001yes good evening everyone welcome um today's onion hills board of education meeting glad to have you here today and so i hereby call this meeting of the board of education of the nordonia hills city schools district to order this is a typical meeting of the nordonia hills city school district board of education it is a meeting in public but is not a public meeting the public is invited to watch the proceedings of the board there will be an opportunity for public participation um in this in the open forum section of our meeting a little bit later if you are uncomfortable with open forum comments and questions may always be submitted to the board or administration through emails or phone calls so mr brown roll call please mr kearney here mr larimer carol mrs mckinley here
002mr tidmor here responded here all board members present great if everyone would please rise pledge allegiance to the fire of the united states [Music] under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all right so at this point we have our ceremonial out of office i think mr brown you're gonna miss that one matthew allen kearney do you hereby swear do hereby swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of ohio and the constitution of the state of ohio that i will to the best of my ability and that i will to the best of my ability faithfully perform and discharge the duties of my office faithfully perform and discharge the duties of my office as a
003member of the nordonia hills city school bishop board of education as a member of the nordonian hills city school district board of education good morning hello raise your right hand and repeat after me i state your name i jason l titmore senior do hereby swear to hereby swear that i will support the constitution of the united states that i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of ohio and the constitution of the state of ohio and that i will to the best of my ability and i will to the best of my ability faithfully perform and discharge the duties of my office faithfully perform and discharge the duties of my office as a member of the nordonia hills city school district last year as a member of the
004nordonia hill city school district board of education [Applause] the constitution of the united states i will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of ohio and the constitution of the state of ohio that i will to the best of my ability and that i will to the best of my ability faithfully perform and discharge the duties of my office faithfully perform and discharge the duties of my office as a member of the mardonia illinois city school district board of education as a member of the nordonia hills city school district board of education [Applause] congratulations to all of our new board members glad to have all three of you on board all right so um the next item is the approval of our agenda this evening can i get a
005motion to yeah i would recommend that the board i would recommend that the board had the executive session we were ran out of time in our work session i would recommend that you add an executive session to discuss the employment of personnel at the end of the regular meeting that sounds good can we add that to the end i have to take a second separate motion for that can i have a roll call to add um the executive session for the employment of a public employee mr kearney yes mr larimer yes this is mckinley yes mr tidmor yes yes marshall carries 5-0 all right communications this month we have two things the first is it's always fun to have school board appreciation month at the very first meeting of some new school board members this
006happens every so often but the truth is this for our school board the work you do i don't think the general public has really the idea of the amount of time and effort you put in the thoughtfulness that you have in your discussions and with chad and liz returning to the board you guys have been board members uh through some of probably the most difficult times to be a board member and it's greatly appreciated our three new folks amy jason matt you guys are going to be bored and i talked to you about this earlier you guys are going to be board members through probably the era that most redefines the mordonia schools as we start talking about our facilities and whatnot there's just so many exciting things in store and i'm really really glad
007to have your leadership as we work through this it's going to be a fascinating year especially and your terms will be just filled with doing lots of great things for the kids of mordonia [Music] and you don't know it yet but you're going to find out soon that the job is tough but it's so rewarding when you do great things for kids and families so thank you all for your service in advance for your service we do have a certificate suitable for framing that i'd like to give you and also thank you i'd like the public if you could please we have a big round of applause for [Applause] us um [Music] okay that's it number one item number two um again there's a lot of work for this new board to do and i
008did not think it would be fair um to throw a bunch of things at you to vote on in this very first month i think it's important for you to have good deliberation and one of those things that i'm asking you to consider that i want to talk about and i've given you you know some information on this in past board updates and i'll ask you to consider approving in february is a to create a new administrative position in this district and i've given you the the rationale for it and the job description but i wanted to take this time to see if there's any questions i can answer and talk a little bit with the public here about what this position is um this position would be called director of educational services and we
009call it that because it sounds kind of generic and it really is because this new position would be taking some of the duties from most of the members of the central office administrative team and reducing them um a little bit that's one part of the job so we have probably the meanest central office administrative team that you'll find for a district our size and our folks do fantastic work but i think we would be better performers if we reduced their load a little bit so some of the things for our director of curriculum for our director of student services our director of business some of those duties would come off the table but the other thing that this position would do would be to bring back in-house the diversity equity inclusion work that used to
010be done in-house that since michael douglas left us years ago we've been kind of piecemealing and at this at this point in time we have two folks that are retiring which makes it ideal for this time to create this new position dr deb wallace later on this evening you'll accept her resignation for the purpose of retirement dr deb has done all sorts of things with the district in terms of not only drug and alcohol programming but she does work in bullying prevention in health and wellness all those sorts of things well deb's retiring and also denise ward who is the consultant that we hire through the esc to do our diversity and equity work is retiring she's leaving and so this position this director of educational services would um do the handful of duties and
011i printed up job descriptions for you you know i sent them to you but if you like a hard copy the job description that this this position would do they would do our title nine work our title six work our diversity equity inclusion not only programming activities for students but also they would lead the professional development in the area of diversity equity and inclusion they would be in charge of the bullying task force they would be doing all of these sorts of things so the good news is this with the two retirements with denise and deb retiring this position would come in at about a break-even point in terms of salary it would just be a bit of an adjustment to how we organize the central office and so um again we've talked about it
012i wanted to bring it to your attention tonight and next month i'll have a recommendation that you approve the job description so i can get busy fill in that position right questions from the board about this this new proposed position okay well thank you very much and again i'll hope i will recommend it in february if in the meantime you do have questions or you think of something please shoot them my way and i'd be happy to give the board more information about it thank you that's all for communications great at this time we have come to the open forum portion of our meeting and although the public has the right to attend board meetings it has no inherent right to participate in the deliberations of the board without its consent speakers may offer such
013objective criticisms of the school operations and programs as concerned that but in public session the board has the right to requested that complaints about school personnel or against any person connected with the school system be directed to the appropriate administrator the board now asks if anyone is wishing to participate in open forum this evening if you'd please sign in if you haven't already that would be fantastic [Music] my name is karen byers thank you probably can hear me anyway but my name is karen byers 117166 downroad sagamore hills i have a 10th grader at the high school i run a local cpa firm i am also vice president of the high school ptsa uh president of building boosters of dordogne hills i'm on the committee for positively neuronia i'm also on the steering committee for
014the new um facilities and i'm on the curriculum advisory committee so i'm here as a volunteer and representing most of these groups to say welcome and thank you we're all here to make our schools and our community better you decided the best way you can do this is as a school board member thank you thank you for stepping up thank you for all you went through to get to this day now the hard work begins hard work always appears as we look forward it's easy to look backward and comment and review what has already happened but it's hard work to look forward to create a path to the future it takes leaders to move forward we want you to know that we are here to support you in creating this path the best thing we
015can do is take all of the energy we have and support you and your job to create the path going forward for everyone here today or viewing this later online i challenge you to work work for the schools and for our community we won't always agree and most times that's really a good thing great ideas come from differences don't fall away if you have a difference of opinion on the path forward continue to work and volunteer in the schools and with the schools to make a difference be a part of that path forward again welcome and thank you [Applause] is there anyone else who'd like to participate in open forum tonight if you'd sign the ledger please uh welcome to the new members my name is jackie steele i've been a member of the nordonian
016heroes community for about two and a half years now i have three students uh within the district i'm here today regarding my daughter logan um and some of the issues that she's been having while attending the negone hill school history so today me and my wife are here just requesting uh your help with some serious issues regarding the hostile and toxic climate that she has experienced while staying in dorney hills middle school her safety has been compromised many times she previously attended lee eaton school and again is currently a seventh grader at the middle school and during her time here she has been harassed and bullied from students and even certain staff members since about 2019 when she was in fifth grade we have reached out to administrators staff members asking for help with this
017problem obviously the harassment and bullying intimidation has continued my daughter has been exposed to racial epithets slurs threats and told to kill herself multiple times she has been called the n word numerous times as well as monkey and other stereotypical words and phrases just this past friday there was an incident where another student monitor hairstyle and call her the angler the racial tension and hostile environment has taken a toll on my daughter's physical and mental health literally after a couple of years of undergoing extreme bullying coupled with this matter not being resolved my daughter now suffers from anxiety and depression the pressure is very exhausting and overwhelming we have watched her go from our vibrant daughter and transform over time and we're witnessing uh the effects of the situations that she's been going through there
018has been uh for our say the nonchalant attitude from staff and administration bullying and harassment are extremely serious issues especially in today's world children suffer when they are targeted these actions and we have relentlessly attempted to get proper assistance and help from administrators in the district again dating back to 2019. there have been numerous incidents where we have brought the administrators attention to different situations instead of her this issue has been resolved staff universe have actually accused her of not being truthful imagine how that would feel we have been told that our daughter logan is paranoid and needs thicker sleeve what is that to say about a child who is crying out for help and seeking assistance from staff in a school setting some specific comments that have been said to logan and us have
019been very unprofessional they they were very disheartening and hurt one intervention that has occurred on this time is that logan has been placed on a 504 unfortunately there have been some staff members who do not adhere to the contents within her 504 plan and two specific teachers have actually made light of it saying that her 504 plan should be reserved for students who really need help the 504 plan is a legal document we believe that the district is out of compliance there were certain situations where they weren't following the 504 plan with fidel a prime example is when logan asked to switch seats in a specific class where she was being harassed and bullied by some students she wanted to move away from those students the teacher denied her request and sent out notes that
020the students will not be allowed to switch the seats there are other examples of why the staff does not adhere to the 504th land which i am myself and my wife are willing to discuss with you again we are simply requesting that you guys intervene and help with this situation we belong we believe that logan is being bullied and harassed we believe that certain staff members are retaliated against slogan because we have shed light on this issue and we ask for your help it appears that some students are being believed over our child during certain investigations which have come back yeah you can quickly finish i'm sorry well the point is it's just we're just looking for help and we're just deeply concerned about our child's safety and it's just been a dead-end process from
021the start and that's all i have on that and just thank you for your time thank you mr welcome my name is shannon steele i am logan stills mom and i want to bring to and present to you guys your policy um in reference to harassment intimidation and bullying the introduction in your policy clearly states harassment intimidation and bullying of students in the school environment is substantially interfered with their ability to learn perform and feel safe therefore any conduct communication activity practice that occurs at any time on the school property on a bus during the school sponsored event at the time and or place set forth called a student condo okay that constitutes as harassment intimidation or bullying involving students shall be strictly prohibited that is your harassment that's the introduction i would like to
022state that um based off of my husband's overview of what logan has actually been going through i'm asking all of you board members that you look at this policy give a specific time frame and re transform this this is not substantial my daughter has taken her issues to the bullying task force and every single time it has been deemed unsubstantiated as not bullying and harassment based off of your policy it clearly states that what my daughter has gone through is bullying and intimidation my child has had witnesses she's also been told as you guys know that she's paranoid and different things like that endowment but i'm asking you so that not just for my child but all children no child should have to deal with bullying or harassment whether it's physical mental or verbal it's
023still harassment and it is not okay and it it actually obstructs their ability to learn effectually okay i'm also asking that when it states here that the person that are that are doing the investigation it says the investigators shall meet with the complaint within a reasonable amount of time right that doesn't say specific time frames of when they should get back to them i need i think my personal opinion i'm presenting this to you guys that specific time frames be placed in this so that people are aware they know clearly what to expect we have no expectation of when this will be resolved because again our child has been going through this since 2019 as additionally other students have reached out stating that they have gone through similar situations black and white of what logan
024has experienced so i'm asking you to please revise this policy revamp it bring it up to code in 2022 no child should have to deal with this and be afraid to come to school so i'm asking you to revise your plan thank you so much you guys have a great day thank you mr steve do you have anyone else who would like to speak for public participation this evening and we will move on to our reports from liaisons and to committee superintendents committees and other organizations [Music] for now to let the public know what committees everybody is on because our new board members to get assigned to committees and these are folks that you can reach out to in the public if you have concerns questions in areas like this and um so one of
025the things we did in our organizational meeting um before this one is we went through and um assigned the roles for these various committees um so for our finance committee also known as the facts committee um that will be headed up by mr brown um that is going to be mr larmer and ms vanish and i will continue to be the legislative liaison in curriculum and instruction it's going to be mr kearney and myself welcome our facilities liaisons are this is going to be mr larmor and mr tidmor this year our cvcc um appointment is going to remain mr veros and he's going to be speaking with you just shortly um when that position is selected that is a three-year term am i correct all right so um and are you in your two this
026is this year two or your three this is year two okeydoke um the nordonio hills foundation um the foundation does a tremendous amount of service work for our schools um this is going to be ms bottich and mr kearney the tax incentive review board will be comprised chad mr larmer and mr kearney will be attending that technology and information systems um who will be meeting with mr rust and his team um will be mr larmer and mr tidmor special education liaisons are going to be misleading and mr kearney and then mr tidmore and i will be serving um with the ndeic and then i will continue on as the student achievement liaison to osba i know that was a lot to digest it'll be on the website i think mr burroughs dancer report yes mr
027virus come speak to us i will read to you first of all i'd like to welcome mr kearney mr tidmore and miss biden to the mordonia school board mr brown dr clark and madam president i am the representative from gardonia to the cuyahoga valley career center as elizabeth said it's a three-year term i'm in year two of three this would be my third i believe third three-year term as a member of the school board for the cuyahoga valley career center we represent eight schools within the uh within the area and i encourage all of our new board members if you have not had an opportunity to visit the career center please do you can contact me i can organize a visit to the career center you can see what we do so this is my
028report for january which really is the report for december because january hasn't really happened much yet but the career center held its annual food drive event beginning on monday november 29th and it ended on friday december 10th the food drive was in partnership with the career center's skills usa local chapter cbcc's 50th anniversary committee sponsored the drive and funded prizes for the classes who brought in the most items the food drive concluded with an incredible results in total the final donations amounted to thirteen thousand five hundred and sixty some pounds which was four hundred and fifty two percent of our initial goal of three thousand pounds the winner of the drive was the heating and air conditioning junior class with the career center's power equipment technology junior class coming in a close second all the
029goods were delivered to four different community centers in the nardonia twinsburg brooklyn heights and garfield heights areas and were distributed to local families in need during the christmas holidays we'd like to thank all of those who contributed to this event and to give back others during this holiday season on thursday december 16th the career center hosted the candle lighting ceremony for the adult education full-time practical nursing class of 2022. the ceremony marks the completion of the basic practical nursing program it also marks the halfway point of the program and is celebrated in honor of florence nightingale the nurse who started the first nursing program in the united states very big thank you goes all to those and the entire nursing staff on tuesday december december 7th deb monaco our career specialist at nordonia high school
030organized and presented a career showcase of cbcc programs which included all five branches of the us military students had an opportunity to speak with current career center upperclassman for the various programs and to ask questions regarding what it's like to be enrolled as a student at the career center this event was part of dardonia high school's rebranding week of the nordonia high school support services where mrs monaco was a valued member of the team students were reintroduced to the career specialist role and how debra can assist them in the college and career exploration and planning process through career assessments job shadowing career portfolios mock interviews part-time job search and assisting in career center program advisements finally our next regular board meeting will be this thursday 6 30 uh at the career center in the uh
031maine conference room this concludes my report thank you mr veros all right so our next thing is all right let's move to the superintendent's recommendations item one i recommend you approve the consent items listed can i get a motion a second okay a few things in the consent items first of all is a donation to nordonia high school of a toaster oven and that's by the building boosters and karen virus and i it never ceases to amaze me the generosity of our community especially karen and the building boosters giving this item to help out in the teachers lounge the next is a there's a minimum wage increase with the state of ohio we do have a few student workers who would make minimum wage so this will be in compliance with state minimum wage law
032those are twe students that stands for technical work experience so these are kids at the high school that actually do a lot of work on the chromebooks fixing brokers and the final item is approving overnight field trips i ask the board anytime our students go out of state or overnight they approve field trips um and sometimes they come in after the actual trip like in this case where the uh one of them where the wrestling team was going to perrysburg and because of weather decided that they were it would be safer to spend the night and the next one is a wrestling team tournament coming up in alliance does anyone have any questions mr brown mr kearney yes mr lerman yes mr mckinley yes mr ted moore yes yes mr kerry is five zero my
033final this will be the shortest report that i ever give you board members my final item is that you approve the personality can i get a motion and there's a couple things outstanding on this the first is you'll see the retirement of deb wallace dr deb wallace has been with the district for for years and years our community intervention coordinator and she has touched thousands and thousands of lives she works with students with drug and alcohol problems she works in bullying she works through health and wellness homeless situations just the the breadth of the work that deb does for us is absolutely amazing we are going to miss her desperately and again she's just been a stalwart for the for the district and other than that i i want to point out to you um
034just a leave of absence um nicole episcopa nicole episcopa nordonia kid graduated a few years ago in 2013 maybe um who went on and got a zoology degree and came back she worked for some zoos for a while came back to work for us as a classroom aide and wants to become a teacher and she is now time for her to do her student teaching so she's going to take a leave of absence from her paraprofessional job to do her student teaching and our hope is that when she's done with that we're going to have a job opening for her because she's fantastic and that's about it for this uh this month's personnel mckinley yes mr tidmor yes yes mr perry's 5-0 and that concludes my report all right mr brown thank you man president
035members of the board our first item on my agenda is to approve the consent items and i recommend for approval link in motion these items on here are routine items we are adopting the minutes from our december 20th special meeting and regular meeting as well as the financial statements for the month of december 2021. we can give a brief overview of our financials for december not much has changed as far as variances that are driving things that are driving the variances as from what i presented in the past but i will touch on a few items and to remind the public i know it's hard to see that information from where you're sitting but this information is available on our board district website and i put that up after the board adopts it so that
036is available for a closer review if you'd ever like to look at it for the month of december we have revenues at just under 25.3 billion dollars and when you compare that to last year that is about a 0.9 decrease from the same time period so our revenues are slightly lower than where we were last year one of the major areas we where we are seeing an increase in our revenues happens to be with our classroom fees and kindergarten fees we're showing an increase this year over last year mainly driven to uh we're in a full year of school year in person doing different activities as opposed to last year so that's that's driving that variance on the expenditure side our year-to-date expenditures through december current year is 25.9 million dollars and that is a
0371.4 increase over last year a lot of the same similar things i mentioned the prior year are prior months board reports however i would like to point out a couple of things that happen and are happening currently our fuel for the district is that a increase of 287 percent from where we were last year we all know what's going on in the economy with fuel prices coupled with full transportation services this year as compared to last year so that's driving a significant increase on that front as well as last year at this time the board approved a reclassification of covet-related expenditures that were previously charged to the general fund but due to some grants that were received last year they were the treasurer at that time was able to reclassify those to those respective covenant-related
038grants so our supplies here i'm sorry our capital outlay is higher this year compared to last year for that very reason so our net income through december 2021 is at a negative 714 000 when we compare that to last year at the same time at that net income our net loss i should say is at 137 000. overall our unencumbered unreserved fund balance through december 2021 is at 8.7 million i'll take any questions if you have any of the financials i have one but it might be more of a trickling question okay so when you talked about the fuel in the cost of fuel i mean stop thinking about all the buses on the road it's not cheap especially these days are we in and i'm sure it has come across you know my computer
039before are we in like a consortium or anything to help reduce our fuel costs or can you explain that to me briefly we are um but rick wolf and i source the chiefess so it doesn't change we've kept the same vendor now for five years and it's involved um something we always compare it to peterman's national climate but our provider is a little bit better so we do source it out and take quotes and build the loads thank you yeah it's like everybody else you know are you going to costco are you going to gift though do you got trail works so we just want the community to understand we're trying to get those those best prices what is nice too is even with the covet fluctuation and fuel we are for the most part
040locked in for this school year so it hasn't hit us as hard as it could as we lock into the entire school that's good to hear thank you that was my question any others okay mr kearney yes mr lauren yes this is mckinley yes mr tidmor yes yes commissioner carries 5-0 item number two on my agenda is a resolution to approve the authorization of the advance of local taxes and i recommend for approval motion just a little background on this resolution it is an annual resolution that's done and what this does is basically allows the district to receive an advance on the property tax collections uh without this resolution we would not be able to receive that and the way that the district is funded is mainly contributed through property taxes that are received twice
041throughout the year usually in the march august september time frame because we are funded heavily in those two time periods our expenditures continue month over month so without the advancement of these funds the cash flow could become very tight so this is an important resolution to approve any questions mr kearney yes mr larimer yes mrs mckinley yes mr tim moore yes ms bottas yes ocean carries 5-0 the next two items item number three are very similar these are more or less record keeping the board passed a resolution back in 2010 to report to sdrs state teachers retirement system and the school employee retirement system for employee contributions and the pickup of those by the board of education a lot has changed since 2010 as far as pension reform back in 2013 and there was some
042need at the retirement systems for the board of education to adopt those changes for employee contributions this is to clean up that over the years and to make sure that we're compliant on that front so item number three is a resolution to authorize an employer pickup of employee contributions or state teachers retirement system and i recommend foreign [Music] any questions mr kearney yes mr larimer yes mrs mckinley yes mr tipmore yes yes motion carries fire zero the next item is very similar but it's the school employees retirement system and i recommend for it can you have a notion an option okay any questions mr kearney yes mr larman yes mr mckinley yes mr tidmor yes the spanish yes russian carries 5-0 and that completes my report all right we have um here at the tail
043end of our meeting too executive sessions there is not going to be any more action within the meeting now if you want to stay here and hold down the court you're welcome however there will be no other um action taken at this time you're welcome to go on home we will come out in a during the meeting um but i thank you all for coming this evening it's wonderful to see faces out there as we do the work of the district so thank you so much can i get a motion to go into an executive session to discuss matters required to be kept confidential by federal law or rules or state statutes motion mr mckinley yes that's your tim yes you