001tuesday april 6 2021. if everybody could please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of america to the republic for which it stands here mrs mccarthy here mrs saxon here this is tamira here mr vodka here finalization of the agenda is there anything to add and or delete there is not the agenda is finally presented outstanding we'll go right into the superintendent and treasurer's report please all right well great thank you very much president ibaka members of the board of education um it is my pleasure to fill in for roxanne ramsey casario tonight and we have two reports for the superintendent's report um the first is we planned for the 2021-20 school year and looking for a five-day in-person return in august anxiously awaiting that we also understand that circumstances this year uh
002with the hybrid model may have led to some learning gaps for students and so today what we would like to present to the board is our extended learning plan and with that i will turn it over to mr print to present the details of the extended learning plan for learning recovery for students thank you mr hearn we are certainly excited to begin um you know to plan for what's coming this coming summer to look into next school year particularly with the students coming back five days a week and as you said and rightly so you know we're realistically looking at not just gaps from you know a hybrid year but we're looking to gaps all the way back to really march of last year to where schools kind of shut down i feel like we've
003done the best job that we can in the current situation that we have so now let's start looking at how do we make sure that our students are successful as possible moving forward and that's really where the um extended learning plan comes in so i'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you and talk through some of the highlights of the plan i will tell you that it is not the plan in its entirety the plan in its entirety is available on the school's website so i just want to make sure that we know that first and foremost we're really just going to hit some of the highlights here today so so a bit of background on the extended learning plan the governor on back in february early february called for each school
004to develop an extended learning plan to help students recover from the loss of education that's occurred over really the last year and three months or so so we asked for that to be created it was not mandated it was a request that schools create that and to do so by april 1st and i am happy to say that we have met that deadline we have shared it with the ohio department of education and is posted on their website with a link back to our website and i think what's important to know really comes on this next page and that is that what you're going to see today is really a working document and a working draft you know we anticipate where our students are right now we know where some of these gaps exist based
005on data that we have but we also know that as we move into next school year as we move next through next school year we're still going to have gaps that we have to address so it's important for me to have everyone recogni for everyone to recognize that this really is an ongoing document and it's going to be a document that takes us through the next year next year and a half to get students to where they need to be second piece that's important is as i said the full document itself is on our website at nrcs.net and then most importantly i think it's important to notice also is to thank the people that have had a say in this um so i need to thank mrs vance out of pupil personnel dr miller out
006of my department um dana edgar's the blt's at each building have discussed these we've done a survey with the community got about 325 responses or so there so it's really taken a lot of different pieces and pulling together where we think we are right now so kudos to all of those groups we wouldn't be in this spot you know without that piece so the plan has six components it addresses impacted students it addresses a needs assessment resource and budget approaches partnerships and alignments and really the two that i want to focus on you know tonight are that resources and budget piece and the approaches and what's critically important for all of us with the resources and budget is that whatever we propose in our plan does not provide a burden an additional burden to our
007families so the things that you're going to see tonight that we're talking about implementing are things that are going to be free of cost to our families you know we're going to look to provide this either out of general fund or s or funds that have come through the federal government to make sure that our students are getting the opportunities that they need at no additional cost to our families and i think that's critically important um regardless of where we are so we've really broken our plan into three pieces and the first one are things that are happening now during the 2021 school year and what's important to note about this is we did not wait to be required to put together an extended learning plan some of these things that you're going to see
008bulleted here are things that we've been doing since the beginning of the school year um our second bullet point there where we talk about providing reading intervention for our struggling students in grade one through three if you remember we did a presentation on this back in january and that's because we had started this process really back in december when we realized that we had some gaps that existed so the district was proactive in putting some of these things in place and we hope to continue to be you know moving down the road we've got a schedule that's going to allow for some additional ap in-person time prior to our ap exams that happened in may uh we've looked we've expanded our ranger academy which is all alternative programming at the high school you know during
009the 2021 school year we've provided some in-person monitoring for select high school students that we recognize are really struggling and actually are taking another step to that and have a group of students that we're going to be looking to bring in four days a week in order to offer live instruction to our students that are most at risk so later on tonight in your agenda actually you'll see an increase in staffing for one of the people to make that happen so kind of the quick overview of where we are 2021 and then really where we're going to ramp things up will be over the course of the summer and into the next school year so in summer of 2021 we have traditionally done a a six-week summer school you know based on the feedback from
010the community they're really looking at two different things one of those is to kind of split those sessions so we're going to have a three week session that's offered right after school is out and then we're going to do something we've not done before we're going to do a two-week session just before school starts back up and that does a couple things for us that allows us to remediate on the back side of school but it also allows us to get students ready for starting school um which was a big point that families and community pointed out was making sure that students are ready to go in some cases we'll have students that haven't been physically in person in a year and a half so we're going to want to make sure that they have
011the the skills to get back into that classroom to get back into those routines we're also making a change to our summer school for the last eight or nine years you know our middle school and up programs have all been apex based but we've looked at our things and we recognize that some of our students need more in-person time so in our algebras our geometry our english ones our english twos we're actually going to live teach those again so we'll have students in person with a live instructor and then we'll look at some of those non-tested areas that will still move forward with the apex piece we're tentatively working through a science camp with a couple of our community partners i don't know which of those we're going to land on right now a big
012piece of that format came back from parents and what they were willing to have their students attend so we're kind of working through that make sure we can get those numbers um something i'm really excited about is the fact that we're not just looking on the academic side of things so we're looking at some social emotional camps um bringing in students a day a week to get them back to socializing to get them some opportunities to interact with students um get them outside whether they're playing games or whatever that happens to be so we're meeting those social emotional needs the return to school sessions we've talked about we've worked with mr hieronymus to look into offering some distance learning opportunities like we did last summer as well and those will be the type of things
013that students can drop into and then other items are honestly going to be as we go and just what our student needs are so identify those needs and address them the two big challenges that we're facing with any of this obviously is enrollment and to making sure that we've got the staffing to make these programs run and if we're concerned about anything that's the piece we opened up our summer school registration for teachers in the last week i'm encouraged by the number of people who have said yeah i'd be willing to do something so i think that's a concern is just general teacher burnout every with everyone i've talked to and how do we make these things staff and how do we make them run the other important thing about these summer opportunities is these
014are the type of things that we are looking to open up to anyone so obviously we'll have our students that we recommend because we think you'd be a good fit for blank but if a parent says you know what i think my student needs we're not going to turn them away provided we have that space and then as we look into the 2021 2022 school year we've got a couple of other things we're looking to do trying to implement an intervention block for all of our students you know k through 12 and that's something that we've been trying to do for a couple of years now we were in a position this year to do it in a couple of our buildings but when we had to shorten the school day that kind of went
015away so i think we're in a good place for that um one of the real strong offerings the parents that i'd have an interest in was our k4 tutoring in math and ela so currently we're just doing the ela we'd like to add the math to that and then the homework support hub for students in grades 5 through 12. and for that we're looking for a place where students can just drop in it doesn't have to be a daily thing it could be hey i'm struggling with this concept stop in get that help and then get on your way so we're excited about getting that in place um expanded credit recovery for our students and we need we know that that's going to exist so we'll look to do some things before this year is
016over obviously over the course of the summer with the summer school program and then the credit recovery moving in next year and then again i can't stress this one enough so those other items that are identified as student needs so people personnel ourselves we meet monthly at least to talk through things and i think this is just going to be one of those recurring things that we continue to see on an agenda so that is the 10 000 foot view of a topic that's kind of got a lot of pieces to it but i wanted to make sure that you were in the loop kind of where we are because you'll be seeing things come through board agendas to help support these things so i would be happy to answer any questions that you might
017have hi david thank you for um the presentation um can you please share that with the board absolutely figure that out shortly the next uh i have a couple questions uh the first one is that this is for students who have been identified as struggling correct so not necessarily not necessarily there is a component in the first part about how you identify students to where we talk about using progress monitoring scores and things like that but that would not necessarily exclude another student from participating in any of these activities it's voluntary for for those ones then okay it is voluntary and that was one of the some of the feedback that we got through the parent survey was we had some parents that were very adamant about not having their kids do anything over the
018summer and that's something that we need to respect okay thanks the next question is um when will parents and students know if they are recommended for these programs yeah that's a great question so our next step in the process would be to get the summer school brochure approved my hope to do that would be probably at our next board meeting here in two weeks and then typically what happens is right after that occurs so probably late april 1st of may we'll have principals and teachers start reaching out to students that we have identified and then we'll also market the other things that are happening so that if somebody says my child needs that they've got the opportunity to opt in thank you sure mr um again awesome job on the presentation i appreciate other items
019as identified by student needs was the last bullet point of each one of those slides for the community's sake is that not our common practice even pre-pandemic that we address these needs as needed and we've been proactive since the pandemic started in regards to trying to look out for these needs yeah you're absolutely correct on that mr vodka and that's why you saw like i said some of those intervention programs start all the way back you know before the school year even turn so that is standard practice for us the difference this time is it's formalized on a plan so really it's the paperwork piece of it and the awareness piece i think that we don't always do a great job of great i appreciate i just want the community to really understand how proactive
020the administration and our teachers and staff have been throughout this entire pandemic and the only thing that's really changed for us is due to the pandemic there's a greater need in a larger part of our student population that might require additional services so we're on top of it we've always been on top of it we'll stay on top of it is that a fair assumption that is a hundred percent accurate to the best of our ability um you know our goal is student success and and when we recognize there's a goal we're going to address that and that's you know as you said great work on the administrative parts and most importantly the teachers part who work with our students on a day-to-day basis thank you very much any other questions i have a question
021mr print um this maybe doesn't pertain to the summer extended learning but you were discussing about online students and hybrid particularly the high school students and that social emotional piece um getting back into the actual high school next year some of those students have never taken courses in the high school i'm sure you guys have something that you're planning um but is there anything that you're ready to share with the board and with the community about that i've had some questions just parents who are concerned no and that's a great question you know some of those things obviously would be um you know increasing tours of the building so students know where they're going um you know offering additional opportunities for students to be in the building and be involved i think are the critical
022pieces of that right now so uh we don't have firm dates on that so i can't provide those to you yet but it's certainly something you know we'll continue to you know kind of as we plan out here work through thank you mr maybe just a suggestion on that front um at colleges a lot of times your orientation for your freshman coming in is um for lack of better words is fairs to show okay we got drama club we have this maybe it might be worthwhile to offer something like that when we bring out all the extracurriculars and those involved during the summer months and get kids in here and expose them to what opportunities they missed out potentially on their freshman year so that we really have a good grasp on what we offer
023and what each one of those groups do so that when they come in here as sophomores and incoming freshmen they can hit the ground running having an idea what they want to do and what each one of those groups or what each one of those extracurriculars look like just the thought yeah no i like that idea typically we have handled that through like our ninth grade orientation night but it's different when you do that through zoom than it is you can actually hear from students certainly we can have that conversation with the high school and see what that might be able to look like i appreciate this suggestion thank you any other questions thank you very much absolutely thank you mr print and everybody that worked on that plan the next item uh in the
024superintendent's report is a report from miss vance the director of people personnel regarding the diversity equity and inclusion committee and training that we've done this year hi hi how's everybody doing tonight i would like to take this opportunity to share with you some information as mr hearn had shared around diversity equity and inclusion i'm gonna share with you my screen there it is just a slide slide ahead all right um so what we'd like to share with you is that i along with many other people here in the district have been a part of a group that has been working since november of 2018. obviously i joined the group as i started here in north ridgeville and i have been very impressed with the work that they have been working on to evaluate and look
025at um the unintended barriers that we face around equity and inclusion um not only within our district but many schools uh face not only within the students but also within the staff and sometimes within the community this group is looking to make sure that our schools create equitable and intellectually rigorous and culturally responsive learning environments honoring differences while embracing shared values of our students creating a safe environment that encourages the expression of differences and the ways we invite dialogue and education rather than cause alienation within our classrooms within um our staff members having conversations and also within the community encouraging curious curiosity and inquiry to be open to learning from diverse ranges of experiences and points of view and finally recognizing that conversations around equity and inclusion are complicated but it's a worthwhile to have
026these conversations around important issues and that by doing so we increase the strength of our organization as we started looking at these areas we had identified that we needed to do some professional development and we started with a training of unconscious bias through franklin covey and we did this back in october of 2020 the entire administrative team that included all supervisors in the district participated in this it was a very engaging training that we participated in and the day was focused directly on understanding our own personal biases and how our biases can improve our approach to the interpersonal and organizational communication that we engage in day-to-day um not only in our school environment but in our day-to-day um interactions within our communities um that's just a picture uh replicating um the time that we spent
027we've been using meeting over in the multi-purpose room over at the high school during that time after we participated in this day it allowed us an opportunity to reflect and identify that we wanted to take it a little bit further and we had contacted ela which is called the effective leadership academy that is located here in northeast ohio and talked with them about what they could do to provide us some additional support to further develop our understandings of our unconscious biases and also to develop and empower us to work not only within our the practices that we have and procedures that we have in our school district but to engage conversations with our staff and our students and the community at large and so they came up with a training that was called leading with
028an idea they have let us know very clearly we are one of the first districts in the north northeastern area that is working on these concepts and that is very empowering to me as an educator to be a part of a group that is doing something on the front lines um the main focus of this training focused on inclusivity the diversity empowerment um empathetic leadership and the action that um we all have to do now that we've had this training as a result of this training that we went through we were able to identify some goals and action plans that we would like to focus on this is a list of those they're going to focus on engaging our students to participate in cross-cultural cross cultural experiences increasing on the knowledge around diversity equity inclusion
029for our staff our students in our community we already have trainings established that are going to be coming up over the upcoming year to establish and accomplish that goal working to increase diversity among staff looking to expand diversity and providing diverse reading materials to our students within their classrooms collaborating on how the school and the community work together and then finally conducting an equity audit even though that's the number six goal that's probably one of the first things that's going to happen at the very beginning of the next school year but knowing that that this is not something that we can do alone this is something that takes everyone that touches north ridgeville city schools and it doesn't only impact our students when they're in the building it impacts them when they are at home
030and it impacts them when they are in the community at large as a result of participating in this we also were early in mid-february we were we identified that there was a grant that came out of diversifying the education profession and mr hearn and myself along with the diversity group um had to work very quickly to apply for this grant and we were awarded a seventy thousand dollar grant to um diversify education profession and we have two goals that we would like to accomplish with the funds uh with this grant first was to build a culture of diversity equity and conclusion so it's to continue what i just presented to you so we knew we had a start but we have a long way to go um in order to continue what we have started
031so as we start next year it is to take the training that we started with and take it to all of our staff every single staff member that works in this district will receive the same training that we went through and then we will work with our staff to build training that goes to our students and then ultimately to the community so that is a huge undertaking that we would like to accomplish and that is ultimately another way that we will review our district policies and procedures to maximize equity and inclusion the second piece of this grant is the option and the ability to attract and recruit and retain a more diverse workforce so one of our goals is to recognize the value of diversity and inclusion and help to look at our hiring practices
032and also looking to help to have our workforce to be reflective of students that are in our community and attending our schools so that is a piece of the grant that we will also be working on so we are very excited that we were selected to be a part of this grant and are looking forward to working collaboratively with the ohio department of education and all the other districts that receive the grant and work alongside them as we develop our diversity equity and inclusion within the district of north original city schools so that is a little summary of information and does anybody have any questions i'd just like to say miss vance thank you for the presentation um but also congratulations to you and mr hearn and to the entire committee um who worked so
033hard on that grant and um secured 70 000 for this project which really is going to be invaluable to our to our district into our community it's gonna the um i think the value is gonna far exceed seventy thousand dollars um so that's amazing i had the opportunity to read the entire grant a lot of work went into that clearly so thank you for all of that and for all the work that you're doing thank you thank you mrs vance i'm looking forward to seeing how this is brought forth in the district i'm very excited and proud that we are one of those few districts in the northeast so again congratulations on the grant and good luck and and let us know if there's anything that we can do to help and assist as you
034move forward thank you i'm assuming that we'll as a board that we'll have an opportunity to participate at some point in the training yes you most likely will yes and in fact that was something that mr hearn and i had talked about at one point um they the possibilities are endless and i i just would like to on a side comment this this training i think i think we all go into a training um such as this with this title and i think you have some people have a preconceived notion about what you're participating in um and i think when we all came out of it it was very different and it was very reflective of yourself and reflective of the people around you um and and the realization and the impacts of unconscious bias
035and and helping you recognize that there's so much that are be that is beyond your control um but it is very informative to you of recognizing and learning what can be within your control to help change practices and to um you know also be comfortable with having conversations that sometimes are challenging and i know that we as an administrative team are really excited to move through this process with the district so you will absolutely be involved in moving forward thank you miss vance outstanding job on the grant that's always awesome when we have administrators and staff that go out and receive monies that we could utilize here in district any chance we can get the idea training that's already been provided sent to each one of the board members so we can see what that
036training looks like and what it entails yeah i actually do have some resources that has been shared with me i don't know that we i can share with you a lot of that what that has been provided to us um but i don't know that it would have every single detail of it um but we will forward you what we have available and you've shared with us about unconscious bias and we're already starting questions about curriculum changes and things that could be coming down the pike so to be able to address those especially after tonight's presentation to be able to answer any of those questions intelligently or we might not be able to get every detail just to be able to reassure people let them know that we've always provided opportunity inclusion but it always
037has to be a conscious effort on our part our staff's part and our community's part to make sure that that's as much a priority as educating our students but i'd like to be able to answer those questions with some factual information as far as the training and what it entails absolutely thank you very much any other questions okay concludes the superintendent's report thank you okay here's an opportunity of hearing of the public this is an opportunity for members of the public to address the board of education regarding items of interest questions you may have and or any requested follow-up information will be addressed to the most appropriate administrator and follow-up will occur after the board meeting if you have comments for the board of education please use the raise hand feature and provide your name
038and address your comments are limited to three minutes with a total of 30 minutes that are allowed for this portion of the board meeting for further guidance on public participation please reference board policy 0169.1 if you have any questions we will note them and the most appropriate person to answer your question we'll get back to you in a reasonable time frame so we'll go ahead and open up hearing of the public at this time thank you mr vodka at this time i'm not seeing any hands raised um for anyone who is looking on how to do that you could do that through the reactions option which should give you the ability to do that or you can also do it from the from the participant tab and with that it looks like we do not
039still do not have any hands raised so i will we can turn it right back over to you mr vodka thank you thank you very much we'll move into the consent agenda education report mr mira thank you we have two items for your consideration under the education report the first item is an agreement with the educational service center of luring county it is an annual county service agreement which includes the following universal services participation in speech and language supervisory services audiological services behavior specialist support services gifted and talented supervisory services and parent mentor services the agreement also includes specialized district services of a board certified behavior analysis and two district social workers the esc of lorene county also provides pathways to success and consortium preschool education programming services to the north ridgeville city schools the
040second item is to amend the calendar for the 2021-2022 school year to reflect the changes in the kindergarten start date and the elimination of the calamity makeup day in may of 2022. thank you very much okay we'll move into um communications report what's yeti it is recommended that the board of education accept the following guests with appreciation a total sixty eight of 13 grants is being awarded to nrcs staff for the 2020-2021 school year from the endowment fund committee care of the lorraine county community foundation from the general fund seven thousand six hundred fifty five from the fine arts fund 3447. the shannon edwards memorial fund two thousand one hundred sixty six dollars eight uh an additional eight wooden step soles were donated by north ridgeville kiwanis club to the early childhood learning committee community
041thank you we thank our community for their support of our schools and students watch move on to the human resources report yes we have several items in the human resources report three certified staff appointments two special project supplementals two supplemental contracts one non-nrea supplemental contract six continuing contracts granted 161 instructional staff limited contracts one intervention specialist or tutor contract five health care associate contracts 205 classified support staff contracts 10 lever placement non-renewals 15 hourly tutor non-renewals five certified staff leaves of absence four support staff leaves of absence one administrative staff resignation two certified staff resignations one support staff resignation one appendix d supplemental contract changes this is the first reading for these items the second reading and consideration for approval will be at the april 20th regular meeting this concludes the human resources report thank
042you move on to the finance audit report ms mccarthy thank you mr vodka we just have one item this evening board for consideration it is recommended the board of education approve the resolution accepting the amounts and rates as determined by the budget commission authorizing the necessary tax levies and certifying them to the county auditor i'd like to move that we approve this finance and audit report in one reading mccarthy second by mr mira is there any discussion roll called please mrs mccarthy yes this is tamira yes this is yancey yes mrs saxon yes mr vodka yes all right uh we'll move into human resources miss saxon sure we have a few items to consider under the human resources report two special project supplementals one support staff substitute one certified adjustment i move to approve the
043human resources items in one rating by ms saxon second by ms mccarthy is there any discussion roll call please this is saxon yes this is mccarthy yes this is the etsy yes this is tamira yes tobacco yes all right it is recommended that the board of education enter into executive session to discuss the employment of public employees there will be no action to follow movement mr mayor second by ms mccarthy roll call please this is tamira yes this is mccarthy yes this is yutzy yes mrs saxon yes mr vodka yes