure well just so you know you can definitely sit in my chair once you're you just have to be a senior on student council that's the only thing so you guys are doing great work already i can't wait to see what you do as you get older and then to cooper i would say when we talk about problem solving

034and collaboration i really love your observation that sometimes those keys go thank you sir keys to success go unused and kind of problem solving through that and thinking about what you could do to make that better for all of your fellow students and then lily i took something from you as well in terms of if others aren't joining in make it a club i might go home tonight and make my first cleanup club as well and see who will join in my family so thank you for that thank you mr fuji i just want to thank you kids for coming out it is great to hear you speak and to be able to get up and talk in front of adults or your peers is an excellent life skill keep at it and it's great

035to see your smiling faces thank you anything else for them i want to know if you've had a dance mr cox have you danced i have i basically have one move um miss crawford pushed me like on this going in the classroom and i'm and it's it's not good mr fuji i don't i'll say i mean anybody seen it so no we have not had a dance at this point i have attempted a dance move but [Laughter] and are you maverick in this picture i just had that yeah yes yes so this is when we go around and do and give the students uh recognize our student leaders every month so when we go around we try to again mrs crawford insisted that i dress up for that and so this is mrs keith uh

036when we went around our first time this year i try i i appreciate the reference to uh iceman there but i think that might be a bit dated for fourth graders to recognize who yeah when they say who are you [Laughter] or with the kindergartners the kindergartners especially when i come in i'll say no i'm not mr cox and that really throws the kindergartners i'll be like are you sure it's no i'm i'm from a movie so thank you all [Applause] all of these all right let's get blinded there um next up we will have our academic update from stomach oh hello good evening good evening good evening um i am here tonight to talk about the sexual education piece so i'm excited about that um i am here to tell you about our preschool

037enrollment history has been open we already have 60 peers that have enrolled in our preschool program for next year um so we're super excited about that our um our lottery will be drawn on february 11th for our peers at our preschool program and then our kindergarten registration opens on february 22nd and the window is open until march 25th we obviously are offering our full day kindergarten um 200 a month for tuition and then we are doing our half day program as well um our half day program we it depends on enrollment in terms of where the half day program at what building that will be held so we're really excited about that um any questions i would just add we are putting a flyer uh next month so you'll have one that comes out next

038week with the following one we'll have all that information and it'll be on our website as well um with the direct link to sign up any other questions what is the ratio of the half day to full day for uh the kindergarten you mean the number of students like what percentage are typically full well i think it just depends i know this year we have um three if i if i'm correct three day half three half day sections um to about i'd say one half day section to about three full days in a building give or take i know um gre does not have a half day section this year um b wee has one uh peri has one in sauder size one so have you seen that change over the last few years at

039all like i feel like it's it was half day was higher last year than it has been but otherwise it's been typically i want to say like 76 percent yeah it hasn't been it's been full yeah a huge um decrease or increase on either so any other questions sure all right thank you do you want to tell them what class that is class of oh my gosh this is class of 2035. so that's a little crazy amanda that probably makes you feel yes that makes me feel good evening everybody uh my update tonight i just i know that angie has talked about the staff shortages and the impact that that has in all parts of the district i wanted to highlight an academic part that we're monitoring just to let you know we'll be bringing

040back this information but our principals since several of them are standing back there i'd like to give them a big shout out because every morning they're getting up between five and five thirty six to rearrange the entire schedule to cover for the staff shortages which is very daunting on them and when we look at that we have our tutors that deliver intervention to our tier two and tier three students matter i'm not speaking to our students on an iep at this i'm talking about our students that are just receiving tier 2 and tier 3 intervention that we've identified have an area we need to focus in when we can't find coverage at times we have to pull our tutors out of those interventions and put them into sub for our classroom teachers obviously we don't

041like doing that those individuals as well as every other principal in the district is doing everything they can not to cancel intervention and it's very hard so we are starting next week beginning to track very closely what that looks like because we do anticipate that will impact our academic data so i will report back to you as we study it a little bit deeper but everybody from everybody in the entire district all of our principals all of our tutors our teachers pretty much any person you can find in the school right now is jumping in to keep our doors open and i just want to point out the academic feat that that has become to make sure that our kids that need that intervention are getting it and i would add that we're so concerned

042as we start looking at data that we actually are making a spreadsheet so that we all can grab kade and annie and ross and mark and i can even grab hey i can go grab that two and a half hour block so we can keep intervention during that time so you know we might be teaching third grade so that the intervention still happens because these are our kids who are most at risk who are not at grade level who need some extra support obviously the last couple of years we've done the best we can to stay open but with kids being in and out i want to make sure that we're keeping an eye on that especially at the elementary with reading math too but reading is our big concern right now so is there

043some specific areas like in terms of the data that you're trying to look at is it specifically is it relative to intervention is it number of saf out is it um we have well both minutes for students where the data that we're looking at is how often is a particular group canceled and then what are we seeing in terms of their growth with that group of kids so we're seeing as we look at some of our mid-year data um in some cases where groups have been canceled a lot we're not seeing typically kids will exit needing tier two usually if they're in tier three they're probably an intervention the whole year but kids that are in tier two might be like hey over the summer didn't really progress any and now i should be reading

044at this level and i'm here so we're gonna give them an extra little boost so they get their regular reading lesson and then they get pulled with somebody that provides a research-based intervention on whatever skills are shorted and so when we're not able to do that we're not seeing those kids exit out or they're not making the progress we typically see so just getting concerned and it depends on the building on the number of staffing and how they're able to um do that some of our smaller buildings are able to use their specialists a little bit more um for the like art music stem to jump in um but some of the the bigger ones it's more of a challenge because they have more sections so and you highlighted that they our students are making

045growth it's just not the growth that we have typically seen where we weren't having to cancel intervention so we're just we just want to keep an eye on everything we can we're just worried especially in a couple of buildings where we've had to cancel a lot or have stopping issues um some of the buildings too where they have specialized learning centers there are a lot of adults in those units and when people are out we have to have certain ratios we have to have adult support and so that becomes the first priority to make sure that that we have the adult ratio we need in there and then we don't have enough to run groups so um i never thought i would say we're going over and doing that but that's how bad it is

046so keep you posted i mean i love it honestly like i go teach elementary every day i did have a little boy cut his bangs the other day watch the scissors when the scissors drop so what what in terms of what you anticipate sharing back with us in the future it's really i mean i know that there's some metrics that you're keeping an eye on such as frequency the group has been ruled and then what the growth is with those students but for us and our oversight you anticipate sharing just kind of what to anticipate next year on academic achievement data or yeah even by the end of the year are we going to see kids where they normally are and looking at third grade you know we want to make sure that's that typical

047year that we really want to make sure kids are on track with readings they're really focusing there but that key free band so that's kind of our focus and then just so it gets locked into my head when you talk about interventions it's it's really those students at risk on building level plans not necessarily iep correct those things are still happening we're still making those gains or those minutes being made it's in uh so we've had a couple situations where we haven't been able to provide minutes at a given time because of staffing but um i confirmed withdrawals that those have either been already made up or scheduled to be made up so we're making sure that they're getting their iep minutes but the way we do groups too so it's not just identify kids

048but kids who are struggling in a certain area you might have five kids and one of them might get an iep or might not and they're all working on the same stuff so we make sure that you know we don't have to identify them as having a special need to give them extra reading help we want to make sure they get the help they need and that's where we're all struggling because we're not able to provide that right now the level we'd like to thank you i do have a question yeah um time that is missed i'm sure is being documented are you looking to see a lot of extended summer services we haven't had a ton missed on ieps because they were prioritizing that time so i don't know that that would be any

049more than usual um but we're just more concerned it's for the kids that aren't identified and if we're not closing that gap do they end up needing an iep down the road because we're not closing the gap now so the priority has definitely been put on the iep minutes and making sure they get made up what about the kids on a 504 you can be on a 504 for many different reasons not all academic so those are more case-by-case basis but i'm sure so extended time small groups take a test things like that well like like the busing situations where you're trying as much as possible to kind of rotate the impact um is that same i mean i guess my like the alternative when there's issues staffing issues is no school which that's not

050a great solution for anybody either um but yeah you don't want the impact to be hitting you know the kids who need the intervention the most um is that kind of making sure that there's a rotation there to where yeah that's part of where we want to get more formal data because we've been like watching it at a building level but it may even be that some buildings what we're noticing is we're looking at your data and really digging in and some buildings are better able to cover it because of the way their structure or schedule works than others so we want to make sure that we're definitely it's not the same group always being cancelled the same group of kids that are losing that instruction and i guess i want to point out for

051everybody they're still getting reading instruction from the teacher of the classroom this is extra that we layer on because they they need additional support and typically throughout an elementary career a lot of kids will need in an area and it may be i'm in there for half a year for this skill actually i don't need any intervention now i may be a little behind in this skill and i need a little extra help so it's a normal thing for kids to need intervention because kids develop in reading at different levels at different paces so perfectly normal thing that we normally do we're just we're just struggling to keep up is that an area where the parent volunteers could be of assistance um we talked about maybe using them not so much with our research-based interventions

052but sometimes we have them do like sight words things like that yeah but not that we usually have our tutors and our licensed teachers do the other ones i think you point out a good point that the tutors are licensed teachers as well that are providing that research our tutors and our teachers who are all like anything else for kate not a fun topic but we just felt like it's important to keep everybody informed we are doing the very best we can we're not happy with it we're going to continue to do what we can to keep the doors open but it's it's a daily struggle for sure all right thank you takes us down to mr schwartz who has a construction update for you i believe you have a little handout he left you

053good evening good evening so the report looks a little different than you're typically used to seeing um we're all kind of singing the same song aren't we so gilbane is the construction manager they do all the reports they've we got the building open we're still racing but they've had some uh challenges with leave i'll call it that way so kobe and other things surgeries so they're down by 66 percent on their field staff so i opted to do this instead basically to hit some of the highlights what's happening with construction um i did want to build on what mr fuji said with miss lilly nobody wants to do the job uh we are having some struggles in the custodial department i'll share some more numbers for you what's that make a club it is a

054club we'd love for you to join we have a couple subs that have joined so we're happy to report that i just wanted to share a number because we're throwing a lot of numbers out to you in terms of who's showing up and how many workers uh yes actually today we were down seven custodians in the district that is 28 29 just to share as a number uh we have three subs though so it wasn't quite that low once we added them back in but it's kind of wanted to share that number that unfortunately it's all departments um again where we're doing the same thing rotating getting critical areas making sure the building's safe and you know what wet areas should they track it in all that good stuff a lot of them so i

055just wanted to share that i know it's everywhere it's everyone but just kind of wanted to continue that song for what it's worth um so for the public what i'm reporting to the board tonight is we open the high school first of all hooray um things are going fairly well i know we had one snafu with with the sewer line on friday uh what was that the seventh i did one mr fuji asked me about her in a comment before the board meeting i did want to share publicly i've been in schools for 20 years but i've never had to say we need to close a building never so that was a new experience for me i've never been directly involved in what is the process to empty a building out we reported it at

056the short version is in 75 minutes the building was empty blew me away i said to superintendent hamburg i said i've been on the edge of it and said yeah yeah they're getting kids out they got this not not in my wheelhouse today well i was in the middle of the wheelhouse and exceedingly impressed how quickly the administration from the top down once the decision was made like i said 75 minutes later every student was gone picked up my parent drove their car or bus buses rolled so just want to note that if the public wasn't we were very impressive for the unfortunate situation we had to deal with that day but happy to say the line has been cleared we have images of it there's no damage to the line everything is functioning properly

057um but we had to make the decision just to share a little more because i know we said construction related but my understanding is there was gravel in there that wasn't picked up when they inspected it it caused the blockage is that correct correct there was a little bit of debris between essentially in the line there's the short version um they're really long but just so they know like it was tested we didn't realize that the other reality is it was not our problem it was i was worried at first sometimes it is something we've flushed down it was nothing nothing human generated if you will from an occupant it was strictly from a construction standpoint so they owned it they addressed it they took care of it they camered it out they cleaned it

058in fact they continued to monitor it on a daily basis just to make sure nothing happened and they actually went past our we have a lift station continued past there to make sure everything was clean um let's see so i'm going to go through this real quick to some dates for you more than anything so as you know the high school's open but we still have some things that are under construction with the we'll call it the new elementary high school and athletics so the high school theater wing that's the theater there's a a scene shop a couple green rooms etc that is slated and on track again we have all the inspections and stuff to do so there's a few variables we can't control but it's currently slated february 1st they can start moving

059their stuff in there all their items are already in the building we've just kind of hid them in some places but we'll be able to move them to their proper location and start using that facility it looks great football concession building is february 2nd i'm sorry march 2nd so just a little bit off exterior athletics while a lot of this is weather sensitive some of it can move forward so the actual multi-sport field the artificial turf i know some people have already been on it in case you see people practicing with their son or daughter on it we have a date of february 22nd we have to have it fully operational for across practice so that's what we're on track to do although you can technically use it now the stadium seating and press box

060is march 2nd of this year there's a pole barn for the athletic department that's april 1st for 122. there are tennis courts that are looking at may 9th again that's again exceedingly weather sensitive just to share same with the baseball and softball fields may 9th and then there are some multi-sport practice fields in the northwest corner kind of the back side of the new high school there are five fields there those are slated to be done in terms of seated graded et cetera march first approximately but i for the board's record i wrote to the site technically you can't use grass for practice fields for about a year so you need a full growing season even if they had planted it in august or september we wouldn't be using it till the fall of this

061year so we're forecasting spring is what we're advising the athletic department of 22 when they can use those fields for backwards no i have it right complete is is now it'll be complete it's complete in 22. we can't use it till 23. i just can't talk as usual it seems to be a track record for me um so i'll stop there before we go on a couple of the other items that i added that typically wouldn't be on the report any questions with the high school or the site athletics okay the high school wing mr schwartz is relative or the high school theater wing specifically is relative to the chairs was that the whole that was the main item so the chairs are actually installed there's still some other things they're finishing like today they

062were painting the stage and things like that um but yeah that was one of the main things that really is but yeah the chair all the architectural components are there pretty much everything's installed now which is fine detailing and mostly sound system lighting system things like that being tweaked there's a small lift that goes into the orchestra pit it's been installed and needs inspected so mostly we're down inspections is what's the final threshold to get occupancy and then the things relative to the spring so my vague recollection is uh turfed baseball softball in fields and so you're talking about the seating of the outfield correct the outfield we have wells and they're watered or irrigated but yes they're natural turf in the outfields and then the tennis courts so those spring sports will actually be

063competing at five five let's see about the five five five south pole three sea yep the bor building formerly known as correct okay um will they play this year on those facilities or or is that really a conversation around waiting because of the outfield again i've really gone too much farther with the athletic director other than he knows these dates when it can be handed over to us but the only thing we've talked in spirit is that the actual playing will happen at the former high school so then my i guess my my wonder in terms of asking that question is in reference to the maintenance and those types of things so we'll have split chips going over there and doing the same thing for custodian over there yes so there will be a little

064bit of added um oversight and yes time to occur thank you thank you oh no one more track being a large uh correct being the main thing the i guess i didn't put it down here because it's not our money but it's our field so since you mentioned it the former high school um artificial turf with ncaa and astroturf's the same contractor in both locations but for the new board members if you didn't know the former high school ncaa north columbus athletic association paid there was agreement with the school board and they're paying to put an artificial turf there that project is still progressing um again they're weather sensitive although they're working through the winter we're going to need a warm spring but they've prepared it such that they're not done with the field we

065can still use the track so that's a known component in their efforts so we'll still be able to use the track safely even if they don't complete that field under that separate contract so the our track team this year will be competing at 555 southpole 3c still yes and remember we talked about um it was kind of a gamble if they could get the track done at the new one in time and they couldn't guarantee that we wouldn't have issues with it like that on any of our other asphalt surfaces and so um we made a decision that it makes more sense to do it right and not have to be redoing it in a year or two like we've had issues and i would also point out that it was always the intention that

066the new high school would open next fall and that those surfaces would be available for the following spring when we were able to put them on the same campus and they were able to actually get it done earlier that's why we made the mid-year move which obviously we want to use it as soon as we can but again that gives the side benefit of giving us the opportunity to get the flooring replaced since we're on five five five um at that building thank you but it was always the plan that those sports facilities would not be ready until next spring so i know it's disappointing especially like with seniors and their last season not to be able to do it at the news facility but that we never really thought that was a realistic goal

067we had sure it happens great but that was always if you recall um especially those of you the three of you that have been on the board that was that last gmp that got approved so this was always the timeline so i just want to remind votes of that so it's not that gilbane's behind it was always the intention that it would be a year out where will graduation be um we're intending to have it at the new stadium which is nice because we'll have more seating all right i'll go on if that's okay i'll go on to the other line items again 555 or the former high school future middle school again those contracts were awarded the latter part of 21 and so we're looking to start which was always the forecast in early

068february finish in mid-july and that tied in again for the new board members that's predominantly in finishes flooring in the three-story classroom wing as well as the band of music but nothing else and then painting in all occupied rooms so we will have rooms that we in order because of budget carry restraints we did not repaint the entire building and a little bit of bathroom work there's some sinks and some group restrooms that were kind of beat up and we're repairing the surface or the countertop and the sinks and that's the bulk of the work there's no permitted work or electrical work or anything like that so quick question so for like sporting events that are happening over at the at 5 5 um in the spring the bathrooms well i guess will the bathrooms

069be available in the in the school at all or will it all be in the like concession building concession but for some practices they'll stop we'll still have access uh to the athletic wing and no construction is actually really happening to that portion right except the staging of things coming correct we're gonna move all the furniture into kind of the gym areas so essentially to replace the floor everything has to float out move down the hall we're going to use that as an opportunity to kind of cleanse the building whether it's items of no longer value or use whether it's disposing selling if we're going to start off with an auction as planned initially and then work with the principals to kind of repurpose what we can in the district to fill the two remaining

070buildings for their appropriate uses i have a question you mentioned occupied rooms how many rooms are unoccupied um i'd say probably about 20 in the classroom when they're not using it don't plan to use biggest areas would be for instance what i'm going to call the wood shop and the adjoining area and there was kind of an ag career room so those are in the lower level on the south side and they have overhead doors and stuff too but those currently aren't going to be used by the middle school point out those are things we've talked about we'd like to add if we have the opportunity some electives back and you know just a basic shop woodworking skills make skills uh we'd like to add those back in space for them at some point um

071not building to be able to do that right but that's kind of a hope for that space and i would also point out when we think of the size of that building and capacity um typically in a growing district you want to be in about 75 to 80 capacity of your building full um when you get beyond that if you're not growing it's not a huge deal but if you're growing by the time you're able to create more space becomes an issue obviously we have bwi we have pre loaded down right now the library is a classroom we did that deliberately although then we have more people move in because we didn't want to move families multiple times with the two-phase redistricting plan but when it comes to our higher level buildings um that's a

072good to be at about 80 percent a good place to be as we look at enrollment projections our facility committee was hoping to get 10 years at least with the growth and not have to add any additional space so that gives us a really good percentage to grow into we're also strategically looking at locating teams within that building so we could keep like a heating pooling zone not have to use you know keep the heat lower and tied to that the last items i decided on mr fuji's in the past i start providing dates for other related things so from lessons learned and i know principal frame at the middle school we've already scheduled now i'm working with the principals at intermediate to do teacher planning packing move meetings just so they understand kind of

073the process you know it sounds silly how to pack a box the size of the box we're using what they what they're moving versus what we will move uh and then the actual moves occur obviously just on the uh end of the renovation so mid july there just as teacher contracts and stuff as people are starting to go back in the buildings so again some good lessons learned from the high school that will apply to intermediate middle school staff as we move forward well i just wonder the complexity of that given uh the fact that we did one move one building from one building to one building um in december and what that'll look like is we look at two shifts at one time with our current staff correct actually i need to commend uh

074the director of maintenance i'm sorry the supervisor maintenance gene hall he had a couple amazing ideas very simple ideas but in the end they saved us a lot of time in terms of moving boxes and things like that just palletizing things we got a truck that had a lift on it just very simple things that we didn't do at pre but saved a lot of uh kind of physical effort it helped morale with your own custodians these were saturday moves uh and so i want to try to improve on that as we move forward using this best stewards of public dollars but also using our own folks generally to do the moves thank you and then the other conversation is i am more than fine with uh this type of of handout just from the

075broad brushstroke perspective it doesn't need to be that 11 by 7 the one thing i would ask and maybe this is a forum or a format that we can provide some public input on or communication around what types of things uh are intended to be occurring in the 555 south 3c facility now as we prepare for that to become the future middle school just broad brushrooms so again the scope we're under contract for is essentially replacing flooring in the three-story classroom wings as well as the band of music area patching repairing basically all the classroom wings again in the band music area and painting and then a little bit of like i said the replacement of some um sinks and whatnot in the group restrooms and the three story wings so if you go in

076there the boys and girls there's two sinks on a countertop and those were kind of the laminate was beat out the sinks were beaten up the china sinks were beating up so we're replacing those 1991 i get it yes they looked original definitely used some ceiling tiles replaced but we don't think that's going to be our budget with everything we're trying to do and all the buildings and the moves but that's something that we may um work out in phases as we're able to replace some of those original ceiling tiles we also have some that i think have been painted since maybe even before you were principal i mean they're painted years and years ago those people might have kids that are in high school now well and i i suppose just understand madam superintendent

077the only reason for that question is uh if that is a question of people in the community like hey so what's happening in that space right now just taking the opportunity to say here are some of the things like the original carpet that linoleum the uh um i don't even know some of the lockers and those types of things i'm sure the thing i want to add that we mess with the locker base so we're not taking these we're taking out about half the lockers because the kids don't use them and so i think i've mentioned before when you walk through our current middle school a lot of times the kids are out in the hallway working in partners and so we are taking out one of the locker bays in each of the floors

078to put in an extended learning area like we have in our new high school and a pre so that the kids can have a collaboration space where they can work and i have to sit between lockers it helps the supervision find the site as well thank you and i was focused on gilbane but that reminds me the board approved a contract for train incorporated replacing the chillers at that school two of the three chillers at that school as well so a separate contract i realized i just i just focused on gilbane's work if you will or things related to gilbane but again we have train under contract board approved that back in december and that's to replace the chillers at the high school that's a separate funding source also um just to share that with

079permanent improvement dollars were used for that not not bond or construction dollars as everything on this page was there is uh mr fuji thank you for bringing up the broad brush strokes of what's going on because you know a lot of people just don't know you know in general what's going on i do have a question like how would you be repurposing or moving technology or what do you foresee in um maybe you could just address that with furniture or smart technology for so i'll start more on the construction side what the construction site is doing is what i'm going to use the term cleansing of the old technology is occurring so there's some original monitors from 1991 on the wall there's some old old wiring old jacks yeah correct anything that's old it's still

080attached to a wall the purpose is strip the walls clean patch them and repair them but i'd have to refer to to uh wayne thompson director of i.t in terms of what he's doing what if anything to kind of i know he's cleansing the building at computers right now as he's opened the new high school um but i'm not sure he's doing other little on that and i know i know a lot of the um things are have already been moved over to help we didn't buy all brand new computers over at the new building um so some of the labs you know um have the desktops from there and then there's a big dock between the buildings of what moves what stays between um the middle school going over there obviously the intermediate then

081going to that building and just things are getting used but they're getting moved around repurposed and then we typically we use like um older chromebooks so if we got newer machines then those become like the loaner so it has one that needs to fix for example the building has a bank that they can then turn theirs in to get fixed and then they get one that they can borrow but it's all um either being used when it becomes a middle school or we've kind of shuffled it around where it's needed throughout the district are you getting out of that it thank you any other questions for doug all right thank you thanks doug appreciate it all right i believe unless anybody has anything else for me that is all i have to say and that

082brings us to item number nine the treasures um i was mainly i'm just going to focus on the revenue side of things uh this month and bring up that we have started getting our advance payments for taxes uh that was something that the board approved to allow us to begin getting those advances at the organizational meeting so um it's always nice to when those dollars are paid to get those in our funds instead of them being held by the county auditor so in next month's report you'll see some changes in uh the property taxes as well as the personal property um we also i i like data i'm always looking forward to getting those quarterly income payments so we do get our our third quarter income at the end of january so you'll you'll see

083some changes in there you'll note that we uh we're about one percent up currently so hopefully we kind of are staying there [Music] we if you recall last year we did see a dip in our income taxes so it's these are these are nice trends to be seeing but you never know how some of the decisions and filing timelines that have changed over the last couple years can can change those trending when we're trying to look at that um the other one to direct your attention to i know i i noted last week that we were beginning to get our payments from the state underneath the new funding formula the december report does show a negative variance in the state funding and that is due to that kind of timeline of when we had expected

084to begin getting those the the payments there um i do anticipate that that variance to um go to a positive variance just the way that they have allocated funds and paid things out and then we might start to see that kind of come back down they did what i would call a true up payment for anything where they owed us but if there were sections where the calculation came out that we were paid too much then they're spreading that negative amount over a longer period of time so we're seeing a large increase here in january and then we might see that we're under a little little by little um anticipate overall though that what we had what we have in the uh november forecast i think we're pretty well on track with um with what

085we are planning to get with the new funding formula so um that's that's really where i wanted to focus today um but if there are questions feel free i appreciate it mr buzzkirk you answering some of my questions from last meeting to this the variance and i didn't ask this question when we spoke the variance you're talking about though from the state funding is really is this reflected in the twelve percent and if so is this the con i'm sorry page whatever it is uh is this the conversation seven where you think that that gets made up just based on timing of what filings were last year is that what i understand well um the [Music] the um the filing portion i was talking about the income taxes uh we are we're actually positive so

086we're in a good shape income tax wise um but what i was and maybe maybe i misheard you on this but what i was referencing is we were about last year we were down in income taxes for the entire fiscal year by about a quarter of a percent so not a lot but it was a dip below what we had gotten in prior years um so our third quarter payment we'll continue to see if we're on a positive growth for income tax or if some of those odd filing deadlines um are causing some kind of thank you yeah that quarter percent and forgive me yeah um i know that was that in 2020 or 2021 that they shifted around payment of the personal income so it was we had two shifts but the one that

087really affected us would have been the filing for 19 that would have been in 20 it was shifted into july of 2020 which then became our fiscal year 21. right okay yeah in the um unres in the state funding numbers yes that is based on the different funding formula with the lower so if anyone like compared this to a prior year yeah the numbers would be lower but it's because it's net now correct ultimately um it might end up being a little bit lower overall as as we discussed during the five-year forecast presentation and for the new board members if you weren't there um what what had occurred with the new funding formula is paying students paying for the students where they're educated we used to have we'll call it more of a gross amount

088and then there were deducted amounts that came out for students that were attending community schools were on a scholarship or things like that those would then be deducted out of that overall funding to get to an ultimate amount with the change uh it could in the equation show a slightly lower enrollment amount now that they're using for the funding um but there's an offsetting also expenditure side that that helps so um still waiting there are still as i noted last week there are still portions of the formula that are being tweaked and updated and as they've they've i know a colleague had brought up that there looked like there might have been a uh a calculation area in one error in one little line that wasn't coming out right so they're still um it was

089a major rework of the way that things have been calculated so it's not surprising the the heavy lift that they had that there are still some adjustments being made but um anticipate though to to speak to the december month that if you're seeing and concerned about the negative area in those grants in aid for the state that i would anticipate those to be well made up next month looking at what we'll be posting and then again we might start to see that large overage then kind of deteriorate um ultimately i think that will be about where we had planned though in the five-year forecast thank you that's all i have that's all yep and nothing under 10 we will go to [Music] number 11 board member of items of interest and left to right do

090you want to start with us what's that no nothing i thought i heard you say i didn't know if you wanted to start with miss smith first or well we can go right to life well i would just like to start this evening talking about the new school students are really loving the new space of course it was an adjustment at first but now that we are acclimated to the new building it really is great um some of our favorite aspects are the variety and table heights my personal favorites are the high top tables adjustable thermostats in each room and definitely the extended learning areas i'm just going to kind of group together academics activities and sports this month so global scholars capstone projects are in full swing practices for the spring musical nine to

091five has started girls bowling was runner-up in their latest tournament girls indoor track won their first meet swim is off to a great start to their season with occ's quickly approaching competition cheer did well at their first competition and will be having another this weekend and of course it is indoor track season and we had two students break school records shane white broke the record for the 60 meter dash and alec carr broke the record for the 60 meter hurdle so congratulations to them and then lastly school spirit we had a spirit week leading up to the basketball games and that was very well received from student council we've gathered that student's favorite day was anything but a backpack day and then of course students really enjoyed coming out to the winter homecoming basketball games

092and rage cage did a fantastic job supporting our players um elisa buldazar won winter homecoming queen and lucas tyndall won winter homecoming king so congratulations to them again we really love seeing all the school spirit lately at all yeah thank you thank you samantha josie wanted to say savannah i'm sorry josie apollo apologizes she really wished she could have been to bring anything but a backpack day that she was a little sad about that that was very uh very very encouraging and fun to see what the kids brought to school um mrs hamburg and board members and administrators i do want to acknowledge the tremendous hard work and effort that has occurred in our big walnut school district over the last few years from the spring of 2020 quickly transitioning to online learning which was

093definitely a challenge for all and the summer came and the district rallied uh together and we went back to imper um went back to in-person learning and sorry just lost my place um and the modified um extended distance learning i know was a challenge and i do want to support and thank you for this year boldly as you led us back to full-time uh school staying in person has been quite an accomplishment um as mrs hamburg her administrative staff support staff you kept the schools open and the children learning while two schools were being built this is what our district voted for and has been very excited um to see this come to fruition and are very excited to see the buildings i believe this would be a great way we could showcase these accomplishments

094that you've helped curate hopefully we could open up for some school tours i want to note that i do support the re uh reintroducing the option of in in-person parent conferences this would allow those who desire to see their children's new classrooms in schools there are many parents who have not been able to visit the children's schools or not been able to meet in person with their children's teachers from sporting events training buses after school clubs to name a few we are at full capacity and in full swing which is quite an accomplishment um i just wanted to say and bring back a little bit of history um [Music] i remember when my children were younger my husband and myself and my husband really appreciated coming in and reading with the children and helping the

095children and there's still kids to this day that remember when mr derek came in and read with them and that was very um it's still very touching and was a great way to see what's going on in the children's schools and i also remember at the elementary school the parents um we could put a little notification we could come in and they would bring a little uh cast iron table outside the principal's office to be able to dine with um with your child or when they brought out the tables and you could sit with your kids and uh any other kids that could actually fit onto that table it was a really nice experience and to be able to see your kids and to meet the friends that they were with and i think that's

096um i would love to see some opportunities like that i think we have a community that's um of parents who are ready to get back in and volunteer possibly with the current staffing problems this might be beneficial so i just want to encourage um to bring back in-person conferences and maybe we could revisit what our current visitation policy is whether we go through security or background checks for parents to get in and volunteer i know that is an important security subject this fall i was able to meet my 10th grade teachers from my daughter's 10th grade teachers and walk through her classrooms this was an excellent experience to meet them face to face i'm not sure if this was available for my seventh grader it would have been a wonderful experience um i might have

097just missed it um another experience that was really remarkable was the christmas concert in the high school it was very touching as it was the last last time in that building and it was just a a highlight i thought it was a great way for the community to get together the middle school also had christmas and theater presentations too i would just like to encourage um the elementary schools if they you know about these little performances that the kids are able to do these are wonderful experiences for the family so just like to support that idea of getting back in person and getting back to normal thank you for all your hard work and that's all thank you um i understand we had our first calamity day of the year uh certainly appreciate the intentionality

098that went with that i think that that was really a strong call to make just wondering if maybe in the future the opportunity to have a conversation around minutes and uh some of the maybe metrics you use to make those evaluations might serve us well yeah yeah snow and ice i it didn't take long to look out the window and see that no i understand um but just thinking about the the requirements for seat time and as those things have maybe changed i continue to like miss graziosi be uh very grateful for you for the leadership uh and that of all of our staffing appreciated the update on the high school and the occupancy appreciate the fact that there's some student energy around it i wonder if the administrators and staff might have felt the

099same way about anything but a backpack day but i get it the kids liked it uh and even with all of this work going on from calamity days to facilities the idea that you still have your eye on the ball relative to the education of all of our children uh not just those on an iep not just those in a gifted classroom but all of our students i greatly appreciate uh that really is the uh preponderance of my comments tonight and i continue to say thank you mr president we'll move to the left are you gonna skip cherry we're coming back this week oh okay no that's fine i i also angie admire your uh stick-to-itiveness because if any anybody had a right to throw their hands up and go to florida you you had

100the you had the right to do that yeah let me know if you're leaving town um one of the things i think is so important i was talking to senator brenner and actually big walnut outperformed any other school in delaware county and i think that's something parents need to know um excuse me i'm still struggling with the osba i would like your help and maybe jeremy's to give me uh some kind of record of how that's distributed and what we're buying eight thousand and one hundred and twenty seven dollars is haunting me because i i know that the new board packet almost all of those forms were from the osba uh so i know that's where some of it's going and i also know that a lot of it goes for lobbyists so anything that

101big walnut is purchasing with that i would really appreciate a list we certainly can put a list together i would just say um my initial comment on that is i think we probably save more than that on procedural things we're able to ask them so tammy lee our secretary um she calls them quite frequently on procedural things with resolutions things that a lot of times they will give us even where we don't called a lawyer so that has been probably where we've used them the most is for uh legal and procedural type questions i was going to ask about the legal cost which is extra above the eight thousand one hundred and twenty seven dollars and obviously we ask them basic things that we probably need just some guidance on but if it's like a

102specific case we're obviously reaching out to our attorney but it saves us from having to use our attorney for some of the more basic things that we just feel like we need a little confirmation on sure and certainly jeremy okay i would really appreciate that you know i can also send you i think attached to the last meeting and i can i'll send it to you as well there are some different uh programs they also have kind of collaborative purchasing and we get some discounts through [Music] osba for those programs as well that we do get some savings on top of the legal support thank you jerry um so first i just want to say thank you to all of the staff um in the district for just jumping in wherever you're needed i know

103a lot of people have been taking on roles that maybe they weren't super comfortable with or you know like you said in some cases they're really fun but knowing that that leaves you know time in the evening or on the weekends to try to catch up with everything so a huge thank you to everyone for just you know being willing to do whatever it takes for our kids um one of the other things that i wanted to um bring to people's attention now that i'm like looking at it um i don't know time frame wise if maybe the spots have been filled but the sages and seekers program last year when they presented to us that was just the most awesome thing to see and i saw a post on facebook earlier this week maybe

104or late last week that they were still looking for a couple of sages to join the program um so i don't know if anyone knows if those spots have been filled but if there's any community members who would want to participate in that essentially it's it's bringing sages so older people in the community are kind of paired with students and they meet and talk and collaborate about stuff and it we saw a presentation last year and it was just awesome to hear what everyone had to say about that program and and it just seemed like a really great experience from from both ends and i think i think you know we every generation can learn something from another generation and i just i just think it's it's great a great opportunity to bring bring people

105together and do that um [Music] then i did also want to mention that the big walnut high school academic boosters has a meeting um monday the 7th of february at 6 30 p.m so if there's any high school parents who want to get involved in academic boosters and haven't been thus far you're welcome to come to the meetings and unfortunately i don't know you know other pto times and but every school has them so if if you're out there and you want to get involved um helping the schools that's another good way to do it and it and if you don't know how to find those times or whatever um reach out to the district office even or you know to the school principal and i'm sure somebody can let you know that's all i

106have all righty i have two items i want to acknowledge the passing of a seven-year employee kathy black she was an educational assistant at gre past the end of december the second item that i've got there is a i mentioned several months ago that the community that i saw at that time wasn't the community i grew up in i would prefer not having to bring the items up however i have seen in social media where there are individuals who think that i should be recalled the election was over on november the 2nd anybody that doesn't like the outcome grow up i've had elections i didn't like the outcome and we need to be civil we need to put away the hate if somebody dislikes me that's fine if somebody thinks i should be removed go

107for it if you think you have a case for it i'm sure there's a lot of people that aren't happy with the outcome of the election but this is the board this is the board for at least the next two years and uh i'm very sorry that i even have to have this kind of conversation but i will have this kind of conversation and the old saying is there's more than one way of skinning the cat that doesn't make one person wrong and one person right it just means there's two different ways of doing something so if we can get the public to maybe set back i mean good golly one meeting and you're talking recall give me a break people that takes us to item 12 public participation jeremy i'm sure you have at

108least one we have five how many we have five okay we have six six growing by the minute yes uh and i will since i don't have a regular agenda that has the statement on the back that's okay i got it that's fine yeah you can do it there's a meeting of the board of education in public for the purpose of conducting school districts business and is not considered a public community meeting there's a time for public participation during the meeting as indicated in the agenda please reference the criteria for public participation which is attached to the agenda mr treasurer and if you'd like i can i can uh keep time with the three minutes that would be great thank you okay our first person is tom andrews of 3034 ravine point drive uh regarding

109written policy for school visitation well i don't think i need three minutes because i've heard what i came to talk about five or six times already so you've stolen my thunder thing no i uh good evening members of the board administration i appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today congratulations to the new board members and the newborn president you have big shoes to fill but i think you'll do a fine job guiding the education the students need and the parents want mr fuji i didn't have time when i spoke last but i wanted to say it was nice to see you again uh i think you had just arrived at the high school in 2007 when my board service ended we didn't have much contact before i left but i could tell you were

110quality thank you for your service on the board the reason for me speaking today is to get parents and grandparents to take a more hands-on approach with the education of their children and grandchildren before serving on the board i was a frequent visitor to the schools i shop around at dances did one-on-one tutoring for needy students came into the elementary school classes and did games like the map of ohio game with candy for prizes the students liked that game the most my wife pam also volunteered as a room mom and with reading but the one experience i will always remember occurred with my son and four friends he still sees today it was in the lunchroom i like to eat lunch with my kids a couple times per year and look for the trends the

111clicks and any bullying as the five of us sat at a table i looked around and spotted a young man about the age of my son eating alone i asked the kids who he was and why he was eating by himself i'll change his name to joey the boys all said he was weird he did and said weird things i watched joey for about five minutes and he seemed normal to me nothing out of the ordinary so i told the boys i was going to invite him to our table they begged me not to do it but my mind was set the lunch went fine with no embarrassing moments for the friends about a week later i was discussing joey and my experience with another parent when i found out the rest of this story

112about him due to a very difficult birth joey had a metal plate inserted into his brain that's what made him different when the boys were all together again i told them about joey the looks on their faces told me they were all embarrassed and sorry for the way they had treated them i don't know what happened to joey but those five boys all with great parents who cared are decent and fair young men today i know questions aren't permitted but in the age of covid i would like to know if big walnut has a written policy for school visitation and parent participation in case any parents out there want to be a bigger part of their child's education and for me when my granddaughter starts at big walnut if there is a policy how can

113i get a copy of it and if there is no written policy i urge the board to adopt one thank you for your time okay next is barb shelby 2262 common bent drive about regarding osbo membership hello my name is barb shelby i'm a resident of the big walnut school district for 34 years proud parent of two big walnut grads proud grandparent of two current big walnut students and a previous school board member for two terms last week at the organizational meeting this board narrowly approved membership in the ohio school board association of the osba it was mentioned that a very disconcerting action by the national school board association back in october raised serious concerns for some of the board members this was followed by the clarification that the osba withdrew its membership from the

114national group based on this incident which should serve as a strong indicator of the integrity of this important organization when i decided to run for school board position i'd spent years working in schools as a room parent library volunteer tutor president of ptos including among along with others starting a pto at the middle school the osba was the source of educating myself as a prospective and then active candidate on campaign requirements and rudimentary information about the workings of school districts and the responsibility of board members there is a model for confidence developed by noel birch that identifies the stages that move a person from ignorance when you don't know what you don't know to awareness you know what you don't know to learning you know what you know but you're still struggling with it and

115to mastery you don't know what what you know because you've gained such knowledge and skills and the work feels second nature to you this applies significantly to school board members especially if experience with the district is limited and the complexity of school regulations finance systems and are more become more apparent moving from ignorance to mastery takes a great deal of education experience and support this expertise and resources of the ohio school board association working with over 700 school boards and nearly 3 500 elected and appointed members are invaluable to guiding board members through these stages to confident service for their districts along with their educational opportunities they serve board members administrative teams and district staff in the areas of school finance legislation negotiations policy creation and updating salary information as well as providing a means

116to connect with other board members from around the state who may share similar experiences and frustrations and may have developed creative solutions that we haven't thought of yet the osb does not mandate or dictate actions it is a resource for guidance to make sure board members fulfill their oaths of supporting the us and state constitution and leading faithfully and impartially in accordance with the laws as we heard in your oaths this board has two members two new members two with two years and one with four years there's much to be learned to even get to the point of knowing what you don't know about the district big walnuts not an islands we need to take full advantage of credible and respected resources like the osba to tackle the many pressing issues the district does and

117will face with confidence big walnuts it's students administration faculty staff in the community deserve nothing less thank you next is sheila rechner 12842 chambers road and a welcome to the board members uh thank you um i'm actually reading a um reading something for a friend that was unable to be here tonight um eric cowy from 14742 financial road new albany 43054 good evening these are the comments of eric coe who is unfortunately was able was unable to attend tonight's meeting i would first like to say congratulations on the re-election to mr crowl and congratulations and welcome to miss graziosi and mrs nix i know that over 4 000 voters are very excited to see you up there i would like to take this time to speak on a few reasons why i and many others

118wanted to see this change two topics that i've heard brought up repeatedly by community members in this meeting are crt and covet policies such as masks and quarantines firstly i would simply like to state that we do not want remote learning and we do not want masks let's keep our children in schools and let their beautiful faces remain uncovered we don't want masks on our children our teachers or bus drivers secondly let me remind you that we do not want crt in any way shape or form being taught in our schools let us not ban the entire library as mr snyder suggested let us start with the communist critical theory of gramsci which has been repackaged as crt which has been i'm sorry which has been repackaged as diversity equity and inclusion i would like

119to propose that a good starting point would be abolishing all diversity equity and inclusion teachings and statements and replacing them with merit excellence and opportunity these are good complex these are complex issues no doubt but 4 000 voters grew tired of being ignored and belittled by former school officials and board members on social media and in these meetings so we made a change these issues still matter to us the past two years have revealed a sickness in this country that has been there for some time we have left our judeo-christian heritage and values and have introduced marx and gramsci to our children we have taught them that they are nothing more than animals and then wonder why they act like it to quote cscs lewis in a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ

120and demand the function we make men without chest and expect them to respect and expect of them virtue and enterprise we laugh at our honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst we castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful it's well past time we repented of these national sins and returned to our foundations we can start right here big one thank you for your time next is mindy panky 10944 sage creek about quarantines good evening good evening president crowl members of the board madam superintendent and members of the big walmart community community my name is mindy panke and i have an eighth grade and a ninth grade student i am here to discuss schoolwork during quarantine at home first i want to thank mr fraim and all of the teachers at big walkman

121middle school for contacting me today regarding my concerns i took my son to the doctor last week because i thought he had strep throat but instead he tested positive for covid i contacted megan truax and was given guidelines as to when he could return to school mind you my son had cold-like symptoms for only three days he was allowed to return to school healthy the following week if he chose to wear a mask he did not want to wear a mask so he was allowed to return to school [Music] after 13 days so he missed a total of 13 days of school and 10 of which he was perfectly healthy while at home the first week i contacted his teachers asking what work needed to be completed i received a few responses but very little

122work was available to be completed i reached out again during his second week of quarantine and received the same response thus for two weeks my son did very little work leaving him considerably behind in his schoolwork and i will admit that after talking to his teachers today they have assured me that he will not be behind i know i'm not alone in this and i do understand each home has unique needs and the availability of a parent at home to help however when a parent is reaching out the child's working class should be sent home some districts have a to-go bag for quarantine snow days days where there's staff shortages we need to create a better balance between 30 minutes of work at home and a full day's work in the classroom i think an

123even better solution would be to allow these healthy kids to return to school when they are fever and or symptom-free kind of like we used to do with the cold and the flu science has proven time and time again that the kids are not at high risk for this virus my last comment in regards to this is that my other son who had zero symptoms not even a sniffle was considered to be on quarantine for a certain number of days and was also forced to wear a mask if you wanted to return to school and again not even a sniffle and that's it thank you for the opportunity to be here next is jen nissett 7829 meadowchase and a thank you to the big walnut community hi i have um four kids at big walnut

124and i just wanted to come and say thank you to our schools to our teachers to our principals to the tutors who are jumping in to the subs who are working to everybody who is making sure our kids are staying in school um i also sub at b we sometimes not as much as i would like to it's hard to fit everything in i've been at the middle school in the intermediate school i know that everybody's jumping in i've been there when um i relieved josh from the band room where he was covering everybody's doing so much the kids have no idea because everybody's working so hard for the kids to not know how hard this is so i want to say thank you for that we did take advantage of the covid uh booster

125or the cova vaccine clinic at the school which i had planned on them doing it through the pediatrician i understand this was my choice my kids were comfortable going to gre when it was an off day i appreciated that opportunity and i get not everybody is comfortable with that and i respect that you know not everybody wanted to do that i was really glad to have them be able to go somewhere comfortable see some friends it was easy they went in they went out they saw their friends we did it at um the second one here and again it was easy we were in and out they were comfortable they knew where they were so i wanted to thank you for that um lunch ladies they're washing the tray is sorry i'm nervous um and

126i know i'm missing people the bus routes the way you adjusted bus routes to make sure we've still got kids in school even if days are getting cut short and my kids have loved those early release days and the late start days and i don't mind getting up half an hour later so that i can start shuffling kids off a little bit later so i just want to say thank you to everybody who's working hard to make sure the kids don't know how hard this is this is hard it's really hard and the kids are they're being kids and they're still going to school and they're enjoying it i was in one class where a zoom call came in and a dad read a book to the class they loved it it was so fun

127another one where they recorded a book and they presented that to the class really fun everybody's being so creative and doing everything they can again to make sure the kids don't know how hard this is so thank you to everybody okay and our last one for the night is annette mcmurray 3690 worthington road uh regarding new board members busing vaccination liability subs and application process well i couldn't put what i used to put so you have three minutes okay awesome thank you um first of all i just want to start by echoing what we've heard tonight is to thank those in our school community have worked so very very hard to keep our kids in school as a spouse of a school teacher in another local school district i know how hard they're working i

128have a husband who typically once we put our kids to bed spends about two to three hours every night doing school work um and i have a daughter who constantly calls him on it so i get all the hard work that's going in um i just have a couple of questions that i wanna i know they won't be answered but just to kind of pose and maybe we can think about answering them in the next meeting um subpay i don't know if we have raised it or if it's something that we've considered i know mount vernon recently did that um they increased their subpay i think from 80 to 100 a day um so that's something i just want to put out there i know budget and money is a is a big deal also

129do we offer paid training for our bus drivers because i've heard that we don't and i know westerville does my dad was a school bus driver for numerous years in the westerville school district also another thing that i've recently heard is that it's very difficult to apply through our website which i don't think we host it i think it's hosted through esco is that yeah okay um so one of the things as an hr professional that i always think about is what is the candidate's experience like um one of the things that we talk about in my line of business is you know are we an employer of choice i really think that big walnut can be an employer of choice um it's a pretty phenomenal school district so that might just be something to

130think about is what are the barriers that are keeping folks from applying and wanting to be a part of this district so maybe there's some barriers there um that are causing the application process to be very very cumbersome and i and i heard this from somebody who um you know i would consider a professional somebody who who can navigate the the technology i know that sometimes that's difficult for some of our older population to navigate um i would not put this person in that that category so that's just something to think about um and then have we considered uh stopping busing for our high school students i know that's something that we don't want to think about we don't want to consider because that makes it difficult for us as parents um but that is

131something that i've been thinking about and you know maybe something we can consider um and then the parents as volunteers um i've worked full-time but i know if the opportunity came about and i could take a couple hours in the middle of the day because i do work at home to be able to come and help uh in the school i'd be more than happy to so i think that that's something that as we're going through these these trying times tag your resources in your community and i bet there's a lot of resources and a lot of people that would be happy to help um as far as the vaccination goes gonna you know put on my lawyer hat here um i do think that we have to look at the liabilities of hosting these

132things on site in our and our schools um so i will wrap that up i do have a question for you in the future jeremy so i'll just shoot that to you via email thank you very much uh board meeting date discussion left up in the air at the last meeting maybe i'll just pull everybody how many do you think mr vice president so it's strange that you start with me because i think we're probably on the way straight at me i try to do that i know uh no i i think honestly in in december um my perspective was with the completion of facility projects and other things i had mentioned as a board i don't recall if it was a board member item of interest or a discussion item the idea of moving

133to one meeting a month um and quite honestly that might be where my mindset still is and kind of welcoming this conversation tonight around uh what you had mentioned during our what should have been like normally the um first meeting of the month in turn first meeting of the year in terms of uh the operations of the districts and kind of setting things up you know that's usually a pretty perfunctory conversation 10 20 minutes in our lineup going i think 83 on the on the counter on the website so i'm not sure i'm looking forward to this conversation but but my position was then and kind of remains to this moment wondering about one meeting a month i saw that our superintendent put out an opportunity to go and visit the school buildings i think

134that if i heard your statement correctly it was really the school board should be looking at what our assets are looking in school buildings uh in order to do that and maybe taking some meetings to the community i can get behind that i can definitely support the idea of that i wonder under our current calendar of 15 meetings in the next school year if that can still be accomplished i know there's probably some technical difficulties with that i see a camera posted and i've heard things recently uh around being able to hear folks on on uh the internet and things like that on the recordings so there might be some challenges there but still having the opportunity to go visit buildings i certainly support and then the other idea of wanting to look at board

135policy i remain curious about some of your thoughts there and if there's another way to accomplish that outside of the 33 meeting a month kind of paradigm so if if the cue is i should just stop looking at you from now on okay that's not the cue those are just some of my initial thoughts and again i'm i'm going back to the conversation that i i tried to initiate back in december uh okay and two observations number one it's not 15 meetings 17. okay and it wasn't 33 it was 31. okay okay sherry what's your thoughts um well we're having a conversation but i guess i'm i'm not sure what we're starting from like i feel like we're missing laying laying the groundwork of what we're starting from like i know that you said okay

136so 31 meetings but i don't know i don't know that we have uh here is the benefits of having 31 meetings versus the way we've done it now i have a lot of points that i've thought about over the last week if you just want to hear those like i'm more than happy okay um so thinking about this to me it just seems that having more frequent shorter meetings because that was brought up too that maybe if we had three meetings they could be a little bit shorter because some of them over the last year especially have gone pretty long um i just feel like overall that would be less efficient um just kind of when we get into the meat of the matter you know it'd be like okay break and pick it up

137a different meaning i don't know you know if you'd only have two items on the agenda exactly how you would do that because so many of the topics that we discussed are related um we have building presentations i mean just tonight um we were here um we were here an hour and 15 minutes before we got into you know any kind of business items really so um i just think that what we do isn't super conducive to stopping and starting selfishly it's harder for those of us on the board with children and many other commitments to actively participate in that many meetings per month especially when they're all in the evening again i know selfishly but i know when i committed to being a board member that to me meant committing to being at every

138meeting i know that sometimes things happen and i can't be at every meeting but that is really what i strive for um i think it's much more difficult for our administrators they already sacrifice a ton of time outside of a typical workday and this would require them to sacrifice even more i think it would present some logistical challenges for our staff and building administrators from setting up spaces in other buildings preparing for more meetings and complicating the ability to stream meetings or eliminate possibility altogether it also brings more people into more spaces where children are present daily and can potentially pose safety or security issues i'm sure there's ways to work with that but again it's just trying to think through a lot of new things and how to do it and how to make

139it safe and how to do it effectively makes it even more difficult potentially for busy community members to keep up with what is going on at meetings impairs board members ability to attend district events sporting events parent meetings committee meetings as well as just community meetings we are all um we are all part of committees not only for the board um but we have outside activities like our you know as we liaise with the different townships and things we have those meetings that we should either attend or keep up with and i think our involvement in the community is one of the big you know one of the big benefits that we bring to the board is this our interactions with other people in the community and that kind of limits that activity um we

140have a committee in place specifically to address facility issues and that committee has two members on it who are from our board whose responsibility is to participate and bring that knowledge back to the full board if a member of the board doesn't feel like he or she has enough information about anything we're asked to act on it is his or her responsibility to reach out to the superintendent set up a time to gather that knowledge through a meeting or a tour and that fact finding should not come at taxpayer expense more meetings would come at a higher financial cost to the district because of our pay and i don't feel that this use of funds would be would really provide a positive return and finally i think if we were having any kind of operational

141issues or performance issues with either our treasurer or superintendent it would make sense to try to make some changes but i think we are a very high performing highly successful district where operations run smoothly and efficiently so i don't understand why we would make a significant change what are the expected benefits of the change and unless these benefits can be conveyed and they exceed the negatives i don't understand how we can consider doing i guess my i'll ask the question again and i think i take oh what you just said my question is steve was what number of meetings are you good with the 17 i mean i'm fine i'm fine with the 17 because that is what we voted on i mean i i i could potentially get to well i don't know if

142i would want to go down to 12 like steve said i think there's certain times a year where there's just like the start of the school year and kind of leading up to graduation and things there's different things that happen that maybe we needed you know maybe a couple more um miss nix this is nick sorry that's all right that means a divorce you know being being uh a newbie um it was my understanding that the additional meetings were to be put on the schedule in casa uh because it's hard at any meeting that is called after the vote of the schedule is considered an emergency meeting is that correct especially special it would be special or it works right so um you know i i i want to do what is best for the

143children um and if it means we have to meet more than once a month then that's what we need to do because they're situated i mean look at covet and the difficulties that has brought into our world unexpectedly so you know that's how i feel uh expected one from sheri so i have to expect one from you well you know um i would be okay with whatever the majority decides how's that for a back out chicken i think as a new person as a new board member there and what alice mentioned you know things are things do change rapidly um but also what sherry said being part of the community is important there's several uh committees we did sign up for um i also coach mountain biking for high school uh that ends up being

144two days a week if i can make it full-time job three kids um and a husband and a dog so there's a lot to be committed to committed and the dog yes i'm sending him to your house steve um so i'm comfortable with what the board all of us um [Music] agree on i think what doug what you were trying to say was to set up meetings and then be able to remove those meetings if we don't if we see we don't need them so to have work sessions to have maybe some of those dates that we could say well let's let's look at it collectively can we all be here or would four of us you know half of us be here three of us be here is it even worth it so if

145they were if somewhere on the schedule knowing that we would they're there but we could remove them so we could look out you know i try to set i've started in one year in with a job i wound up you know drawn the short straw tonight um so i apologize for being late so i think a blend could be possible and knowing that we're not you know we wouldn't have have all of them but we'd have the opportunity to remove remove them if we see things are going swimmingly you know we're gathering it but there's schools to see and i appreciate you know seeing the tours we might want to do more tours or go back or you know discuss more things so i'm happy with blending i know i work full-time steve sherry doug

146i know you work full-time alice you're very busy with lots of other things and we all are so to be committed you know we want to be there we want to show up and so i'm easy i mean i'd like to i think i'd need a little more i think it would be nice to have them and we could remove them if we need them more or less a number please a few more than we voted on 17 i was asked by mr fuji during his nomination which i'm sure tied into having the availability what i thought i thought 31. so we have around 20. how about 20. you gave me a number that's what i was after i think what uh sherry said also like or alice whoever mentioned like you know school leading

147up to graduation is important maybe we need to have the begin save two for school starting you know give us time off in june a little less time and then [Music] yeah june go ahead jeremy june we think june is a busy month for us and for the finance office and closing out the school year so that's why historically we have had um especially that second one late in the year um because we do have a payroll that happened still for the fiscal year on june 30th so we we raced to get that one done beforehand um and while we shut things off earlier than people would like for purchasing there's still a lot to kind of close out so um i would like to still have the june ones now my i've explained my

148perception which was the first monday third thursday and last monday month that equated to 31. incidentally the june meeting on the 28th would move one day farther ahead from tuesday to monday in the last 10 years there's been 246 board meetings simple math dictates that that means that there were on an average averaged out 24.6 meetings a year that's two a month the first five years of that 10-year period it averaged out to 21 days for 21 meetings the second five-year period of that 10-year period worked out to 27 days so the idea that we only have one meeting a month or that the second meeting of the month was based on the school construction there's there were four meetings in one month in 2013 or something my position is we need to have enough

149meetings that on nights like tonight's business meeting we can make the awards we can do those things 17 to me is not a good number so i suppose in and and maybe this is where i'm struggling a little bit in terms of the not to interrupt but there was never a year in the last 10 years where as few as 17 meetings were planned or held not planned go i'm sorry it's all right we're having a conversation i don't really see it as interrupting one another when we're talking all right um but darn it i forgot to see what happened and i apologize for that oh no i and really in terms of the conversation around numbers so i think that the the points i've heard about having meetings as necessary and certainly having the

150opportunity to have those topics that are important or bubbling up around graduation or those types of things you know we kind of lean on our administrators to tell us hey june is really important to me as a treasurer we need to make sure we have a meeting there and i see that we have our our two so june 16th and june 28th i almost feel like this was probably intentionally built for making sure that those heavy times are there times around hiring seasons uh times around the opening of school around graduation i think maybe the way to approach it as opposed to a number of meetings whatever that number is and kudos for going back and looking at the last 10 years and counting that up and calculating that out for the average which i

151do appreciate i mean that's good data to have uh the better way to look at it from my perspective would be the purpose of so one of the things that you had shared at the last meeting for the organizational conversation around the perceived need for additional meetings is that a re-look at board policy or a conversation on focusing on particular items i think that's really warranted and if there was a topic that we needed to have and discuss to look at that we still have the flexibility to be able to do that with 48 hours of notice i can't imagine that a deep discussion about board policy wouldn't warrant an opportunity for 48 hours worth of notice like it would require some time for an administrative team to put together what their thoughts are or

152whatever those policies are and us all to be read up on them uh for quality conversation so again instead of like numbers and i appreciate the attempt to pull everybody and say hey how many do you think how many do you think i'm wondering if there's something that we could forecast that we need to accomplish that can't be accomplished in this time i i appreciated what sherry said about hey we're we're a pretty darn good district i mean i i think that we have an active community we have public participation at every meeting for the last year i think it's good i think it's valuable and i think it makes us be better and i appreciate that opportunity to be better having said that again an organizational meeting which usually takes 20 minutes takes 83

153minutes like i just want to be judicious with that time so if there's a need for different discussions to be had i'm all game you i think that you know that mr president the conversation would be can can that still occur or uh is there something that's missing from your perspective if i'm hearing you right you're you're saying a special meeting a work session that could be noticed 48 hours before yeah right okay on the 16th of december i brought this up i wanted not this particular topic okay but a scheduling topic yeah where i wanted to have the meeting earlier organization earlier in the month yeah that's a perfect example your meeting or your schedule would permit changing it from the 13th of january to an earlier date in sheri's wood so unless we

154come up with dates number of meetings so that you guys know because you apparently have the well three of you have the heaviest unmovable schedule well and it's not that it's unmovable let's let's be really clear about that it's really about an opportunity we had the one on the 13th scheduled and how could we was there something that was so pressing that we needed to have it before you know as i took it because you had already filled your schedule yeah okay i think it's important that we have the number of meetings work sessions homework sessions sure okay far enough ahead without the 48 hour notice the burden of that so that you can work it into your schedules yeah no and i appreciate that right 17 meetings is not enough meetings okay i actually

155to be honest with you completely honest i take the fact that this board was presented with 17 meetings as an insult in the sense that it's we've this board the teacher's contract was done seven or eight months early by the previous board the superintendent contract was done eight months early by the previous board well i think we'll have a conversation about what's early and what's timely but i understand what you're saying the i i take it as an insult because i think that there's and i mentioned it this evening there's a certain amount of resistance these are the board meetings these aren't anybody else's meetings can i can i address why we presented with those dates if it's alright superintendent i actually want to take ownership of that because i think in the december meeting

156maybe the idea of it going to 17 meetings was predicated on the fact that i had in discussion moments said hey is it possible to go now that we're we have a building complete is it possible to go to one meeting a month so maybe just maybe the administrator and i don't know i know mrs hamburg wants to chime in on that maybe just maybe they were doing that relative to something that i had suggested so uh if there's a fence to be taken i don't i don't necessarily know that it should be about the administrative team and this board i really think that was a statement that i'll own in terms of what i said and we talked about it after the meeting i mean there are conversations that can occur between board members

157in between times as long as we're not talking about board member board business with more than the quorum so you and i talked about that candidly offline and we and i shared exactly what my perspective was on doing that and i still remain at the idea that if it's about the content of the meeting if there's something that we're trying to accomplish big things in a school district like levy campaigns bond issues contract renewals big topics like that that come up and have to have a board meeting in order to accomplish i still stand ready just like sherry said mrs dorsch said about wanting to make sure that that's a priority so it's not as though it was an attempt when i suggested 12 meetings to get away from doing board work sorry angie i

158interrupted you yes because we did bring that and i honestly i'm a little offended that you're offended because well everybody's okay because i came in and jeremy and i talked about it and we brought the dates to you at the end of last year asked what would you like us to put on the organizational agenda because it's your agenda and mr fuji was the only one that gave us anything concrete emailed out again mrs doris responded about what about a compromise so that's how we got from i think you wanted 12. so she said are there times of the year where we could add in work sessions where it would make sense so we looked through and said okay february 10th we added that one because that would be a board coming on we get

159through january all the organizational stuff great time to sit down and talk through things in depth then we added the second one in june we told you why on that everybody talks about graduation and starting school i actually prefer one then because first crazy business so that is not a time i'd like to um but then we put one in september so the school year is tucked in here's a morning one where we can again dive in and then we did another one in november trying to stay away from december because everybody's schedules are crazy with concerts and things like that so that was not meant to be disrespectful that was us reacting to the only feedback that we received and i said we'll put it on the agenda so you guys can discuss it

160and you're always welcome to change it so please don't paint that like we're being disrespectful to the sport thank you so mr crowley i wonder or mr president i wonder like everybody else you kind of canvassed for a number and the number that you had proposed was 31 i'm still not necessarily and i agree with you maybe 12 is not enough i get it that's okay instead of talking about whether or not there's a particular number given the fact that we have these ones approved is there something that we need to attend to that couldn't be attended to in this framework or is it just about the number per se no it's not just about the number as i explained before i believe we that we need to review the board policy sure well you

161can't that's not going to fit into a business meeting okay so if you have 17 business meetings you're going to have to have additional meetings and the board policy isn't the only items uh what would be the other items i'm trying to think of what it was i'm like you now uh ouch well no you meant that as a compliment yes i meant it as a compliment i always only give compliments yes sir you didn't know that general discussion of board business i will to your point i will review my emails because for some reason that's not ringing a bell the request what was made here and then tammy said something i think stanley has sent it out not me and i know the only response we got that i recall was from sharing i

162remember responding to that email and if i'm yeah i apologize however i appreciate that i was just trying to give you a starting point for you to discuss and it's hard when you all don't agree for us to even know what to put on the agenda so we did the best we could with the feedback we received with the intent that again you had the opportunity on january 13th if you want to change it we weren't trying to i will last one i will check my email chain but we're back too and the purpose for me to pull the members there's five members here with five different schedules with five different whole lives with different number of kids and duties and responsibilities i don't believe 17 is enough yes i would say in regards to

163looking at the dates and one of our the former board member spoke about not knowing what you don't know there's a lot that i don't know there's a lot that other people might not know or might not know about me there's a lot i don't know about sherry i know too much about steve because we're neighbors just kidding but um i think that looking at it in what angie's saying and you know august being really busy um and we're all very busy that really well february i know that i have to go away for 20 days for training so i'm looking at march april or may if we had two board meetings that those months if we had them on the schedule it's much easier for me to say to my boss here's the dates

164that i would prefer to either work morning or evening sherry what does it work how does it work for you or steve how does it work for you and that we can collectively come up with where a majority of us could be there if we need to be there for me to pull a 48 hour notice for my company is nearly impossible because i teach clients and they're you can't not show up so looking at the dates i just see march april and may as where possibly we could you know um compromise and add those in and then if we don't need them we're but i i feel like to get enough teeth on what's going on in this school board because i wanna i wanna give my 150 just like you said sherry you

165want to be here you want to be involved but we have other correct other if we don't plan out it's really hard to whip something up you know with juggling like a circus all these other things we have in our lives also for you too angie if you saw in advance okay there's an extra meeting that those three months and then it's tough for you i mean you're juggling lots of plates we all feel like we're circus people keeping the plates spinning but if we can keep those that's my opinion as a mom working parent and all those things can i make a quick point about your um the averages i mean i don't know i'd have to look back at obviously all those years and see what was happening but just off the top

166of my head i know that in a lot of those years we were either had levies on the ballot or we had bonds on the ballot or we had a failed levy had to try to figure out how to get another levy on the ballot um riffing teachers or roofing staff um i mean and and then building buildings for a lot of these years i mean how many years has there been construction going on yeah so well and before that the middle school and yeah so 10 years takes us back to 2012. the middle school was done by then that's why i went back okay to get an average and to assume that those issues wouldn't be in the next year i mean i mean you have to have a starting point right well that's

167why i feel comfortable with the starting point point of 17. i think it was it was a good compromise between how many meetings we had last year and and going down to you know one i think too you know we can add meetings if we need to add meetings and i think historically whenever issues have arisen whenever we have whenever there's been an emergency situation that we needed to have that we needed to meet or whenever we felt like you know what this is coming up and we really need to focus on this and talk about this we need an extended period of time when we can talk about this we have all been able to come together and find a time that works for everybody and do it now it's not always easy but

168but i think there's a danger and you set all these meetings and then you know you end up well it's on the calendar and so then you fill time and our administrators plan for these meetings as well you know um just like you saw this evening with building presentations and a lot of time and effort goes into these meetings so you know if there's 31 meetings on the calendar the team's going to plan for 31 meetings i mean you know and and i just feel like we can accomplish what we need to accomplish this year without doing that and if something comes up we will figure out a way to you know plan some special meetings to take care of it and and to your comment about kind of this i i don't even remember

169exactly how you phrased it um so i'm not quoting you but it's kind of like us versus them or whatever like or or disagreeing just to disagree that like that isn't it at all you know it's about doing what we need to do to get the business of this district done the most efficient way we can and i think we can do that in 17 minutes i can do however many meetings oh i forgot you're the one that didn't even give me a number i i don't have a full-time job anymore and uh this is my this is my i'm gonna give you one okay poof i didn't say that don't give me one you ain't got the time oh no no no now before there's a perception of that being out there that is

170not at all never mind so everybody's good with the 17 the schedule as it is and we can we can amend the schedule by work sessions with 48-hour notice at least special sessions clarify a couple things technically there's no such thing as a work session it's a special board meeting that we use as work time i just want to make sure he's in my term and in the past when we've decided like board members have said hey we really need to dive into this or can you bring this person in to talk to us usually when that has happened it hasn't been that we have to do it 48 hours i mean it's typically been like a month out like hey next month we schedule some additional time um since i've been the central office

171we've done that several times so we're certainly able um tammy does a good job then of getting with all of you coordinating a time that works and i i mean there may be the world's crazy so there may be times we need a 48 hour notice but the majority of times in history that we've done that it's more of like a month or a few weeks that we have time to coordinate so i think that helps the schedules a little bit i would just encourage you um if you do need something like that bring it up and if the board decides as a whole that you want a work session scheduled as a special meeting then we can certainly do that everybody good then we'll move on that takes us to uh 13.1 do you

172want to make them it is recommended the board approved the calendar for the school years uh 2022 and 2023 and 2023 and 2024 iso second so just to note here um there is a set number of days i know it's been a long night for everybody here but uh any questions on the two drafts these those were presented last month i know we have two new board members on since then um but certainly not heard any questions but certainly any questions that you have that can help with i'm happy to do that i'd like to add that in the past we've tried to do two year cycles our families appreciate that for vacation planning we haven't done that the last year is just because of construction and um uncertainty with timelines there but we feel

173pretty confident for the next couple years that we can and can you walk through you shared last time when you presented these for conversation a little bit about the calendaring process with staff and input and how the calendar is put together yeah and we do include all of our unions or at least an invite for our unions to participate in this we have a couple administrators there were eight members this year two were administrators myself included and then six staff members from our unions and um we've had anywhere from that's actually the lowest we've had in my years here we've had up to 15 to 20 involved it's up to them to decide if they would like multiple representatives or who they would like to be a part of that um so we share the

174drafts we generally go off of where we're you know starting point is what what did we just complete and then from there input you know whether work days um days that did uh work out days that didn't work out uh just overall we look at the winter break i know that's always a big one to look at um you know at the end of the day we try to look at the starting date being after the hartford fair is a specific piece that we look at as many of our students participate in that um and then we look at that memorial date as trying to end around that time or before that time if at all possible has just been kind of that that overall traditional piece of of everything involved with calendar so that

175then limits uh based off of the number of student days the number of teacher contract days that that limits then where we have to put days and so we would love to have uh you know we hear parents and and staff members uh would love to have two full weeks off during that winter break uh it doesn't always work perfectly that way i noticed when the holiday is next year that's that's always a piece we've looked at you know doing when we look at student absences a lot of times that day after easter was won over the last couple of years that we've moved one of our conference comp dates from october to that day after easter as that traditionally has been a day where a lot of students are out after traveling for that

176holiday and so we've we've moved that date that was a pretty good move over over time that we've had input on that that a lot of people have appreciated that move so that once again is presented within these two calendars here uh we do look at other districts we do look at the career center as part of that as well trying to coordinate schedules as much as possible looking at spring break as well they of course are on different staggered times of improving one year to your calendars but in general this is a calendar that fits pretty well with where we've been over the last few years that was the one concern i brought up so thank you for addressing it relative to the career centers sure to collaborate with them i have a question

177how many snow days do you have baked well we don't have days anymore so it's actually um i can't even remember how long it goes but now five years maybe they've switched to hours yeah so we actually have a little bit longer school day than some people do so we end up having actually checked it last year we could have missed 15 days that isn't something that needs to be reported back to the student body doesn't mean we are it doesn't mean we are only at one yeah obviously you know and and i can certainly share more for mr fuji's request on those but the main thing i always look at with those is um student driving conditions um i honestly don't worry about the buses as much as i do the high schoolers driving

178um and typically with the first bad weather of the year too i know my superintendent fears and i would talk we have a new crop of drivers it's not used to driving on ice and snow and so we tend to look at that but we've been fortunate this year that we've only had to use one so far we have uh plenty i unless something crazy happens which i keep saying i mean the meteor might fall out on the sky who knows they said that one's gonna miss yeah i mean i think anything's possible it doesn't surprise me that you know i keep an eye on that i believe about plowed the meteorite hits i mean i was just being hypothetical but thanks for that um but anyway so we should be good on on days

179because we're at an hour and when they did the hours they didn't let you reduce days so right we kept the same amount of days it just gave us a little flexibility a student asked me you know i i can't tell you that's probably the number one request that i get from students is calamity days they also ask my children all the time okay any other questions thank you jeremy okay mrs nix mr fuji yes miss dorsch yes mr crowl yes miss graziosi yes and miss yes takes us to 13.2 it has recommended the board approve the following new budget accounts uh bwmsu service america grant and ruling our experience fund which is rocks so moved second okay i will so in the account world when we get special grants or if we have a

180club that is going to be ongoing it's good to be able to keep those funds separated so as we see here the middle school got a grant to help with their service projects this is not only for the mlk day service events but also for the global youth service events so that's what those funds would be going towards and then for the rocks this has been something i know we had a presentation um gosh a year or two ago maybe something that goes on at both our intermediate school and our middle school and they received a donation for registrations and things like that so beginning to because it has been an ongoing thing setting up a fund where the donations they get and different events that they get to be able to set those up

181so that's what those funds and you'll actually see a donation um regarding one of those to follow any questions for jeremy so these are established clubs or established items we're looking at funding though or providing those fun lines in this moment separating out so they're a dedicated account for those yeah they have exactly they have their own bucket now and and when you get grant monies a lot of times there are requirements on on separating it out so thank you any other questions go ahead jeremy mr fuji yes miss nix yes mr crowl yes miss dorsch yes mrs graziosi yes ms smith yes item 13.3 just recommended the board approve the following donations one thousand dollars donated to ruling our experience donated by neighborhood bridges and going to the newly created rocks fund 82 64.82

182donated to big one high school yearbook donated by student managed student activity at big wanna high school yearbook fund well that's where it's going so moved second any questions for jeremy jeremy mr fuji yes mrs dorsch yes mr crowl yes it's uh item number 14 human resources update mr cooper yes sir um everything's pretty explanatory here i do want to self-explanatory i should say i do want to highlight in 14.1 that that mechanic half position there is an ad it was an anticipated ad actually the beginning of this school year we have not been able to had not been able to find someone for that halftime position we did recently get somebody on board for that and so this would be a huge help we are now uh to two and a half mechanics giving

183you approval with this position tonight uh two and a half mechanics for our fleet about 40 buses so they are worked hard they they do an amazing job to keep our buses moving and an aging fleet at that but uh you know we are welcoming uh giving your approval tonight kenneth fashing as as a mechanic for part time mark do you know ballpark too how many other service vehicles we have i know we have a lot of beyond just our houses pick up six or seven we have what two trucks uh we have our salt truck um i'm sure i'm missing some but six or seven others um and then just looking through again replacement positions throughout from here and i believe again it's pretty self-explanatory but certainly available to answer any questions you may

184have on any of these items here tonight okay thank you need to read these if you read the first one and then sometimes somebody will maybe do it graciously i was waiting for that before i started 14.1 mr president yes i moved that 14.1 through 14.4 uh go consent agenda i'm missing the language there but i want to accomplish the intent you just articulated yes thank you that's what i was waiting for i'm learning sorry life is good okay uh mr fuji yes mrs garagiosi yes ms storsh mr crowl yes ms nix yes and miss smith yes but i just had for our new board members the reason we do that that way that format format mark comes up and kind of shares about the whole section and then they just put on one associate

185sometimes so if you ever have questions just know we don't typically have a discussion at that item so you want to ask and before or no item 15 scheduling of the next board meeting the next regularly scheduled meeting is february 10 at 7 30 a.m here and the meeting after that is february 17 at 6 30 p.m here both meetings will be streamed and made available district-wide mr president yeah um could i note that february 10th was one of the ones on that original date proposal that we talked about being a longer session folks are able to be available and if you could um send potential topics for that i will jeremy and i will meet with doug on if you could pass over to him on items that he would be interested in covering

186as we kind of look at pulling the new team together and see what arizona that is dangerous because before we go to item 16 are there any topics from the board members that would like to be included in the agenda for the 10th meeting i'm polling again the board members special items if we could talk about um [Music] more in person be it um like we talked about and i you did mention that but maybe we could just go over a little bit more about in-person um parent-teacher meetings looking at volunteers in the school going through i don't know you getting here but the question was asked and the question was answered they're working on yes oh okay i didn't know it yeah no i will i was live streaming while i was oh you

187can't watch your phone and drive i didn't listening i was listening oh i would like to uh we've talked about the board policies and i mean i'm i feel like there's a lot there that i need to be aware of and maybe have questions about so i don't know if that's something that we could start addressing at that meeting and do you want to like take a walk through the policy manual and maybe talk about how it's laid out and then if there are [Music] yeah any starting point my point of reference is very cloudy through the policies okay we'll start on section one 101 would be good i i have acquired a staff handbook and i've been reading it so i've got some really good insight to that as far as the board policy

188and i'm meeting with jeremy next week about uh the different levels of pay and qualifications and as a reminder if you want to start looking through the first section then that there is a link on our website so as you mentioned that then is that the mentality that we want to adopt is kind of start at the zero zero zero zero level go through bylaws and then just review i would presume that board members uh with more than a month's experience on the board probably has reviewed it yeah i guess so the reason for the question right now see now this is a conversation and not an interruption the reason for the question on that is you know we always have the opportunity for selected board member item or i'm sorry uh selected board policy

189so i didn't know if there was like a starting point of hey let's let's look at as was addressed here tonight uh visitation uh uh policies around visitation is there a topic of policy or does it literally start at zero zero zero zero and work through nine thousand plus and zero i think we need to start there and if you already took the course and for some other reason you're back this year then you don't need to study it but that's why i'm looking forward to studying that's the topic okay that'll be on the agenda for next week so i'm hoping and if you need a device we're having to provide one but i'm hoping that maybe we don't need to print all these you should be able if you don't have a good device

190to do that i'm happy to have them available just let me know or the board members that review it on their computer at home if you have a page or a policy that you question just print it out right i don't mind putting one here there but like if we print out every bylaws it it seems like it would be i don't know more more efficient use of time if everyone read the policies on their own and when they had questions or wanted to specifically address certain items they come prepared to discuss those i think yeah i think what you're saying we can review and then plan to ask any questions or clarification i think we'd move real quickly through the purpose the purpose for the question that i asked is to get it on

191me an item on the agenda and that's the item she brought in should you have anything you'd like no no no no no no you just went on the agenda the bylaws and then you're all going to review them and then you'll just come with questions just have a discussion oh for a title exactly we may go beyond that bylaws review yeah okay what about um as well can be under 13 i believe no that wouldn't if you're not having an action item we probably could just put it as part of the discussion i mean we have that on the agenda as well item 10 right select selected policy typically we do readings and approvals but i guess we could just put a discussion you're nothing nothing if i come up with something am i

192allowed to hit you up and help me absolutely yeah that was my thought is this is a lot of problems i've just come up with ideas i'd like to be able to if somebody has something on their mind now that they would like to discuss next week then streamline it the first i'm gonna defer to uh we'll let miss grazios have this one oh i forgot to ask wayne did you catch how many people were streaming i okay all right to me make it official mr fuji yes miss yes mr crowl yes and miss smith yes i can stop this