Board of Education Meeting - 02/17/2022

001nice i'd like to call the meeting to order and do a little explaining at the last meeting i had incorporated a moment of silence prior to the pledge and i'm accustomed to that because we do it at every meeting at the township level but some people wanted me to explain the etiquette for it you can stand you can set if you stand you'll be prepared for the pledge which will immediately come after the moment of silence so with that uh let's have a moment of silence for personal reflection followed by the pledge 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 roll call jeremy here doris mrs nix and just for the record

002mrs uh graziosi and mr fuji are not able to be with us tonight that takes us to number five district goals improve academic achievement promote whole child development optimize capital and human resources and demonstrate financial responsibility that'll take us 2 6 and 6 1 is recommended the board approve the minutes of january 13 2022 organizational meeting and the january 13 and january 20 20 to 2022 regular scheduled meetings do i have a motion summary uh discussion i didn't review them the second time but one of the mr crowles just left the l off we can go back through and make sure we got all the l's okay go ahead with a roll okay call mrs dorsch yes mrs nix yes mr crowl yes and mrs smith yes and that takes us to number seven the

003superintendent's report thank you we'll start with academic achievement tonight and proud to introduce our bikwana elementary principal mrs lauren height cam she's in her first year and doing an outstanding job at bui this year so thanks for coming tonight and i'll let you introduce whoever you cry it's just me tonight but i have some some video where i've been able to include some voice from our teachers and our students so it's part of the president's presentation so i wanted to start by just thanking you the board of education mrs hamburg for inviting me here tonight to talk about what we're doing at bwe and i'm really going to use this as an opportunity to talk about not just what we're doing in our building but um also what we're doing really sort of a combined

004effort between all four of our elementaries a new program that we're bringing that is really focused on coming together as a community around around our students so we're going to talk to you a little bit of our program we're starting this year called the big family read aloud so as you know as mrs hamburg mentioned i am new to the district new to big walnut and one of my first um one of my first introductions to our staff was when i met this summer with our pac which is our principal advisory committee it's a group of staff and teacher leaders in the building and we sat around talking about what was going to be our theme for the year and our theme for this year that we came up with pretty quickly was better together

005and really where that's coming from is thinking about i guess we in the world but especially too in education i've been through a lot over the last couple of years coming from march of 2020 when we were forced totally apart and working in isolation teaching from home and students learning at home big walnut had a major achievement being able to come back in person all year last year but we know that a lot of our families were still learning a lot of our students were still learning in the virtual learning program or seeking other opportunities like homeschooling or private schools some of our teachers were teaching from home in vlp and so coming back this year really felt like coming back together our students were returning from vlp many of our families who have who

006were using those alternative options came back in and one of my first introductions to bui was our back-to-school night our open house and right away the feeling of homeless community is just incredible um seeing our parents come in our building and even though they were wearing masks you could just see the smiles on their faces so happy to be back in our buildings meeting their kids teachers going into the classrooms and our kids too so um that's where we settled on our theme yeah and i have some teachers and students here who are going to tell you a little bit about what it means to them better together means that we all come together to support one another have fun with one another and just all around be a better group and be best friends

007with each other better together means you can help each other better together means that it's not just depending on you to get the job done [Laughter] um we really started to think about so our staff first off talking about our staff i was blessed to come in into bewe where our staff truly collaborates from weekly plc's they are exchanging lesson plans talking about something that didn't work and trying to refine it and tweak it for our students our data meetings they really lean in to analyzing student data to looking so closely to thinking about what do our students need whether it be enrichment or intervention and where how can we meet them where they are and help them grow and our professional learning days which have been an incredible opportunity and all of our teachers

008i would say across the district truly show up as learners those days they are open they have an open mind to what new ideas they can bring back and the little shifts they can make to find a new opportunity for their students and then our students as they we welcome them back we really reinforce this idea of how can we be better together what does it mean to be better together at bwe um and our teachers have taken that and run with it our students are doing a lot of hands-on hands-on learning where we're getting them to collaborate and think together and problem solve see that like you heard in that student example the ideas of others help make our product better help grow our ideas so really kind of encouraging that open mindset and

009and that hands-on collaboration and listening and then our parents and i think when we think about our parents we know that we need to partner um and this is really if you want to click the next one it's really a triangle we know that it takes all three sides to really support our students here in the district that is parents at home and teachers at school and then the students being that that active part of what we're trying to build here the tough thing is that parents aren't there every day so they're like this missing piece where we're educating the students and we're growing in our relationships with them um and their parents are at home and if you've ever put a kindergarten your kindergartner on the bus for the first time you know how

010that feels as a parent for the first time in their lives you're sending them off and you don't know what they do all day you know and usually they come home and say nothing how's your day good um they tell you about yeah snack or recess and so um so they put a lot of trust in us and our families really do trust us and believe in us um but how can we bring them in even more i think we do a really great job with parent-teacher conferences and newsletters and communication um but we know that it's been tough the last couple of years so there just being less family events less less of that going on and we're getting back there we're definitely moving in the right direction but we really wanted to do

011something that was different something to really bring our parents in and that's where the idea of the big family read aloud came and so we started out thinking about our school and then we really said this needs to be district-wide so i'm presenting to you about be wee but it's really going to be all four buildings and what the big family read aloud is is if you've ever heard of a community or library doing kind of a um a city-wide or a wide read where they pick one book and everybody in the town is encouraged to read that book and you might have events or or a discussion group um that's kind of what we're building off of here what we're going for but here it's a read-aloud and so the entire district for our

012k-4 students every single family is going to receive a copy of the same book and our ptos are graciously supporting this program so we thank them by buying the books for all of our families so each student next friday will come home with a copy of the book and i think the title might have leaked but i'm not going to be the one who links it so i'm going to keep it a secret today and our kids are going to come home with the book and in this book is going to be a calendar for the month of march all of our families are going to read together at home we will have activities in school that accompany the reading we're going to have little celebrations and celebrate reading and do some learning around that

013book but the big important piece is the reading is happening at home families gathered around a book reading aloud to their students really to enforce that importance of family literacy but also to build again that connection between school and home that we know our students see that they're watching us and they see that wow my my parents or my guardians my families they work together with our teacher teachers and they really both care about me and and what i learned and how i grow so you can kind of see a little bit about what's coming and i just wanted to talk a little bit about the why research is pretty strong on family literacy programs they do matter um you can kind of see some of the things up there but in addition to that

014oral language and vocabulary and reading skills they really go beyond that they touch we see improvements in students overall achievement and just their attitudes towards school family trust in schools increases students beliefs that they can succeed improves and just making the home a literacy rich environment makes a huge difference because kids see that i can read for joy i can read i can share the act of reading i can talk with people about what i'm reading and seeing the value that it has as you grow older so when kids see their parents reading they realize that this isn't just something i do at the set aside reading time at school this is a lifelong activity so really looking at this program kind of bringing us all together nope you can play it's important to partner

015with parents at home because they help continue their child's education even when teachers aren't around this event is going to be a lot of fun and i'm really excited to see parents continue um they're educating their students at home and having those quality conversations around literature and just engaging with their students so this year we have a privilege of partnering with parents in a big family read aloud and one of the things that's super important in building a strong bridge in connection with our families is to include the parents not only on weekly reaching out through schoology and letters but also on a more personal level with their kids and when kids know that they're supported both at school and at home and that parents and teachers are a team and we're their advocates it

016builds a stronger community and so like i said one of those things for bp is and for all of the elementaries is to do the big family read aloud to have fun together to come together and to learn and love for reading parents and teachers should work together so the parents can know what is going on in school so they can help their kid at home if they need it i think parents and teachers should work together because parents and teachers both help you learn new things and they can help you both help you be the best person and i always say that you know our students you think about their most important person in their life is probably their parent and um and to see that their teacher is partnering with their parents just

017speaks volumes to them the last thing i wanted to touch on was the eagle profile and we've really embraced this work at buey as a staff and thinking about starting to dive in thinking about what does this look like in our classroom how do we develop these skills for our students that we know are so important and the more we've dug into it the more we realize this isn't just something for our students these dispositions being a collaborator a communicator a problem solver all of these are really something that we as the adults need to model for our students and that goes to everyone from the bus driver who greets him in the morning the food service person who gives them their lunch our custodians our teachers showing our students that as adults how do

018we solve problems how do we work together how do we communicate with each other and so the two that i really want to highlight with this program are obviously collaborator and showing our kids that we are partnering together with their parents and we're working together and then the last one is really responsible citizens so our hope for this program really goes beyond just families and teachers but also we're looking to you as the community so i guess i'm coming to the board of education also to invite you to be a part of it we would like to invite you to read the book with us we would like to invite you to be a guest reader if you'd like and record yourself reading and if that's something that you're interested please reach out to cater

019annie and we can kind of set you up to schedule a recording of a read aloud of a chapter and we'll release that to parents we want our kids and our families to see that this whole community really stands behind our students that they we believe that they are our most valuable asset that we have and that we're showing up for them so that's kind of and i have a book for you and it's wrapped so you can't see what it is but don't open it in here right because we don't have yeah there's a title right i don't know um so and do you have any questions about the program or about what we're doing at bui and i don't know if they typically are questions did you see were other schools doing this

020yeah so all four elementaries are participating and i know that annie's planning a similar accompanying program for our elc students so it won't be the chapter book but um some read aloud activities for them throughout the month as well and had you seen this in other communities as well or um so i actually was a reading specialist in one of my previous districts and did this program there so we loved it it was a community very similar to big walnut where i came from and and it was just a great way to bring our community together so pitched it here and was very encouraged to go for it again i thought it would just be one building but it's been amazing that every single building has said no i want in so yeah i think

021it's a wonderful idea and i'm thrilled to see you're using a paper book rather than something on the chrome well we wanted to provide as much access as possible in addition to the 1344 copies that we bought we also bought 20 copies of a spanish edition and so our families who whose spanish was their primary at home language if they chose to we we bought them the spanish edition so i think that was great too can another question and then you have do you have anything additional with read across america or was that kind of um yeah i know this kind of i know it's a separate item so sorry i guess i kind of was misleading on that but our culminating week will really be kind of our read across america week where we

022celebrate reading just in general with our students part of that i know in the past some board members have done the reading and so nice way to tie it in with the book study and again would encourage you to reach out and do that it's one of my favorite things to do i got to read to some first graders this week and of course they were just excited to hear that i call snow days but i think that'll be like a book so if you get a chance to do that hope you can okay thanks lauren [Music] [Applause] and she is passing out the super secret special books there um we'll have mrs clark and miss toma come up with their academic update good evening i'm here just to give you a quick little update

023on our instructional technology software and where we are at i know that kate and i have mentioned several times this year about our ilc and that stands for for those of you who don't know instructional leadership committee and part of that committee we have a subcommittee which we are working closely with to look at what technology programs we're using and do we need to revise that revamp it we are on we were on a three-year rotation and then covet hit so i think it's year four that we've had these same programs so basically what we have done is we we created with that committee a rubric to see if each program matches what we feel is best for students so part of those criteria points personalizing is it personalizing instruction for our students is it

024engaging are we able to see student growth are we able to grab data reports from that and then also is it is it it's not replacing the teacher but it's a supplemental to what the teacher is doing and then also in addition to that does that program offer some sort of professional development for our teachers so that they can be experts at the program sorry i don't want you but in case some folks aren't familiar could you maybe share how the technology is used especially like an example of an elementary reading block and what role that plays versus the rest of the absolutely yes so we um i'm going to backtrack a little bit with our committee we also created a philosophy because we don't want a chromebook just to sit in front of a

025child for an entire 90-minute reading or 75-minute reading block because we don't feel like that that is what's best for kids so how we use that is we do a workshop model and i don't know if you've seen our framework but we do small group guided readings so while the teacher is working with students the other small group of students the other students are doing stations so one of those stations might be six to eight kids on a chromebook and then they're doing for example i know in first grade they're doing lexia which is a instructional software program that is a personalized learning path so it gives them a diagnostic assessment to see where they are and where their strengths and weaknesses are and then it takes them on their learning path and that isn't

026used more than i would say 15 minutes really probably less than that in the k2 area because by the time the student logs on and transitions from a station it's probably less than that so really it's in one to two max rotations during that one reading block um so again we definitely i agree with miss nix when you said thankful for the paper back book and not a screen because we also agree that it is important to put books in kids hands um so we can do a really great job of balancing that and our books that kids use in our books like we think of books where you should turn the page uh there are some titles that are on the chromebook that might be that one or two technology stations could you describe

027what some of those other self-guided stations might be sure absolutely just to give people a full picture yeah and i have to go back to biwe so i'm sorry i'm going to use biwe as an example because i was principal there but some of those stations might be word work where the students are manipulating letters to create um different words depending on word patterns that they're working on another independent station might be reading a book reading to self it might be some sort of collaboration with another student in the class it might be a book talk it might be writing about what they just read it could possibly be thank you a phonics game so all of the other stations are not technology based and then obviously you have that um group of students that's

028working with that teacher in guided reading so or guided math whatever that might be in the math workshop model some of the stations would look like math games working with a partner on flash cards and then the same type of concept where you would have a personalized learning path for the math we have a lot of students one in one classroom for example a first grade classroom we can have students that are on a first grade math level all the way up to a sixth grade math level so some of these programs give us that opportunity to reach all of our students for that small amount twist 15ish minutes and then the reports that they that the programs give us allow our teachers to dive even deeper into the data to figure out where the

029holes are and how we can close those gaps they use that to kind of go through each program this program does not meet this criteria this program doesn't meet this criteria so then we were able to narrow down our selection so we have a couple vendors that we're working with where we're going to push out some pilots and some trials for about a month a month and a half um so that our our teachers can and students can get the feel for it and then we'll come back together as a committee and get um obviously their their feedback on which direction we may or may not go so just wanted to give you that update and we'll continue to update you on that any other questions um you know annie and i have experienced lots

030of firsts this year um with our role being new to us so we had a new first this week i wanted to share with you guys we were part of launching our podcast and preparing for that so we began completing the podcast this week using or with support from students at the high school angie's done a great job of just really thinking creatively about how we can communicate in different ways reach different audiences so we're really excited about it we've always done a state of the schools and so we try to kind of mix up how we do state of the schools and have tried different formats so we're excited that this year we'll be doing state of the schools through our podcast so annie and i had our first ever recording of a podcast

031experience so we were maybe a little bit stressed and not gonna lie we had to do a few takes over to make sure that we you know sounded the way we wanted to but we shared information about our academic vision the key initiatives going on in the district the role of our stakeholder groups which include the instructional leadership committee that annie was just talking about as well as our academic advisory council and there's a lot more packed in this episode too so we're really excited it should be coming out in march and we hope that it will answer our community's questions about what is that curriculum piece look like and and how does big walnut tackle curriculum because it's such a broad term so we're excited any questions no thanks for doing that i i

032love like you said how angie's always creative about you know different ways to communicate i think it's really helpful i know that the facebook lives were always good for people to to see and hear and i love that you're providing like specific examples of what the curriculum looks like because i think you know sometimes we can read things but until you can really kind of picture that and get a better idea it's hard to it's hard to know so that's really helpful so thank you you're going to release two episodes a week in march which will be on each of the areas in the district and we have jay money making a repeat appearance if you ever uh listen to him on the calls that we had a few years ago we were able to

033we actually got really good feedback on those if anyone ever listened to those um we could pilot a few but the price was really expensive so this is kind of getting a similar effect but a lot cheaper um get to use the kids new podcast uh video recording studio at the high school which is cool and have them involved and then um so that'll be in march and then season two will go down to one episode a week and the kids are working right now on um they're doing the intro and the outro they're also doing some commercials and then they're going to start helping more in the second season with some of the hosting and um they're being trained on how to do the technical end event which i could begin to explain um

034caleb on our tech department's helping with that and then second season is going to be just more exploring topics and questions that people have so certainly open to suggestions if there's something you would like uh covered we've got the kids brainstorming ideas as well you can email us at podcast bwls.net and we'll be happy to consider whatever topics we're able to address so thank you for being our first guinea pigs and that takes us to 7.2 do you have anything for that i do not just uh and then 7.3 so mr sports is making his way up to the podium with the construction update i have no free books or anything to hand out so i just want to start there just a couple good pieces of good news so the board has a one-page

035document changed last month you might recall the format a little more bulletin a little more specific beyond the high school and project if you will and talking about a couple other things and i've even changed it a little bit today maybe to highlight how some of these areas that come online are specific to use requirements or maybe events that are happening in the building so to start out i'm happy to to report that the last area of the new high school the area we could not occupy the theater wing we received occupancy last week so there was training with the staff i know i think it was yesterday i'm looking at principal jados i think they had an eighth grade orientation in the theater uh there's rehearsals happening every night after school now you see

036so there's lots of activity we're like i hope to say we're driving the car and kicking the tires and learning how to use the new toy so we're moving forward with that so that's good news kind of going from there there's still a lot of work to do on the exterior for sports and whatnot so going to item 2 why not a lot chronologically i want to point out the football concession building is on track for march tonight that ties into the first lacrosse scrimmage while that's not a paid event it obviously will have visitors and stuff and fans in the stands so we want to be able to use that facility pointed out a couple things i just want to share if you were to go over there now we can walk around three

037sides of the concession stand we can get to the restrooms we can get to get this concession area there's two different sides for the restrooms we cannot walk up to the ticket booth so that is concrete and asphalt that has not been installed it is weather sensitive we're looking at working on a plan b just to share if we have to operate a ticket booth a little later in the month i'll get to that bullet in a second but if you would go there now that's probably the most evident thing that's not completed and again it's weather sensitive we're trying to develop a plan b for the ticket booth uh scoreboards lights in fact they're now already using the lights for night practice just to share on the lacrosse field or the multi-sport field kind

038of going from there again it actually starts i'm sorry on the 22nd they're going to start practice for lacrosse so they're going to start using the lights and whatnot so start benefiting from that field which was installed last fall just to remind you in terms of other milestone dates the first lacrosse game or first use of that stadium is scheduled for march 19th so that is even though we will beat that date by about 10 days that's when the stadium press box seating and all that will go live but march 9th as it says there is when we're hoping to have that handed over to us kind of the end of the sports and last time i kind of flubbed or messed up the way i presented it just to share so the multi-sports field

039the grass fields if you will they're slated to be planted uh in 5 5 22 but again we won't be able to use them for almost a full year or growing season so that's where that march 1st 2023 date comes in that week because they get such heavy use it was just our front lawn we could use them much sooner but being athletic field they really need to have grow in and really get a thick root structure ability to be used so i'll stop there that is the high school or high school athletics any questions on those items okay a couple other things i'll point out again we're under contract as you know for the interior renovation of the high school former high school sorry or 555 as some people called it or now the

040future middle school so that's uh underway next week officially we've done some preliminary work but really there'll be boots on the ground next week during the demo and removal of furniture could i could i ask you a question for just a moment heard some comments and questions lately as to just wanting some more clarity around why we didn't wait to move into the new high school until august could you kind of give that perspective um from your lens especially in regards to getting the 555 building ready for august sure so the desired scope just recall is predominantly replacing the carpet many of it original to 1991 removing a couple locker areas to create some extended learning areas as you've seen them in the new high school and elementary and also doing a little bit of

041renovations in the bathrooms that work alone takes right now we're right at the edge of the schedule if you will to do it so even though we're starting awarded it in december starting in january and february we're going to be racing just to get product and have it done by july of this year in time for the administrators to move in and staff and start school in august so we needed that entire break to be able to do it it was not something obviously carpet you can't remove it when people are still in the building so just timing wise we had to have that gap in time so aside from we didn't want that nice new building to sit empty for half a year um i just want to make sure people were clear that

042that was a big reason i know that's been brought up a lot lately why didn't we wait um would have been very very challenging to make that transition and we felt pretty strongly that that 1991 carpeting needed replaced yeah just a summer time would not have been adequate if we had waited to the end of may to complete students in the former high school and then move them into the new high school summer would not have been an adequate time frame to renovate the school so we still would have had some type of interesting gap in time to delay the middle school basically moving over thank you the other item here i've done it in blue just to kind of uh point out too just a reminder the new high school track will not be

043in in time to use this spring we've known that for months and months and months and months probably almost a year now so the plan has been all along to use the older 555 or future middle school track if you go over there now you may notice remember national ncaa is doing a renovation or conversion of that grass field into an artificial turf that works occurring it is also weather sensitive but they are working on a plan such that we can use the track i think it's about three weeks here coming up that we have to start using the track so the field will not be done the field will not be completed in terms of a new artificial field at the former high school but the track will be usable and the field adjacent

044area will be safe that it's not an issue for students to be using that as an event space just to share um other than that moving planning meetings are coming going on for the moves and again the actual moves again are july of this year we actually move the middle school and the intermediate uh to their new homes so that's kind of the big broad picture update any questions on those or thank you all right thank you so much i appreciate it mr president that's all i have this evening thank you it takes us to number eight which is recognitions and we've got an abigail abraham abigail you want to meet me in the middle here you things here to read about abigail abraham um it says here you have two siblings they look like

045they're pretty proud of you um i wanted to um talk a little bit about well actually you can you can maybe tell us some of these things if you don't mind um it talks here about some of your favorite hobbies do you want to tell us [Music] what's your favorite class in school math nice um it says one of the questions on here was what do you want to be when you grow up says i want to be a doctor my mom is a nurse and i learn a lot about her job from her when she comes home from work i ask her lots of questions i will get to meet lots of new people and help them feel better i thought that was pretty special i'm going to read just a few things that

046some of your teachers have to say about you and then we'll let you take this paper home so that you and your family can read the rest of them uh abigail's current teacher mrs kennel said abigail always has a positive attitude her constant smile is contagious her classmates chose her as the best example of what it means to be kind they wrote messages explaining how she is friendly and helps others and then abigail's music teacher mrs blocker said abigail has been a positive present since her first day at bb she has always come to school for smile on her face and a greeting on her lips she enjoys trying new things and is a wonderful role model of her attitude and her behavior abigail is patient with her classmates and the younger students in the

047school which she demonstrates as safety patrol abigail is a joy to have that pg so on behalf of the board of education i want to congratulate you for being a student of the month i'm going to take this home with you [Applause] you over there and next we have savannah smith big one high school student of the month long walk how do you have time to come to work savannah is the daughter of john and tonya smith raise your hands and for the past two years she's been a member of student council and currently serves as the president of both the spanish club and the aguila amigas thank you and tell them about that tell everybody what that is yeah so that was a club started last year by a former student and we're a

048club where we go to classes with our spanish speaking students at the high school to help tutor and translate during those classes so along with that she is a member of the best buddies program and tell them what the best studies basically best buddies is just a club where we make friends so it involves all students especially those with developmental disabilities at the high school and it's just a great way for all of our students to branch out and the next one is a favorite of mine because i was the first woman to join the sunbury lions club and she is a leo so that kind of makes us related she's also the principal's leadership team and she uh also has been an eagles first flight mentor would you like to tell them what your

049eagle's first one is sure there's a day right before the first day of school where all of the incoming freshmen come in a day early and us upperclassmen who are the mentors we kind of show them around the building answer all their questions and just get them acclimated she is a member of the national honor society the spanish honor society and is a national merit city finalist but do you have an update on that i do i learned today that i am now a national merit finalist [Music] [Applause] she's also a candidate to apply for the presidential scholars program sponsored by the department of education thank you and would you like to tell them what your gpa is they believe it is a 4.395 i didn't know you could get [Music] uh preparing to uh

050for her last lacrosse season on the new high school field yes we're very excited yeah there you are and uh after graduation she plans to study political science at the university of dayton welcome flyer with a degree in public administration her goal is to work in the non-profit management field so you know what habits you've done maybe play football her teachers have said the following savannah is a wonderful young lady as well as an amazing student she works hard in school and can be counted on to help others and her community another teacher said she is the president of the spanish club this year and she plans and coordinates all of our club activities she also has been great during each evil time to tutor and assist my spanish two students and another teacher said

051savannah is an exceptional leader and embodies all of our evil strong attributes she is involved in many activities and leadership positions within our school she is a great role model for all our younger students so congratulations thank you [Applause] you have to actually come back after you get your picture and next we have gabby jagger and she's from the big walnut elementary art student of the month so gabby can you tell everyone first grade um [Music] did you use is it okay with you if we keep this here in this building to display until the end of the school year sure well this certificate is for you as well and and we'll keep your artwork here but if you want to take this over to the other room right now with your family and take

052a picture [Applause] next is alexa degenova alexa was unable to be with us tonight but this is her painting and this is the message from her art teacher liz schar alexa is such a phenomenal artist with an amazing work ethic and exemplary attitude this painting two-piece was inspired by an assignment to paint any animal or detailed object of her choosing the goal of the project was to depict with as much detail as possible different angles of the same animal while showcasing compositional techniques color mixing blending and layering the acrylic paints alexa has a passion for animals and her love of animals goats in particular shines through this piece all who have seen it smile at their cuteness and beauty so she will be getting a certificate of recognition and um i'm assuming she will agree

053to let to let the painting stay is that things but i think mrs lee talked to her teacher okay great so there it is and that brings us to item nine treasures report got something for us jeremy i sure do so i'll just go hit some of the highlights on january's financial report again focusing more on the revenue side just to share some of the quirks that happened um we are because on the expenditure side we're running about one percent under um but really pretty much on track um in for our property taxes if you were able to review the report you'll see that we were quite a bit over this is kind of a timing thing where we were able to get three advance payments from the county compared to two last year so

054i anticipate that that will drop down and be more in line for february and then usually it's around march that we get our final settlement and we'll see where we have have come and how we are with our projections as a whole income tax you'll also see i think i've shared and we've this has been a hot topic over the last several years just with different timelines and filing requirements and and all of that but i'm happy to see how after the blip of last year we we really are continuing to seem like we're on track with that normal trend uh with our third quarterly payment and and you see that with january where we we received our third quarterly payment the other kind of odd thing that i've been talking about for several months

055is in the state grants which is essentially our foundation formula you'll notice that we are quite a bit over as i i think i've shared this as well based on projections i was not sure if there would be a lump sum payment or if it would be spread over we did get the lump sum payment the way that our totals are looking i'm anticipating being under in the unrestricted as that continues to tick down month on over month offset by our restricted amount being over and and really it's all part of the same formula but under the the new formula where we had about two restricted areas we now have i think five or six um and and that just means that we should be uh we have to track and report how we're spending

056it for those specific purposes is is the the essential of that um so you'll see that um begin to kind of come down and balance out to i believe all in all about where we expected it to be so that's all i had to share tonight any questions on that okay also i wanted to share about two house bills that i've been kind of tracking and share my understanding what they are as well as just my concern of what what it means for us the first one i was going to share about is both i guess i'll frame it both of them in at least in my opinion are taking away some of our right as a district to be able to be part of a conversation which i'm always an advocate with our community

057partners townships villages i want to be part of those conversations so that's overall part of the the concern on this first one especially it is like i said house bill 123 and it is the community reinvestment areas while we do not have any current community reinvestment areas that that we've had those agreements in place i know that we have had some presented to us and there have been some there's a potential one that would come before the board what this does is it repeals the annual reporting requirement once those are in place and right now we have what's called the turk meeting where a lot of those are done and i participate in that where there is a presentation presenting of are is the individual hitting the appropriate marks of employment and different things that

058were set out in that agreement so that's a concern that that is no longer a requirement to be able to continue to to share that that that individual is living up to their end of the bargain it also increases the threshold requiring board approval from the 50 percent to a 75 percent um those who may not know uh in the community you can go up to a exemption on a cra or community reinvestment area and when you under current law when you go over 50 percent it's required that a board approves that so it's it's upping that amount and again more can be more taxes can be given away or exempted underneath what is being proposed without us having a seat to have a conversation at least the third point on that is as also

059part of our current law if there is supposed if there is anticipated payroll taxes coming in over a million dollars from new jobs coming in because of the cra we have the opportunity to negotiate with the city or or a village if they have an income tax and be able to share in some of that income tax coming in and that's being raised from a million to three million so those are kind of the pieces that that i'm seeing in this and it's just right now is it had i believe is this week had its third hearing in the senate ways and means committee so something to continue to watch and if you know legislators reach out to them if it would be the the board's desire i would happily there are kind of some

060template letters that we could write our legislators in opposition of something like this just because again i think it should be a local decision on those types of things and at least be able to have a conversation in that so that that was uh house bill 123 and then also wanted to mention house bill 126 which is regarding property values and property value complaints to be clear we do do some of these and that we do not focus on residential though what we what we do is we have a an assessment that we we have our attorney that we approved at the beginning of the year for board of revisions and we're only looking at we're not trying to undermine or do anything against what the county is already doing through their triennial updates and

061appraisals but there are those sales that happen in between those time periods where and sometimes it can be just a transfer same owner of sorts but a transfer between an llc and another organization or something like that and at times i have seen that that can artificially show a lower value on the auditor's website than than what a fair market sale would show um so what this so there are a handful that we do each year that uh that we do participate in this and some of the key points on house bill 126 to my understanding is that it would prohibit us as a school district district from filing any initial complaints further than it would it would require us if there was a complaint that if we were to file a counter complaint then

062each one of those that we would be filing a counter can plan against would be a resolution that would come before the board while like i said we only have a handful this could be much more of a burden for larger school districts that may have more and as we grow i mean that could be something if we begin to have a larger commercial tax base that could also be a concern it also prohibits any kind of negotiations between the two parties to come to a resolution outside of the board of revisions through direct payments and settlements and things like that it removes that opportunity and then also once a decision is made by the board of revisions current currently that can be appealed but that this current law as its as is being discussed

063would remove that opportunity as well so i wanted to bring this to your attention and and ultimately my concern is just like i said before it removes uh we are as everybody knows school districts are heavily funded by property taxes um and it is i would not be doing my job in my opinion if i wasn't trying to look out and make sure that everybody is being taxed fairly and generally arms length sale is the way that that is is being seen so um just wanted to bring each of these to your attention and as you as i mentioned if you would like me to um have a letter in opposition of this would happily prepare that and and send it off so jeremy i have a question yes are these out of committee yet

064at the state house so the right now the senate for house bill 126 they did pass it in december it is sitting in it is sitting to be looked at by the house to let's see concur on a vote but it has not as of february 10th it had not been taken up yet by the house the other one then it was just this week that it was in the senate ways and meetings committee for the third hearing which would mean that it's already come out of the house went to them they'll go through the bill and send it back right for those that might not understand the process and for the common people in the audience and online this is what this deals with is the border revision is where there's a transfer and

065the district has a question as to whether the valuation on that property is proper or not as jeremy's explaining these two bills will limit what we have as an ability to in the future attempt to get a correct valuation or a better valuation it is an attempt to keep your taxes lower so that is uh lots lots of stuff there but that's that's what i had to say well i tried to put it inside no i appreciate that i'm a simple man hey you know what sometimes uh i maybe it's a little more i saw a couple glossy eyes out less is more right any further questions for jeremy no is that all you had jeremy it's all ahead all righty moving to item 10 selected board policies uh we've i've got a list of

066the board policies it's i think it's substantial enough that rather than eating up time in our regular board meetings that we have a work session sometime in the beginning of march and i'm not going to say when because i need to get a hold of all the participants to see what fits in the schedule but that would be before our next meeting so i work that out i'll get a hold of you and we can set it up for publication did anybody have any questions on 10. i think i've got everybody's list so moving on to item number 11 board members items of interest we'll start on the left well i i really like your program you're reading and excited to read the book as well as participate i think it's a great idea and

067i'm glad that it's going to be going district wide i think more books with pages that children can learn to turn is very important so thank you that's it that's it sherry um with read across america day coming up i just wanted to take a few minutes to thank everyone on the team here in the district who plays a role in encouraging our students to read and developing young readers and putting time and effort into finding ways to get kids excited about reading i grew up in a very small town in northeast nebraska pretty similar to sunbury actually my town didn't have a lot going on much less than sunbury actually and coming from a pretty large family i was the youngest of six kids we didn't have a ton of resources but i was

068blessed to live down the street from our county library and i spent a huge chunk of my childhood at that library and i read my way through most of it being a skilled reader helped me be a better student but the biggest benefit was the exposure to so many places people cultures and ideas that i never would have known about otherwise and the exposure that i gained from reading gave me the confidence to do many unexpected things in my life i want every child that comes through this district to love reading and i know that's a hard task but i think having a diverse library can support all students in finding titles that they can read and connect with at some level having a diverse collection also gives opportunities to students to read books that

069represent different abilities cultures and beliefs which can help them better understand and develop positive insights about those who are unlike them a diverse book collection helps to stimulate thought and debate in a classroom to better develop critical thinking skills and to develop empathy our students have the greatest chance of meeting their maximum potential when they are able to couple the technical math science and social studies and writing skills that they learn here each day with empathy and the sel core skills that are strengthened by seeing themselves in the stories that they read and by reading stories that expand their worldview this is a huge piece of the whole child framework and i just want to thank all of the teachers aids intervention specialists and administrators here that work so hard to make this a priority

070in our district that's it mine's rather short moving on to item 12. oh i'm sorry i thought that you were really tired from all the stuff that you do i was going to give you a reprieve but go right ahead okay i'm doing all right over here good evening um our students have been very busy this past month so i'm just going to jump right into it our clubs especially have been up to a lot german club had a tasting day where they tried traditional german foods and a movie night on the learning stairs in the academic commons for their valentine's day event spanish club also had a valentine's day party where members made cards for nursing home patients and also friends in spanish classes so we as spanish club officers delivered these cards to

071the inn at walnut trail and then spanish teachers passed out cards during class respectively all three of our language clubs are working together to plan a dodgeball tournament in the coming months so stay tuned for more on that student council upped their donation to 150 lunches for hope house this month and plans to continue to provide with this organization for the rest of the year they also had a sucker sale last week and all proceeds will go to hope house either directly or through food supplies the choir and band concerts in march will be hosted at big walnut so those groups are eagerly preparing for their performances as for sports six boys swim team members made it to the district meet and several boys dive team members qualified for states our game day cheer team

072placed second at occs and qualified for states both girls and boys bowling were occ champs for the first time ever sadly girls basketball came to an end but boys still have a few more games left in their season a group is forming for boys volleyball which is very exciting the ohio high school athletic association added boys volleyball as an emerging sport for next school year as winter sports seasons come to a close spring spring sports start with tryouts beginning next week for academics our third quarter is quickly coming to an end and our students have been hard at work our juniors will be taking the a.c.t test on march 1st so for freshmen sophomores and seniors we do not have school that day senior quotes are also due march 1st the national honor society induction

073information is becoming available for eligible juniors and seniors who are not already members and there is a schoology group for more information on that 8th grade orientation was on tuesday and we hope that incoming freshmen feel a bit more prepared for their exciting next year and then lastly mr stimel one of our teachers at the high school shared some great news with me recently some of our students participated in the biotechnology career development event at central state university to qualify for this level of competition the team placed in the top 20 in the online test thank you to teacher ashley longshore for proctoring this test in this event each student identified equipment completed safety scenarios and demonstrated lab skills while working together to solve a team problem thank you to teacher heather naumann for helping

074these students prepare their lab skills and then our students placed third at the state level at this event team members included maddie jones jordan loki brinley mccurdy and sophie marvin sophie was named the top individual in the state congratulations to this amazing group thank you [Applause] and again my apologies now that brings us to item number 12. did we have anybody that wanted to talk tonight we do have a full slate tonight we have 10. so yes so and just a reminder by our policy it sounds like we're probably okay unless we uh get any more but our policy does mention after 30 minutes we're supposed to extend by a vote of the board so i would say i would make a motion right now that we extend okay a second and so mr crawl

075yes miss nix miss yes okay so we will go until we're done um would you like me to uh to read the public participation piece uh yeah but i would make one unless you're gonna do it for the address um i can mention that if you'd like okay okay um go ahead all right so this is a meeting of the board of education in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not considered a public community meeting this is a time for public participation during the meeting as indicated in the agenda please see referenced criteria for public participation which is attached to the agenda a slight adjustment that was made last meeting i believe it was is uh while we are still requiring or requesting the addresses to be on the

076the sheets we we will not be reading those for the public or posting them to our our minutes so anything else to add with that you're going to control the clock i will i will watch they're going to be right there well it it now has shortened since we're uh not doing 30 minutes i can just keep it on one clock so yeah i'm good keep an eye on him i will i will give whoever is up a wave at about 30 seconds just so you can begin wrapping up um our first person is lad dilguard regarding curriculum review committee [Music] okay so this is a good follow-up from the really exciting curriculum stuff that we heard earlier and i'm looking forward to those podcasts i propose we review our curriculum to ensure it includes

077items of american pride and an accurate portrayal of history and that we're challenging and two who are challenging young minds to the fullest some things might not get taught today because they're not cool or they don't follow divisive narratives that were pushed on every day americans have sacrificed to protect and liberate the rest of the world and young minds should learn to appreciate this i'll give a quick example the united states navy polices the waterways of the entire world to ensure safe free flow of commerce for everyone not just us no one else does this and we don't get paid we don't demand ransoms or tolls so for example if argentina trades with australia via the ocean our navy ensures that free flow of goods how many kids know this and how many kids are

078proud of it is it wrong to be proud of it millions want to move here because of opportunity freedom capitalism rule of law capitalism is a dirty word socialism is hip to clueless people who don't know the pain and poverty that it's created capitalism is what's provided those super computers in your pocket the fancy car you're driving and full store shelves but are we teaching capitalism are we teaching that it's a good thing we're reminded constantly about the sins of the past but not how great this country is and how good we have it secondly on challenging our kids my daughter when she was entering seventh grade course guide said either seventh or eighth graders could take algebra one she had a 99 average in sixth grade math so a challenging class was in order

079but the counselor said that's a typo only eighth graders can take algebra one so she was put in a class where she was literally learning the exact same stuff as the year before after a couple months i reached out to the middle school principal and discovered that indeed seventh graders were in algebra one we requested she be moved to that class that was denied because the rule said transfers weren't allowed during the year now no one thought that our daughter couldn't handle the transition it was just the rule that's a dumb rule she sat through that class all year with a 99 grade average bored out of her mind we as a district let her down we didn't provide good counseling didn't make an effort to put her in the most challenging class and didn't

080correct our mistakes another example that is a little less stressful but my son normally gets perfect scores on quizzes in history class regardless of the quiz results they do the same thing in class maybe if you score perfect you move on to the next section on your own you score perfect all the time maybe he moves to another class we should be searching for slack in the learning process so students aren't hearing already mastered material i propose the board create a curriculum committee of interested citizens that reviews content searches for slack and proposes ways to eliminate it next is barb shelby regarding employee relations committee good evening my name is barb shelby i'm a long time resident of the big walnut school district and a former two-term school board member at last week's meeting the

081suggestion was made to form an employee relations committee and that would consist of two representatives from each of the unions those four unions the superintendent and assistant superintendent and two board members while on the surface this gives an appearance of open communication between employees and their employer of transparency but in reality it's an attempt to create an end run around the agreed-upon rules and procedures that have been developed with much hard work and collaboration and to provide professional and legal support for both the employees and our district while i understand that some may not give credence to the ohio school boards association as a resource this expert organization states it clearly and well when they say that in quotes perhaps the most important responsibility of a school board is to employ a superintendent and treasurer

082and hold them responsible for managing the schools in accordance with the school board's policies end quote our district has done just that and it continues in quotes board members do not manage the day-to-day operations of a school district they see suet that the system is managed well by those professionals and quote the track record of this district in student achievement maintaining in-person education during a pandemic the proactive reporting we heard last week about staffing plans the fact that there are four agreed upon bargaining unit contracts in a district this size and a strong record of recruiting and retaining quality teachers administrators and staff speaks very highly of the reputation the communication and collaboration that represent the overall functioning of a highly performing school system with strong knowledgeable professional leadership as an example of the system

083working article six of the negotiated agreement between the big walnut professional support staff association and the board dated july of 2019 through june of 21 clearly describes that four-level grievance procedure that moves from informal through arbitration it outlines the documentation required to protect all parties the district personnel that are to be included at each level and the support from union personnel that is available to employees throughout the process moving in different circles does not necessitate upending the policies procedures and agreements that are serving the employees and the administration well when there is reference to losing talented good teachers principals and staff please include data to support those statements when there are concerns about the structure of the system realize that current policies and negotiated agreements need to hold sway until the work of changing that

084structure may occur this should take place with the entire board included and significant legal advice along the way this needs to be thoughtfully undertaken with the good of the entire district kept in mind thank you for your time next is tom andrews and leave its issues at the last meeting thank you for the opportunity to speak the first thing i'd like to do is to present the board with this very expensive finely crafted piece of art 4.99 plus free shipping mr buzzkirk do we need a uh a motion and a second and discussion in a vote or can you just accept i will accept it well it depends on how much it how much does it say it costs it's 4.99 4.99 it's probably day minimus okay [Laughter] at two and a half minutes ding

085three minutes two dings we're done uh next i wanted to say it was so nice to be able to watch the recording of the 210 morning meeting to which i was unable to attend the only thing i would suggest there is maybe to put it on youtube or rumble since i believe the district has a youtube page nicer to see it on the tv screen instead of a computer or your phone i had a few comments on what i saw at the risk of being redundant i would again suggest that big walnut look into the liability issue the district has in administering the coveted vaccination i would suggest that the law firm for the district review the board of health documents for extended coverage to the district and give us an opinion i would also

086ask the insurance carrier for the district to give us an opinion as to what our own coverage would provide in the event of an adverse reaction this has nothing to do with being pro or anti-vaxx on this particular vaccination or all vaccinations but everything to do with the financial safety and viability of the district in the event of a bad reaction with 40 years of experience in risk management and insurance i learned using assumption as a strategy never worked out very well i thought that the idea for a committee to handle community questions or concerns was a good idea an answer to what i just described above could be given in a board meeting in the eagle examiner or online at the district website many people who speak at the board meetings during public participation

087never get an answer or reply to their question or concern i would think that after a while people will just stop participating since there's never any follow-up last is what the school is doing as the teaching and or promoting ding there we go c-r-t-s-e-l or d-e-l now you should give me an extra 30 seconds the first was to give you the gift okay uh it was reassuring to hear that the district is not using sel as many districts are around the country our definitions of of it are different non-political our version of sel doesn't have anything to do with critical race theory we are learning or leaning more towards [Laughter] all right here's the box by the way if you insist all right next is ashley ryder and regarding centero and would you like me

088to use the bell or not i would not thank you i do have a rules question last week mr crowl said not to address any board member directly but the rule says to address them to the presiding officer is that mr okay perfect good evening if you'll recall in last week's meeting mrs graziosi and mrs nix address facebook rumors about sentaro counselors and mental health services offered at our schools they questioned community members for daring to suggest the board wanted to get rid of these services even demanding an apology they assured parents this was never part of their agenda or the boards they told parents they stand by them and the mental health services provided by big wanna mrs graziosi ended her speech with the phrase be your own fact checker well here are the

089facts during an august school board meeting mrs graziosi made these statements during public participation i would like to know who hired centero and at what cost and why does the school district feel like it needs to be in the business of parenting our children i'd like to know where the parents come in on this you stated that mental health is a top priority of the safety committee as a parent i send my child to school to be educated on the basics math reading english science and history you say you plan to add several mental health professionals to align with national recommendations why are we aligning with national recommendations when you said we should consider this perspective of the students of our community and i don't feel like this is the perspective of our community i

090would like to see where parents have asked for this overreaching mental health involvement in our children's lives because i know that's not what i've asked for here's some more facts we sat and listened to endless comments from parents villainizing centero including the statements i just read fear mongering with phrases like we have to elect a new board to get them out of our schools we saw candidates posting on social media about overreaching mental health services inviting negative comments from their supporters we read your websites during the campaign that said we need to focus on academics not therapeutics because therapeutics is emotional manipulation we saw the presentations we heard the speakers the audacity to say we're the ones who are causing panic at the community by suggesting this is part of your agenda now that you've

091made a complete 180 my question for the board is this were you lying to your base to get elected or are you lying now to the parents mr crowl in every meeting you've talked about the lack of disability the keyboard warriors and i'm not when i say stop i'm the presiding right and i'm addressing no stop i'm addressing you and i'm telling you to stop for a second while i explain something to you go ahead you cannot address or defame any member i did not you call the flyers i'm reading the facts i have not addressed any member i said mrs graziosi and mrs nix i did not address them and i'm addressing you and you didn't judge me i'm addressing you zip it for a minute no listen you i honest i i realize

092you have a problem with authority or women in power trying to talk over you but here's the thing this is my time not yours i'm addressing you your time is done no yes it is no it's not i'm the presiding officer and i'm addressing you and i'm telling you you're done at the podium you can go sit down i'll speak at the next meeting then thank you that's fine okay now before we move on public participation is to explain to us your position not to make accusations not to call names it is public participation voice your concern and then we'll move on any personal attacks name calling i will call out go ahead next is rachel snyder uh a welcome and something regarding transparency and trust okay my face was right the last time we

093did this i printed off something i'm rachel snyder i live here i am a parent i am a social studies teacher of american history and government i did my student teaching up at the high school i also worked at the high school for a couple years um welcome to the new board members um i'm looking forward to hopefully having the same dispos i can't even talk now either i do better with high schoolers okay um i hope that there is the same diplomacy that was previously on other boards that i have seen over the years we've moved back here in 2014 i have watched most of them because i'm a single mom i'm at home a lot because kids my kids are getting older so i can leave them but i loved hearing that it

094was said in the last meeting that big wanna outperformed other delaware county schools we are also listed as a top school in the state i think my concern is where it's been brought up that things need to be completely overhauled no school system is perfect i work at a dropout recovery prevention school if you want to talk about crazy come to high school we'll talk about that um so i guess there is some frustration on my part that there has been it has been said that there's lack of transparency um i have like i said i have listened to most of the meetings i appreciate um do i call you mr buskirk his guy and miss hamburg and all the board members who have given input um i feel like there has been transparency um

095i need to follow um also um there is not enough time this is kind of going towards a transparency i think i said the last time all the learning standards for history and government economics where we teach capitalism socialism communism all of that we don't teach one is bad or good or whatever a lot of times especially with communism it's the fact that things haven't worked the way that it wanted we have ways to go about it and present the facts to the students they figure out where they're going with it and they can think for themselves my job and the jobs of the teachers are not to just give one point of view and say there you go go out in the world just have one point of view and not accept anything else

096because employers are not looking for that they're looking for people who can change who can adapt who can figure out where they are and still stay true to themselves crt was not taught i just finished up my masters in american history and government it was not taught on any of it it's a legal form i keep hearing it shoved on a national scale and as a social studies teacher it is ridiculously frustrating um my students oh okay is that my 30 seconds okay all right and again trust that was my last thing on there trust some of the teachers ask for their syllabus talk to the principals nobody that my children have had have hid anything from me they have emailed they have opened when i me emailed parents from the high school there's a

097lot of times parents didn't answer me back didn't give me feedback but just trust them ask for the curriculum ask for the learning standards see what they know they are professionals they learn this i sat back there the last meeting oh and just let them teach is what the teacher said so anyways thank you next is jamie osborne and this is regarding structure i want to start off by saying that i am sad to see where our district is heading i have been in the school district for 36 years i loved growing up in the big one at school system i was proud to stay where i went to school i received a great education the teachers prepared me for the future i got to participate in a lot of school activities i followed the

098school rules guidelines and i respected my teachers when did the rules reverse today teachers have no power or control over the students there seems to be no more boundaries structure discipline or morals being taught to these students that is the most important part of the whole child not just about feelings for starters kids can't or kids can pretty much wear whatever they want no matter how distracting it is students are wearing midriff short shorts skirts dressing like animals it is not cute it is a distraction when i was in school i would have been sent home for a dress code violation if a student talks out of line to a teacher spoke vulgar or disrespectful to someone they were held accountable for their actions this would mean a phone call to the parents a detention

099saturday school or suspension two did they get a slap on the wrist and sent on their way bring back those types of corrective actions make the parents and students held accountable for their actions make it inconvenient for all and maybe they will not think twice or maybe they will think twice before they do it again doing nothing is setting children up for failure in the future there are no consequences for bad decisions in the real world it's not supposed to be easy for students or parents if my child is not behaving i will support whatever punishment he receives put the teachers back in control not the students and parents it's not about fear but about respect let's get back to educating the students set them up for success not failure next is annette mcmurray regarding

100attendance and other items all right so um the other day i got to pull it up i had to have my son take a picture of it and send it to me i received a letter in the mail the letter addressed the fact that my second great second grader has missed more than the allotted number of hours from school this year so it shows that she has missed yeah we'll just say 69 hours out of 65 hours that are allotted i was really sad to get this letter because we work really hard to keep our children in school but this year huh sorry no i know it's required by law and but i think that that some you know though to get okay my husband's like he's a school teacher he's like oh my gosh

101you know we're gonna get in trouble we can't do this i'm like what do you want me to do so i just it really bothered me that i got the letter i think i understand that it's law but this year i wish that we could have been able to show a little bit more grace can i answer that yeah i'm comfortable with it um i'll stop the time too yeah i do not want you to ding the bell yet okay we actually tried to get some exceptions for that because i agree and we're not giving them okay so that's good to hear and that's why i wanted to to bring it forward because it was a concern that i had to notify you by law okay it's a concern that i had and i know

102i've heard of some other parents in the district that also received it can it be made up we work really hard to get her to can it be made up um it's just the first tier uh so i got a i got a phone call i think initially like kind of like an all-call generic so you've got a mediation you're fine okay not that we're encouraging but everybody knows obviously especially earlier in the year when we had more quarantine today yeah and that's what impacted a lot of those hours but yeah and we try we try to follow the 24 hours sorry i just made it to you no i appreciate it i appreciate angie all right you're back on the clock okay back on the clock okay so um the the other thing that

103i i wanted to take a moment to address was something that um my sister addressed when we were in school respect was demanded it was something that we all showed to our teachers i feel like that that's changed dramatically um the expectations of our children are not the same as they used to be and i think that we need to go back to some of those ways um i've heard parents say they've had to beg some of the principals to give their child a detention because there was a behavior that they felt like additional discipline needed to take place and they actually had to beg for it um i just think we need to go back to letting our teachers control their classrooms and not worrying about upsetting the parents and upsetting the students teachers

104have a job to do and in order to do that successfully control needs to be in place and i think that that's gotten out of control when it comes to our dress code i know it's not just our school district dealing with it my husband is a teacher in mount vernon and the dress codes he sends down to the office as they're coming off the bus is not appreciated by the parents it's not appreciated by the students but it's the rules and we need to follow them so that's one thing we talk about our teachers and we talk about respecting our teachers and we talk about you know allowing our teachers to teach if we don't follow the rules it takes away from the time in the classroom when they can teach so that was

105my other item thank you next is lindsey leslie regarding mental health good evening board members school administration and big walnut public i'm here to read a letter from a mother of a children in our district who would speak to you herself but needs to keep her child's story anonymous to hammer to whomever cares to listen with all this back and forth on sentaro and what you said and what you say you didn't say i felt the need to share our story i am glad you have never needed these services we are that family we have asked the school to quote overreach we will ask over and over again if needed because simply it saved my child's life i'm a parent of five children my oldest is at bwi and to say they have had a

106rough year would be an understatement the bullying started in second grade in a different district that did little to nothing to help things got so bad we left with a lot of research we moved here to big walnut for a fresh start well this year the bullying came back and it was so bad my child became depressed withdrawn so many meltdowns crying wishing they were dead at 12 years old my child has an actual suicide plan this isn't just a sad kid this is a kid who has been pushed to the brink they made some very scary artwork in which was what pushed me as a parent to have the school step up their efforts enter sentero i didn't even know this was an option the school never involved them until i said it was

107okay after i was explained what they were mrs fortune is amazing but i only can do so much as one person and my child needed help immediately we were already on the waiting list everywhere for months and we finally just got outside therapy this month my child would never have made it this long without sentara counselors i'm not exaggerating one bit when i say that this program saved my kids life we have been down a very dark road this year places you never want to be with your child and we are not received this have we not received this extra help from the schools we would not be here talking about my amazing kid in the same capacity i have no doubt in my mind they would not be here we are still on a

108daily struggle but we are getting there i cannot thank the school enough for offering a program like this everyone should be thankful that we have a school district willing to step up and help a child in need not every child or family can get outside school outside help outside of school if you personally don't want the help then decline it but don't take it away from those children in desperate need the outcomes of these lives these children will be on your hands thank you for listening and i know this this child they are an amazing child and thank you for helping them [Applause] next is larry wells regarding diverse books for the school library good evening i brought this discussion or topic to discuss mainly because the obvious i'm the elephant in the room in

109any time that you have to vote or suggest that you need some sort of investment in diverse books that's stating where the deficiency is at i work in e-learning i create content i work for major corporations all across the state and i specialize in diversity and inclusion in that context you have to be intentional when you are trying to make sure that you're displaying representation from everybody that may either be in this room or not be in this room you have to make the assumption that there are folks that are different races religions all types of accessibility issues and you really have to kind of consider that intentionally even if it's not obvious to you even if it's not something that you personally can associate with i can tell you as a person who doesn't

110have the opportunity to take this skin off there are a lot of things that are associated with that that people try to make assumptions about me about my background about what i might do if i move a certain way or if i get pulled over by law enforcement that sort of thing and it's just unfortunate and whether those seeds get planted from the unintentional educational resources that are deprived from a lot of school districts including this one where you really need to plant those seeds of tolerance acceptance i heard some stories about i don't agree with a lot of stuff a lot of people a lot of different religions backgrounds political things whatever it is but i accept those individuals for having that perspective and and i freely accept them to voice their opinion be

111respectful you know do whatever it is that they do i don't i might not agree with what they wear what they eat what they believe in but it's we we live in america and we're a community and we have to get back to being a community not separating folks together not trying to assume things not slandering people we really need to take the time to invest in understanding what other people might go through even if you just don't understand it and so i'm sure a lot of people wouldn't even understand what i might need to do to put to keep my hair a lot of barbers in this neighborhood so so here we are that's not why my hair's like this but to that point understand that i know what most folks in this room

112do to upkeep their hair that's because i was taught that um and so i just asking you not asking you to change your heart i'm asking you to change your mind and understand that yes please invest in diverse resources for young folks thank you next is alison fagan next is allison fagan and it's regarding mental health services good evening um it is a pleasure to be here as many of you know i had the honor of serving on this board of education for a little over eight years i think nine and change and served as president of the board for some period of time i know what these seats feel like to respect that is important to me that said i spoke to this board in october at a morning meeting presented as a part

113of the importance of mental health services to our students another hat i wear is i'm a licensed psychologist i graduated from ohio state in 1998 so i've been a psychologist pardon me 96 licensed since 1998 so i kind of know what i'm talking about when we talk about mental health services i want to thank the administration our principals our teachers for educating the whole child and i want to thank the board and our administrators for retaining mental health services that are provided by a well-regarded community agency centero you walk in my shoes and talk to other psychologists and mental health providers in central ohio sintero is like none other we are also very fortunate in that these services are provided to our school district with funds from the delaware morrow mental health and recovery services

114board so the services are provided at no cost to big walnut schools that's pretty amazing this is especially important right now as we come hopefully at what's the back side of this pandemic mental health issues are not going to go away especially among children we've seen a two there's likely to be a two year developmental delay in their social emotional development because of what they have been through in these couple of years it's one thing for us as adults to tolerate this it's another thing for a six-year-old a four-year-old an eight-year-old to tolerate it um a recent article was posted on wbns 10 tv was put on television and then posted on their website kevin landers is a journalist with wbns and he wrote a piece that was entitled ohio's child behavioral health system is

115at a breaking point i quote the number of children seeking services is overwhelming the system because there are not enough therapists to treat them that's not going to change anytime soon mental health services support the student who needs them as well as our educators who have a referral source in the classroom thank you our final one for the night is steve mazzy regarding board ethics superintendent hamburg treasurer bus kirk members of the board thank you as per protocol attempt to uh direct my comments to the presiding officer without directing comments to any individual board members as a previous superintendent i'm very concerned about a presentation that was made by a community member last thursday morning's board meeting this along with many other examples is confirming not only my suspicion but the suspicion of many others

116that for a lack of a better phrase there seems to be a lot of pillow talk going on only between some selected community members directly to selected board members but also between board members leading to up to a board meeting where topics have already been discussed and decisions have already been made behind the scenes prior to the public meeting this presentation made by the community members stated during public participation the following thank you good morning i wanted to first of all i got here a little late i wanted to find out for the moment of silence did that go through is that happening upon hearing this there was an uncomfortable yes from the board president the community member stated okay i wanted to thank you for that why is this person thanking them how did

117she know this was even going to be on it the community member went on with a prepared speech with directives of implementing the moment of silence which is important to remember this speech was prepared ahead of time before she came to the meeting the community member went on to say as we implement this it should be after the pledge of allegiance and gave more advice on reading of such by the building principle with further advice i won't go on you get the point this begs the question how did this person know to ask that and have a prepared speech with her further suggestions around the topic it certainly made me wonder as you can imagine as a previous superintendent i've had some experience with preparing board agendas and worked with many board presidents in the

118past to prepare such the board government's team protocol specifically states if a board member wishes to have an item added to the agenda he or should make a request to the board president who will then consult with the superintendent for full disclosure i actually could care less whether you have a silence or not i do believe it's being done just to check a box versus it being sincere if it's the intent of the board to implement this in the schools i ask you if this has been discussed with the bwea and their thoughts on it it's only going to add to an already packed morning agenda not to mention instructional time it's not going to mean much to an elementary student and as far as middle school and high school students as somebody who's a

119middle school not only teacher but principal for 15 years believe me most will just tune it out i'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that this addition to the board agenda was at the request of the board president versus the superintendent otherwise i think she would have had it on the last seven years that she's been here however this also means it's abundantly clear that this community member was given a heads up remember she came to the meeting with a prepared speech now i actually laid no blame on this community member or the unprecedented access to board members i lay the blame squarely on the board member or members who are allowing such access for allowing being told what to do and for this to happen i urge this board not

120all of you to be very careful you're on a slippery slope here board protocols in orc are in place for a reason and i suggest they be followed versus what constituents are telling you to do finally have an offer thank you there was mention of losing good employees because we have no avenues to express their thoughts thank you mr trump he told you 30 seconds ago your time oh i didn't even look up i would love the opportunity to be with one or two of you or all of you in executive session remember anyone in this room who has ever been in leadership rose knows that we lose good employees at times thank you for your time thank you i think you understand protocol oh i do yeah that's the last one yeah thanks goodness

121uh i came that close to gaveling you out for making accusations against me i think it's an accusation yes you did i'm the one that put this the uh silence moment of silence on the agenda yeah so you never knew no that's not how the member knew if you want to get into a debate here no i'm not going to get it i'm not going to gentlemen gentlemen but i think gentlemen both both of you i think just to go back to the public participation that it's not a back and forth no it's not a back and forth but i will not put up with accusations and unethical on me i put up with the last week i will not put up with it if you have a problem if you think there's something to

122it then follow a case with the ohio ethics commission if you think you have evidence there is no evidence moving on item number 13 business items jeremy uh so the first one here um i think we need a motion pardon okay well your name was on there i thought you were going to read it oh i i can if you'd like i thought that's why your name was on there usually he's the one that'll discuss it if you ask for a motion okay it has recommended the board approve the fy 2022 alternative tax budget information to be submitted to the county auditor so moved second okay so the this is a you may recall if you've been other meetings for mrs nix being part of uh other public bodies this is probably a requirement as

123well but each year we're required to file with the county auditor an alternative tax budget it's based on we we base it in our process on our five year forecast if you'll you'll have noted if you looked at it that it provides a couple years worth of history and then it it this is looking at more of a calendar year view that the county uses for setting and planning for next year's um millage rates and things like that so um i'm open to questions if you have others and mainly it is uh part of a statutory requirement is why we provide these okay and with that no discussion i can do roll call mrs dorsch yes uh miss nix mr crowl yes and miss smith item 13.2 it has recommended the board to prove the

1242021 tax rates for taxes collected in 2022 and estimated revenue all right this is provided to us by the county where they have looked at our total assessed valuation and then [Music] set the rates and then we are required to affirm those rates as i've actually shared earlier the taxes that are being collected tax bills have gone out i will note though if you looked at this that the rate is actually higher on what we're approving they have you approve the rate at what the full voted rate is for several of these and our effective rate is actually lower than this it is for a resident a resident it's 33.575 and some additional change so i didn't want that to be a confusion uh they do have us approve it at the full rate though

125and not the what the effective with the what happens at the county level of rollback of of those amounts so other other questions on that okay mrs dorsch yes mrs nix yes mr crowl yes miss smith takes us to item number 13.3 it is recommended the board approved the following extended field trip uh actually trips girls track and field team russ parsons invitational in west virginia on april the 15th and 16th of 2022 and the eighth grade class washington dc field trip april 25 through 28 of 2022 a second and that's got your name on it angie yes um thank you to um coach evner with our track team i know that's an opportunity they've had in the past so excited to get back to that and i think our eighth graders are also excited

126to be able to get back to the dc trip um just to note it is a little earlier than it normally is and we're proving it a little later because of just kind of waiting and and watching um the reason we moved it up was that gave us more flexibility we typically go the last week of may which is a little nicer weather-wise and also it's a nice way to end the year however with moving it up it gave us some flexibility if we have any issues come up with the crazy world that we live in any questions okay uh mrs nicks yes mrs dorsch yes mr crowl yes miss smith yes uh 13.4 it is recommended the board approved the following donations 18 disc golf baskets and installation donated by the columbus flyers disc

127golf club donated to the current big walnut middle school campus donation value three thousand seven hundred sixty three dollars and eighty five cents a twelve hundred dollar donation by aaron and sherry dorsch a 20 donation from stephanie salzer donation from tiffany watt donated to big walnut local school district to augment our current selection of diverse books going to district support fund 018-9 thousand a thousand dollar donate donated to sauders supporting students with funds donated by serenity fairway foundation going into the sauders principal fund oh 18 9004. do i have a motion any questions i i just am curious if the money that was donated by sherry and her husband stephanie and tiffany can be used to pay for the read across america program we've got going forward okay and sherry i don't know if you

128want to address kind of what happened with the elementaries last year with the books or kind of how we use those but yeah um so last year same kind of time frame the read across america um i think it was mrs bailey sent out an email about you probably remember about us reading in the schools and i couldn't because of my work schedule so i decided to record myself reading a book and and um at that time i thought what a great way to you know try to get more books out there for our kids and and you know books that better represented some of our students so decided to donate seven books at the time various titles at the elementary school level and then some some dollars i think it was 500 last year

129um because i figured that the teachers probably had better buying power than i did and could get get more bang for their buck so they were able to buy a couple of additional titles and then they basically bought a set of those for each elementary school so there's a variety of different books um i i don't even i don't know if i remember any of the elephant one i remember yeah there's strictly no elephants was the one that i read there was one that was called i am enough our class is a family read a crayon story this is how we do it one day in the lives of seven kids from around the world um another one so these were mostly for elementary yeah this was all for the elementary school um last year

130um so the teachers really appreciated it it gave them the opportunity to kind of go through some really meaningful lessons with the kids and it put a lot of books into our schools that had you know kids with different abilities brown kids black kids like so so gave the opportunity for some kids to maybe see themselves on on some book covers that hadn't before so this is just another opportunity to expand that and leaving it up to annie and kate were you know the i think kate is taking that on again working with our elementary principals and she did a really nice job last year with helping create some resources for the teachers to use with those and just want to say thank you to you and the other donors because we're always excited when

131we can get more books and especially as you said so kids that maybe aren't used to seeing themselves on a cover have a way to identify and develop that software thank thank you any other any other questions or comments mrs dorsch yes mrs nicks mr crowl yes ms smith yes and that brings us to item 14 human resources mark good evening thank you just want to run through the items that we have this evening for you and certainly take any questions that you may have under 4.14.1 recommending a leave of absence there that is within the contractual agreements within that union 14.2 supplemental contracts and this is always a time of year when i can thank all of our coaches for all of their work and all the extra hours that they put into you

132know the work they do with our kids and our student athletes and so huge thanks to them well beyond the hours of what these supplementals can really support but we appreciate all their work and also just want to you know give a special thank you to each of our volunteers that work with our teams and and to help our students so our volunteers are huge to to each of these sports teams so thank you for that under 14.3 i'm asking you that you approved the revision of a leave of absence for a staff member to be able to return malia actually had planned on taking the year off but we do have a mid-year fill needed due to retirement and she's actually stepped up to the plate to be able to do this and really

133appreciate this as she is a highly qualified teacher to be able to step into that middle school math program so excited to have her return back for this school year under 14.4 asking for your approval of these limited contracts these are teachers who have been in their position for 60 days in the same assignment so it is required that we then approve the rates change for them in moving to a long-term assignment essentially then under 14.5 these are not ads these are just moves and within the positions within our food services department and under 14.6 i do want to especially highlight here penny sturdivant as she is has turned in her retirement to us she has been amazing for this district we knew this was kind of the time was coming um as mr sturtevant

134retired just a few years ago but um so excited for them to be able to enjoy the retirement ahead for for their lives and at the same time will greatly miss penny and what she has contributed to our kids to our administrative team to our entire staff so thank you so much to penny and all the work that she has put in this district any questions i don't okay well um steve uh mr fuji can be here tonight but i he had a few comments that he wanted to make about mrs sturtevant and i too wanted to thank mrs stergman for all that she's done to all the different programs and everything that have been put into place in the high school to really help our kids just excel and be successful and move forward

135in their lives and and i know she's done extraordinary things and and my kids have have benefited from a lot of the work that she's done mr fuji asked for one of us to read this he says as one board member i personally want to thank mrs penny sturdivant for her years of service this board always expresses gratitude when a member of the professional staff retires however mr sturdivant holds a special place in my heart and the heart of my family after 28 years of service to big walmart and 35 years in total in education penny has influenced the lives of countless alumni and current students she has impacted students lives for the positive from an educational perspective but more than that penny has influenced the lives of students and families beyond the classroom a

136multi a multiple handicapped nonverbal child comes to mind penny in an effort to be a good educator counselor and mentor assisted the family by providing links to services inside and outside the school walls in fact penny herself marshaled a team of educators to go to the home and clean and otherwise help in ways that go above and beyond penny has helped students be successful on the act sat and application process to their dream institutions penny has worked with colleges to establish the big walnut's clearinghouse expectations with the ncaa penny has even been the literal lifeline for students and families in situations where children lost a loved one or families lost a student her patience and demeanor and the trust she garnered during a situation in 2009 literally helped my heart heal and in fact the

137heart of the entire school when we had a student tragically pass she has been a remarkable professional for this district and i want to express my most sincere gratitude for penny's 28 years in this district even as penny contemplates retirement she continues to influence my son with recommendations about his educational future and i hope that she knows that retiring from this district does not mean she can retire from the life of the four fujis thank you mrs penny sturdivant thank you item number 14-1 mr president i move for consent agenda items 14.1 through 14 14.6 inclusive make that 14.5 and i'll agree i think we need to do hers okay items 14.1 through 14.5 inclusive i'll second that all right miss storsch yes mr crowl yes miss nix yes miss smith yes and that leaves

138us with 14.6 it is recommended the board approved the retirement of penny sturdivant district testing college and career readiness coordinator effective at the end of business may 31 of 2002. so what i said hold isaiah 2002. yeah sorry about it all right miss nix yes uh miss yes mr crowl yes miss smith yes us to item 15 scholarly scheduling of the next board meeting the next regularly scheduled meeting will be march the 17th 2022 at 6 30 p.m here at the district administrative office streaming will be made available on the district website item 16 executive session is recommended the board enter executive session to prepare for negotiations or bargaining sessions with public employees concerning their compensation or other terms conditions of their employment just a second uh mrs storsch yes ms nix mr crowl yes

139ms smith we will take a 10-minute recess prior to going into executive judge