001this meeting to order thank you everybody for coming mrs hatfield can you call the roll please mr king president mrs patrick here mr o'brien here mrs wagner feasel here and dr weiss here thank you please stand and join me in sing the pledge of allegiance i pledge and to the allegiance for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay tonight i need approval on the agenda as amended and the two amended items is a treasure action item to approve emergency resolution to accept the material terms of the one ohio subdivision settlement and then the the second addendum is the superintendent action items and it's related to specific human resource issues two new people playground cafeteria aid at liberty tree elementary and a transportation driver um adjust the transportation
002driver so can i have a motion to approve the agenda as amended one second any further discussion no call the role please mr o'brien yes mr king yes mrs patrick yes dr weiss and mrs wagner feasel yes thank you tonight we have two presentations and the first presentation is our treasurer emily hatfield to talk about strategic planning and how the funds are used good evening everyone so we want to do a presentation this evening to talk about the next component of our strategic plan um as you know our in previous presentations our dlt our leadership team excuse me have presented on the other three components of our strategic plan and so tonight i'm going to present on resource stewardship this slide gives you the overview of the fork main components thank you you can see
003on the wheel that we have talked through our students excuse me i took my glasses off because my mask was fogged up now i'm squinting that's not a good plan but we've talked about the other three components at previous board meetings and how we've achieved those goals that are the missions underneath those four components to help the district be successful and carry out our operations also at the bottom you will see our mission statement our values and our vision statement this allows us to kind of tie all those pieces together and understand how they all align to meet our strategic plan overall goals so the three components that we have focused on for resource stewardship is maximizing investments in revenue managing assets wisely and modeling fiscal responsibility and transparency so i wanted to start the
004presentation by talking about key influencers what dictates some of the components and things that we have to report on or report to as part of the treasurer's department and fiscal side of the house so we are governed by provisions of the ohio revised code or law those are specific laws in place that tell us how we can invest how we have to report our information and what a proper public purpose is in the funds that we spend there are non-profit regulations that govern what we do and certainly our generally accepted accounting principles dictate how we book things and keep our records they also govern how we report our annual financial information the auditor of state is responsible for making sure that we are meeting those metrics we are audited every fiscal year we are actually
005getting ready to engage in the audit for fiscal year 2021. typically that takes about six months and our auditors will come in and take a look at all of our fiscal records make sure that we have appropriate documentation that they serve a proper public purpose and that everything was accounted for per all those regulations and items that govern that we also take a look at market rate and trends in terms of investing in terms of debt ratios how are we earning interest revenue for the district and what are the general economics of the area on the economic side we're also looking at national state and local so it's not just school funding but it's on a national level what's coming through pandemic resources what is the gov federal government working on state usually works with
006not only legislative matters but of course our funding and then within our community how can we support the funding of our students locally and then community stakeholders of course our board of education and our district leadership all have key influences on what they would like to see in reporting decisions that best suit the district and help us achieve and maximize learning for all of our students so let's take a look at what we've been doing and where we are headed for each of those three major categories to maximize investments in revenue what have we been doing we are responsible for going through professional development and training we have to as the treasurer and also i encourage our assistant treasurer to make sure that we have all of the certifications that a treasurer is required to
007have by law to invest public funds the reason that we do this for not only myself but for our assistant is to make sure that the district is covered should something happen i'm not able to make a decision we have someone who is licensed and able to make those decisions and move the district forward we strategize our debt capacity taking a look at how we create our debt schedule and whether or not we can have debt that will go towards our no new millage promise so we manage that and make sure that we've got our capacity set not to increase that tax burden on our community we also look at refinancing how can we refinance our refund bonds so that we can get lower interest rate and keep our costs down we participate in tax
008incentive financing projects or tiffs those are incentive structures that allow for a set aside of some tax dollars so that we can so the funds can be put into a place to help get the economics and the public infrastructure up and running to bring in more commercial properties commercial properties are taxed at a higher rate and help take some of the taxing burden off of our residents so we try to participate in those as much as possible and when they are in the best interest of the district and then the negotiation of board of revision and board of tax appeals so you may be aware that board of revision and tax appeals is the process that individuals and or commercial properties can go to go through excuse me a court process to change their valuation
009of their property and so we work with rich and gillis our attorney firm to make sure that we are looking at those components perhaps making negotiations so that we can still maintain the tax collection and value that the district is look is depending on to help support our community where we are headed um there are some partnerships that we are looking at with our banking with in the banking um section excuse me i can speed talk a little bit i'll try to slow down just a little bit but we are currently working with commerce bank and pnc to do some revenue sharing programs if we have the opportunity for vendors to use phantom charge cards so to speak we can issue payment through the through that one-time use card and then we can gain some
010incentives back on that we also have our pnc cards which are like pro pay cards there's very strict regulations about how they're set up but they work kind of as a credit card for the vendor and for staff so we take advantage of those purchasing agreements to help re generate some funds debt consolidation and or refunding of bonds we touched on this a little bit we will actually have another refunding that we will present to the board at our next meeting i believe we've done about six or seven refundings over the last i would say four to five years saved about 9 million to 10 million dollars in interest so we continue to look at those the interest rates of the market and when we are allowed to take those back for refundings to help
011save costs so we'll keep that cycle going so if i could just jump in for example sure i think the treasurer's office has done a really good job on managing our interest rates and managing our refundings because you know some districts just kind of issue the debt and forget it and we're constantly managing our interest costs and consciously managing [Music] the amount of millage on the capital capital fund so i think it somewhat goes unnoticed because it just it's like financial items on the agenda but our ability to really manage that down has helped us a lot on keeping our capital costs down thank you i appreciate that we always want to make sure we can take advantage of that lower interest rate markets unfortunately it doesn't help us on the investment side of the
012house but if it helps us on the debt we'll definitely make sure that we can use that strategy to keep costs down so thank you and then we also work on strategizing millage rate needs for future levy campaigns that's part of the five-year forecasting tool that we have in place is taking a look at day's cash on hand when we might be back for a levy cycle what does that millage rate look like and how do we plan forward so that we're continuing to get make that better and then again continued investment portfolio planning unfortunately right now as we mentioned interest rate earnings are as low as interest rate financing we are licensed to participate in the commercial paper area but even in the commercial paper investment market its returns are pretty low but we
013do take advantage of that all idle funds are invested including construction funds so when we sell the debt for bonds we are also investing that cash and as we are waiting for the construction bills to come in managing assets wisely so what have we been doing we've been working again on short-term and long-term capital needs annual budgeting of all funds we go through that start that process in january it carries us through the may forecast and then in june we have those budgets approved by the board we are working on enhancing a culture of fiscal responsibility with staff talking to to staff members as they call with purchase order questions or with items that they may be looking at buying what's the best use of funds which fund can you use how do you you
014know utilize what you have in your building to get the best bang for your buck so these are conversations that we continue to have on an ongoing basis managing cost of employee benefits one of our big areas for this is our health insurance we are self-insured for medical insurance and so we are responsible for paying the claims as they are incurred and it it's different than fully insured where you just get billed and they kind of have this big lag but with the self-insured fund we're paying the claims as they come in and paying for the management of that so we renegotiate our annual premium rates we provide education to staff about how to better utilize the benefits so they can get some cost savings for themselves as they use the plan and also take
015a look at any high claims on a regular basis with our insurance broker to understand if there are adjustments or conversations we need to have to change those strategies excuse me and rework our plans we are constantly looking at cash flow management that's a little bit on the investment side of the house but investing idle funds making sure we have just enough cash on hand for our operation pieces making sure we're laddering any investments so that more cash becomes available as needed and not tying them up in the market so we have cost extra cost there all of that goes into our cash flow management that occurs on a regular basis and then development of procurement guidelines for federal programs we had a big shift in our federal procurement guidelines a couple of years ago
016and had to recreate what we were putting into policy so that we were meeting those guidelines not a lot of information was available when we were expected to have those in place and operate under those guidelines so we made sure that we were working with the appropriate partners to get those developed and documented and keep our fiscal reporting online and on target so where we're going we are due for request for proposals on banking and probably health or medical provider services within the next year or so now that the pandemic has i wouldn't say settled but businesses are starting to come back into their capacities in moving and operating on a semi-normal basis to where we can do these requests for proposals and get a good response i think so we'll pick those up and
017start moving forward with those again we are implementing fiscal software that provides better more adept accounting requirements and electronic workflows and reports so hopefully we will be able to produce information that you need succinctly rather than using some of the old metrics that we have in our current software again just working with our budget management and then continued staff training opportunities within our department and across the district so how do we model fiscal responsibility and transparency i know that this is a big concern we are talking about public dollars we're talking about tax dollars so what have we been doing with this and where are we headed so we've been working on redesigning the forecast report trying to make it a combination of visual tables and metrics that people can read who need that visualization
018as well as a narrative i know physical data is pretty boring to most so we're trying to redesign that to make it more user friendly and more engaging as well as our monthly board financials those are quite thick we have to produce the check register in those monthly financial package which is quite a number of pages but we're trying to be more creative and purposeful with putting summary reports on top so that you don't necessarily have to flip through all of that detail to get to what you want we're enhancing where we have enhanced the treasurer's web page to put more information about how taxes are collected how house bill 920 affects taxes talking about our transparent transparency and accolades and keeping our financial reports in focus and easy to access we've communicated or excuse
019me participated in community education through town halls and coffee chats and in addition legislative advocacy as you may remember the fair school funding plan was brought into the state budget this biennium budget which is fantastic we've been working on trying to get fair funding for the school district from the state for quite a number of years unfortunately the fair school funding plan isn't fully funded for this fiscal year in the next but at least there are the plan or the funding model is within legislation and will continue to push for that funding to be applied and then again working with our finance and audit committee we have a group of folks that we meet with at least bi-annually if not quarterly regarding our financial status where we are where we've been and working on any
020kind of levy campaigning information and millage model information that we might have so where are we headed how can we get better we are very adamant that we maintain the accolades for fiscal reporting i think it's very important to our community and to ourselves that we continue to maintain our gfoa certification of achievement for in financial reporting we've had that certification for 20 years consecutively so we'll continue to maintain that we've also received the ohio auditor of state award with distinction for our clean audits meaning that there's no material weakness or items that need to be reported we've gotten that award for the ninth consecutive year through fiscal year 20. and then in a new measure that we've worked on is transparency and records requests the auditor of state's office created a new star rating
021system that was in effect for fiscal year 2020 and so with the operations that we had in place we were able to achieve a five-star ranking without really adapting or moving any of our operating procedures so we're pretty proud of that so we'll continue to meet those metrics and work on those as our standards of course reviewing and re our reporting documents with finance and audit committee taking advantage of their expertise to get better enhancing your wedge what excuse me web page with graphics and statistics instead of more verbage trying to make it easier and more accessible continue to create on-demand training for support groups and staff by support groups we're talking about our boosters and pto organizations making sure they have the materials they need to be successful groups and offering an on-demand type
022of training as new members come and go from those organizations and then again continued legislative advocacy for the funding of the fair school funding plan are there questions that i can answer about that i know that was a lot of information thrown at you any other questions no when's your first finance and audit committee meeting have you said it yet for fall oh yes thank you we are currently scheduled for october 18th to review the five-year forecast update with that we should be able to have the state funding model in place and it should carry through our forecast model we have some training going on next week to make sure we understand those components so we should be able to report out how those changes come to actual fruition so the second meeting in october
023we would be able to see that at the board level yes okay yes um typically when we have our review with the finance and audit committee you receive a draft version of that so you can kind of see it as we present it to them but yes there will be a first reading that second meeting in october all right anything else thank you thank you okay the next presentation is superintendent mark reef your return to school update thanks thank you everyone welcome nice to have everybody here so um obviously we sent out a message a little bit ago some things have changed here uh again and so we're just gonna update you the board typically would have given this presentation prior to sending out the information but kind of things just didn't align time timeline
024wise this time so you know as always everything starts with our mission and uh to facilitate maximum learning for every student our vision and our values and you know our main goal here is to keep students back in school in person five days a week and student because we know students benefit best from in-person learning so that's what we're going to try to accomplish here with our return to school plan so our priorities as we've been developing this guidance first and foremost is to continue our partnership with the delaware public health district because they're our our best resource to provide us with local data and guide us on the decisions we need to make to keep a safe and healthy environment we're going to follow the school guidance at the national and state levels and
025ensure that we have uh mitigation strategies that allow for uh sufficient contact tracing and quarantine determination so provide choice for our diverse staff students and parents uh population and and again we want to maintain in-person learning for students and staff uh for uh for the year so let's start by just quickly looking at our local health data and and vaccination rates as you know the delaware public health district is um producing a report card weekly with critical factors uh they recently there are one two three four five critical factors there you see uh just recently we initially in the first week that this reporting system started there was one fail on that report card system there is now a second fail on that report card system um but um director hiddleston uh told me today
026she's in contact with the cdc because she does not think the second fail is an accurate measure so um so she's working on trying to get that corrected from from our standpoint so um obviously from the this is all county-wide data that the delaware public health district monitors we are at an average new case rate of 15 per day for per population of 100 000 per 100 000 population about 210 000 people in delaware county um and you see their cases in isolation for the last uh 10 days was 292 and uh as of um this week there have been 27 000 doses administered by the health district for the vaccine this is interesting data the the blue line is olin tangy and the um i think the red line is big walnut the orange
027line is delaware city and the yellow line is buckeye valley as you see there all the way and all the ways it goes to the right on the graph is the most current data for june july and august and we actually have the lowest data of any school district on cases per 100 000. now obviously being significantly larger than any other district in delaware county we're going to have significantly more cases potentially than any of the other districts there's 2400 students in big walnut i'm not sorry big walnut in buckeye valley you know we had 2200 kids at orange high school one year so that's very encouraging data for us it continues to show that across the board we have um what i would with the health district and i both believe are very low
028case rates so that's that's a very positive number for us this is the known cases by school district across uh since june of 2020 all the way through august of 2021 obviously you see there in december we had the highest number of cases of 266 but again in comparison when you look at buckeye valley with 31 if you do that as a percentage of the total student population and these are cases for students and staff so if you do it as a percentage of the student and staff population our case percentage of cases is actually lower even though that number is certainly much much higher so so again from a local data standpoint from from our health district we currently have uh five elementary school students that have reported one middle school student seven high
029school students and two on tangie staff um since june 1. we've had that many and there are three that somehow the age was unknown but the health district is telling us they're under uh 18. so again those numbers look very very promising here for us so again i want to just quickly review the k-12 school guidance from the national and state level the u.s department of education has released a return to school roadmap map obviously all of those agencies continue to stress vaccinations as the for anyone over the age of 12 as the first line of mitigation so that continues to be stressed by those agencies the american academy of pediatrics obviously this has been discussed heavily and the statement that i want to stress is that the american academy of pediatrics strongly recommends in-person
030learning and it urges all eligible people to be vaccinated obviously that's very important the layered mitigation approach to make students safe is very important they are recommending universal masking for all students and staff so obviously that is their recommendation they are not able to make a requirement obviously for our school district but that's what they're recommended along with the cdc very similar guidelines there is a federal order for mass to be required on buses until at least september 13th that federal order there's been debate um about whether or not our school buses are public transportation and whether or not that debate uh is going to be litigated or not isn't really uh of our concern right now because we got to get school started our legal counsel is telling us that that federal order supersedes
031any ohio law so we [Music] are going to follow that federal order as um as required obviously the cdc is also recommending in universal indoor masking for all students staff and teachers and um and then obviously the three feet of physical distancing is one of their mitigation strategies and then finally the ohio department of health very very similar strongly recommending vaccinations strongly recommending mask wearing and all the other proper ventilation distancing and so on so those are the guidelines that we're um are from a state and national level and the delaware health district's guidelines are also very similar um mask recommended again very consistent mass required on the buses through 913 for the federal rule and so on you know i think it's really important this this more than any ever any year this should
032be followed any year but the self monitoring of your health condition so if people do have a cough or shortness of breath or do feel they are ill staying home both students and staff is going to be very important here especially early on as we continue to work our way back to full in-person learning so um contact tracing and quarantining the um the the major point of this is that um is it starts with vaccination because if if a student or a staff member are vaccinated and you follow this flow chart this will be sent out then they will not be required to quarantine so that's very important if um is uh the second the next thing on there is did the contact consistently wear a mask if the answer to that is yes then
033the student or staff member will be allowed to remain in school it'll be uh recommended that they wear a mask and monitor their symptoms for 14 days it will be recommended that they get a test i think it's it's i'm squinting up there but i want to say it's at day five and at day five then they would be able to if they are asymptomatic be able to uh take away the recommendation to wear a mask so the way to not be quarantined is to be vaccinated and to wear a mask so again those are all the the health guidelines that are in place from the health district so the health district will be doing all the contract tracing and they will continue to provide isolation and quarantine guidance based on cdc recommended recommendations and
034our local data they will be the ones responsible for quarantining individuals who have come into close contact with a person who is positive so wearing a mask though obviously will help keep children safe in school so again that's the um goes along with those recommendations of the other health agencies so our mitigation strategies our mitigation strategies are that we will follow the ohio department of health guidance which strongly recommends that everyone regardless of vaccination status wears a face mask in school so parents and individuals will have the option to have their children wear face masks while in school or participating in school activities so i know that is obviously the the biggest point of contention but those agencies that are making those recommendations i [Music] those um guidelines again are going to be strongly encouraged
035and strongly recommended to be followed again everybody will have that choice as to how they choose to move forward we will do physical distancing in our classes three feet whenever possible we will have ppe available hand washing and sanitizing will continue to be encouraged and prevalent throughout the building buildings we will continue to clean and disinfect all of our buildings and buses just like we did last year stay on top of all that again vaccinations will be continued to be encouraged you know to get vaccinated against covet 19 and and just like we did last year if if the health district feels it would be beneficial then we could potentially do a vaccine clinic here on our sites so again with regards to transportation um about uh we're gonna follow the federal requirement and um
036then pretty much everything with transportation will be the same as last year and again that could change by september 13th was a date that that is set to expire again just some building protocols i know again these are things of interest for for the community essential visitors and volunteers will be permitted into the school buildings and that's going to be determined uh on a building by building basis by the principle of each school we'll continue to our all of our hvac systems we continue to be programmed to bring in more outside air like we did last year we're very fortunate that we've got great systems we've got obviously these new buildings so that is very beneficial for us and then water bottle filling stations will be open for use um but we're not going to
037bring back the water fountains right now because those just tend to be little germ factories um food service as everyone's aware all students enrolled in ellen tng are eligible to receive one breakfast and one lunch at no charge obviously again if kids buy a la cart then their accounts will be charged so we are going to in order to provide sufficient information for contact tracing we are going to have assigned seats in the lunchroom tables so high school students did a really good job with this just scanned a qr code and so that will be able to to know where everybody's sitting in the event we have to um do the contract contact tracing and then obviously saying we've already already stated this with regard to ppe the table dividers will be available for students
038upon request and again students will be continued to be encouraged to use sanitizer before lunch periods and so on so you know again as i stated previously this health assessment at school you know it's very important that i think people be very mindful of their own health before entering any of our facilities and you know we would like everyone to follow these guidelines because it's very important to try to control that spread so the district communications team is uh working on communicable disease notifications um so we're working on that so basically what what essentially the delaware health district has decided to how they're deciding to work through this is much like other communicable diseases now the health commissioner does have the authority to require masks be worn so in my conversation with her today i
039asked her specifically at this time given our data where we are as a district with the number of cases we have do we need to require for mass to be worn all throughout the district and our answer was no you should follow the guidelines of the cdc the american academy of pediatricians the ohio department of health and our guidelines and recommend that mass be worn but it's important to note that um [Music] uh obviously depending on how things are and if things change then our guidelines and guidance could change uh accordingly again the goal being to remain in person in-person learning we do not have the ability to do remote learning or hybrid learning because of new laws that have been passed uh at the at the state level so you know that is problematic
040for us i'm going to ask dr feddy to talk a little bit about distance learning questions and cdl the cdl program that we had last year so good evening yes we were as you know able to offer committed distance learning last year the state had passed what was known as house bill 164 i believe was the number that suspended a lot of attendance requirements state testing requirements and other rules that schools operate based upon because of the pandemic all of those waivers or all the rules that they suspended last year ended at the end of last year and they did not reinstate them this year in addition with the budget bill that was signed on june 30th the state implemented a new law that said that virtual schools have to be virtual and students can't
041live in both worlds and if they do then they're a blended school and if they're a blended school they have to learn primarily in a physical setting not an electronic setting so we would have to bring students in 51 of the time essentially into our buildings anyway to do a blended uh approach to allow them to belong to their physical home school and cdl like we did last year also if we created a full virtual school the state's very clear that that should be a permanent decision not a pandemic related and that it would have to follow and meet all of the requirements of a virtual school in state law or any school in state law which is far beyond what we were doing with cdl when we were running a program that operated as
042a satellite off of the students home school are there any questions about that so essentially we'd have to create another school district to do cdl well because you have to have your irn number yeah you have to have an iron it would technically be a school but the size of it as we know is kind of district size but yes it would be another school in all in tangier or really three more schools in elementary and middle and high did you have a question i do have a question it's about dublin i know that they have they now have an online option how were they able to accomplish it did they use their ser two and three funds to do that uh i don't know all the details of dublin's plan um obviously don't work
043there but the uh somebody sent me a website of theirs that lists what they're doing and it looks like they're calling it a virtual school but they're operating under the blended parameters which means that 51 of learning should take place in a physical school setting um and i would imagine that there would be you know obviously they got more esser funds than we did since we got zero um but i don't i don't know exactly how that would how they would be using that money but it certainly would help thank you and so well honestly the rules the rules are very specific about how you're supposed to operate these schools and given the current state of the state um the ohio department of education he's supposed to monitor those rules i i personally there's probably
044districts that may just be saying we're going to do what we want because there's nobody monitoring those rules now anyway so um i don't know exactly all the all the parameters of what what everybody or do everybody's doing across the state with regards to distance learning but the ohio department of education is in a complete state of flux [Music] thanks jeff okay um questions okay any other questions because i have some i have some as well okay we'll start down here mindy okay um going back to the beginning of your presentation we talked about the the five parameters pass fail and my question i'm not sure if you know the answer to this but the fail that was potentially um in question is that i believe it was around hospital capacities correct the highest cost
045we're looking at whatever hospital facilities are in delaware county right which is just yeah grady health okay and then um [Music] uh as far as truancy and attendance now i know a couple years ago all those rules changed at the reporting of it it's based on hours with quarantining and illness i assume that that is still suspended kids are the attendance rules are not suspended the way they were previously though quarantine does not affect the student negatively in terms of the truancy portion of the law okay and i would fully expect now that our staff is well versed with schoology and some of the other online options that we were able to put into place last year that that the um level of of instruction that child would be able to receive in a quarantine
046or the amount of communication that could be happening with it with it with a staff member would be significantly improved over previous years because we've experienced that i have one more question and that is around vaccine records so would it expedite students not getting quarantined if they submitted jovid19 vaccination records or is that going to have to go directly to the health department they'd have record of it they'll have they have a record of it anyway it could expedite it i mean we've had situations i've talked to other superintendents with situations that they've incurred already where a kid has his vex a picture of his vaccine card on his phone and that again depending depending on who you talk to with the health district is whether or not they determine whether or not that's good
047enough okay so lakisha yes can we turn the lights back on i can't see my notes thank you dustin thank you thank you sir thank you all right so um this contact tracing is it going to be like it was last year where they were behind will they be able to keep up i mean hoping they wouldn't have to do a lot of keeping up but there was a lot we're actively discussing that with the with the health district about what they're going to do to employ enough people to do that we did a lot of the contract racing last year so you know it could fall back to us you know again right now where we are with cases i would say we're we're in good shape and uh but we're just gonna see
048how that goes okay okay and uh i mean i i'm very concerned i'm definitely concerned about our kids 12 and under for preschoolers but i know that uh i have other kids too you know i see both sides here what's happening here and when the arguments but i you know i'm just very concerned about our preschoolers and our kids under 12 and um i feel like we're kind of looking at like ohio weather we don't know what we're going to get in this ohio weather sometimes you don't know what you're getting okay okay um but my one question is are school nurses medical professionals just leave thank you okay okay let's let lakisha talk so what is our school nurse involvement and when it comes like to making this kind of decision and and are
049you consulting with their school nurses are they included with you know when you talk about the health district yeah they've been they've been involved throughout all throughout the process you know not maybe not as much during the summer but you know we we do keep our nurses very involved in this process they're integral to you know obviously on both ends of the process you know and i'll just you know clarify just like just like everybody here in the in in the audience we're all concerned about all of our kids every single day i'm concerned you know so and i know okay so you know again i think the the the you know everybody has different levels of concern that i think is it's important for them you know i put in my first communication you
050know that there's a level of um risk that certain different people want to manage in different ways i think if you're a young child that you're highly concerned about then obviously then you should put that young child in a mask but there are also people that don't have that same concern that have more concerns about the mask so there are issues of okay let him continue i can i can tell you when i was a high school principal i didn't sleep entire prom weekend because i was so concerned about my my kids um you know we're we are concerned about our kids in everything that they do so um you know again we're going to continue to stress to people good healthy hygiene and habits and and try to um get back to the business
051of of teaching and learning um you know i know people debated this issue you know the notion of um you know i'm not a public health official and i'm certainly not a a medical professional um i jokingly tell people i was pre-med for a week um but i i struggle with having that responsibility to make some of those decisions when um i believe there should be other people making some of those decisions regarding the public health and safety you know of of our school districts across the board but the opinions are so varying it's just hard to to get a handle i think the approach we're taking is is the kind of the approach we've taken all throughout the pandemic back in march of 20 march of geez when the heck this thing starts march
052of 2015 i don't say that it's funny i don't know yeah it's like yeah but in march of 20 we had no choices 20 21 now we had no choices in march 20 with no choices last school year we had choices and we made we kind of took a measured approach that we took a middle approach with our hybrid attendance model whether whether that was you know agreed or not agreed it was a middle ground approach we wanted to see how cases would go and manage our way through that some districts didn't you know they went all in right away and mess up and and head at it again monitor their cases again every community is a little bit different every health commission is a little bit different i we have i wouldn't want to
053be working with anybody else other than our health commissioner because she's very pragmatic very good common sense she approaches it i think in a very good rational rational way um and gives us great guidance and support um and so as we managed our way through that we decided to bring everybody back again that was there was a timing issue of that and and you know again there's always debate on whether or not what was the right decision but we managed our way through that we didn't know what would happen per se with cases but we made it through the rest of the school year and we had a lot of events at an at the end of the school year and made our way through that um obviously the mass mandate got re repealed in
054um in june and i think there was certainly a lot of people that were very happy with it there were still some people that were uneasy with that and continue to wear their masks and again i think that's a wonderful choice that's a choice they wanted to make so again i believe what we're trying to do is take a middle approach and manage our way through this to start to start our school year i don't know i never know what the future is going to hold with regard to a pandemic and if anybody really thinks they do then obviously they're much smarter than me but um obviously that's um you know um so i'm sorry i probably yeah you probably have more questions that i jumped ahead of no i'm good i'm done um i
055i step one if you just spent a minute on the um challenges and complexity of mask unmasked cohorts uh yeah so you know at the high school level i i don't know that that's necessarily been requested but with six to seven classes per child and different ch you know different courses and different um subject areas it's it just can't be done not especially not knowing who who's gonna wear a mask and who's not going to wear a mask um at the same thing pretty much at the middle school level because they they're moving all over all the time you know whether um putting together an elementary schedule i'm not something i've never personally done being a high school secondary guy um but it is it is every bit as complex because you got 100 let's
056just say 125 fifth graders at a grade level um the fourth grade team works really hard with the fifth grade team and the counselors to match kids with teachers that they think are going to be the best fit to match kids with other kids who are going to fit well together and work well together and it's not like you just go down the list and randomly assign kids you've got schedules kids students that need special education services you have students that need gifted education services you have students that need ell services speech services and the entire scheduling of those students in the time that all the specialty area people are involved is um you know it's just a big puzzle that if you all of a sudden decide let's just say at a random fifth
057grade we have 15 students that wanted to be cohorted together wearing masks [Music] well now we take those 15 off again i'll use freedom trail just because i know the numbers there because that's where my wife is they have 28 kids in every 5th grade class and if you pull off 15 or 20 and you put those other 8 to 10 leftovers through the other four sections now you've got classes from 28 to 32 34 and that's just not gonna it's not gonna work for for distancing in the classrooms and it's not gonna just that's not a good situation to have so it's just not it it's that was something we did talk about we talked about it even to the extent of could we make mass buildings unbe and unmasked buildings but i mean
058again we i always appreciate suggestions i get but they're they're they're that was something that we did uh discussed thoroughly okay dave okay okay um mr reef do you see that um at any time the masking rules could change one way or the other you know again that's going to be determined by because again if if the health district treats this like they do a communicable disease and we have a outbreak at a particular building then that building may need to go into a a quarantine period depending or a classroom could go into a quarantine period or so if they're treating it just like they would with any other communicable disease that's how they're trying that's how the health district has decided to approach this with us so again that would be in conjunction with
059working with them to make those determinations and then um with children with their parents deciding what the child is going to be doing either masking or not masking how will bullying be be handled for for either either side okay you know um i would i would say to that that that like uh bullying of any kind is going to be handled appropriately at the building level okay so like we do with every situation if a child is is having difficulty if a child is uncomfortable with any any any situation um the uh should be reported to a classroom teacher a building administrator and we'll work that process we have like i've said this before i don't know that we could have another kindness initiative in our district and our kids i do believe by and
060large treat each other well there are times they they don't and we need to intervene in that as uh school personnel and as and as parents so i have great confidence that we will manage our way through that process and that you know we don't we have you know people talk to me all the time about zero tolerance policies all of our policies are zero tolerance um i have zero tolerance for any bullying it's that simple and we will deal with it appropriately any other questions okay thank you thank you okay we will continue on with the board president's report and we've just heard the return to school update for mr rafe and i want to reiterate that all of us care deeply for the safety of our students and staff mr rafe has a
061wife in the district i have a husband in the district dave has many longtime friends in the district kevin has two daughters in the district mindy has a son in the district lakisha has twin daughters and a son in the district emily has a son in the district and our administrative team has many friends and family in this district as well we all want our students and staff to be healthy and safe i understand everyone's concern about this virus i often tell people that i wish i had a crystal ball to guide me in my decisions the school district is following the guidance of the ohio department of health and the delaware public health district the center of disease control in the american academy of pediatrics and strongly recommending that all students and staff wear
062masks i'm wearing a mask tonight even though i'm fully vaccinated the american academy of pediatrics says masks are an important tool in preventing coveted spread especially as a dangerous variant circulate among unvaccinated children they are safe and effective for anyone over two years old don't hesitate to talk with your child's pediatrician if you have any questions about your child wearing face masks i also encourage you to read the letter issued today by the director of the delaware public health district regarding the mask mandate the school district is also encouraging everyone who is eligible to get a vaccine to help stop the spread of coven 19. please believe me when i say no one on this board or in this administration is making decisions for one side or the other and believe me we are hearing
063from both sides and i am sorry if i didn't get back to you with all the emails and calls that i have received the school district is following the guidance of our health department which in which the majority of the school district falls which is the delaware public health district guidance from doctors attorneys health care professionals has been sought and taken into consideration i myself has talked to our attorney several times including once today also i know that the plans in place today could change i am imploring everyone to be civil and respectful of the wishes of others turn off facebook be kind to each other the division in this community and around our country on masks and vaccines is as one person said to me today heartbreaking personally i do not understand what happened
064to love thy neighbor as thyself or doing what's right for the good of the whole or living by the golden rule or just being nice to each other we all want this virus to go away we all want our students and staff to stay healthy and safe we all want our students to be successful all right that is it superintendent's report just stayed up there some people lose weight with stress i i stress eating have gained weight i think i don't know so um i always you know obviously when i do my superintendent's report i usually get to talk about a lot of great things going on in the district because again i still continue to believe that um we are in the greatest school district in the greatest community in in ohio and um
065i will continue to championing that everywhere i go we're very blessed with all that we have in our district and that as of sunday will include our 16th elementary school so we are have an event planned uh at for the grand opening of shale meadows um i'm sure mrs genegy the principal is excited beyond belief um the only little bump in the road is we're still waiting for all the furniture but that's been a covid logistics problem and it's supposed to arrive monday and it's supposed to be put in place by wednesday cutting that one a little close but this is again this is all pandemic related getting product and getting it shipped but it is in the country so um we got a great donation from uh staples here in lewis center it was
066part of their classroom rewards program so they donated uh classroom supplies and back to school supplies that we distributed to all the buildings throughout the district so there's members of the leadership team and uh representatives from staples who distributed all of that throughout the district so thank you to staples this is uh i say this is the second year that olin tangy football has run the brave life camp for kdtel students across the district with special needs this was started by a student trent maddox it's entirely run by volunteers and donations and it is truly a a great experience uh for all of our students involved in the brave life camp so thank you to owen tangi braves football for conducting that camp so obviously as part of the last issue in 2020 we had
067a bond package that obviously included shale meadows elementary school middle school 6 elementary 17 and one of the most important components of that bond issue was the construction of school security vegetables throughout the district so previously we had um berkshire middle hyatt's middle shanahan middle and uh berlin high school and four elementary southern ridge wind up run ellen creek and arrowhead that had these enhanced school security vestibules so um the main entrance of every building now guests will have to enter through the security vestibule well someone will physically check them into the building as opposed to previously where they got buzzed in and then they were inside the building uh prior to so they're going to have to physically go into a space and be checked in so this is a huge enhancement to make
068our school safer and i got to give mr gordon and his team a compliment because getting that done throughout the district while we had so many other things going on is a great accomplishment also with the bond package was upgrades to all of our elementary playgrounds so now all of our structures are ada compliant handicapped accessible and they have soft surfaces so for any elementary parents in the audience you will no longer have to be taking those rocks out of your washing machines [Music] so they i was i was over at shell meadows and the soft surfaces are like trampolines they are really nice so i'm looking forward to seeing the kids uh enjoy those new um playground construction the playground equipment and the and the soft surfaces so um another component of the bond
069package for any hyatt's parents here you the people that pick up and drop off at hyatt's uh the the congestion there is really bad uh so as part of the bond package we put in a separate bus lane that will be ready by by the first day of school so uh it'll kind of be i guess it's like an easy pass lane for the buses to get by and then there'll be a separate lane for parents to pick up and drop off so that should help greatly with the congestion of getting students in and out of hyatt's middle school couple action items that of note we do have a re-employment of a previously retired teacher one of our school nurses jane mcrae has been with us for a very long time uh recently retired and
070we're bringing her back in a roll um i should usually we and mr meyer tells us how much that saves us but uh i forgot i forgot to get that number we're a little busy with some other stuff how much 45 45 000 saves us we get an experienced nurse and say 45 thousand dollars so that's a great great uh thing and then this is kind of an annual write-up right of passage approving the bus routes and stops for the 21-22 school year it's kind of like the last thing we do before we get them ready to roll so transportation's held all their in-services and they're ready to do a great job safely transporting our students to uh to school so excuse me obviously our important dates i previously had on there the power school
071reopened so everybody find out their class assignments and schedules today shale meadows elementary our elementary school open houses will happen next week district convocation on wednesday first day of school is thursday so the kindergartners will go on that are on the monday thursday schedule will go on thursday and then the ones on the tuesday friday schedule will go on friday so and our next board meeting is the 26th [Music] charter excuse me and don't forget what's friday night zone tangy yes yes yep friday night yep all right um next we have our treasures report emily but no i'm fine i just talked too much do you need a moment mr ray my goodness so wanted to give you some updates just in the general practices that are going on in our department we've talked a
072little bit about these but let me give you some more details with our state funding the ohio department of education is on the communication education trail so to speak they are coming to webinars and meetings for treasurers around the state to help explain what will be coming right now what we are seeing on our funding reports is that they have kind of given us a net funding so to speak of last year's funding so we no longer see deductions off of our foundation statements but they're really kind of set to last year's funding they're anticipating the full funding to be available and ready in their reporting system by october so what that means for our forecast is that we will see a flat line through the next couple of months and then october a spike
073in our state funding which will even out then to the expectations of the plan our forecasting tools should be updated this month as well so that we can share those components and speak to those different metrics that are being used the other big project that we are currently working on is our e-finance plus conversion for those that haven't heard about the state software that we currently use the state has decided not to support that software as of december of 2022 so we made the decision to move forward with e-finance plus in that conversion why that versus some of our other options quite frankly efinance plus gives us the best connectivity between our human resources and our payroll system and it also connects to the student information system or powerschool so the goal being that we
074will have integrated systems that speak to each other from the student all the way through through payroll and state reporting so that's a great efficiency that we will gain by having that connectivity so we're working on parallel payrolls right now making sure that our our staff data ties in both systems and that we can process payroll and get some get the same data as we issue in both systems so we are running two fiscal softwares as we speak my staff is god love them are doing the best job ever they are working through that process of having state software and e-finance and tying out those numbers and making sure that they are training themselves and getting updated on that the user training that relates to not just our department but the other users of our
075software so our buildings and our other departments across the district put in requisitions to create purchase orders for the items that they need so they will actually be new end users of this e-finance plus program as well so we're working on that training process and getting information to them for the action items we have our june board financials are ready for your review and approval this is our fiscal year end for 2021 we ended the fiscal year with a positive average expenditure variance of 2 percent generally speaking our forecasts our fiscal year ends have landed within one percent variance between may and our june closure but we've had some really positive outcomes with some of the pandemic assumptions that we made in our expenditures we had forecasted that we might need upwards of two million
076dollar transfer to help sustain our food service department but as you may remember from the june meetings we actually approved a 1.5 million dollar transfer so that's a big component of that 2 percent and then we are also still seeing some delays in billings from some of our purchase services and supplies and materials so i think some of that timing is is still an issue as mr reef discussed some of the furniture coming in for shale meadows similar situations we know that it's coming just not processed when we close the books so just to reiterate to the community we had 1.3 million dollars in coronavirus relief funds we also had about two hundred and forty seven thousand dollars from the elementary and secondary school emergency relief funds or esser these are all the funds that
077the district received from pandemic relief we did not get s or 2 or s or 3 monies that some of our surrounding districts received and so the rest of the expenses that we had were paid for through the general fund we anticipate that our actual expenditures were roughly 3.4 million dollars are there questions about any of that information nope thank you okay why miss hatfield returns to her seat to get ready for public participation we'll just remind you we have 30 minutes of public participation um everyone who gets called up to speak has five minutes to speak they're to introduce themselves give their name their address and speak mrs hatfield is the time keeper and she will be letting you know when time is up the presiding officer may prohibit public comments that are frivolous
078repetitive or harassing the presiding officer may interrupt warn or terminate a participant's statement when the statement is too lengthy abusive off-topic obscene or irrelevant the presiding officer may request an individual to leave the meeting when that person does not observe reasonable decorum or disruptive or conduct or the conduct of the meeting and we were all requesting that civility prevail while we go through public participation because everybody deserves to be heard within the allotted time the presiding officer may also call for a recess or adjournment to another time when the lack of public decorum um also interferes with the orderly conduct of the meetings as to warrant such of an action okay so mrs hatfield are you ready to start the timer yes ma'am okay call the first person may um i please have courtney bulware
079come to the podium [Music] mrs bower you have five minutes please introduce yourself and state your address my name is courtney boulware and my address is on file for months we have been told that critical race theory is not in olentangy schools in fact on may 21st we all received an email stating as much in part it read quote in the same way that i reject the claim that our district is systemically racist i also reject the claim that our district has adopted critical race theory end quote just before this sentence parents were belittled for even having concerns and we were told quote i am afraid that many parents are confusing ol and tangi with schools in new york or california and conflating what they're hearing in the media with what's actually happening in olentangy
080end quote despite the fact that parents and students have stood up here and given example after example ol and tangi has only dug their heels in more and defiantly said no we're not adopting this despite the fact that the person recently promoted to the position of supervisor of equity and inclusion based his entire dissertation from may 2020 on critical race theory said he agrees with the first tenet of it as outlined by him that tenet is that racism is normal for white people and that he has a bias toward european americans because he believes they are all racist and again that's normal for them olin tangi continues to pat us on the head and let us know how unintelligent we are because obviously there's no crt happening here despite the fact that dr hassan jefferies
081was brought in to train our teachers last year and told them that white children aren't capable of empathy for children of color and in fact they have more empathy for animals olentangy continues to insist that children will not be judged by their skin color that was also in the may 21st email despite the fact that dr jeffries is himself a proponent of crt and that some teachers in our district are being paid fifteen hundred dollars to receive additional instruction from him olentangy remains steadfast in saying that crt is not in our schools despite the fact that we were told that the concept of intersectionality was used to train teachers last year olin tangi still says there's no crt here despite the fact that the dei group paid dr goldie mohammed to speak to our community
082and teachers albeit optional for all and that she has publicly stated that the goal of education is to make children more woke and that she said she was providing files of lesson plans to our teachers olin tangi continues to say that crt is not here despite the fact that at least one kindergarten teacher this year has on her amazon wish list the book something happened in our town which has quotes like it wasn't a mistake the cop shot him cause he's black and they the police don't like black men olentangy continues to insist that the oppressed oppressor narrative is not being taught here that was also in the may 21st email despite the fact that students at berlin high school were directed to make a video about angela davis a communist activist hailing her as
083a hidden hero for black history month we are still told that quote olentangy does not teach students to embrace marxism or anti-capitalism also in the may 21st email despite the fact that at orange high school today there is a ceiling tile painted with the words know your privilege with a design showing a white person wearing a suit standing atop a box with a money symbol a police hat and a medical cross next to a black student in a hoodie who is not standing on a box olentancy keeps saying there is no oppressed oppressor narrative being taught here the email from may 21st assuring us that crt is not in old tng schools has been proven time and again to be false it's incorrect hear me when i say i'm not calling anyone a liar because
084i believe it's entirely possible that at the time that email was written this is what the board actually believed to be the case here however in the many months since then parents and students have come forth to provide examples to the contrary i know a common response has been that those are just rogue teachers deal with it at the building level but the district as a whole brought in dr jefferies again a crt proponent to train all our teachers the district effectively paid for crt to be brought into our schools the district owes us an apology publicly publicly acknowledge that since may 21st new information has come to light and you are sorry it ever got this far then publicly tell us how you are going to ensure this doesn't happen again as parents who
085are being asked to trust you with our kids our kids not your kids up to 35 hours per week we deserve this we are not here to demand special treatment new mascots or even anything that costs money we are simply asking that you acknowledge what has happened start following your own policies and hold yourselves and your teachers accountable to them thank you [Applause] [Music] we cannot change the policy sorry miss jennifer galt please i apologize i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing it okay it's been worse before i'm so sorry oh goodness well my name is jennifer galt my address is on file so first of all i'd like to encourage everyone in this room to take a deep breath you know i think back to fall of 2019 when our kids were so excited to
086start school they were excited to go to their soccer game on saturday and they were looking forward to the carnival and the first neighborhood or not neighborhood with the first football game our neighbors were our friends unless they didn't cut their grass every week and we argued about stupid stuff on social media like the guy that turned left when he wasn't supposed to it was a much simpler time and i really think that all of us want to get back to that so i'm a 1997 graduate from olin tangi um i attended when k through 12 was in one building and before the big high school opened up um i've watched this district grow and from mostly for farmland into what it is today and right now i have three kids who are entering the
087district so just a little bit of personal facts about me um i have a learning disability and i really don't know that much about it apparently i've flipped some words around sometimes and instead of going to study hall i actually hung out with mrs barboza and mr siddhachik in high school they really helped me i didn't realize that it was something that could hold me back mostly because never nobody ever told me that it was something that was a challenge in my life my grades weren't the greatest but i always tried the teachers i had were amazing um mr yeoman sue andrews mrs laymaster coach eddie thanks for that a in gym class it actually really meant a lot to me um and so every single one of them were an instrumental piece and it's
088inspiring me to to be the successful person that i am today when i was in middle school the high school's principal's daughter actually decided that i was going to be one of the ones that she made fun of for a couple years and it sucked like a lot um i literally entered high school without a single friend i begged my parents to let me stay home and surprisingly one day they did i took that day to gather myself into think and what i realized would i was that i was trying so hard to get these mean girls to like me um and i was really missing out on true friendships that were out there um shortly after that day at lunch i heard them talking about their newest target they were planning on confronting the
089new girl in the bathroom so i followed them in and i must have said something amazing because the big mean girls left and that is how i met one of the closest friends that i'm still friends with today so why do i tell you this um i've been waiting for years to get this off my chest i'm just kidding now i share this with you because i'm concerned about some of the things that i'm seeing happening in our district you know there are extreme moments that need extra attention i understand that but life isn't easy these are instrumental moments in a children's social development that we are messing with these scenarios they don't teach kids i'm sorry don't teach kids to be a victim teach them something that you know they can be proud of
090and that they can learn from everybody deals with something don't take away these opportunities that teach my child how to think stand up for themselves and what a real friend looks like we have many issues occurring in this district right now in addition to a movement in our society that is raising eyebrows i'm not going to stand here and list them we are all aware but i'm a firm believer that when you bring up a problem you have to present solutions so we've got to break away from this pattern that we have fallen into um if diversity and inclusion is really what we're going for here the rhetoric needs to change because what we've got going on right now is nothing but division the rhetoric needs to be changed into a positive seeing that there's
091a multi-step restorative education program for diversity as it relates to incidents does not sound positive i suggest that this amazing district olyn tangi sets the bar for not only our kids but what for the nation can look at and what they can look up to so here's a few things that i suggest one minute um something suddenly changed at olympian start of 2020 and it wasn't the pandemic there's a strong feeling of negativity and divide so i suggest that the district identifies what's causing that divide and immediately removes them and bans them from communicating with our our school district for example the email that was sent out today to all the teachers we need to fix the damage that has been done by people like hassan jeffries who thinks all of america is racist um
092you know if i had one child came home and was doing drugs i wouldn't blame all three of my kids for doing drugs i would handle the one child for the mental health of our teachers and for our kids sake we need to balance out this mindset this wedge that has been shoved into our district with somebody who appreciates america because there are so many great things and we are so lucky to be living in this country so my point number three is most important it's students family apologies that's time please okay thank you thank you carol fisher please good evening my name is carol fisher and you guys have my address on file first off i just want to thank mrs feasel and mr king for your service on the school board i know
093things look a lot different than when you guys first were elected and i just want to thank you for your time here i also want to thank you for stepping away to give people another group of people chance to with fresh ideas so i just want to thank you for your time as a parent for 20 years i have dealt with almost every type of medical specialist literally during that time and i've never been told that i didn't have my best my kid's best interest in mind over the years i've put my trust into the staff at olin tng and honestly there have been times where i've been greatly disappointed from my son who was in a wheelchair and was flipped his he was let go and into the parking lot hit the curb and
094he was flipped over face first two coming home and urine soaked shoes and socks so now my question when i hear mr rafe say that he's got the best intention for my kids i questioned that leadership in the district even more when i was made aware of comments made by a member of the equity inclusion team that i don't know where the crt is going but it's going to be it's going to be something that we must continue first we have been told there is no crt in this school but then i hear this i'm sorry but from this statement i'm sorry next person please thank you carol you can email it to us maureen bodus please my name is maureen bodis i'm at 4737 sabel court i don't mind saying my address you guys
095have seen me multiple times so tonight i am here to address the mascot issue let me start by reminding everyone here at on the stated mission of the olympia school district which is always provided when they start talking about their initiatives olentangy school's mission is grounded in its pursuits to facilitate maximum learning for every student that mission drives all behaviors and decisions it is a place that focuses on the needs of the whole child and strives to produce aware global citizens who will be successful after graduation now that we have reminded everyone what is it what it is you are supposed to be doing let us look at what you are actually doing the last few months you have revealed the new mascots from the branding project from the feedback the community response has been
096underwhelming at best and in the case of many downright disgusted this project which would be laughable had it no not cost the taxpayers of this community almost a half a million dollars in just phase one and is a perfect example of the staggering lack of oversight of the olympia school board and administration in the past the community trusted you to make financially trustworthy decisions with their money but considered this already extraordinary waste of funds and with more phases of this project stated slated to waste even more money we say no more this is a gross misuse of funds our tax dollars are meant to be spent on educating our children not in extravagant endeavors the people of this community have been very generous when it comes to giving money to the schools they have supported
097levy after levy after levy as a matter of fact the last levy threatened the loss of busing and arts and music programs should it not pass and again the olympia community came together and stood by its schools and passed it and even with passing it some neighborhoods still lost busing to realize in the aftermath that we had almost a half a million dollars to play with and that it was spent on rebranding and not the most basic of needs for students like transportation seems just fundamentally wrong how is branding more important than transportation to and from the school the branding project was brought to the community with two goals the first was to trademark the mascots to gain a new revenue source and the second was to remove native american imagery apparently the project somehow
098got derailed because if we were just sticking to those two goals why did pioneer pete and the liberty patriot mascot need to be changed neither of those evoked native american imagery perhaps the intent was always to remain rebrand with imagery that aligned with the goals of the equity and inclusion department it is interesting to note that in initial phases of branding focus groups were held to help determine the personality of the district grand pillars were defined as opportunity community educational excellence personal achievement pride and exceptional value yet somehow all the mascots came out with branding that was geared toward diversity inclusion and equity it does give one pause to question the originally stated motives and goals you have also stated that many people were involved in the rebranding process however two students two parents and
099two alumni from each school can hardly be considered many much less a good representation of the community contrast that with the naming of the new elementary school for which you received 125 name submissions exactly how many submissions did you receive or ask for from the community for the new mascots why did you not involve the whole community you could have held contests and gathered tons of feedback and suggestions for the new mascots why was there such a failure to garner any real community feedback from you and speaking with a parent whose child was on the rebranding committee they voiced their disappointment in the way everything was handled students did not draw the logos and were not allowed to brainstorm additionally the students felt they were constantly being pushed to look at this project through the
100lens of diversity inclusion and equity the students you could say you involved the students but you what you really did was limit their involvement completely in closing i just want to remind everybody in this community that they have spent almost five hundred thousand dollars to rebrand and that is not including all of the things like the gym floors and the uniforms and all of the other things this is a misuse of funds and we need to speak up and get this under control it's ridiculous thank you [Applause] we have audrey mchenry [Music] hi my name is audrey mchenry and i'm going to gift my time kirsty my daughter had an author uh donna's appointment so i was a little late getting here but greetings olympia school board my name is christy thompson and my address
101is on file per the form i completed upon entry and i appreciate your time i grew up outside of new york city and somehow found myself in columbus ohio 15 years ago i am going to talk about something other than mass and covid but it is something i will continue to voice my opinion on as long as as long as my children will be of age to attend this district my husband and i moved into this district almost nine years ago to be more specific we moved here the day my daughter was born so i won't ever forget that exact date which actually happens to be her first day of school next week by the way when we were researching communities to raise our two children olin tangi was acclaimed for its academic excellence academic
102excellence that is the standard to which i hold this district accountable with all of the grumblings of critical race theory and all of its names and forms infiltrating our schools i wanted to make sure you heard the perspective of this particular asian-american parent this parent of two beautiful biracial children i am the first generation of my family to be born in the united states my parents and older brothers immigrated here from the philippines in 1979. they came here to leave corrupt politics behind and give my siblings and me more opportunities you will not meet a guy that loves this country more than my father and he instilled that love for america and to each of us he instilled in each of us the value at what hard work can bring endless opportunities of our designing
103today i hear a lot of concern from those without outsider perspective that america is bad that america is racist how i wish you could see america the way my family and i do i was raised that with hard work and perseverance i could achieve any goal that my race didn't matter my skin color didn't matter yes our history wasn't always like this but it does not change the fact that today you can succeed no matter what race creed background you come from the message nowadays is completely different and it is quite disheartening the crux of my issue regarding critical race theory is the need to place blame upon an oppressor which today would be white people do i tell my half white and half filipino children they are half white supremacist and half victim tell
104me about a major civilization on this story that has a completely clean history and i don't say that to make light of our past transgressions but it cannot be changed the same country that had slavery redlining etc is the country that today anyone of any ethnicity any background can succeed and prosper in why can we not focus on education and academics being the pathway to prosperity the filipinos were colonized by the spaniards for 300 years we sided with the americans in the late 1800s and our true emancipation was dependent upon how u.s interpreted manifest destiny but do we filipinos hate the us and spain today no another aspect of crt is systemic reason our specific racism if this country is so systemically racist today how can we have so many ethnic minorities not just black
105but ethnic minority mayors governors police chiefs doctors lawyers and highly compensated entertainers athletes tell me a low on existence today that is discriminatory i'm happy to be corrected but the only one i know about is affirmative action and that actually discriminates against white people and asians lastly i want to touch on commentary from those in the community who claim that opponents of crt or crt and its elements are racist individuals i say elements because where there's smoke there's fire you may not on the surface call it crt but the components you push are crt to the core i am actually the belief that those who push crt have racist tendencies as they insist on viewing everything through the lens of race instead of the contact of one's characters what sort of universe do we live
106in to think that is an effective approach just because i'm against a theory does not mean i don't believe racism exists there will always be those with hateful hearts and hateful hearts don't have a preferred shade of skin or skin tone i only have one minute left so the power to see life without looking through the lens of race is within our power let us encourage diversity of thought individuality and accountability for one's actions instead of perpetuating this culture of victimization and blame things that are so unproductive let us focus on the true path of prosperity and unity which is education teach my kids how to think and not what to think thank you we have brandy please forgive me i'm not sure how to pronounce your last name i believe it's amanda it's okay
107my answer mianza thank you for for teaching me how to do that i appreciate it yeah um so my name is brandy myanza and you guys have my address on file i wanted to talk today about masking according i am an rn by trade and for the last 18 months i have been immersed and coveted in a variety of ways in my everyday job i have managed staff exposures i have managed staff illness and that has been very challenging i have also helped on where i work in writing policies to ensure the safe um safe policies in order to see patients safely in our clinics as well as our staff safety so the american academy of pediatrics as we're all aware of what they have said there's also a lot of pedia pediatricians that don't
108say strongly recommend in columbus there is a large number of pediatricians that do say universal masking is an effective and essential measure to give our children the best possible chance at an in-person learning choosing not to implement such policies amongst others is unacceptable and dangerous so i'm not going to sit here and i'm not going to talk about the science because half of this room does not want to hear about the science what i want to talk about today is olin tangy's mission its values and its vision olin tangy school states that their mission is grounded in the pursuit to facilitate maximum learning for every student the mission drives all behaviors and decisions it's a place that focuses on the needs of the whole child and strives to produce aware global citizens who will be
109successful after graduations online tangi also boasts about creating a one-on-one tangie that has community support pride and commitment that is essential to pave the way to a more successful future with the vision to be wrecked the recognized leader for high performance and efficiency in education olin states its values are we respect and we care we make sound decisions we can always get better and we partner at school and in the community and i'm standing here today and i'm sincerely struggling to understand how the current health and prevention guidelines supports the mission vision and values that we are supposed to allow all students to flourish here i want to start by asking all of these parents that oppose masking that believe it's their right to choose do you have a child with a nut allergy i
110have protected your child by sending in nut-free snacks for my child and just today today i received that reminder olin tangy provides nut-free tables in the cafeteria with olin tangy's new stance on masking and supporting personal choice is it now okay for me to send in a more convenient snack for me and one that my child likes more despite your child's allergy does your have child have an epipen they can carry how can olentangy mandate in not free classroom for one child however they are going to ignore all these children with medical conditions and that's not my child i'm not here talking about my children i'm talking about others these children that we can't just give a quick injection to and we have no idea what's going to happen with this delta variant that is
111quickly spreading through our community we have no idea how it's going to affect them are they going to be on nebulizers around the clock are they going to wind up on a vent is old and tangy okay having the blood of that children on their hands if your child ends up on a vent you choose to send them to school without a mask i don't have a choice in that protection because my child is not vaccinated many of us are asking olin tangy to recognize that they can do better children age 11 and under have no option to be vaccinated i can argue science and data all day but no one is listening to that anymore we are asking olin tangi to follow follow the ohio department of health recommendations for k-12 and provide a
112layer protection [Music] since i only have a minute i'll just skip to the end olin tangy school board i'm calling on you now and i'm asking you to reverse your decision on masking and to prove to us that you stand by your mission vision and values and that those are not just words on paper to make your district sound good actions speak louder in words and right now your actions prove that words mean nothing you have an opportunity to change that now after all how can olin tangi strive to produce aware global citizens when they're not doing their part to end a global pandemic as we've stated olan tangi is one of the largest districts in delaware county that's time so we also have the opportunity to be the biggest lesson learned kelly livingston please
113and this will be our final [Music] public participation please yeah hello my name is kelly livingston you have my address on file on august 5th olin tangi strongly recommended that those who have not received a vaccine wear a facial covering i'm here today to humbly ask that ole and tangy reconsider its decision and make masquering mandatory for those in k through 8 as so many other school districts are doing the reason for my request is based on facts and data as of friday august 6 delaware county moved from being a county with substantial transmission to one that is red meaning high transmission i'm concerned because it's somewhat misleading to provide stats on a period from june to august as our superintendent did when students are not in school congregated and when we know that from
114at least march of 2020 most adults have been working from home i think it's also dangerous to quote yet disregard the guidance from administrative bodies that have the ability to provide guidance but lack the legal jurisdiction to mandate it what do the experts say july 19th the american academy of pediatrics as mr reef quoted recommended universal masking because a significant portion of the student population is not yet eligible for vaccines what he didn't add was the rest of the sentence the rest of the sentence stated and masking is proven to reduce transmission of the virus and protect those who are not vaccinated that's a direct quote from the american academy of pediatrics july 27th the cdc stated all children over the age of two should wear masks regardless of vaccination status july 27th in the
115columbus dispatch a hundred columbus doctors implored school districts to require masks for all kids this coming school year just today this afternoon around two approximately the cdc reported that hospitalizations of children from the delta variant saw a 30 percent increase last week from the previous week for me it's personal i have four sons three of which graduated and went to school through olyny district and three of which will be graduating from college this year my youngest son is 10. so he's too young to receive a vaccine my family has already lost two members to coven as i shared with mr rafe honestly my family simply can't bear any more additional unnecessary and preventable sickness and death from this virus i believe that as a parent we all have certain unalienable rights however another parent's right
116to choose whether or not their child wears a mask should not outweigh my child's right to life and right to safely attend school and to receive an education with guarantees that any and all measures are being undertaken to safeguard his health and safety by those with whom such responsibilities have been entrusted society our nation in our community is only as strong as its weakest members what type of society have we become if we aren't willing to undertake even rudimentary basic measures to keep our most vulnerable population our children safe i respectfully ask that you reconsider your position on mask mandates for children in grades k through eight thank you um next on the agenda agenda we have the treasurer's action items um emily please present your treasure action items and i believe that um b
117is to approve that um emergency resolution on the um you can explain a lawsuit correct um [Music] um [Music] it's a pharmaceutical company that are claiming bankruptcy even as they issued or produced opioid-based pharmaceuticals as a self-insured medical fund we are responsible for our own participation in any kind of litigation if we were fully insured um our carrier would take part in that for us so really all this amendment is asking for is just that we submit our name as a debtor to the program and that we as the superintendent or treasurer can take any action that is necessary that may come through the court proceedings it's not a lawsuit or piece of litigation that one tng school district is paying for okay all right so with that i would like to present treasurer action
118items a one and two for approval please save emotion um emotion do you have a second any other comments okay call the roll please mrs patrick yes mr king yes mr o'brien yes dr weiss yes and mrs wagner fizzo yes thank you uh superintendent action items what do you have for us this evening uh yes ma'am i'd like to present superintendent action items a through i for approval i'll move do you have a second second any further discussion call the role please mrs patrick yes mr o'brien yes mr king yes dr weiss yes and mrs wagner feasel yes thank you and now i need a a motion to enter into executive session as permitted by section 121.22 g1 of the ohio revised code to consider the employment of public employees and there will be no
119action taken after we come back except to adjourn oh except to adjourn dave moves so i have a second second any other discussion i'm sorry was that dr weiss yes on the road please mr keane yes dr weiss yes mr o'brien yes mrs patrick yes and mrs wagner feasel yes and our next board meeting is august 26th okay i need a motion to adjourn salute lakeisha motion sec first do you have a second dave ii call the roll please lakisha yes oh yes dave yes kevin alphabetical diesel oh yes yes patrick for me yes no that's right that's right yep all right we're adjourned until august 26th you