Olentangy Schools, Board of Education 3.13.25

001e e evening everyone uh I'll call this uh meeting the March 13th 2025 meeting of the oi Board of Education uh Mr Jenkins can you please call the role Mr Lester here Dr Dao here Dr Wallock here Mr O'Brien here miss shriber I'm here all right please try alce 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 all right uh I don't believe that there are any amendments uh to the agenda than hearing n can I have a motion to approve the agenda so moved and second second any discussion all right hearing none Mr Jenkins Mr Lester yes Dr dbo yes Dr Wallock yes Mr O'Brien yes M ryber yes all right we have a very

002packed agenda here tonight so I'm going to be very very brief with uh with the president's report uh I just want to note as we've said for the last few meetings the the state budget discussions are continuing to uh move forward I know Mr Jenkins Mr Meyer and team have uh been talking with sever legislators we've been you know continuing to work through that process that's going to be a continuing issue for the next several months as the legislature Works through this and and fair school funding remains a very very big priority for this District every dollar that we get from the state it's one less that we have to get from the local community so as as we continued to say say throughout this uh we really encourage folks to to be educated on

003the issues to speak out to your legislators about it uh and we'll continue to uh to work on that uh we've had a number of um you know big uh big events uh the past couple weeks I know Mr Meyer's going to talk about a lot of those in his in his report so I'm not going to repeat it uh but this is a very busy time of year as we're sort of heading into the home stretch right now we're smack dab in the middle of High School Musical season which is always one of my favorite uh times as well uh and uh just encourage everyone to uh you know get out see as many of the the uh the performances that we have for our students uh wonderful athletic events as well and uh

004just soak up everything that the the schools have to offer the community so uh with that uh any discussions from uh the uh the board committees uh I don't know that we've had any others since anything osba upcoming we have the spring conference but no meeting since sounds good all right well with that we'll head straight into our first presentation seeds of change uh Miss Fury and a whole bunch of other people so forward to hearing good evening um I just want to say thank you for this opportunity to come and speak about our seeds of change uh oldi professional development course that we offer each year um this course is a truly authentic professional learning opportunity that we offer to our teach teachers and administrators throughout the district and um a couple of things

005about seed to change I have some individuals here with me tonight who are going to share about their projects so I'm not going to take a ton of time because we want to hear about theirs but a little bit of backstory on seeds of change this is our fourth year that we have done seeds of change uh Vince datillo and I have been doing this for about four years now and this year was our largest group yet we've had over over 40 individuals participate in the seeds of change course where they were coming together with a kind of seed idea that they were excited to try in their classroom it's something that um they've been kind of thinking about doing but haven't had the opportunity or the space to try it and Seed of change

006really gives them that place to dive into an interest or a passion that directly affects student learning and engagement um it's really truly driven by teacher agency inquiry and collaboration um it's rooted in communities of practice and Project based learning where teachers are they come and they have a driving question they'll dive into some research and then they'll present on their findings they may not have a full-fledged project that they finished but it's really about that driving question the data and the research that they've gathered and then where they're going to go next with it um some of our projects tonight it was it was wonderful to hear about the various projects some of them we have students who are collaborating and um kind of developing pen pals with other students in another country through

007some of our digital resources uh we have students who or we have teachers who are doing voice and choice in their assessments and so it really is just about empowering our Educators to really Empower our students so just a little bit about the course uh we have three meetings per year uh we have our asynchronous kind of kickoff module where we really kind of um give them the overview of what seeds of change is and then we bring them all together where they share their ideas and they take part in some thinking routines where they're Gathering feedback from colleagues around the district that's the great thing about seeds of change is they're partnered up with individuals that they may not otherwise be able to collaborate and work with and Learn and Grow from if it

008weren't for this course so they get that feedback um they get some they kind of pose some questions some sticking points and get those ideas from their colleagues and then we have these thought partner meetings and we've actually expanded it because we had so many individ ual this year we actually have brought in other members of the curriculum team and instructional technology team to help support the individuals and provide them with kind of um those experts in that area that relates to their project and then they all kind of come together for this Showcase Event which happened tonight where they're really kind of just showcasing their learning from the year so I'm going to turn it over to two of our participants to share their projects we even have some students here one of them

009rushed in from from track practice so and they were able to join us um so we're super excited to hear about their projects and what seeds of change has meant to them so I'm going to turn it over to oops Sharon Bosley who is a teacher at Indian Springs thank you hi good evening um I'm grateful for the opportunity to be here thank you for allowing me to present um I'll just quickly introduce myself my name is Sharon Bosley this is my first year with the district um it's my seventh year teaching um I taught at Columbus City and a charter school up on the northeast side um but I'm very excited and grateful to be here one of my driving factors of wanting to be in all and Tangi was being able to grow

010as a professional so being able to take a course like seeds of change was really important to me um and really has allowed me to dive into some things as a teacher I otherwise wouldn't um so I'm a traveling art teacher for the district I have the privilege to teach first grade art across three different school buildings um and I my home base is Indian Spring so I also teach kindergarten in there um and so my project was based on developing A literacy curriculum and a visual arts curriculum combined so um taking read aloud books um and reading them to students asking comprehension questions um putting text in front of them really trying to just build a passion for reading and and get more text in front of them um and then build a visual

011arts project out of that um I've been at districts before where kids really struggle to read and um have seen how that has adverse effects in all the other subject areas that they try to learn in um and so even just being able to work with kindergarten students and uh develop a love for reading and and put things in front of them and ask them questions and work on comprehension um I think it's really fun and the kids love it um the projects that you're seeing on the slide here are our flat cat and then the color monster so the flat cat is really fun it's kind of inspired by Flat Stanley if you're familiar with that so they made a cat they got to you'll see these are some of my kids they took

012their cats out on adventures and then they brought the photos back and got to share with their classmates um where they took them and all the fun things they did and then the color monster is another great book that just ties in emotion and um feelings and things like that they made great connections with uh inside out and so just being able to really develop a fun curriculum but also um engage with um you know other things that are happening in the building and other things that are happening with their teachers so um I love the ability to just be able to really cross-connect things that they're doing and and enforce more learning um across the board so um it's kind of an ongoing project that will just continue as I continue to teach thank

013you so much thank you thank you hi good evening thank you so much for the opportunity to speak here tonight my name is Anthony Peta I one of the assistant principles over at Liberty High School and um this is my first year within the district and I'm having a wonderful year learning a lot and getting to work with some awesome students that are well they're already right behind me so um I was like oh there you are um so our project for seeds of change which was this was a really cool opportunity a really great opportunity to really take our PBIS initiative and bring it to Life So within the first like week or two of being on the job at Liberty High School these students right here came to my office and said they

014had an idea to put on a Ted a TED Talk at Liberty High School and me I was assigned the PBIS initiative and I said well as long as we can do it with our theme to be respectful engaged and inclusive and so from there this event kind of took off and we made it 100% student-driven student initiative we have six students that will speak this Tuesday and we have three staff members that will be giving their speeches or their their talks on our PBIS initiative of being respectful engaged and inclusive and I'm really excited because we have a lot of a wide range of speaking events or speaking topics and it's just a great way for our school to build a sense of community belonging and really push what we believe at Liberty High

015School and our PBIS initiative doesn't mean anything unless our students take ownership of it and so that's why I was really excited that our tedex event will allow it to bring to life so enough about me speaking I'm going to let our students come on up and talk a little bit about it hello uh thank you so much for this opportunity to speak here uh my name is Augustine Martinez and I'm a junior at olangi Liberty High School and the number one reason why I wanted to take on this event was as a student council officer at Oli Liberty I really wanted to create a positive culture inside of vol inang Liberty and bring my peers together and I feel like the number one thing that I've learned throughout this entire project is the amount

016of connections That You Don't See at first but when you try to dive deeper and ask questions there really are so many whether that be cutting uh wooden letters of head out for our stage or even just making these t-shirts there's so many opportunities that you don't realize and I'm really grateful this opportunity thank you yeah yeah thank you again for the opportunity my name is William Wayne I'm a Junior at all Tanger Liberty High School and so one of the key reasons I wanted to be a part of this was that I think it's necessary to build a connection between students adults and and you know staff members and so really through this process it's been inspiring to see you know teachers being in the same position as students which is something I don't

017think we see often but just see but seeing the process of you know teachers helping students students helping teachers is really inspiring I think that's something I want to you know keep doing throughout this event and in the future as well yeah thank you for letting us present here um I'm Michelle I'm a junior at Liberty as well and I'm not as good-hearted as will and Augustine and I kind of just did this cuz um as a student I feel like we aren't the most representative voice at Liberty I know I think a lot of you are familiar with one Community which is happening this Saturday and I think that I really took inspiration from that event and also I just wanted to apply it locally to our school and possibly bring um like Mr

018P said the PBIS initiative and facets of Liberty culture onto a global stage which tedex provides so thank you all the last thing I was going to say our event is this Tuesday from 6:00 to 8:30 we hope to see you there thank you um so those are just a couple of the projects that um we had tonight at our seeds of change um Showcase Event a couple of the other projects we have some repeaters who've been with us for the entire four years that we've been doing it and they're continuing to build upon their projects um and it's really all about involving students and creating that sense of Engagement for all of our students and we know that when we provide opportunities for teachers to grow ultimately our students benefit so any questions question

019you look like you have a question I I don't want to okay I don't I don't want to put any of you students like on the spot like if nobody wants to answer this you can actually just be like we decline um which would be fine but I I guess you know in the world of Education we it's like alphabet soup and there's a million bajillion acronyms and so we're talking about PBIS um and I'm just going to kind of play Devil's Advocate and act like maybe they're people in the audience or people watching from home or listening later who are like what is pvis I see that say respectful engaged inclusive that sounds lovely but was PBIS do any of you I mean you could just you know we can talk about what the

020acronym means but like in your own words not necessarily just defining the P positive behavior sorry would any feel like to speak to that or say no sorry I like to hear it's students own words okay from a student um perspective I think as students we're kind of exposed to it everywhere we see this like blaring like Banners at school that's just say respect engagement inclusivity but specifically at Liberty we have like a designated committee for PBIS and I don't know if you guys know this but like compared to other schools Liberty is really lacking in the school spirit aspect um like take for example Berlin and orange they have a lot of more events um so I think PBIS for students is a way to kind of unify our school into even if it's

021three words into like a community and also just like to enhance our school spirit so what I take away from it is just like kind of just um condensing what we are Liberty into like a community or into a motto or a mantra like REI thank you I'm sorry are you a staff member or a plant well thank you for working in on Tangi these are high school kids fantastic well and I'll just know I recall a couple coming to the um the mental health committee last fall and I really appreciate the thoughtfulness that's gone on to continue to present or to to build upon this idea right when we talked six months ago five months ago it's a little while ago you're still sort of coming up with exactly how you wanted to to

022make it work and and I really appreciate just the the continued thoughtfulness around building a positive culture and using it that way to to do it I mean a lot of times when this stuff works best it's where it's actually there's input and there's discussion about it it's not just sort of thrust upon you you you have that that idea that you come up with so thank you for all the work and thank you so much for for all the work to inspire sad my my son is now out of Indian Springs but I really appreciate the the just the cool initiatives to to make them more excited about learning that's great so good Mr Lester I think I think that the thing that's exciting is that you know you're taking these lessons you learned

023in high school about changing culture and and people in charge don't always do a great job of of setting up a culture that supports our goals so thank you for doing that because we're depending on you to do things a little bit better maybe sometimes than we do so thank you for um being student leaders and representing your school your family and and um the west side of Delaware County so well thank you guys great thank you so much all right so we do so much more clapping now it's great so uh we're gonna move on to Dr Blackley with the flourish here initiative so good evening board members um thank you for having us tonight um we are my entire team we're we're so excited to share with you our the district's strategic approach

024to elevating the ol and Tangi student experience as you know our our district mission is a very Broad and generalized goal to facilitate maximum learning for all students and the mission is framed in the portrait of a learner attributes and it also includes strategic academic priorities such as alleviating barriers to learning promoting a culture of inclusive excellence and ensuring Mastery of learning well the work of the academic team has been to bring this District Mission this very Global large District mission to life in the classroom for our students and the conduit through which we move from that very Global um broad District goal to actionable academic goals is through what we call our academic continuous Improvement plan and a lot of this plan includes what I would call typical academic goals centered on Mastery of

025learning and pretty EAS easily measured through quantitative ways um but tonight we would actually like to Showcase an academic goal that is not focused overtly on Mastery but focused on student engagement connection and ownership with their learning thank you good evening I'm going to kind of pick up that conversation from there and um really when when we think about that particular goal the way we frame that is elevating the student experience that's how I try to explain to people maybe not in education uh what we're doing here the best part is you just saw two really wonderful examples of of Staff elevating the student experience so when we talk about the student experience you know it refers to how students engage in connect to and take ownership of their learning we feel like that the

026quality of that experience is what prepares them for a meaningful future sure academics are really important but academics alone it's not enough for the future we've all agreed upon that so when we say student experience we need that whole package and the three items that we're we're leveraging in our work and in these projects and helping teachers understand there's kind of three doorways we're let we're trying to invite people into one is to increase the amount of student feedback you're receiving and that is typical feedback in the classroom sometimes but this is also um through just asking students opinions how would you do things letting them Drive I mean they are very very capable at doing this work it's almost getting out of their way a little bit when we think about this and let

027them be who they are and contribute the great things they have the second one is educational opportunities you know this can look a lot of different ways but we have great opportunities but we're trying to elevate those opportunities so one there are more two people know what they are and and three that students are kind of the drivers of what the opportunities are in the district and then lastly student engagement which if read or read about education you hear a lot about the challenges with student engagement um particularly in in the world today um and that that's an area that our teachers are familiar with but we're really trying to use relevancy and authenticity in the classroom to engage our students we know that if we can get them hooked into the learning through their

028passions through what they care about they're going to take it much much further so um there's a lot of different ways to think about the experience but these are the three that we're going to focus on tonight and we're going to share some examples in the rest of the presentation of specific projects initiatives that are happening right now that are looking at elevating the student experience thank you thanks Vince Thank You Vince um so I'm going to start off with our student experience and talk a little bit about our student experience surveys so from a strategic lens right it's easy to measure Mastery of content achievement however it's not easy to understand the development of portrait of a learner attributes and and one of the questions that our team continues to ask ourselves is are

029our kids flourishing here in ol and Tangi so with the help of um director Janette Kenny who is now Mrs brunwick um and in collaboration with the students from um our Mr Meers superintendent advisory Council we actually Revis the student exit survey that previously was given in grades 5 8 and 12 so the new student experience survey that went out yesterday um it assesses the development of the portrait of a learner attributes as well as the district's Effectiveness in alleviating barriers to learning so the way we rewrote that survey and the questions we're asking it's giving us feedback additionally we are um giving the survey to all students in grades 5 through 12 um grade five and then 9 through 12 went out yesterday and then the first week of May the Middle School um

030students will receive the survey and we're very excited because it does provide us with feedback to help us better understand their student experience from their lens so as Vince said tonight we're going to couch our presentation in in three things right student experience educational opportunities and student engagement so I'd like to introduce Shane cha our assistant director of intermediate curriculum and he's going to talk talk to you about some of the educational opportunities we have for students thanks Michelle I've got some uh fun things to look at too like okay so this is uh from Orange middle school I'll explain what we looking at here in a second example we wanted to highlight thank you some student work always fun oh boy can't do that um so what you see front of you is a

031culmination of work of a concept um a Japanese concept called eeky and it's really about exploring students purpose and we believe strongly that can start in younger grades especially in middle school where we know students are searching for those identities trying to figure out who they are who they want to be and we know that the one question they do not like is what do you want to be when you grow up you know so when we think about that differently the process of eeky guy asks students what do you like to do and what are you what are you good at what then can you be paid for and finally in our opinion the most important um how how does this impact the world how can you change the world with that so when

032students start to consider those four areas and how are we going to make the world better you get to the center of who they truly are so asking students to do this activity and this exercise which our administrators at Orange middle did with all grade levels um they get kids to start to see what they value what they care about and we know that's the first step in engagement they could care less about my American history class I used to teach if I don't know who they are right that engagement piece is so critical so one of the other things that we want to highlight with this is once students start to think about their role in the next 6 to 12 or however long they want to be in school um as they start

033to think about that we really want them to consider what those decision points are for them and so this year we started a middle school coursebook Comm committee we had representation from each of the six middle schools counselors administrators um to really look at consistency across the district for our students especially around unified Arts courses so aen Miracle has done an awesome job um as many of our teachers have um making sure that we're offering these opportunities to students um and we also want to start to align those opportunities with the high school so students start to see how what I'm learning now matters or can contribute to that passion that I have later on so they can get to high school and start to make even more decisions there um some opportunities we have

034at the middle school for elevating uh that uh opportunity is the Partnerships that we have with um many of our Bridge Ed Partners as well as the DAC this year we offered a trip to the DAC for all eighth grade students that were interested um which we're super excited about so we are heading to DAC next week um and then once again in April so they carved out two dates for us since we have such a large group of eighth graders that are interested in exploring what those options are um and then through the partnership as I said with Bridge Ed we've had many school visits from Robertson Construction Columbus State wexter Medical Center some really great things that have happened uh to introduce students into what's next so yes school's important yes we care

035about American history and all these other things but where do you fit into that mix and and what is it that you want to do so with that we hope that we can get them into a place uh come freshman year where they're excited about their learning and they see their own personal goals uh unfold throughout the school day so I'll introduce Dr Chris sander to talk about the high school opportunities thank you Shane so obviously the opportunities that most of you are familiar with that kids have to kind of enhance their experience or Elevate their experience include college credit plus partnership with Delaware Area Career Center where they can engage in specific career Pathways and our advanced placement courses all of those are terms that we're very familiar with and kind of talk about

036those acronyms that we were referencing earlier um elevated opportunities also exist however however through our career Pathways that we have right here in ol and Tangi so when you think about the definition of a career pathway you are looking at programming that aligns coursework to Career fields that are in demand by the local economy so our programs include the four that you can see on those bullets there and in addition to the courses they are enrolled in they are also paired with a Career Technical student organization so if you think about your presentation you had from our Deca students most recently those students talked a little bit about their experience shared their projects with you and when I reference a ctso PR technical student organization that's what we're talking about and they are a very

037big part of our career Pathways within ol and Tangi we have our teacher Academy which is how housed at yep I just U I think before yeah thanks uh sorry teacher Academy which is housed at ol T Academy A lot of times we hear our our community members referring that as the stem building but our teacher Academy is housed there as well and through our work this year we have increased enrollment in teacher academy by 57% and our students have two different opportunities to attend um two different times of days that they can day they can attend um so we're just really trying to promote that programming increase opportunities for awareness we have um Sunday weekly did a lot of work with having students pair you know give an invitation to a friend and and

038do things like that where we can really expose our community our school Community to the opportunities that are there also housed at ol and T Tangi Academy is the engineering program that is a four course pathway that begins in ninth grade there is a decision Point Shane referenced that earlier at the end of the 10th grade where they can continue on through the biomedical biotechnology Academy or stay in engineering we are enhancing those biotechnical um technology opportunities um through providing career sorry providing college credit opportunities and our teachers are um visiting two different school districts Westerville and Dublin over the next three weeks to look at their programming to make sure that we're in line with other opportunities that student have students have and see if we can enhance those in any other ways and

039then as I mentioned our marketing program our Deca kids um that is housed at all four Comprehensive High Schools um and in addition to that Shane referenced the middle school coursebook well the high school course book's been around for a long time 72 Pages worth currently um but we are also working from that lens to make sure that our opportunities are articulated very clearly in that course book that they are consistent across all of our high schools and that the courses we have are what our kids want to take so we worked with our family consumer science department our business department Our World Language department and we're currently working with our ELA teachers to really Elevate the opportunities that student have students have and make sure our courses are aligned to their interest so thank

040you all right one last thing we want to share we have so much to share I know we really want to tell you all about this stuff so um another opportunity that I have that I'm extremely passionate about this group but I think it's an awesome thing to know that we're part of so building capacity for student agency this is a grant that we um had the opportunity to join into last year funded by the Martha Holden Jennings Foundation which does great work uh in funding really really Innovative projects and essentially we're part of a cohort um our cohort includes Upper Arlington and Warren Local Schools down in Southern Ohio which is kind of cool to have a different perspectives but there's about three cohorts now about 12 to 15 school districts across Ohio who

041are looking at ways to enhance student agency and agency is a little bit of a buzzword we've talked about it before but we really look at this as enhancing the student experience how do we provide students with autonomy Freedom Direction the ability to influence their learning and through this we have sort of 10 staff members teachers administrators a couple other people from Central um office who are who are attending this and just a couple things I want to share that has happened because of the grant number one um last Sunday and Monday of this week we were in Granville uh for the student power Summit the student power Summit is a national conference focused on obviously empowering students um this year they held it in Granville and Granville uh schools hosted it um we had

042two teachers present there from the grant Hannah rust from Liberty High School and Andrea vasilius from Orange High School both who are exploring and interested in um different ways of assessing and providing students with feedback working on a more Mastery based system in their classroom and really truly handing back the decision-making to their students in terms of how they learn uh they also brought seven students with them who who spoke um for a very long time people were very interested in what the students thought about this experience because it's a very different classroom than maybe many people grew up in um after the after the session multiple people came up as I was kind of lingering around asking a lot of questions even a representative from odw came up asking more questions about how can

043we connect um districts wanting to come visit our teachers and the work they're doing so super proud of them and the students who were there um the professional development that we're getting from this grant um every time we go to a session we're being exposed to National experts in the field researchers around agency and school districts that have been doing this work um in a really focused way for longer than than we have um and then we're bringing that back to our buildings uh here in all Tangi um the third one student focus groups this is a really really exciting project the grant funds um a few student focus groups in each of our high schools for the last two years and now we're starting to expand that process a bit um a a group

044called The restoration project comes out and facilitates a conversation with our students um they provide us with a transcript they tell us the themes they actually have a an app where we can hit and it gives the student actually saying the the the the moment that they were talking about in the survey on the right I just thought this was interested this year um this is pretty similar to last year they asked the students what is one word that describes school um and the the winner again this year was competitive um and I think that's something we need to think about right that's a that's a good thing in a lot of ways but also when you read into the rest of the stuff there's some other things that come along with a competitive student

045experience so we have to find that balance but it's really trying to tell have the kids tell us what the experience is and have us adjust and work with them on this and then as Dr sander talked about the um the ELA teachers who are actually in this room today High School they've been really inspired as a district by this work and they're making some revisions to their curriculum and vision for the high school curriculum that is really rooted in student Choice autonomy and agency so the grant has been a really I feel like a good thing for us to be involved in because it's it's getting us out and about and networking a bit more but we're really bringing those things back to Old Tangi and starting to see them really flourish in our

046classrooms so I'm pass it over to Dr Blackley to wrap it up thank you thank you Vince and thank you for for your time and allowing us to share this I mean not that you know perusing literacy curriculums isn't Fun um but what really motivates this group and really excites us about um the work that we do on a daily basis and getting our our mission down to the student level um this this is the work that we are just so proud of and to personalize our learning for kids to expand those opportunities and um you know Foster a student agency um it truly elevating the student experience so thank you thank you thanks real quick question if if I'm not mistaken um tell me if I'm wrong on this the the summit um Grandville

047schools was also like didn't they like open up their doors to like almost like a little field trip did anybody from y sh oh how was it yeah yeah Jen you want to come up yeah I got a chance to go to the middle school which is super cool and he from seventh graders that were in an experiential learning Mastermind that's what the course is called it's a semester course or or a year-long course where it's an action research project and so all of these students had done some sort of service learning project and it's interesting again you have eeky guy in front of you and you ask most Middle School you know kids what do you like sports okay great these kids that liked Sports found ways to connect that to a service project

048they raised money with a kuas organization um in Granville they did so many really amazing things that uh were Beyond themselves which is exactly what we're hoping for so it was a great experience so I was able to visit the intermediate school and they are doing various student-driven learning projects throughout some of them stem from issues that they've had in the building um so they have what they call the NFL commissioners because they were having some issues at recess with kids playing football and um so a group of students they were kind of told like no more football at recess and so a group of students approached the building principal and was like here's what we want to do do to solve the problem um and it was about making sure that the experience was

049inclusive to everyone who wanted to play um they had some issues in the bathroom with graffiti and things like that and so a group of girls came and said here's how we want to fix this um they had the SLC students were out taking a walk one day and um trash was like overflowing in the dumpsters and it was some good things that they were questioning like why they were throwing them away so then they started creating um and and kind of coming up with ideas for how they could repurpose these um pieces of material that were in the dumpster in the buildings um and she's been tracking her data from the her um her data from her assessments and things and her scores in that SLC classroom have just gone through the roof because

050she's taking what the students want to do and pulling her standards in where she can um so it was a really phenomenal experience to be a part of and and to hear how they're really the students are owning their learning and helping to to solve problems around the school thank you you know the longer they let me hang around the more I'm convinced that um if we listen to our students they'll tell us how to motivate them and they'll tell us how to teach them and this is a great example of that you started with listening to them to define the student experience so this is really cool and I appreciate your hard work on this this doesn't just come together so thank you for doing this he I mean we we talk a lot

051about caring first it's making sure they know they're cared for if they're not listened to they're not cared for right I mean it's just it's as simple as that you you don't connect with someone that's not listening to you it doesn't mean that we just do whatever the kids say like you know resar recess for every period like but but if you're actually listening engaging them and treating them you know seriously like they have you serious thoughts because they do right um that leads to a lot of understanding of what makes it a better educational environment and it teaches them what they understand more about themselves I mean we see so many people at college or other things they they are just sort of spiraling around because they don't know what they're good at they

052don't know what they want to do and and promoting this sort of understanding early on about who I am what I'm good at what I like to do I mean that makes a big big difference in them I also want to like personally engage with whoever this student was who has kindness and compassion and humor and food which I feel very very very good I'll collect those I thought we got them I really like the one that there it's great all right thank you so much uh so we are now moving on to Mr Gordon and energy management good evening uh as usual this report will look very similar uh the beginning part of the format is is what we've covered before I've made some changes uh it's a good news bad news uh situation

053what we can control on our energy cost we're still controlling well uh at the end I'm going to talk a little bit about what we're seeing with cost and the increases that uh we're going to be experiencing uh based on factors that are outside of our control uh this is similar slide to what you've seen we actually shortened it from 2022 and the base year previously was considered 2013 we've now moved Berlin high school and shell Meadows into this comparison we haven't added Peach blow Crossing or Berlin middle school yet uh so the base year is the base year of 2013 plus the first year of each of those new schools as we continue to add new schools we'll we'll adjust that b here uh that way so um as you can see we continue

054to perform well by using um less energy and controlling that as compared to where we were back in um 2013 if we were still operating the way that we were today um we'd have significantly more cost um same thing on the gas side you can see we've continued to drop uh from 2022 down now um this is the end with these slides the way we're doing it next year it won't impact but this is the end of the co impact on this because as we came back for the first two years after covid we were bringing in more outside air so when it's hotter out you're make you're treating that air more to make it cooler and vice versa when you're heating so you see that in the gas and why 2022 was so high

055and then we continue to have dropped down and work our way back down to where we were uh pre uh pre pre uh uh Co co uh total avoidance since our last Levy in 2020 uh $5.8 million um see that the majority that being on the electric side we can control that and we do continue to hedge our gas and participate in the Mec or meta now uh purchasing Consortium for both Gas and Electric um this is uh energy star we've talked about energy star before I've circled some parts here and um basically this is in this case here this is Heritage Elementary School we're performing better than 96% of of like buildings or school buildings that are in energy star as a district we're performing better than 92% so we're continue to perform perform

056well as compared to to other other uh commercial buildings and school buildings that uh have their scores in energy star uh the bad news so uh everybody's hearing about the data centers there's been a lot of Articles recently on the increased electricity uh required for those data centers you see this this graph to the left there is uh the blue is 2022 2023 summer Peak and then where they're predicting we're going to need to be uh in central Ohio for the data center adjusting for that and the the downside to that is there's a RI or capacity charges and we'll talk about that a little bit more but they put on and that is an incentive that we pay for us prior to um the data center adjustment there but we pay anytime we we

057need the wholesale Market to provide enough electricity to reach whatever Peak we would ever be at so they are incentivized beyond the cost of the wholesale price with a capacity charge for the infrastructure produce more electricity and since there's more electricity being required for the data centers that capacity the cost to build that capacity out is going up and we're all paying for that we're paying for it as school district uh we'll pay for it in our houses as well as that continues to work its way work its way down so sorry to deliver that bad news um but it's not just the schools it's it's going to hit us at home as well uh you see the graph there um on on the left side of the screen again that blue is the wholesale

058Market the the red is the actual pay what we pay on total there's a lot of charge in between there but the majority of that's the capacity charge the wholesale Market is where we've been locked into a contract and we've continued to use the Consortium power buying power to push that price down back in 2015 2014 contract had us at about 5.5 we were able with the Consortium and and where the rates were at that time to drive that down uh to get a better contract the next three years and then the last three years July of 2022 to 25 we were locked in at 3.2 cents um for the wholesale price uh we're now because we couldn't lock in a reasonable rate we actually are going to be hedging electric similar to what we

059do with gas through the Consortium with with those advisers uh and the current rate if we were to buy today would be 5.7 yes sir je is there an extra zero in front of that 5.7 there is because it's the calculation do when you change it to kilowatt hours then it becomes 5.7 cents you are correct got it uh capacity again we talked about what capacity is the revenue stream paid to wholesalers uh to generate that we can control part of the capacity for us and so there's the clearing price which is what they buy the capacity at auction and then there's our Peak load contribution and that's the part talked about before when I've done presentations in the past I've mentioned demand and like the demand cost at your house and in our case

060now it's a capacity charge but it's based on your your high demand on the peak day so during the summer we'll get alerts that this is going to be a high demand day and um a and the wholesalers watch that and how we perform on those days so the higher usage you have on those days the more Your Capacity charge the the so we really watch that when we do our you know we're we worked the 410 in the summer to try to save that electric by shutting the buildings down extra we also shut the buildings off at 3 power-wise so those those um test they when they track our electric on those five days the five biggest demand days they take that and they use that to compute our capacity charge we hope that

061all five of those days are before school starts last year unfortunately the fifth day was after school started on a day that was 90° when school was in session and even though we were out of school we still had events and things going going on at some of our buildings that we couldn't just shut the air down so when you look at the chart on the right um the the capacity clearing cost the first part of that is $ 2950 uh was our charge that's now up to going up to $269 per unit and um so then when you look at our usage the PLC value is what we controlled uh previous year we had 1,649 um kilowatts and you see that had we kept that the same not had that peak in school we

062would have um had an increase from 24,000 28,000 so that was our increase purely on the capacity charge um and where we would have been had we kept the same so even without that that one bad day we had uh 24,000 increase to $28,000 increase and with those where we performed as a whole in the average of those five days and that last day being when school was in session uh we our actual increase on the capacity side is expected to be about 334 uh ,000 as a whole with the wholesale and the capacity we're expecting to go up about 27% on our electric cost this year any questions sorry to end with the bad news so I mentioned we we saved a bunch of uh money since the last the levy I mean just

063converting that number you've saved almost a mill almost yeah yeah yeah so what we can control we do a good job and look at it uh you know honestly that last day we really debated what do we do here we but we've always said we will not impact the student day with our energy program and we really try hard not to do that and that's kind of where we are at is is we completely shut that down let the buildings get a little bit warm that day or and we decided we we needed to operate as as normal with students in and given the temperatures we were at and then with athletic events afterwards and other um public events you know people coming into our buildings afterwards so just curious so you highlighted Heritage relative

064to the energy star and that at least as I'm reading this build in 2011 how do our newer buildings look in that regard all of our buildings are in that and and so our average is 92 so we're we're they're all doing very well the reason I use Heritage as an example is um and this is the value of our facilities committee one of our Engineers Frank Eisenhower worked with us to get Heritage energy STAR certified just so we could make sure where we we truly stand and then we can compare so the other elementaries compare very well the like elementaries like built the same way compare very similar all of our buildings perform well but that style of building um also all perform similarly we do have some you know where they might have

065a range and we always look at that okay why is that one performing different when they're the same building they're within a couple miles of each other but that's why we use Heritage because it is it is certified it takes a lot of work to get them certified and Frank did that work for us we didn't want to ask those volunteers to do all of our buildings we just wanted to get one certified to see how how we performed got okay good any other questions all right thank you Mr Gordon happy for the hard work he does even if the news does I was going to say that's clap for that guy that's clap for him because you know obviously we talk a lot about academics and extremely important that's our purpose learning why we're

066here but the operation side of this district and and what we do to manage uh as a district and the people we have in the organization it it's unbelievable now I got a full confession Jeff will come to me on those hot summer days and say he'll ask the question because again you know he's always got energy on his mind but what should we do what should we do but he was right so we cannot impact the student experience so that was that was good um also I do want to just go kind of go back to that icky guy um uh comment there Shane brought up that was interesting so I was a couple weeks ago I was over at Liberty High School and um I was honored to talk in two of the

067positive leadership classes so one of the questions I asked the the students I said where do you see yourself in 40 years right so you may think that uh you know they may drill it down to like I'm going to be a doctor a lawyer engineer whatever right this is what they said because this is what they value so I wrote down the themes um and this is two classes so probably 50 plus students and so three them themes resonated so this is this is what they value I want to have a great family I want to be happy on my job and then this this one set myself up for retirement so they were doing the math on the third one but but you know it's it's just amazing you know the reaction and

068just you know with with uh how the kids think and and I was like thank your parents kudos to your parents for obviously doing a good job raising you but um so I just wanted to mention that all right so uh great things Mr Lester uh thanks for mentioning this at the beginning but a couple weeks ago we uh held our annual state of the schools at ol Tangi high school so again it was just a great night uh where we're able to bring so many students and staff members from across the district uh to one place and really showcase all of the great things that go on in the district um so it was just a great night um this year we did a little bit a different theme with we did presentation student

069performances in the a Auditorium and obviously uh we had the um the the show outside as far as uh all of the schools representing activities that were doing the schools but uh then we just did kind of a what do you call it Oprah style uh uh conversation all right conversation uh just pretending was yeah Oprah style she did say that by the way but anyways um so we were we we we had three uh panels and um they represented District leadership team members and building principles but really talked about the mission and really liveing the mission and what that means here in ol Tangi obviously District challenges because we do have challenges that we face and and discuss those and then uh thirdly talked about the student experience and how important that is here

070and how committed we are as adults to make sure that um we are providing opportunities for student voice and obviously providing the best experience that we uh can for our students all right uh also want to highlight um this partnership with Liberty Township uh so it was just last Sunday they unveiled a sign recognizing all of the state champions from our all four high schools uh athletic teams so you can see there that's the initial sign um and and we were we were talking about adding up all those state championships it's just it's remarkable about how many state championships we have but um so somebody asked me the question since I've been the superintendent almost now two years six state champion Team Championships uh it's unbelievable so uh again in that space um uh you

071know our parents obviously uh help to provide opportunities for kids and we provide opportunities for kids here as well ah there we go um I think I passed one up skipped a couple or one yeah Dustin um I I want to highlight I know it's the clicker uh so this is a another cool event I was not able to attend this night but we did have representatives from the board there and a district leadership team but um this is the annual uh Special Olympics um student staff basketball game so just uh have a few um things to read about Special Olympics so the mission of olangi school Special Olympics is to provide yearound Sports training and competition in a variety of Olympic type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities giving them continuing opportunities

072to develop physical fitness demonstrate courage experience joy and participate in sharing a sharing of gifts skills and friendships with their families other Special Olympics athletes and the community so the oo currently has 12 Sports across the fall winter spring and summer seasons so this is all year so currently 152 registered athletes uh students must be eight years old have a qualifying developmental disability and have a medical form on file um so it's and again I just read kind of uh what that's about and all of those things were experienced uh that night and the students actually won was it 50 what was the score 50 something to at half it was 50 something 567 so anyways the students won so great great for them the intervention team tried to make a comeback yeah no so

073wanted to highlight that um we're wrapping up winter sports so you can see again accolades from swimming and Diving wrestling uh Liberty high schools hockey team was a regional qualifier um this Sunday orange uh boys basketball is in the final four so they play up at Canton um Sunday at noon so we're I'm going to knock on wood hopefully they have a good chance to win it all but we'll see uh and I want to congratulate uh two of our team state champions um Orange High School girls wrestling so consec two consecutive the last two years backto back state champions as a team and then you can see individual placers there and then also the Berlin High School competition cheer first place in the state championship uh competition so congratulations to both of them it's

074amazing that we just unveiled the sign on Sunday that's right and we we already have to add to it yeah yeah we're gonna already have to add to it um so this I this popped into my inbox on Monday morning and I think it might have been two weeks ago and I I wish we could just blow that picture up because uh every Monday in our district leadership team um our first standing agenda item is celebrations so we go around the table and talk about what we're celebrating and and it helps ground us for the week but I always pick something from the district that I see the week before in the district so an individual a group team team school um whatever sometimes the Board of Education you guys make it on the list

075um but that picture uh it just it I mean just said it all um so congratulations to Orange High School above the noise so first uh place there in the quarterfinals move on to the semi-finals but in in that picture if you can zoom in on your computers it's just unbelievable about you you can just see the joy uh in the students reaction there um and again we talk about academics a lot but these experiences that we're able to provide for our kids and the opportunities that they have um in the school outside of the school across the country uh unbelievable and it just creates such positive uh moments and memories that you know obviously they will remember for a long time so shout out to them um and congratulations so back in the fall

076we had 22 semifinalists um which we recognized at one of the schools well I'm proud to say all 22 semi-finalists are now uh 22 National Merit finalists so the top 1% um of all uh seniors across the um country so um congratulations to our 22 National Merit finalists and I'm sure we'll be um reading about them for uh years to come and all that they accomplish superintend tant action items uh so first um we I am uh making a recommendation uh to hire uh Stephanie dbo as the Director of pupil Services um just want to talk a little bit about that process so um when we uh we're very intentional and thoughtful in the process when we post jobs um you know for this particular job uh 15 applicants we narrow those applications down to

077uh interview three two finalist and then uh selected Miss dabrico um to serve as uh director of pupil Services uh Miss dbo has uh 17 plus years in ol Tang first as a pupil Services Supervisor then as an assistant director and has been a valued member of our pupil services department and uh team and comes to us uh serving in the new role with a lot of experience so um you know she was selected on Merit and and based on um the quality of work that she does in the organization and obviously will continue to do to continue to move that um Department forward so uh so I will be recommending one administrative um uh replacement tonight also you can see retirements up there um so it's we're getting it's that time of year um

078for resignations and retirements and uh we will as our uh Workforce becomes more seasoned and Veteran um and the state continues to drop the retirement uh re years of service then we may see you know a little uptick in retirements but I always say this I want to thank all of these individuals for their contributions to uh all and Tangi schools the students they serve and the families um uh across the district so in total uh this represents 113 total years of service um between these individuals uh to ol and Tangi schools our students and uh their fam so I want to wish them the best um as they move on also we have uh few students for early graduation so I'll be recommended that again uh some student overnight out of state field trips

079uh and one student Club um that's on the agenda for tonight um Mr Dr fetty will uh come back and discuss the feedback from the 2627 District calendar and then I will make that recommendation to approve our recommendation for that calendar uh Mr sexon will also discuss uh the technology recommendation here and so this technology recommendation will be to uh replace 5200 student Chromebooks again um Mr SE will discuss our leasing program and the reason that we do that and obviously um it's part of our technology strategic plan uh few items in the business management facilities item uh facilities uh section uh you can see the um flooring contract uh to levitate Plus for 141,000 we're uh recommending an easement for drainage maintenance purposes on District own land at Berlin High School um to the

080board of the County Commissioners so to Delaware County so recommending that and then we have again like every year this is part of our Capital plan uh we have our tracks uh that are on replacement uh cycles and this year it's Burkshire Middle School's uh turn to replace their track some important dates coming up uh end of the third quarter doesn't it seem like just yesterday we were August starting school and here we are the end of the third quarter so wow um teacher work day tomorrow so no school um our one Community Education Fair will be Saturday this Saturday March 15th at Orange High School classified interview day uh March 17th um and then you can see third quarter report cards and then of course much deserved spring break which everybody's excited about uh

081starting Monday March 24th and then we will be back here April 10th at 6:30 any questions I just I want to call out the student Club here um it's the best buddies club which is pair students that have you developmental disabilities or other disabilities with other students for social things they were out in full force at the Special Olympics game um and it was a really powerful uh group they're sitting right up front and I think if I'm correct Liberty won the contest for the most students uh that were at that event uh which was really really nice so glad to see that club from Liberty um on here they do a really nice job that's and it's awesome because again we had so many great students who helped support um in that space and

082and um it's you know we we just have some great kids here so yeah thanks for mentioning that yes Mr Meer the only thing you didn't mention was the level of skill that your students and staff have dancing at halftime yeah hundreds of people dance that very impressive yeah did you dance I did you did yeah I missed that d report that back I did not report they didn't report that back but I moved my shoulder yeah great all right thank you Mr May Mr Jenkins good evening board members um what I want to talk about this evening there's been a a lot of uh talk in our legislature about the cash balance that schools have and I want to specifically try to address uh the reasons behind the cash that we have uh it

083is not halfhazard uh we think a lot about why we need to have cash and you'll remember as a board that we've actually passed a specific policy uh we passed board policy 01 the things that we look at when we try to determine how much cash to have would be the predictability of revenues and expenses uh any exposure to significant onetime outlays for example uh year ago tomorrow I probably shouldn't bring up what happened uh but we had about a 4 and a half well pushing six OR7 million insurance claim um you know things like that occur obviously that was insured but we had to begin to fix things immediately and we needed to have the cash to be able to do so uh availability of resources and other funds liquidity of the general funds

084and then assed and committed fund balances which have to do uh with encumbrances and knowing that even though we might have liquid cash at the moment that it is bound up in an encumbrance or another type of uh commitment so in creating this policy what we worked out was a sliding scale uh we want to have in the current fiscal year at least 180 days of um our expenses in reserve we want to then have 150 if you go a fiscal year out and you can see we go down by 30 days at no point in time in a five-year forecast do we ever want less than at least a couple months of expenses uh in reserve so when you look at a 5year forecast it's really easy for your eyes to just go to

085line 7.020 look that o ol and Tangi is forecasting $21.2 million in carryover cash and make the decision that everything is just fine now while this is not intended to create any type of panic it is far more uh instructive as well to look at line 6.01 0 which most people would say is your budget balanced if your budget isn't balanced or at least Revenue exceeding uh or equal to expenses then whatever reserves you have you're obviously eating into those now it's possible uh that there are certain years and certain circumstances that would cause that to occur but when you start to see a line 6.10 that goes negative uh normally what happens is is it picks up uh in an exponential type of fashion and it picks up pretty quickly so while you could

086still say in 2026 we plan to have $170 million cash you can see how quickly by 2027 and 2028 we run into a cash balance that just simply isn't sufficient okay that's still two to three years out no big deal right well these are the kinds of things that schools have to think about budgeting is a multi-year planning process for a couple three reasons number one we can't just flip a switch and start getting more Revenue we only are able to do so with a successful passage of a levy well we can't just decide we want to start uh having levies anytime we want we have to follow the Ohio Revised Code and generally there's now only two times a year when levies can occur most people are obviously aware of the November general election

087there's also the primary uh if it's a presidential election year it happens in March uh but if it is a non-presidential it's going to happen in May those are really your only two times that you can pass a levy if you are successful collections will not begin until the subsequent calendar year so if we had a levy on the ballot uh this may which obviously we don't we don't even start to begin to collect on that Levy until uh January and February of 2026 so if that happens the other thing is is you only get one half of a collection cycle now here's what I mean by that our calendar Year everyone knows is January 1 to December 31 but a fiscal year is July 1 to June 30th if a we use the hypothetical

088again were to pass in May of 2025 we would get one half of that Levy's collections in January February of 2026 meaning in fiscal year 2025 2026 we get half of what we would hope to get When the Levy is a full cycle and we would get the subsequent half in the next fiscal year so the upshot of that is is there's about at least a 3 to 6 month if it passed in November if not a 10 to 15mth lag in getting a full Levy collection for whatever the levy passes so the district requires um that we are diligent that we are you know making sure that we're planning and preparing uh in such a way that meets those challenges another couple things uh you can't if you have a bond issue if the

089levy passes you can't just snap your fingers and the building is constructed overnight you usually have a 2 to threee period of time uh where you're designing uh and building the facility Staffing in order for us to plan appropriately uh for facilities to open uh we need to know two and three years in advance exactly what that looks like so when you put all of this together a 3 to 5e window on planning is about the minimum you would ever want uh to see and the best analogy I can come up with is large ships are not going to fare very well in water that's 2 to 3 feet deep they must have enough depth they must have enough water beneath their Keel in order for them not to run ground the other thing about

090a large ship it does not turn on a dime nor can it stop on a dime you have to plan ahead as somebody who is piloting a ship of that magnitude ol and tangy schools is about a $500 million a year uh entity our 3 to fiveyear planning as mentioned is about the minimum amount of time that we need to consider when we're looking at Future revenues future expenses uh are planning for facilities and staff so that hopefully goes towards the explanation of why a district that is currently forecasting carryover reserves that are healthy enough would even be thinking about two and three years out uh a levy uh and certainly to clarify for our community there's nothing on the ballot at this time but we know uh as Mr Lester has talked about in

091multiple meetings uh we know that we still face challenges as a district after last March's failure about what we're going going to do to handle our growth uh which comes with the buildings the Staffing and all of the things that occur across this District so questions about uh that brief explanation uh as to what cash balance adequacy looks like so the only question I would have is how how will the the impending budget discussions impact that fifth year because you're you're you're making assumptions you made assumptions when you did this as five years ago so what what will that do with like cets um our floor so this current budget uh would be portraying the state funding formula as the governor's version currently exists uh while it would be fully phased in it would be

092looking at 2022 cost sets which dramatically impact the base cost uh really what it dramatically impacts is the share of Base cost because even though the variables that impact the state's contribution are frozen at 2022 the variables that impact the local contribution continue to clip right along uh and what I mean by that is is our uh property valuation which has increased since 2022 and our incomes which have increased as a community since 2022 will be reflective of 2024 2025 so what that does is that dramatically shifts um we saw statistics that if the current funding formula uh- which is the version that the governor has put forward uh goes in the law right now the state contributes about 38% Statewide uh of the funding formula that will drop to just barely above 30% if

093those cost sets aren't adjusted and some other factors aren't adjusted so the that's a a long-winded way of saying this budget and what we've asked our legislators for which is uh we we absolutely want it to be fully phased in we want those cost sets to be adjusted uh at least to 2024 we've actually proposed a type of inflationary adjustment uh but then finally for ol and Tang's sake it is also critical that the state minimum threshold of 10% is also adjusted um we know that we will always be driven as a district to whatever that threshold is if it's 10 we're going to overtime be driven to 10 if it's 15 we're going to overtime be driven to 15 so we've kind of U targeted a 15 to 20% we certainly would prefer 20

094uh that's the level of funding that we would need in order for we've said many times in this particular venue we want our funding to per pupil be at least the equivalent of what um nonpublic get in auxiliary and administrative funding which is about $1,400 per pupil so if we get the things that we're asking for it would be dramatic local property tax relief because it would go a very very long way to making up a lot of what we see here I cannot in any way shape or form say that a future Levy would be off the table if we get what we're asking for in the state funding formula we're growing too fast um you know those sorts of things are just already occurring but it's going to dramatically impact what we have

095to ask our community for so we've been saying uh where Mr Meer and I have been talking that one of the quickest ways to get local property tax relief is to continue to ask our state legislators to make the funding formula such that that it gives ol and Tangi what it needs as a very high performing high growth School District so it's still true what Mr Rafe said three years ago that fair school funding is property tax relief for ol and Tangi taxpayers absolutely absolutely it's it's the quickest way right now for our community to uh try to leverage and uh provide their feedback and input to the folks who are developing the budget um that will impact their local tax contribution in our next upcoming Levy whenever we decide that will be okay all

096right thank you Mr Jenkins there action items just real quick uh will also be considered as usual as a consent uh agenda you can see the different donations uh that we have uh the minutes from the February 20th meeting and that would be it and I do not have any uh participation forms all right thank you so we have uh four discussion items tonight the first one is uh Berlin Township uh Buckeye swim Tiff so uh Mr Mrs Carr thank you thanks for having us um I'm Lori Carr uh just here to talk a little bit about what we have going to bring a pool into the district um I am the owner of Buckey swim and uh we are multifaceted we have uh Bucky Swim School which we operate in pal we open that

097in April of 2023 um average about 850 students a week in some lessons um we created three full-time positions and 45 part-time positions there have a lot of volun school students employed with us um we also uh just won a contract with Columbus School for Girls and we'll be Pro providing their curriculum for them for spring um swim lessons for their prek through sixth grade students um I also operate Bucky swim club which leases two locations in Columbus one at the Columbus North Sports Club um and the other at Buck some school in pal we have about 300 kids on our team at any given time and the mo majority of our swimmers have always attended only schools since we moved to Columbus North um our staff includes over 14 coaches we have 16 on

098our staff right now um me uh I live in the district my husband and I live in the district both our kids attended School K through 12 um that was a while ago uh I graduated from the Ohio State University where I swam got a degree in mathematics spent five years at Oli orange as a full-time sub um teaching kids that were slighted back in the ogt days not to pass ogt a little bit about math and getting their math skills short up um spent eight years at Liberty as the head coach of onlyi Liberty swim and dive both the girls and boys team and then did a year interim at Oli high school when they could not find a coach um eight years experience leading learn to swim uh Rick here is my business

099Finance driver for this whole project uh this started as a bubbled pool way back when when we bought this land and um we just could not get it off the ground let it sit for a bit uh Co rolled around we were all bored sitting at home I'm like make this happen and this is the iteration that we've come up with and while we were doing it we came across um EMP empty property in pal and we were able to successfully lease that and open that it has been a huge driver of how we know that this next project will work um we're full we're perpetually full we've been full since uh few months after we opened we're constantly trying to find more space for these swimmers um we also um host uh High School

100swim meets small team meets there and Worthington Special Olympics interestingly enough because they got kicked out of their pool in Co um the Columbus n Sports Club is the other facility We R run um we were able to successfully negotiate leasing that facility from the owners in another covid era thing for us um and we're able to we were able to accommodate a lot of kids in that era and now um we accommodate Tree of Life High School in Middle School swim teams our uh Buckeye Swim Club aquatic Adventures uh scuba classes and lifeguard training um a little bit about what why we're here this is the Peach blow Aquatic Center and its current iteration this is what we plan to build um we purchased 10 acres uh in 2014 before there were in any

101elementary schools on the road um we have uh we have final development approval through Berlin Township for this facility it is a separate 3ot by 60 foot teaching pool that's the one off to the left um and then a competitive training facility of 25 yards by 25 M if you've been to uper Arlington's High School pool very similar to that not quite as much seating because we were limited in our size of our building we did try one iteration was seating above and that did not fly with the township um we listened a lot to the schools and the coaches as to what they wanted for this and the team room that's off the pool is part of that it was able to get us uh a little bit more seating on the pool deck

102a little bit more seating for uh swimmers during competitions so that we could host small meets like sectionals occ's High School dual meets um Buckeye swim team Buckeye Swim School will uh operate out of that and it is our hope should we be successful tonight that we have an agreement in place to have all four high school teams in there um we've got us soft agreement with uh the schools as to what time we also have time during the day should the PE classes ever want to come in um this is a better view of it um you'll see one thing we did is individual changing rooms individual bathrooms um so there's no locker rooms in this facility uh there are a couple of individual uh family rooms off the pool deck as well um

103but that's to the right of that picture is the main competition pool and training pool it's 10 lanes plus a smaller Lane so it's like 10 and 2/3 Lanes is how we have this set up with that smaller Lane being available either for training or some lessons um this is just an overview of where the schools sit in relation to the project and then in our Tiff agreement summary with the schools um for the swim teams uh on we've basically got morning time before school starts available um we have all 10 lanes three days a week our Swim Club does use four to five Lanes two days a week for their morning practices so that's why that looks different from Monday Wednesday Friday Tuesday Thursday and then the schools ask for the entire facility up

104to 5:00 after school they that they have that in this agreement Saturdays after 1:00 the entire facility for either training or swim meets um and then Fridays as agreed upon before each swim season uh the cost is our cost so what you see there is whatever our lifeguard cost is to cover the lifeguards there that's it um it's 1.25 because that covers our payroll costs for those lifeguards as well um so if we're paying a guard typically you're paying between $5 to $20 an hour right now but if we have a guard that says I want to lifeguard for the school at minimum wage we'll pay a minimum wage and that's what we'll be charging you um so there's some flexibility there for the cost to the schools but it will certainly save the schools

105a lot of money from what you're paying now um at the facilities that you're at um having been on the other side of it as a coach where I've been in some of our facilities where we haven't been very welcome uh your schools will be welcome in this facility this is where we want them to be um and we would meet with the the school each year to make sure that we have everything in place for what the school needs for that year that's it all right so this is a discussion item so we're open for discussion if anyone has any questions or comments or uh I'll just say I just think this is a great example of a private public partnership that works it meets a a a great need in the district for

106pool capacity in a way that uh makes sense for everybody so I think it's great do you have an idea of as you know to that point if we were or how much maybe someone here can answer I don't know how much would we pay for access to a lane um otherwise it varies um I think Ryan are you have an idea force or not force but Mount Carmel charges 30 bucks an hour a Lane right yeah and we're going to need basically two lifeguards during so it's a lot less cuz that's you said per Lane right yeah that's per Lane so if they're renting six Lanes that's $180 an hour yeah for Mount Caramel that's a good example the why I think is a little less they're probably closer to the 20 range but

107I'm not P to what that is okay it's hard to believe two years ago remember I think we're over there for a music lesson and you said take a look at what what we've done it's beautiful and remind me again of the student yield how many new students will we get from this facility this is a commercial tip so we'll get no new students to educated so we'll have zero students from the development and we'll save money so this is a home run thank you thank you yeah I mean I think that's that's the important point to keep in mind is whenever we consider a tiff we have to be very thoughtful because it is impacting the tax dollars to the district um but those dollars are not the only costs right there's a lot

108of other things that we have to keep in mind one is certainly development of the area and and that area is exploding you said there were no elementary schools there originally and now there's you know however many that you have up on the screen um so we have to keep that in mind and then you know those those additional costs that are racking up over time of you know paying for Lanes um but also really the sense of community that can come with being in this location having students from all the schools together and um and able to do that so I think that there's a lot of ways that this is you know there are some unseen benefits that that we're able to realize and also good you know partnership with the other local

109um the other local um municipalities Mr Lester I do have one question do you have room on the walls for state championship banners absolutely I'm kind of upset with the Liberty Township people because they only have Team state champions he's heard it so much for me team state champions on that thing and I think the backside should be full of all the swimmers and divers that have won States they they did they did discuss that but obviously we we need a big well four Billboards electronic electronic right right right between track and but they did not want to take away from um obviously all the individual accomplishments which we have many across the district um over the year so yeah so uh we're not going in just this moment uh we have a couple more

110discussion times but we will be going into executive session later to discuss this a little bit more fully and then we will be reconvening um to take action on this at that point so um thank you any other questions comments before we all right thank you so much thank you all right Mr seon for uh the technology replacement discussion hi good evening um thank you for the opportunity to talk about tech Replacements right it's this time of year right um this particular one is um one piece of the puzzle so this is just Chromebooks so we'll have some some more smaller items uh coming in but this is this is the bulk of um of what we're replacing so real quick um so Chromebooks student use only right these are not for staff um the

111um 5200 number came from um two different pieces we have we have 4100 is falling off um so going back um so these are leases so what we do is we do competitive um bidding for the selling of those back sometimes it makes sense to um hand them back to HP um and uh uh in lie of a what's called a balloon payment at the end of this so uh it's whatever we get the most money back for so 4,100 coming off 5200 coming on right so why 5200 right well this was five years ago right so we've grown substantially since then so this is an account for for new students um what we do there is uh some of these 5200s are for our reserves but we put the newest the latest and greatest

112out in the hands of the kids and um and we take some olders older ones we have uh and use those as our reserves okay um a couple things that um are kind of behind the scenes on this uh this isn't just Chromebooks okay so um they uh this uh order also includes uh blue light screen protectors so it helps protect the devices uh from damage um but it's also good for the kids um that are on these devices for you know substantial amount of time um so um the uh Beyond this uh it also can include carts uh where needed we have a a large number of older carts that we've been trying to replace over the years that are damaged and you know need repair so we're going replacing some of those uh

113charging stations for the classrooms uh in case you know the batteries die or kids just want to charge other devices uh lockable cabinets and of course um the warranty right right and this is a um the warranty is a big piece of this and the uh intent there is to not be repairing all these um with the service desk uh and to have those individuals out in the buildings helping staff helping students with any issues they have so um happy to answer any questions you have questions I I'm just curious especially with the Chromebooks I know a number of people buy them you know for their students have we seen over time M have you mapped it relative to the student growth are we seeing a the same rough percentage of people that are taking

114advant or not taking advantage but are are using School Chromebooks versus not or is that number changing at all yeah it changes from year to year the some buildings do uh have different strategies about promoting that uh and saying hey you know please bring it what we do is we provide enough so that um we can fill that gap of of students that don't um and we hold uh well hold we try to provide a certain percentage to to buildings for example the high schools uh we uh 65% is that magic coverage number and then students bringing devices uh filled up the other 35 has that number shrunk over time so five years ago X number of kids brought their own and now more percentage or yeah it it does um it does increase the

115number of students bringing devices but we also see to is um uh students typically have three devices uh we can tell that from our our data in the wireless um and our wireless numbers just continue to to grow and grow in the capacity that it that's on there so kids have their their phone connect to the wireless uh usually have a tablet or other device um their and then their personal device um so they're not just bringing just their you know one device so don't answer this question but I'm just wondering what what percent because you know we're all thinking about screen time right we're all we understand the research is coming out and and trying to minimize so I'm curious how much how sensitive we can be with our curriculum about screen time and

116that's not a question you can answer cuz there's no way to know I'm I'm guessing different different classes have more time on screen so it's just important to figure out ways I guess is what I'm saying absolutely yeah there needs to be a balance um so I'm a te I'm a tech guy but you know they're there's just you just don't need to use technology you know for for a lot of things um but um in this case a lot of our digital you know curriculum is delivered this way um and um it's what we need to to at least build that gap for when even State Testing is done on the computers right that's how we have to do it for the state yeah April's coming uh and uh starting in third grade right

117even earlier yes that's such a good time with uh trying to move things around and where buildings uh you know hey we're getting it from this department or moving from here and having in high schools I remember it wasn't that long ago where we're we're pulling up the truck and and putting carts in it and shipping them you know between um between the buildings uh so uh thank goodness those days are gone so great thank you Mr Saxon appreciate it uh we'll now move on to uh Dr fetty clapping for good good evening uh it has been over the statutory 30 days that we've gathered public feedback on the 2026 27 school calendar uh we had over a thousand responses about two-thirds of which were from the community uh the rest obviously staff um so

118uh our student year that we're proposing on the exhibit tonight uh would begin on August 20th 79% of our respondents were satisfied with that date thanks giving break you can see there following the standard pattern 87% satisfied and the year ending on May 27th um we presented two uh different winter break and spring break scenarios um for Community uh feedback uh option a uh in both scenarios was the preferred option from those providing feedback winter break uh beginning December 21st and continuing through a teacher work day on January 4th and and um spring break beginning on March 26 with a conference exchange day and then uh continuing through April 2nd both of those options again are in that 60% uh range so uh the recommendation for you tonight is to we're asking that you adopt

119the exhibit as presented with the winter break and the spring break options reflected um a couple other notes that you'll see on the exhibit um we added uh a note for the first day of school for preschool students to begin on Tuesday August 25th um traditionally as we had this year um we start our preschool students on the same day as everyone else but uh with our growth it continues to tax our transportation department further and further so this gives us the ability to focus on our kindergarten students the first couple of days who are most vulnerable um Riders as they're learning school and then uh bring on preschool on their first day on the following Tuesday uh also noting our last day for seniors being May 14th which would be the Friday before graduation

120that year um and the last day for prek students is May 26 which is uh you know our uh elementary schools do a two-hour early release on the last day of school so prek has always ended uh a day before um but just being transparent with those dates here on this calendar uh are there any questions on the calendar or the process that we use I I always just think it's amazing how many people respond to this I mean it's that's great yeah and these numbers were very consistent with uh the responses that we saw last year yeah it's great and it's always it's the number one search on our website school calendar not board bios now that you've planted the seed uh maybe maybe though all right is it all right if I move

121on then to the next item here um not my eeky guy but I do spend some time with the board policy um oh yeah I only had this slide so uh the committee met on February 28th uh so thank you uh to the committee members on the board uh for for that meeting um I personally want to apologize for the the size of this exhibit um what you see here uh reflects noa's recommended changes from October of last last calendar year plus uh we waited to wait uh get all the legislative changes at the end of December um all into an exhibit um so you will notice uh you know with the size of this exhibit if you look at policy 2260 and policy 2265 2260 um is a policy that we adopted back in

122the fall to respond to other legislation um so at that time so we have the new legislation but like 2265 is nea's recommended policy to address that legislation protecting uh individual beliefs affiliations ideals and principles of political movements and ideology was the short title they came up with there um but the you know so we had uh worked our policy adjustment into existing policy to comply with state law and Yola came out and said it would be best if you have your own policy on that matter so the revision here is removing the change that we added uh back in the fall to 2260 and um just reflecting that in its own policy number uh there there are lots of other um house bills and Senate bills that are reflected in here Senate Bill 29

123House Bill 8 are two major ones that have driven a lot of policy change so um this is the first reading um for feedback for public feedback for your feedback um are there any questions that you've seen on the exhibit so far that I can answer right now or anything you'd like me to report on at the next meeting when we bring it back for adoption I think just to note that um you know you said that these are out for feedback so they're all on our district website under the board tab um if anybody wants to look up the policy changes or yeah make comments I know we sometimes get feedback from staff sometimes from the community so that's what this people do pay attention to it yeah and I will say I mean

124there is a lot here and it can be a little confusing I think especially as you're going through it with the way that it's you know moving and all of that so if people have questions certainly they can certainly reach out to me absolutely um unless you you wanted them to call you miss shriber is to as well we we as the policy committee could answer those questions but I would be glad to take them I mean we we went through all of these I mean line by line honestly looking at them and it is just sometimes hard to parse you've got to have a bit of a sense for everything so certainly if people have questions we're always happy too you can reach out to us where you can reach out to Jack and

125um and certainly thank uh Chris Maola the other the chair of the policy committee who put in a lot of work absolutely Chris is valuable yeah uh okay thank you great thank you all right uh I will now entertain a motion to enter into executive session pursuant to oh high Revised Code section 12122 G8 uh for negotiations with other political subdivisions respecting requests for economic development assistance with respect to Revis code section 579 73b uh my favorite subsection of the Revise Code so uh can I have a motion uh to enter into executive session so moved and a second I'll second uh and then just for discussion I'll note that we will be coming back to vote uh on on an item here uh so uh with that Mr Jenkins please call the role at

126your leisure you tenant Leisure Dr dbo yes Dr Wallock yes Mr Brian yes Miss shriber yes Mr Lester yes all right we will be back for e for e for e for e e and now Recon us into Open Session uh so the for first uh action item we have is a board action item a resolution to approve a tiff uh compensation agreement and deed Covenant uh which we discussed uh in our discussion item uh can I have a motion to approve so moved a second second any discussion all right other than just thank you again for the presentation we appreciate it uh all right Mr Jenkins please uh call all the wrong Mr O'Brien yes M shriber yes Mr Lester yes Dr daco yes Dr Wall abstain all right Mr Jenkins uh please uh

127call the treasurer consent action items uh board members as mentioned in the presentation um I only have two items tonight but I'm asking you to consider both with one single motion and action uh item a is the recommended approval of the donations that are listed and then Item B would be the recommended approval of the meeting minutes from February 20th these could be considered as one single motion and vote unless somebody would like to pull them out and discuss them separately these out these are some good meeting minutes so okay hearing no interest in that can I have a motion to approve these as a consent action item so moved a second second all right any discussion are hearing none Mr Jenkins M shriber yes Mr Lester yes Dr dbco yes Dr wallik yes Mr

128O'Brien yes all right Mr Meyer please present the superintendent consent action items thank you Mr Lester board members I recommend approval of the following superintendent consent action items a through I a specific human resource items administrative B specific human resource item certified staff C specific human resource item supplementals D specific human resource items classified staff e students for early graduation F academic items which again those are uh student trips and the student Club request uh G the 2026 2027 District school calendar H uh technology items the purchase of Chromebooks and I business management and facility items that were noted in my uh super tenant report I'm asking you to approve these items by one single action and vote unless you'd like to discuss any of these items separately I would like to discuss any of

129these items separately no right I'll just note uh before we go this that we do we've pulled out uh Miss dco as the Director of people services to a separate action item so that will be our next item this is voting on everything else uh can I have a motion to approve so moved a second second right any discussion I I think I asked nobody wanted to point anybody any of these out I think okay all right uh any discussion all right Mr jackets please call the RO Mr Lester yes Dr dabrio yes Dr wallet yes Mr O'Brien yes Mr shriber yes all right Dr dbo I think is leaving the room uh so we'll give him a minute all right Mr Meer do you want to present your final uh superintendent action item yes

130thanks Mr Lester uh board members I recommend approval of a specific human human resource item administrative which is a three-year contract uh for Stephanie Dabo as director of pupil Services as well as 30 transition days okay uh can I have a motion to approve so moved and second second all right any discussion I just want to appreciate that um that Mr Meyer explained the process and that um I'm confident that this was a an impartial and merit-based um recommendation thank you and I I'll also say I ran into uh some teachers in the district who work in one of our slc's they've worked here for a number of years and uh they approached me yesterday uh with excitement enthusiasm um singing uh Miss tabber goes Praises that she really knows what she's doing so and

131and I think that's certainly been evident from the years of presentation so we we've seen that in action to be sure uh all right can I have uh so we did a motion right already then we' got our discussion we have our discussion it's been long me uh okay uh Mr Jenkins Dr Wallock yes Mr O'Brien yes M shriber yes Mr Lester yes all right congratulations uh we will uh now uh entertain a motion to enter into executive session pursuant to Ohio high Revised Code section 12122 G1 uh to discuss the employment or compensation of a Public Employee uh I will note that after this we will not be coming back to take any substantive action items so can I have a motion to approve so moved a second I'll second all right any discussion

132right hearing none Mr Jenkins Mr Brian yes M shriber yes Mr Lester yes Dr Wallock yes e for e for e for e for e for e for e for e for e for e for e for e e e all right it is 9:11 p.m. uh we are returning from executive session I'll now entertain a motion to adjourn so moved all right and second second all right any discussion hearing none uh Dr dbo yes uh Miss shriber yes Mr ler yes Dr wallik yes uh Mr O'Brien yes all right we are a ja St