Olentangy Local Schools Board of Education, 6-24-21

001so we're going to get the meeting started uh mrs hatfield could you please call the roll yes please mr king present mrs patrick here mr o'brien here mrs wagner feasel here and dr weiss here thank you please stand and join us in saying the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you everybody for joining us tonight even on this beautiful night glad you spending some time with us uh before we get started we need to approve the agenda and i don't have any changes or addendums so i need a motion to approve the agenda a second call the role please mr o'brien yes mr king yes mrs

002patrick yes dr weiss yes and mrs wagner feasel yes and with that we will get started with our first presentation it's on our safety and security update with joe swazzi he's our director of safety security and preparedness take it away joe there you go how about now there you go you were testing me yes good to be tested well thanks for allowing me to come in and present my annual update where we're at for the safety and security i know the last board meeting you touched on the sunset salute and the commencement i just wanted to give a thanks to all the behind the scenes workers as you know in any special event there's a lot of a lot of hands that make it look nice on the end they were pretty much 12 hour

003days and and everyone just pitched in and did a remarkable job i'd like to thank the delaware county sheriff's office and i have a photo here i think they provided their command bus and all the school resource officers pitched in you could see they get to join in in the celebration with seeing their graduates and it was it really was uh in addition to the the heat and logistically being challenged this year doing two a day um we were running around but uh good to see some smiles and uh and uh we couldn't have had better weather for that really i want to get into where we're at with the safety vestibules as if you recall we were supposed to do half of the safety vestibules last summer and with the remaining project completed this

004summer but because the levy was delayed um we as you know have i don't know i think mr gordon said last week some 81 construction projects going on i'll give you a brief glimpse of where we're at that's not where we're at that's where we started we so we got a little bit of a drive through here at indian springs and as you can tell that's the the structure and obviously the glass and and some other things have yet to to be laid out but i do want to bring to the board's attention i i had hoped to have a visitor management system in place along with the vestibules and i'm telling you right now that i don't know if we'll be able to make that deadline by the beginning of school so we're having

005a little bit of vendor delays some of the computer systems with the chip shortages and one thing the pandemic i guess revealed to us in our high schools where we have our second and third like late the kids will take the study halls so we have you know a good amount of students outside so what i am trying to do is not have the safety vestibule delay their entry into school a couple of vendors have promised us the capability to be able to get not only our regular visitors checked in but a system that coincides with our power school which would really help out our attendance folks so i'm trying to trying to you know get get both done at the same time here um we might be able to do it but i just

006want to bring to your attention that we may or may not have joe just so we were clear that on the picture on the left that the visitors now will come in and have to they come in through the double doors buzzed in and there will be an intercom system and then they have to come into the office um before now they're entirely visible and everything in their possession is entirely visible and then we have um some cameras set up that that shows us um where they're where they're at in the system does the board have any any questions on the safety vest because we have them in some of the schools berlin being being one of the most and again what the pandemic showed us like at the high schools the principals and assistant

007principals were quick to get people socially distanced and they came up with some qr codes on their own where the kids that had phones and i know most of them have phones they were able to use these qr codes and that really assisted the attendance personnel in getting the kids checked in so we're trying to incorporate that with the current vendor technology and and that's where that's where we're having a little bit of a hiccup i just want to let you know some of the partner in engagement stuff that i'm involved in the delaware county criminal justice association fire chiefs the delaware county public private committee and i was supposed to spell that out i'm from an organization that loves acronyms so the fbi jttf is the joint terrorism task force i'm a member of

008their executive board parent-teacher organizations parent program teams even this morning mr rafe and i met with jackie bain trying to enhance our safe team drivers parent task force and she has some ideas of some things we could we could try to do once we get back back into school full time you know we have that driving sim simulator at liberty high school and it's good to get that around all the high schools and we have little competitions to see of course we have to be competitive um i think liberty won it last year so preparedness um so one of the things or the only thing we can control is the preparedness part part of my job so i wanted to point out that we were successful uh for the third year in a row of

009obtaining the attorney general's office grant this year we got a little over 109 000 for the district so we utilize some of that money in our our behavioral assessment training which we just we just had on june 15th we call it our assessment and care teams so for those of you that have been following any of the legislation house bill 123 mandates that by 2023 that every school district have these assessment and care or um threat assessment teams in the schools so we for the last couple of years we've had not only teams at the middle school in the high school but also the elementary schools so we're well ahead of that and it has nothing to do with you know having it done before before the state mandate so we used some of the

010grant money to bring in a couple of training teams and we had all the principals come in and we're basically looking at behaviors of concern so what we're trying to do is trying to prevent any type of targeted violence in the school by by focusing on those behaviors and uh early identification as you know and intervention is the key there and we do this in concert with pupil services and alicia's group we also discussed the outcomes of the panorama survey we have every year as they relate to safety and security and we we continue our overlapping efforts with as much research based data as possible so one of the other areas that i am over are the school resource officers and i would like to acknowledge them today their three main roles are as a

011guest lecturer in the schools there are informal counselors and mentors sometimes the kids they don't want to go to the teacher they don't want to go to the principal they like to to maybe bounce some things off the school resource officer and of course they're they're all a law enforcement officer so we have a little bit of a change um this year deputy martin who was at orange high school for six or seven years he moved over to the sheriff's department community liaison position but you'll still see him in some of the other schools as a backfield so we have deputy roy filling in for him deputy weaver knee rice was recently promoted to detective so we have deputy newman coming over to fill in her slot and then this year we were able to

012um with our five year forecast add an additional school resource officer so we have one at each of the high schools then instead of having two to cover the rest of the middle schools and elementary schools now we have a third in in deputy aaron siegel and he has some previous school resource officer experience in virginia so we split up the um the responsibilities to the school resource officer so hopefully we'll we'll have a little bit greater uh coverage some of the things they did last year in a covered year because they were they were in the schools um i went ahead of myself of course they're in all the the health or health classes in the high school talking about drug and alcohol awareness they do a presentation on home safety bullying peer pressure

013stranger safety what to do when you call 911 summer safety water safety halloween safety bicycle safety and some of the classes i i helped do presentations with them on were the civil law and the government classes and we also did a presentation on the bill of rights so they were in the schools even when we were shut down we came up with a plan with the sheriff's department to keep them in the school buildings this way if someone in the patrol division happened to become sick they were like a ready reserve and then of course they were they were there handling uh telephone uh complaints [Music] we're good i got one minute that was my key and then this is something we introduced last year and i wanted to point out to you the only

014thing we are changing is item number two it used to say lock out and that was getting confusing with lock down so the verbiage is changed to secure and that'll go into all the summer packets to the parents and and we follow this national program from the i love you guys and this is our standard repo response protocol so these will be on the website and i just wanted to bring to your attention that we changed that one verbiage and since i heard my buzzer i think that's it and i will open it up to the board for any questions you may have of me yes sir mr o'brien jill i mean you showed that last slide is that still consistent with the alice training yes sir it's this is more of a communication piece

015so for the alice part for an active aggressor uh situation we would still be in in the middle one which is called the lock down that's where we we train the the students and i'm glad you brought that up because in the first polaris mall shooting this year we had some students that were there and they knew to do and there were some adults that were like frozen so it's great training and i really think our kids take it to heart and we tell them you know whatever you can do to get out of the situation get out of it but if you can't then then you lock down and then there's the acronym for alice to alert lockdown counter evade um but that that is in addition to this is just a communication piece

016of it good question yes and the governor this week announced a 10 million dollar i guess grants for height for schools to install more safety measures and i didn't know if we would qualify because we never qualify for anybody but we are looking into that but yes if we are aware of that and there's a short deadline to that and uh of course if we do qualify we will definitely seek whatever type of money we can we can get either at the state level of the federal there's some cops grants from department of justice or stuff that are really difficult to qualify and just like in in the past it's pretty hard for this school district to qualify because it's usually a needs-based thing not that we don't need it but however they do determine

017need any other questions thank you very much next we have our strategic planning update on internal processes from mr mark gray our superintendent hi good evening everyone and welcome thanks everybody for for being here i'm again just going to start us off and then turn it over to a member of our leadership team um i just want to kind of for the people who were here last time will be a little bit of a repeat but for our new friends uh we'll have you know just a reminder we do have a very detailed uh strategic plan that clearly outlines our strategic priorities that are our students and stakeholders our resource stewardship our internal processes and learning and organizational development this plan has helped us over the past four years direct the work of our departments

018and our administrators within the district and it keeps us focused on those priorities so anything that we're talking about has to fit into one of those priorities so tonight we are talking about internal processes before i hit on that i do want to i talked a lot our grounding uh statement in the district is to facilitate maximum learning for every student our vision to be the recognized leader for high performance and efficiency in education um you know that's what we're trying to become and i didn't really highlight the value statements last time uh and those are really the behaviors we expect of everybody in the organization as we do the work to achieve our mission and reach our vision and those value statements are we respect and we care we make sound decisions we can

019always get better and we partner at school and in the community so the internal processes strategic priority has three um strategic objectives implemented digital conversion expand our talent management strategy and strive for a culture of operational excellence so i'm going to invite mr meyer to the podium to talk about those areas okay thank you mr rafe uh good evening um so as mr rafe said we're going to look at the strategic priority internal processes and as you can imagine there's a lot of internal processes across the school organization especially an organization uh our size so when when we look at those strategic objectives and the focus uh of those strategic objectives that we're focusing on um that's what i'm going to talk about tonight so the first one uh strive for our culture of operational

020excellence and i think that that word culture is really important uh in striving for a culture of operational excellence because it really starts with selecting the best person for the job bringing into the organization and when we bring those people into the organization like mr rafe just stated being able to articulate what our vision and what our mission is uh here in olin tangy from the onboarding to the orientation to the induction and then obviously through the employee experience as our employees uh work through their years of nolan tangi also and this is this is important within the culture too because we stress this with a lot of our work groups so one thing that uh mr rafe does really well is he meets with our employee groups across the district yearly as well as

021not just our employee groups but also our association leadership and then each building and it's really important that each employee in the organization is part of that mission and vision so from the time from from bus drivers to custodians to food service workers to teachers to counselors to administrators everybody is equally important in facilitating maximum learning uh for every student and i talked about the ongoing relationships and how important that is because what that does is create trust in the organization when we make decisions and when we collaborate and we receive feedback from our employee groups in the decision making so that really all goes into the culture the next thing performance management on the operations side just like the academic side we've created key performance indicators our metrics um and and we look at

022how well we're doing how efficient we're we're being what feedback we're collecting where the gaps in where we can improve uh our processes so going into the next thing uh item there processes so again we look at all processes across the organization so for example the workflow starts to finish so who's involved in that workflow as far as employees what needs to be communicated where might there be some gaps and then how can we improve those processes and at the end of the day it ends with high quality service we want to provide the best service we can to all of our stakeholders our students our staff and of course the community so some examples um of things that we've been doing we use the same format that we used at the last board meeting

023um again so established kpis so in the operational team over the last uh four years we've established over uh 70 key performance indicators that we continue to look at and what we wanted to do was three years ago create these performance indicators across the hr department across the business department across food service department transportation to collect trend data over three years and then we want to benchmark that against national industry standards or local standards so that's where we are right now and as you can see over there where we're headed um this year we're going to identify a uh operations scorecard and it's going to be similar to the um academic annual report and as you know the academic report we either we haven't met or not met across all of our indicators so we're

024going to do that same thing on the operations side so i'm excited to obviously look at that data and then see where we are this fall enhanced timely and effective communication and use of mass notification system in a district our size that's extremely extremely important so as you know we've implemented the use of a new website with integration of email communication text push notification and phone calls and mobile app which has enhanced and streamlined our communication system so for example if we need to drill down and communicate with a specific segment of the organization we can do that like for it like an example would be transportation one bus if we needed to communicate just with the families on that bus we can do that establish collaborative and positive relationships with all employee groups and

025again i i mentioned mrs or mr race leadership and meeting with the employee groups but that's also drilled down to the organization with our departments our departments we meet with stakeholders like pupil services curriculum hr we have committees within our associations that we meet with throughout the year that again help inform us to make decisions and i i wanted to put this this implementation of the k-12 district professional development plan because i always talk about this when people ask me about owen tangy i've been in five districts and as a principal this is one of the most amazing things that the district does of aligning our k-12 professional development systemically k-12 so everybody's rolling in the same direction and like i said i've been in other districts where it's just random acts of improvement and

026here we have an alliance system which is unbelievable and obviously our kids benefit from that um and then the board of education yearly agenda calendar that's one thing that the district leadership team does in reviews every year where we map out the year of board of education meetings and presentations that we want in a timely manner across that year for the board so those are things we've been doing you know one of the important things i talked about the scorecard but we want to continue to evaluate collect feedback and identify gaps for process improvement because like mr rafe mentioned one of our values we can always get better and we don't want to stay stagnant in education and we want to look for ways that we always can improve our efficiencies without compromising the mission

027of the district to facilitate maximum learning for every students another thing up there improve two-way communication between the district and stakeholders and this is important too because we're a large organization so this is uh one improvement area where we think we can do better as far as creating that two-way communication between the district and all stakeholders and then determining how best to do that so we used some technology platforms that we've done that in the past and we're going to continue to evaluate that and that's a goal and then expand administrative resource library for district operations again we bring all new uh um staff in and they do go through an orientation induction but also um this is an example we've created a like an hr human resources administrative class in schoology where all administrators

028have access to that and then they can go it's a resource library anything human resource related they can just go to and have that as a resource and a tool to use okay uh next um strategic objective is expand our talent management strategy and so this is a talent management strategy cycle which starts with planning and again how do we allocate resources based on our strategic planning so we look at our strategic plan and uh we almost do a five-year forecast on how we're going to plan for allocating resources recruiting top talent is important for us as you know the olympia brand is very strong in the state of ohio so when people get the opportunity to apply uh at olin tangy obviously we get a lot of applicants so that allows us to have

029a lot of people in the pool to select the best people that we can for the positions that we post and then once we select them the development is extremely important and again i already mentioned i i don't think there's a school district in in the state that does a better job of developing its people than olin tangi olympia it's tremendous from day one when we work through the onboarding process to bring staff in all positions into the district retention is also important for us so you know we we talk about this it's about the employee experience so how can we capture um feedback from the employees as they go through their journey in olympia and it's something i'll show on the next slide we're working on but uh you know from day one year

030one with the employee to year three to year six to year fifteen um we're coming up with the system to capture that feedback um to get that data on the employee experience uh through oil and tangy and then obviously succession planning is extremely important with a [Music] district our size um you know when we we have the opportunity to identify in the organization top talent who can be leaders and encourage them to develop and provide them opportunities and experiences those are things that we're doing so obviously helps them when opportunities present themselves down the road in the district okay so some of the things uh specific to talent management when i first came on board we had we had a vision of uh really looking at the hr process because quite frankly was ant it

031was antiquated because we were collecting so much paper so every day i was like why do we where's all this paper why do we have so much paper so we we went from the online application which we had but almost and we still have some paper but almost all electronic and digital now with uh our onboarding process and this is just a little antidote because yesterday we had our first small mini orientation with new teachers we have five five throughout the summer before new teacher network where we bring them in and give them their laptops and go through all the technology and hr and and that information but we had a teacher who used to work for the district left to for career change decided he didn't like that career change and he was a

032great teacher when he was here before and we were sorry to see him leave but now he's coming back so he was like he did the paper on boarding previously and then went through the uh electronic onboarding and he would i mean he was raving about it he was like it's unbelievable um so obviously that's something that we've totally transformed in the um hr department fostering pride educational excellence and personal achievement through strong organizational brand identity so behind you are all the brand pillars and three of them are up there and again uh by going to yesterday just the enthusiasm and excitement of the new teachers coming to olin tangi like just i can't believe i was selected for a position on tangy and so there's just so much pride with that brand and obviously

033within the organization people work here the same thing and then i'm just going to connect the next three because i think this is important in our talent management strategy to remain competitive in the education space in order to recruit and retain top talent so we do a really good job working with our associations uh to negotiate contracts that are fair and then also work with restructuring um our compensation structure to be competitive within education so those are things that we've evaluated the last few years in order to fairly compensate our workforce and another thing we mentioned this in an organization our size we want to broaden the organization broaden the organizational chart horizontally to allow for vertical movement because what hap we were finding that we didn't we were running into some issues where um

034people aspired to do things within the organization but we were losing them outside the organization because we didn't have anywhere for them to go so that structure hopefully will help again with our retention and then provide opportunities for leadership development i might get it i'm not going to get into that because we talked about that last week [Music] with mr wright but again the opportunities we provide for our leadership the over there where we're going continue to create professional development leadership opportunities for all employee groups and again that's important when i when i started talking about all employee groups so professional development for intervention aids for our bus drivers for our custodians that's important just uh as we emphasize the professional development for our teachers and um administrators and then that's the journey map that

035i was talking about so in conjunction with curriculum and dr fetty's office we're going to create this journey map that tries to capture the experience of an employee through their tenure in olin tangy it obviously is going to give us some valuable information with our talent management um and then we mentioned this too but we're the state's converting to otez that's the evaluation system for teachers and then opes for principles 2.0 implementation so all of our administrators currently are in bridge training for otez 2.0 i think the first cohort completed last weekend this week so we're moving along with that [Applause] okay last one implement a digital conversion so the goal here is to improve efficiency effectiveness and relevance through technology advancements so you know really when we're looking at these internal processes anytime that

036we can automate the workflow uh to be more efficient and it's meaningful we want to do that and and we've done a lot of that in the organization um and we'll continue to do that obviously as uh um new technologies come in line uh so we're all we're all up here old enough to have filled out the uh uh emergency medical form every time a kid went on a field trip you have to fill out another one and another one finally we don't do that anymore so 20 years later we finally realized hey just keep a copy of about 10 of them in your jewelry yeah well that's what i do um so part of this digital conversion uh so implement implemented unified talent hr platform so again i'm going to go segue right over

037to where we're headed because this is this is important so from uh an employee's application to uh selection to onboarding it's everything is integrated and it's electronic and the the great thing here is emily and i had conversations for the i don't know probably the last five years too about the disconnect between hr and treasury so we're going to be able to integrate pretty much everything across that power school suite now from applicant tracking the unified talent to e-finance plus which is the new state software that we're implementing right now to the professional learning and the professional learning is now what teachers or certified staff everybody has to fill out at uh ippy dippy with goals and they have to have advanced training every year to renew their license so we're going to implement that

038structure and we have some of that right now but this is all going to integrate together and talk to all of our systems back and forth with creating the right workflows right emily um so we're working through that right now both teams uh treasury team and the hr team and spent a lot of time with the with the implementation so we're excited about that because i think that's gonna just uh leverage the technology um in the efficiencies that we have within the district um same thing as far as integrating the mass notification system with powerschool uh what we've been doing that's going to be again like i mentioned extremely important with communication to the stakeholders we need to communicate with from the curriculum side conducted professional development technology standards and tools uh developed anytime anywhere

039digital curricular resources so when teachers are at home now they have it at their fingertips or if they're at the library at the park wherever they can log on they'll have the opportunity to do that and mr rafe had mentioned this we continue to look at how we can digitize parent processes too to make it more efficient for families so for example back to school parent forms including transportation enrollment so i think might have been mrs feasel about five years ago you asked the question hey can we just survey parents who wants to ride the bus so covid caused us to do that last year and it worked out so well we're doing it again this year so right now we're in the middle of that process gathering the data of who's going to ride

040school transportation next year in the fall new student enrollment process we've digitized a lot of that work with a new student from the new student welcome center and then our parent volunteer training program we we went totally electronic a couple years ago and it's unbelievable because we know all of the requirements um all the principals and the secretaries at the building know exactly what parents uh went to the online training complete the on train on tr online training their background checks everything's in one system so a secretary and a principal knows immediately when they're done the parent volunteers cleared to volunteer in the building so i think we implemented that maybe two three years ago but it's worked out really well [Music] digitized certified career fair processes because with kovid you would think that everything

041shut down well we said how can we still continue to create our pool and attract people in tangie obviously not being able to visit college campuses so this year due to covid we were able to digitize and electronically do all of those things electronically that we would typically do traveling to the campuses and i'm excited about this this is really important so this is a major improvement area for us implemented advanced district work order programs uh a few years ago we i this is a huge improvement area for for us so i'll just put it at that so we had work orders that were stacking up we didn't know who was doing we didn't know if they were filled principals didn't know custodians didn't knew it didn't know if they were filled so that's been

042a huge improvement for us we've um we're using fmx so it's it stands for facilities management express so that system now will integrate and talk to some of our other systems but really it's a communication tool where principals have custodians maintenance all know when work orders are put in and then we prioritize them high medium and low and high typically as if it's a safety issue that's a high priority and then we need to get on it um another thing that we did with that is we realized and again this is from conversations with our custodial maintenance group the people on the ground doing the work we looked at how we deploy our resource across our schools and we changed that a couple years ago and how we deploy our maintenance team in our schools

043which is a lot more effective now before they would just come in and go wherever and all over the districts um now they're assigned to a specific uh geographic reason region and a school and they all know how to do general maintenance so it's again it's part of the training so the general maintenance they can just do at their schools and then some some of the higher end maintenance with like hvac plumbing obviously we have trade people to do that and we'll continue to train others so we're excited about that um so and i also have up there launch transportation bus parent app because lori has been here and talked about that last year we did not do that due to covid but we've tested a few routes in the spring pre-covered so we're going

044to get back to test a few more in the fall and the the goal is to launch that to all parents this fall that's the one that's kind of like find your phone you can see yeah where your kid is you can follow us the bus and the route and so obviously we're pretty good with timing that's one of our our metrics but um but yes you'll be able to follow the bus through the route todd would that work within the olyntangie app or would it be a separate app that parents sign up for if their children opt into transportation right now it's a separate app but we could see if we could integrate it into yeah that would be good i have a question about the attendance software like when when the state changed

045their attendance reporting it was a huge tax on our staff is i don't know where we're at with that student attendance yes he said he said he said for sure don't call on me but i have to call him there's really been no update to that process it's still going to be um a chore i think the state's still working on enos improvements allegedly but say no more just thank you do you have any um one question in regards to the employee feedback so we've been voted greatest place to work before how does one earn that acknowledgement and is that part of any of this employee feedback um so obviously yes we like to receive that award so we've decided to do that every two years and it's anonymous it goes to every employee in

046the organization again from bus driver to custodian to teacher and then they ask specific questions on culture engagement and then when they re when they get the data back then they compare us to other organizations like paul and tangi and then um depending on how we score then we get the award so we've i think we've applied or we've done a survey three times and we've received it all three times okay and just a a warning um i also serve i'm appointed for olin tangy to the delaware area career center board and we have a new superintendent there and they're kind of looking at the employee onboarding protocol so i might have thrown your name out there sure yeah mr marquette he's been they've been here so abs absolutely we love to share our story

047so we have districts to call and come in all the time we onboard a lot of employees every year so um and i've heard great feedback about it so okay i shared your name i have a couple questions um do you know how many applications you got yet this year i know you usually give us an update yeah i'll update that in august a lot and are you still in the process of hiring for fall we are we're almost done but we just got another resignation today so some resignations will trickle in here to the july 10th deadline um so as of uh late last week we had 11 certified vacancies uh still i think we've filled three or four of those maybe five um and we're in the interview process and making progress and

048then um you know our certified's a little bit different because it's more dynamic so we're always hiring uh i mean classified we're always hiring classified staff um so we're continuing to work on that but we plan to be fully staffed when school starts in august do you know how many certified positions you had to put in place for growth this year yes 50 i want to say 50 i'll say 52 ish okay um and then finally you talked about professional development and i think that people a lot of people don't realize that there's professional development going on a lot in this building when we're not in covid um but now we we're doing it virtually but also in this building you know all the time during days after school can you touch on that a

049little bit yeah and um you know that's actually a process improvement we implemented four years ago about assigning professional development and and when people can uh ask for professional development because we're a large organization so uh we typically do professional development in this building on tuesday wednesday and thursday we don't do mondays and fridays because in our attendance metric that's where we have the most absences across the year on mondays and fridays and then we break it up with elementary professional development on one of the days secondary professional development days and then central office so central office so we'll do a lot of professional development through the curriculum department through pupil services through technology so we organize that across the [Music] organization where then our employees do come here and this room and upstairs in

050the orange room uh liberty room even some of the smaller spaces are pretty much utilized every day for professional development and one thing i didn't mention in mr rave talks about this all the time creating the conditions for our employees to be successful and in our schools uh the structure we have in place for our employees to collaborate which to me is probably the best professional development you can receive when you sit down with a grade level team or a department team of teachers around the table and work on curriculum you work on assessments you work on instruction and again as a building principle for 14 years those were some of the most powerful professional development sessions that i ever observed so we do that daily in our schools any other questions nope okay thank

051you very much thank you next we have the owen tangy education foundation update and we have rachel hulk she's the foundation executive director and thank you for coming absolutely thanks for having me is it this button todd come on yes okay thank you there we go um good evening my name is rachel hauck i am the executive director of olentangy education foundation or oef which is a non-profit organization that has been supporting olentangy schools since 1990 by supporting and funding enhanced educational experiences for students within the district through a variety of programs that i'm going to touch on as we go on oef's focus is on supporting olentangy schools at the district level providing complementary support to ptos and to booster groups oef trustees are community volunteers and school representatives dedicated to enhancing academic excellence

052by supporting olentangy schools staff and students through variety through private fundraising initiatives at the present time there are 16 members of the board of directors four of which are appointed positions that represent the school district the mission of the foundation is to enhance the education experience and olin tangi schools which the pro which the foundation does through several programs the first of which and the primary focus is on grants providing classroom grants via private fundraising initiatives grants are awarded to classrooms across the district for innovative programs and learning opportunities that fall outside of school budgets voluntangi teachers and staff are able to complete grant applications for consideration on an annual basis we're still wrapping up the 2020 grant cycle so i can give you some highlights of last year's 2020 grants last year in 2020

053oef granted just over 60 thousand dollars to olentangy classrooms via 24 separate grants those grants touched every single building in the district and impacted around 11 000 students every year there is a wide range in the size and the purpose of the grants last year individual grants ranged from five hundred dollars to just over six thousand dollars and provided support for a variety of programs with everything from books to garden materials art supplies to microscopes math manipulatives to classroom technology and i have a few examples of those that i'd like to share with you so the verbiage i have on this screen is out of the teachers grant applications the first grant that i'm going to share with you is the um the water project it was a grant that was awarded to a teacher

054at johnny cake corners and focused on the curriculum surrounding uh the book along walk to water which is a story that is about an eleven-year-old girl who lives in sudan and has to walk to a pond which is a two-hour walk twice a day every day to collect water for her family the grant supplied the teacher with a classroom set of those novels as well as complementary books and access to a speaker the project began this last year when students read a long walk to water as well as other literature that builded that built their background information on the global water crisis they then had a speaker who had first-hand experience with the water crisis in sudan share his story with his students and then the students followed up with a service project to benefit

055those affected by the global water global water crisis one of my favorite parts about this grant is that oef was able to prepare the grant recipient the teacher who received the grant with delco who was a long time supporter of oef and they were able to work with the teacher the teacher and provide further expertise on the project the next is integrating microscopy with technology last year several science teachers at olentangy orange high school got together and submitted a request for digital microscopes for use in biology honors biology forensics and some other science classes the digital microscopes which you can see in that top photo allow for group work as multiple students can view the screen at the same time versus traditional microscopes which can only accommodate individual use the teachers reported that the ability

056for students to collaborate increased interest engagement and learning oef was able to provide 40 microscopes which because of the collaboration supplied five classrooms another fun feature of the digital microscopes is the ability for our students to take pictures so you can see an image a group of students took with one of those microscopes which is the bottom picture that is a cat whisker that the group studied during their hair analysis project and the last grant i'm going to highlight is the orange middle school creativity center which received their second grant this past year in 2019 oef awarded materials and supplies to get the creativity center up and running which transformed the flexible learning environment in the atrium to a space where students could visually express their creativity and their voice after demonstrating what a success

057that was the teachers returned last year with another grant request to continue building the creativity center by incorporating technology so at this point um if you are interested in hearing more about the grants i had the opportunity to sit down with two grant recipients this past year and do a virtual interview the teachers do a much better job about talking about these grants than i can but the video was long and due to time constraints i'm not able to show it tonight so if you'd be interested you can pull out your cell phone and scan the qr code or you can find the video on the oef youtube channel and look for grants in action so the grants provided big impact on olentangy classrooms and while that is the primary focus oef does support the

058schools in through a variety of other programs as well we have hosts the staff shout out program it was formerly the staff accommodation program a program that allows district families an opportunity to recognize and thank coal and tangie staff that have that have gone above and beyond for their students the shoutout comment is not only sent to the staff member who is being honored but to that person's supervisor and district leadership as well we get feedback every time we share those with leadership about how wonderful it is to see the all the positive comments that parents are leaving about the students that are about i'm sorry about the staff that are supporting their students this past year the district or the oef facilitated more than a thousand of those shout outs the foundation has also

059traditionally supported the teacher and employee of the year program by providing recognition and opportunities to celebrate the honorees in cooperation with the district's communications department oef established the olentangy schools alumni association last year the goal of the alumni association is to provide to provide an opportunity for alumni of all olentangy schools first and foremost an opportunity to stay in touch with you with each other but also an opportunity to stay in touch with the school district and the olympia community as a large district with a long history the biggest challenge the alumni association has faced thus far is getting in touch with prior alum it's my hope that through some alumni who have volunteered to help and through student interns that we can connect with some more alumni over the coming year and lastly the

060foundation is in the process of getting a program up and running that will support the district's staff recruitment efforts by mentoring pre-service teachers all of the programs that i have mentioned and everything oef does is funded by private fundraising fundraising initiatives the foundation raises funds throughout the year through a number of different channels corporate spots corporate sponsorships play an essential role and oef is extremely thankful for the local businesses that continue to support the foundation year over year individuals support the foundation's mission by donating in a variety of ways most donors make general donations that support overall mission of the organization other donors have established endowed and non-endowed funds that these funds provide long-term support to the organization and can create a legacy of remembrance or a way to honor the person or group for

061which the fund is named while other donors have chosen to support oaf via planned giving or through a donation made through their will in addition oef hosts two annual fundraising events there is a golf outing in the fall and the biggest event which is zul and tanji in august which there we go as i mentioned zola tangi is the biggest fundraising event of the year and i am personally thrilled that we get to have this event this coming august after having to take last summer off for those of you who weren't able to join in 2019 zul zulentangy is a fun event held in the district at the africa event center at the columbus zoo and aquarium we have grant recipients on site to share about their grants and the impact those grants have made

062in their classrooms and of course because it's at the zoo there's giraffes to feed and other animals to interact with this event is open to the public so anyone who would like to attend i this is your invitation to please join us tickets can be found on the oef website thank you for the opportunity to share a bit about the work that we're doing um to support the community and the way that we um the work that we're doing to improve the education experience in olympia schools i would encourage anybody in the olympia community to find a way of getting involved with the foundation either through volunteering through becoming a donor or attending an event the foundation is grateful for the opportunity to support olympia schools if you have further questions there's more information available

063on the website or i'm happy to answer questions now dave you you serve on this board so he does do you have anything you want to add it's a great group of people and really good interesting one we had a meeting just the other night and just great conversation talking about the different projects everybody's excited about zoom tangy coming back so yeah just it's a nice variety too of their professional backgrounds so it works very well i know i got my tickets i can't wait i haven't ordered mine yet but i'm going to i have to do we it sold out last year it sold out two years ago it was a very fun event i did how many tickets are there do you have a final number we're capped at 400. [Music] and then

064i just wanted to take the opportunity to remind the board we have a fund with the olympia education foundation it's a boards fund we're working towards endowment and i'm sure it's time for us to make we donate a month of our salaries salaries which is 250 right to the fund so thank you all right thank you thank you thanks rachel thank you rachel okay the board president's report i have to check my phone because my co-workers were going to let me know if the budget was it was released and i they haven't texted me that's what we're waiting for i had hoped to have an update on the status of the state's budget which includes a school funding plan but the conference committee hasn't reported anything out yet they were thinking that it would be

065by like this evening so i have some of my co-workers stayed back at the office to wait and see if we had any information but fortunately not we thought it would be today but now it's looking like it might not be until tomorrow we're hoping that it doesn't go over the weekend again the state must pass a budget by june 30th because the new fiscal year starts july 1 and no school district in the state knows what funding will look like in the next seven day you know after july 1. we have no idea we only have a forecast based on assumptions but we do not know what our funding will be for next year so stay tuned but i want to thank everybody for attending tonight's school board meeting and just as a reminder

066the board meetings are con to conduct the business of the board so that the school district can operate the presentations that we hear provide us with information as to the day-to-day operations which are overseen by the superintendent and the treasurer those are the two positions that we oversee and those are the only two positions that we oversee but in order to carry out much of the board business the school board relies on experts from our community and there are four committees that our school board that are direct reports to the school board and those are the finance and audit committee the policy committee the facilities committee and the school advocacy committee two board members are assigned as liaisons to each committee and we attend those meetings to provide some direction the committees are made up

067of all volunteers who dedicate their time to serve the school district as we close out our fiscal year i want to personally thank all the members who have served on these committees for this year for their contributions i feel we don't recognize them enough but it is with their expertise and guidance that we are able to make well-informed decisions for example our facilities committee which dave was a founding member of they really guide us and when we need to build the next building when we need to do any kind of renovations people on those committee are engineers architects facility managers and they really put their expertise to work for at no we don't pay them to do this and they put their expertise to work so when they say hey we got to look at

068a new hvac system or you know something like that or concrete or or they ought to be unroofing the ship yeah roofing was big or they also um look at our enrollment data every single year that's the group that that looks at our enrollment reports um you know we couldn't do it without without them our our finance and audit committee is made up of cpas and business managers and finance experts and you know they look at our five-year forecast you know every year so without those people we couldn't make some of the informed decisions that we do make so i want to really thank them because we i feel that sometimes we forget to thank them so but speaking of recognition at our july 8th school board meeting we will be recognizing students for their

069accomplishments that weren't recognized in april so we'll get the like the spring accomplishments and our community volunteers the meeting will start in the berlin high school auditorium with the recognition ceremony and then we will proceed to the berlin library to conduct the rest of the business meetings just like we have before we've done it at olin tangy before where we do the recognition then move to library but this this next meeting we will be at berlin and this is similar to what we did in in april when we recognized uh fall and winter accomplishments from our students but this time we're going to do spring and then the recognition of our volunteers again the meeting will begin at 6 30 pm in the berlin high school theater and then proceed to the library and that

070is all i have superintendents report please yes ma'am thank you so i got a lot of even though it's summer and uh we're not in session i got a lot of great stuff to share with you uh as mr swazi kind of gave us a little preview or update on the security vestibules i wanted to do that as well you see here heritage elementary johnny cake corners elementary and orange high school some vegetables under construction so all the elementary schools will be very similar with that secondary entrance that then we'll have people buzz in to go into the main office at a orange high school and liberty high school that are the same design the uh there's a ticket booth in the front of the building that'll be taken out and then a secondary entrance

071will be added there so that people have to come into a secure area and be buzzed into the building and we obviously built berlin high school like that you see here two pictures um the high school journalism studios that were part of the bond package i really give a kind of shout out to the orange high school journalism program and mr brian i remember maddie was in that program for a while ago they really really took off and run ran with our broadcast journalism program and have done an incredible job of um and they were filming out of a basically a closet and then we transformed a classroom into a journalism studio and it is professional quality they they broadcast live sporting events and i mean they do debates and they did a telethon and

072they've just done so much and the other schools are playing catch-up on it but as part of the last bond package we are putting in those journalism studios in in the other three high schools and you know i look forward to the day to some some get getting a shout out from some kid who's an espn sports anchor saying it all started in my high school journalism program in old tangy and then the other thing i'm really really proud of is is our playground updates that are taking place so that all of our students will be able to fully participate in the playground experiences so you see there the ada compliant playgrounds and the soft surfaces and i tell you our elementary staffs are are really excited about not having to uh i think elementary

073parents will be really excited about not having to uh take uh rocks out of their their shoes so um so really proud of that that that we that was all part of the bond package um you know again as a sign of our returning to normalcy our kindergarten screenings are taking place in our elementary schools so those are are in full um full process as we've been moving through here in the summer numbers are looking looking real solid i think we'll have obviously more kindergartners here this year since i think a lot of people redshirted their kindergarteners last year another thing again as a sign to returning to normalcy is that we have camps happening all over the district um elementary and middle school students are um you know again all over the district doing

074their their sports camps you see some baseball and uh it looks like football and soccer and and amanda had i think he had some fun going out taking pictures of all the activity all over the district it's just great to see it all all happening um so again really really proud of that you know i need to i want to make sure i take an opportunity to um give a shout out to our custodial staff it is amazing you know if the people walk out of the building on that last friday of our teacher workday and then monday morning every classroom in the district is emptied out into the hallways and and um you know uh wax is stripped and floors are scrubbed and everything is is obviously deep clean and repaired and and as

075you walk in any of our buildings it looks like a war zone just there's just stuff everywhere and then all of a sudden it gets put back together in which virtually like the blink of an eye and um our custodians just do an amazing job so um i just want to make sure i highlight the work that they're doing now because they are busting their their tails to get it ready i say i come back every year and and our oldest buildings look brand new and the new ones look again just as good as the day they open so um thanks to all the custodians and maintenance staff that make that happen we do have summer intervention and extended school year services happening all throughout the district so you see here some small group and

076individualized learning with our intervention specialists and our orton gillingham tutors all throughout the district so so that's again great work um you know some of these these students are getting provided some extended school year due to some uh learning loss that happened uh over the course of this year um but you know i have every confidence that we will have everybody caught up to where they they need to be again our data indicates real strong results we're looking forward to when the state testing results come back here because i have great confidence they'll be excellent again i want to highlight hershell n who is from liberty middle school he made it to the scripps national spelling bee so congratulations to him and his family um he made it to the quarterfinals so the top 16

077in the country it's a great accomplishment for for him um as i'll always like to do is highlight some uh action items bless you we have some um administrative resignations here on the on the agenda and um some administrative employment you see a pretty long list there we have one two three four five six seven eight i think of these people here so if i call your name you will please stand and be recognized we have erica boone who's currently at arrowhead elementary is going to be our supervisor for gifted monica brown is coming us to us from the esc of central ohio as our assistant director for elementary curriculum and instruction erica harris is coming to us from columbus uh schools as the assistant principal at liberty tree and she brought her family and

078children welcome i remember doing that one time erica a long time ago my kids actually my kids are funny stories my kids was a very long board meeting in westerville and i woke up the next morning and my daughter said to me dad i think i know why they call it a board meeting they never came to another one matthew jordan who's a previously a math teacher at old tangy high school is going to berkshire middle school i miss him uh stephen lewis is a business teacher at orange high school is going to be a supervisor in equity and inclusion she's so excited i can't your proud mother your proud wife i'm sorry that's right um michael schmidt assistant principal at uh berkshire burke burr excuse me hyatt's middle school excuse me too many bees

079hyatt's middle school is coming to us from upper arlington and mindy schultz who was at arrowhead is moving over into our curriculum department to be a supervisor for academic intervention did i get everybody here i miss anybody but anyway so thank you all and congratulations we look forward to joining our administrative team [Applause] um some other action items i want to you know we always every year we have to renew our district property fleet and liability uh property fleet and liability insurance company we use liberty mutual we have for years um that obviously is a big number 444 445 000 that's up from about 405 000 from last year we are adding some um additional buses and um it just seems that insurance coverage across the spectrum is up um so mr o'brien i know

080that's always a it is a what they call a hard market where premiums are going up and coverages are going down so i'm not surprised i mean i looked at the material and it appears reasonable but yeah it's uh and we put this out for we put this out for a request for a proposal every two years and try to obviously stay as competitive as competitive as possible so um and we'll be doing that again next year um so we have been with liberty mutual um for for quite a while and they're they've been a good partner for us so um there is a change order to the paving contract that we approved at old tangy high school when we got in to do the work there we found um through our own uh examination

081and examination by heiberger that there was some significant sub surface uh damage that needed to be repaired with some concrete reinforcing so it was not within the scope of the original bid work so we do have to do a change order there we have the tap fee for shale meadows so this is kind of like one of the final things in the um opening of our school so we will be connecting our sewer system to the delaware county regional sewer system and then hvac improvements at shanahan middle school with mcavoy geiger mechanical so those are some big ticket items and then as mrs fiesel noted our next board of education meetings so with that any questions all right thank you all right mrs hatfield you're out with the treasurer's report [Music] good evening everybody i

082know mrs fiesel gave you an update on our anticipation of the fair school funding plan and hopefully having some of that information released today but perhaps we will see it in the morning i just wanted to give you a couple of bullet points on why it's important to look at the differences between the fair school funding plan and what the senate was discussing in their first proposal the senate funding base was proposed at six thousand one hundred and ten dollars per student while the house was at seventy two hundred dollars per student and the biggest difference in that lied in the student support component of the funding model seemed really odd to me that the biggest gap that we had was in the student support metric when that's what it's all about is funding our

083students so that's one of the items that they are working through the other component item that is really critical is the metric that they use to calculate the wealth of a district because that component deals with how much of a local share should that community support their school district with the sentence proposal was using the current state share index which we know is very flawed that's one of the items that is in the current funding model that looks at owen tng and says we have high property wealth we have very good valuations we should afford be able to afford to have continued levies to support our students the other issue that we have with not only the mechanism or the calculation that it's using the senate also had old data so new data is released

084new property valuations are available as well as new income indices which should change what that index looks like the fair school funding plan changed how that calculation would be put into law it would look at property valuation but it would also look at local income levels and do a 60 40 split of that calculation versus all property values the other thing that the house did is it it discontinues the ranking of each school against each other so our state share index was ranked against hillyard was ranked against dublin and we just kind of be shuffled through that 610 of us one on top of the other to figure out who would get what part of that funding the house version takes that out of the equation and just looks at each district on its own

085so that's a good component to keep it helps us not to be in competition for what's available through state funding but truly fund the students where they are so those are some of the key components that we were trying to support and hope that the senate will concede to or at least bring into their proposal the final com or the conference committee is comprised of representatives please forgive me i'm terrible with pronouncing names um but olenslager who is a republican plumber who's also republican and crawley who's democratic our senators are on the committee are dolan and gab gabarone who are republican and sykes who is democratic so as mrs feasel currently stated we hope to have some more information tomorrow about where that conference committee has landed and what will be going to to the

086governor for his approval they have until june 30th to sign that bill into law um some of the action items that we have on the agenda this evening are listed on the screen for you um just to give the audience an understanding of what some of those items are we have a lot of jargon or accounting notation that is that is part of some of the work that we do so our final appropriation adjustments for fiscal year 2020 that is final adjustments for budgets we are making sure that we have the budgets approved and adjusted for any increases that may have been needed before we close the books for our fiscal year currently we are scheduled to close out fiscal year 21 on monday so we will be wrapping up those changes and making sure

087we are in compliance for our next audit it feels like we just ended one um our may board financials are in compar we're comparing those to our may five year forecast adjustments revenue is slightly higher but not material compared to the five-year forecast our expenditures are lower than anticipated for the month however we're still seeing some delay in either the billing that we're getting from our services or back orders of materials so what we anticipate that we're going to see is being under budget again in our purchase services and supplies and materials but we'll have perhaps a higher encumbrance when we close the books because we're still waiting for those bills and items to be processed and come into the district overall we have again just to notate for the audience we have already spent

088all corona virus relief funds early in the fiscal year mostly on ppe but we did have some broadband funding which helped get more remote devices in the hands of our students and to enhance our wireless access around the building so students could use that as we were remote and we did have some small esser funding from the first round which was about 247 thousand dollars but that was spent early on as well we did not receive esser ii or sr3 funding so those big dollars that were that some of our other neighboring districts are using to help support future growth or building we are not eligible for we have board meeting minutes permanent appropriations for fiscal year 2022 those are establishing our budgets by fund for next fiscal year at our previous meeting we approved

089at a object level the general fund as we prepared the five-year forecast for you but our remaining funds are budgets are set and approved at a fund level donations we continue to be in awe of the donations that we receive thank you to all of our generous donors who are listed on this screen we have excuse me alum creek pto an anonymous donor donating technology to owen tangy meadows we have science labware to owentg orange high school and additional funds from the athletic boosters at owen tangi orange for some supplemental coaching all of those continue to help service our students and maximize their education when funds are not available for those particular items so we appreciate those and we continue to appreciate our community for their in-kind donations of time and support the final item

090that i have for action item tonight is a transfer recommendation from the general fund to the food service fund for 1.5 million dollars this transfer again we had a long lengthy discussion about this with mrs linko at our last board meeting explaining the summer season program and how the funding for the free meals breakfast and lunch were available and how that funding evolved we also know that having our students in a hybrid schedule hurt the revenue stream that she normally sees so we had originally set aside about two 2.5 million dollars or so in the five-year forecast as a transfer i'm happy to say that we're only recommending 1.5 so that is a decrease from our previous assumptions largely due to students coming back in full time and having that full revenue stream for mrs

091linko and her department so we're excited to have that number come down the total for fiscal year 20 and 2021 will be 3 million dollars we are anticipating that we can do a small arrangement or a stretch out a payback situation for the fund at about 500 000 each year of the next six years so that they can get back the reserves can build they can continue to replace equipment as needed but also pay back the general fund so we'll make arrangements with that and you'll start to see that on the coming back in on the five-year forecast assumptions moving forward in fiscal 2023 other questions that i can answer for you any questions no fantastic thank you thank you very much i'll let you get back to your seat because you have to thank

092you because you have to get ready for public participation is next and i'll remind everybody that we have a total of 30 minutes each statement will be read by the participant has five minutes mrs hatfield is our time keeper because she's our official keeper of all of our minutes and all of our everything all of our records she's our official record keeper and so when you come up um um i believe heather lance collected them and gave them to you and they read in the order that they were collected okay absolutely when you're ready you can get your timer set and absolutely so i think um at our last board meeting it's very difficult to hear when my mic when that microphone is active and mine is turned off so we're going to use the

093timer hopefully that's a little more helpful this evening but as mrs fiesel stated we would ask that each person come to the podium in order that they were received they have five minutes and so our first participant excuse me is miss pam lewis mrs lewis would you please state your name and address for the record please pamela j lewis and my address is on winfield drive in lewis center ohio 4303 lewis center ohio no relation thank you to my knowledge okay okay thank you so good evening my name is pamela lewis and i have been a resident of this community since 2006 and my family has been in the school since 2007. two of my three children attended the elementary and middle schools in the district and both graduated from olentangy orange high school currently

094i am a full-time working professional and i have had the true honor to be a community volunteer this volunteerism has been part of who i am as a mother a spouse a christian an activist an african-american woman that has sought after and seen a lot of positive changes through good and bad triumphs and challenges i personally have always stayed true to what i believe is essential to demonstrate hope while sharing my gifts that are god-given and to speak life and love to those around me as we all know in recent times there have been a lot of hurt and a lot of pain there has been some mistrust misunderstanding and dare i say evil trying to permeate throughout our beloved community ladies and gentlemen my reason for being here this evening is twofold to commend

095great efforts towards mitigating counterproductive behavior and to encourage effective conversations that will result in the outcome we all want for our community for the children which embodies the mission of olsd this is to facilitate maximum learning for every student i'm grateful of the district's effort to support and provide education in a way where it benefits all students these efforts show the true commitment towards excellence and focuses on the overall success even during difficult occurrences the district leans into hard conversations by listening engaging and attempting to do what is required to meet the vision of being a recognized leader for high performance and efficiency in education i know that some of the outcomes are unpopular however the key players can constantly demonstrate both personal and administrative accountability to own the hard decisions while attempting to do

096better the district recognizes when they may not get it right and they are willing to adjust accordingly to that end i also commend the community efforts created within the grassroots organizations that advocate for equal treatment of all students and staff within the district the awareness the accountability and action taken re taken result in strategize no outcomes for a purposeful encounter with key leaders in the buildings as well as throughout the district's enterprise the techniques of learning circles and comprehending historical relevance provide key attributes to the way forward to understand and implement for the overall community this perseverance helps to break down echo chambers for students and for families that support them so that the ongoing positive exchange is fluid and frequent now don't get me wrong i i know that we don't all agree however

097i encourage positive discussions within the community for those that have concerns and or questions that may enable better understanding and refocus commitment to our students our youth our young adults our old adults our beloved community when my family and i relocated here it was always under the expectation of providing excellent opportunities for our children while participating in their success i believe a lot of that has been met with much more to come i feel we must be willing to learn from each other share perspectives and each other and be comfortable about having difficult conversations so to balance the strategies and apply them to what can be deemed more harmonious than chaotic don't be afraid to ask questions embrace differences so we can empower and focus on commonalities that we have respect each other there has

098been great work accomplished through equity and inclusion and the best diversity is a diversity of thought let us keep the momentum as we continue to demonstrate what i learned to call the unforced rhythm of grace that's five minutes please okay so then i won't read philippians 4 8. you all can read that thank you man thank you [Applause] thank you for being respectful with that timer i'm sorry it interrupts next we have janine king if you would please state your name and your address for the record and we'll start your five minutes janine king 45-84 grayson drive in pal ohio and i think it's like divine providence that she and i met in the parking lot because i'm just going to start by saying she basically summed up what i decide i have written this

099and i'm like i'm not going to really talk about that anymore some of it i am but the majority of it not for everyone in this room i think if we actually like sat down and talked and got rid of the anger and got rid of the side pitting two sides against each other and really actually conversed about what we all want i think we would actually all agree on 99.9 percent of the stuff right what i have taught my kids from the beginning of their lives is to respect a person actually not even a person a soul respect a soul and i don't care what color you are i don't care what your gender is i don't care what your sexual preference is or what religion you are that is what i've always taught

100my kids and we do the work we this is not to toot my own horn this is just to let everyone in this know right i have taken my kids year after year into the inner city this year we actually tutored kids in the inner city who didn't who weren't able to go to school because their schools were closed and don't have access to the support that they need i have for the last four summers also done the same thing with groups of kids within this school district where we've gone down and spent weeks down there on mission so that is what needs to happen conversation needs to happen bullying is real in this district it is happening to kids of every color every gender everything and i am an expert on bullying because i

101was bullied horribly in high school to the point where i almost committed suicide i was that kid sitting on my parents bedroom floor when they were out with my dad's gun in my hand i know bullying i don't want any kid ever i don't care what color you are what gender you are i keep saying that but i really don't kids need to be loved and they need to be respected for no matter what diversity of thought they have or diversity of how they've been how they've been brought up every individual has their own lived experience in this world and we need to learn from those lived experiences i had a great conversation mr rafe's office with mr rafe and dr fetty one day you're going to hold me to the five minute timer because

102that's policy in this room 30 minute public participation also policy i think you would eliminate 99.9 of your issues if teachers were held to the same policies when it came to the curriculum items that we've talked about in the past things that are even remotely controversial we all know right now things are high people's anxieties are high anger is high anything that's even remotely controversial just bring it to the parents and say hey we want to bring this to your kids and this is the reason why what appears to some is slipping it under the radar is not good not in this environment it's in it just leads to more of this and we don't want this we want good discussion in the classroom to both sides represented so that people can start to learn

103from each other that's the only way we're going to move together as a school as a community and as a nation and as a world by looking to the others and learning from them that is it [Music] thank you mrs donna well please my name is donna gawell and i live at slate crossing drive in delaware 43015 as a retired educator i am here to support those who are not in a safe position to speak i believe who all who sit before me aspire to be hard-working and honorable people i assumed you were unaware of the false and harmful information being taught by some of your teachers and invited speakers the board states we completely and utterly reject critical race theory instead it appears you either agree or are afraid to push back against the

104destructive horses within your district in fact the district allows teachers and diversity administrators to repackage the harmful ideas of crt and teach them under other labels programming sponsored by your district shows significant components of crt are in fact being actively promoted the board members and staff learned about critical race theory and other marxist cultural marxist theology ideologies during district book studies and conferences that you approved books such as this one written by ibram x kendi the leader of the anti-racist movement or on your reading list why haven't you taken steps to stop those administrators and teachers who are intent on promoting this dangerous ideology we object to the indoctrination of our children as an author of history i have a keen understanding of how leaders use youth to achieve their evil goals when the nazis

105in germany rose to power they targeted their children for indoctrination in an organization known as hitler youth in 1692 history showed another example of how adults with corrupt and personal and financial motives manipulated full and highly foolish and highly emotional young girls i cautioned the board to take a lesson about what happened in the aftermath when 20 people were killed citizens who didn't stand against this atrocity worked hard to disassociate themselves from the facts they even renamed salem village to danvers so the world might forget what their weakness of character had caused is this going to be the fate of those who allowed profiteering activists to infiltrate our school system instead of destroying statues of ohio pioneers the district is considering eliminating or drastically altering the third graders pioneer day experience the diversities community notes

106to the superintendents described pioneer day as a tea party where characters dressed up in fact pioneer day was a highly high quality experience designed by your teachers and professionals from the delaware historical society unfortunately the staff from the diversity department purposely misinformed the community in order to eliminate this wonderful experience one of the diversity coordinators told me that pioneer day isn't inclusive of the district's minority students her line of thinking puzzled me as a historian when i go to auschwitz gettysburg or the plymouth plantation i'm not looking to be included in their history we need to teach children to learn and appreciate the real history and culture of others rather than applying this egocentric and misguided approach when the stakes for our children and country are so high to be silent is to be complicit

107i quote alexandra suljanison who warned the world about totalitarianism there always is this fallacious belief it would not be the same here here such things are impossible soldiers and soldiers and laments alas the evils of the 20th century are possible everywhere on earth i descend from partisans of the polish home army who tired of waiting for the world to save them from world war ii or to help them during world war ii poland's citizens rose up against hitler's oppression unfortunately their fate after the war meant that those who fought for freedom became the targets of russian communist occupiers they were hunted down and assassinated because they fought for freedom my great uncle was one of those the russians killed i view the righteous parents in this audience and around the country as the home army

108fighting for their children's souls parents and voters must ask ourselves and whom can we have confidence where is your moral compass i beg you please research the harmful ideologies you have brought into the schools using our tax dollars five minutes please thank you oh forgive me i believe it's susanna steadman or is it suzanne i'm sorry okay thank you all right my question for the board tonight is what is the district planning on for regards to the covid vaccine my hope is that there would not be a mandate but the vaccine would be voluntary there have been several studies released lately raising serious questions about the vaccine just yesterday members of the cdc advisory committee acknowledged that 1 200 cases of heart inflammation of 16 to 24 year olds of the covet vaccine and they

109said that it should carry a warning statement many institutions employers when faced with potential litigation over mandating the vaccine prior to the fda approval have chosen to suspend and withdraw their mandates rather engage in litigation in fact many employers are choosing not to mandate it even if it receives full fda approval i believe that students and staff should have the right plain and simple to choose to receive or not to receive this without a religious or medical exemption my goal is not to stop it from those who want to get it just make it not mandatory what will only tangi do if one of their students is permanently injured or worse because they have felt compelled by the district to receive this injection has osd considered what its damages financial and otherwise might be in

110that situation there will be continued legal challenges to the mandates likely there will be legal challenges to licensure as well in those contexts is it possible for court to find that the vaccines are experimental i know that you take the health and well-being of all the students and staff like you have done seriously this year and the year to come the bottom line message is this a mandate is not legal now because the product is under emergency use authorization and by that definition is experimental before you implement such a plan please consider that even though many school vaccination requirements for license and approve vaccines have been upheld in court no court has ever held a mandate for an emergency use authorization vaccine which all coveted vaccines are at this present in fact the federal court

111has held the eua vaccines cannot be mandated to soldiers in the u.s military who in jar who they have fewer rights than we do as citizens civilians doe number one versus rumsfeld 297. the court remarkably held beyond the united states cannot demand that members of the armed forces also serve as guinea pigs for their experimental drug you can look up um all the reactions that have happened so far on the vaccine adverse event reporting system bears today there's been over two thousand two hundred twenty seven thousand adverse events and four thousand two hundred one deaths following this injection despite this the government agencies and national levels continue to promote this vaccine it is my sincere hope that you were considered future plan in light of these facts i also don't agree with the solution of

112students and staff who are not vaccinated must wear a mask as some schools in ohio are doing because that is discrimination on a personal note the reason i am so passionate about this is because i have a medical condition that increases my risk for blood blood clots that is why i'll not subject myself to the shot i lost my first son to this mental condition when i had placental abruption during his birth his younger brother has the same medical condition that i have because it is hereditary i will not face the guilt of losing another child because i allowed society and to bullying me into allowing him to get an experimental shot for a virus that he has over a 99 survival rate for thank you eric bulwar are you with us thank you if

113you would please come to the podium and state your name and address for the record please thank you good evening my name is eric boulware i'm a concerned parent my address is 268 on tangie meadows drive lewis center for the past several months i've been joined by many other community members and sharing our concerns with the district representatives and administration it has been an up and down experience as i have been reassured by the district that they are not using critical race theory or as it should be called state sanctioned racism they claim they are not using crt in their development and training of teachers and staff education of students or in their curriculum every time i was somewhat encouraged in my dialogue i would dig deeper only to find out that the district was

114in fact propagating this marxist ideology before i offer examples allow me to be clear but brief as i explain what i'm talking about marxism categorizes people into groups oppressor verse oppressed in the past marxists have separated people based on characteristics such as class gender religion etc crt specifically separates people into groups based on race there is no individuality with this ideology only groups the oppressor group is viewed as evil therefore the oppressors have no reason to be listened to considered or valued if they do speak up the oppressed must silence them and cancel them the oppressed is the only voice allowed because they think they have the only real truth which is what marxists call lived experience if something from the oppressed group doesn't make sense to you that's because you just don't have the

115lived experience to understand it if the oppressed says they feel like one plus one equals three just because it fits their narrative you the oppressor cannot question it they have lived experience that trumps all objective truth if the oppressor says one plus one equals two and it goes the against the oppressed narrative get ready to be called a racist with absolutely no reality to back up their accusation there is no objective truth with this ideology i ask you is that appropriate for an educational setting for children to make things worse the concept of intersectionality which is coined by kimberly crenshaw and marxist is also being propagated by the district intersectionality takes two groups of oppressor and oppressed and adds intersections or levels to them so i to the marxist am labeled with intersections such as

116white male christian straight able-bodied conservative i check most of the intersectionality boxes of a super oppressor i am viewed as the oppressor of all oppressors on the other hand if you have a trans disabled immigrant minority etc they are viewed as the oppressed of the oppressed so it doesn't matter that i live with i view the other person as made in the image of god and holding equal value as myself or anyone else my ideology does not matter how i treat that person doesn't matter to the marxist with those things in mind i have had an ongoing conversation with a diversity equity and inclusion staff member before i proceed i want everyone to understand that i appreciate her giving me her time i don't want to call for someone to lose a job unless it's

117absolutely necessary and i don't want to vilify cancel or socially crucify anyone however i also want to be very clear that she's wrong morally and rationally wrong here's why let's first start with the title of diversity equity and inclusion you can't say you don't propagate crt then emphasize the word and concept of equity equity means equal outcome equality means equal opportunity education should be about equality maximizing opportunity for every student not making sure every student gets the same grade experience or outcome equity is communism in communist countries it is well documented that highly specialized and necessary professions such as medical care or in short supply this should not be a surprise if you could get paid the same amount to be a doctor as you would the custodian who cleans the doctor's office why would

118you spend the extra time and effort to be a doctor apply equity to every aspect of a society and you have a crumbling society we need equal opportunity not equity the real title to our district theme is diversity communism and inclusion karl marx was a communist economist and the district is pushing a radically immoral world view i'm going to read something from the district spring 2021 dei e newsletter it described their professional development day on february 12th by stating quote the theme for this year is sense of belonging and anti-racism end quote anti-racism sounds like it's supposed to mean against racism don't be fooled marxists intentionally manipulate and weaponize language and the term anti-racism is marxist racism ibrahim kennedy just mentioned considered by many to be the modern face of crt wrote a book called

119how to be an anti-racist in kenny's book he writes quote the only remedy to racist discriminate discrimination is anti-racist discrimination the only remedy to pass discrimination is present discrimination the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination end quote to be an anti-racist is to be a discriminatory racist during my meeting with diversity communism inclusion staff member i was asked what my expectations were from them i told her what most of us here seem to want martin luther king's dream of being judged by the content of our character and not our scene color we're doing the opposite of this i was then told by the staff member that martin luther king was an anti-racist i was also told the district uses intersectionality for training and development of teachers i was shocked and disgusted i still

120am i would like to believe that most employees of the district are only ignorant not disingenuous or misleading however i cannot be sure this considering the totality of the circumstances leading me to believe otherwise this should be embarrassing to the district that i even have to speak against marxism this must end let's work together to fix this thank you we have a few minutes remaining of our half hour our next participant is salon weiss [Music] hello please state your name and address for record my name is salon wise and i you have my information it's on file appreciate you taking allowing me an opportunity to speak i hope you allow me to finish out my five minutes um good evening board and community members my family moved to olin tangi five years ago since then

121we've seen much of what makes this a great school district we've seen award-winning teachers excellent programs and facilities and a commitment to academic excellence however in that time we've also seen instances making it clear there is still much work to be done when it comes to olin tangy creating a sense of belonging and equity regardless of race ability gender identity neurodiversity or any other difference this time last year we were heartbreak broken as we read dear olsd where students shared personal experiences with racism ableism homophobia transphobia and other biases they endured here in olin tangi we were also in the midst of worldwide protests calling for greater equity and equality after the murder of george floyd many hope that these events of the past summer would be a turning point however one year later we

122see in many ways it wasn't a turning point it was a tipping point instead of turning toward acknowledging the injustices of the past and the inequities of the present we have tipped over into debating whether controversial subject matter has a place in the classroom instead of turning toward making progress on issues of race and bias that have plagued america since before its founding we have tipped and tumbled down a path bickering over words like fragility privilege equity and inclusion instead of turning toward ensuring no student has to endure the ignorance and bias detailed in dear olsd we have tipped and toppled into attempts to prevent teachers from acknowledging and addressing matters of history and present day events in a factual and age appropriate way we have over 22 000 students in this district many of

123different races identities abilities religions and cultures and given the growing and increasingly diverse population of our student body it is imperative to maintain and grow the number of equity and inclusion administrators dedicated to promoting a culture of inclusive excellence for students staff and families james baldwin said not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced in other words facing issues of bias and equal and inequity does not guarantee we will have success in solving them but refusing to face these issues guarantees our failure and as i see it we cannot afford to fail we cannot fail the kindergarten girl who has been bullied and made fun of because of the ethnic food in her lunchbox we cannot fail the asian american middle schooler who last year came

124home from school repeatedly crying after being called corona via coronavirus by her schoolmates we cannot fail the child with a disability who has not had access to accessible toys to play with on the playground we're glad to see that that's changing or the student with neurodiversity who has been bullied because of how they communicate differently we cannot fail the transgender high school student contemplating suicide because they feel so unaccepted we cannot fail the teachers of color who enter the district but leave after a short time because they do not feel welcome and i cannot fail my own children who are navigating childhood at a time when some community members cannot bring themselves to declare that my son's black lives matter those are some reasons why my wife ashley and i founded the parent diversity network

125also known as pdn which is a network of olentangy parents and community members engaged in elevating awareness advocacy accountability and action regarding these issues since then pdn has grown to include hundreds of olentangy parents actively engaging to encourage progress in these areas and for our community members watching at home or here if there are any if you would like to join our efforts in elevating awareness advocacy accountability and action in olin tangi i encourage you to visit parentdiversitynetwork.org for more information and together we won't fail our children thank you thank you everyone that concludes our half hour of public participation i appreciate that everybody took the time to listen to each other and uh be respectful at the time thank you very much um with that we can return to the agenda okay next we

126have our uh sorry i'm messed up our treasure action items um mrs hatfield can you present the treasure action items and let us know what they are please yes please i would like to present treasure action items a through f for approval please and i just want to point out that f is the transfer of funds from the general fund to the food service fund to make it whole in the amount of 1.5 million dollars that'll bring be a total of three million dollars which we will plan on repaying back the general fund over several years okay do i have a motion to approve those so moved second any further discussion call the roll please mrs patrick yes dr weiss yes mr king yes mr o'brien yes and mrs wagner feasel yes thank you okay

127um mr rafe what do you have for us yes ma'am i'd like to present superintendent action items a through i for approval okay superintendent action items a through i do i have a motion i'll move do i have a second i'll second and that includes the new people that are here tonight that we are approving their promotions or their their new positions okay uh can you please call the roll on that mr king yes mrs patrick yes mr o'brien yes dr weiss yes and mrs wagner feasel yes thank you and now i need a motion uh to go into executive session as permitted by section one two one two dot two two g one of the ohio revised code to consider the employment of public employees when we come back we'll just come back to

128adjourn we will not be taking any further action so do i have a motion to go into executive session so moved second okay and before we call the role remember our next meeting is july the 8th at berlin call the roll please mr o'brien yes dr weiss yes mr king yes mrs patrick yes and mrs wagner feasel yes thank you and the board will be meeting in the liberty room it is 10 30 so i need a motion to adjourn so moved okay kevin and you second second okay everybody vote okay we are adjourned you