Bexley Board of Education Meeting - March 9, 2022

001our revised code section one two one two two i hereby call the march 9 2022 meeting of the bexley board of education to order kyle would you call the roll for us please dr baker here here thank you we are going to have public participation available tonight as we work to ensure that our public participation section is responsive to our community's needs as well as those of the boards to conduct business in an orderly and efficient manner we ask that those wishing to speak at public comment sign up at the podium at the beginning of the meeting is there anybody who's here to speak who hasn't had a chance to sign up yet so kyle would you pull the sheet for us thank you so much and then we start with the pledge of of

002the united allegiance of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all dr fine i'm going to turn it over to you i'm sorry oh did i miss something sorry i'm so excited to do the awards and recognition the minutes of our february meeting have already been provided to the board members has does anybody have any comments or changes to the minutes there being none can i have a motion to approve the minutes thank you second second thank you this is a vote on approving the minutes all in favor please signify by saying aye aye any oppose same thank you that motion carries now let's do awards yeah wow well okay i just have it in a different order on my sheet here um did

003it print differently no i just i must have made a mistake oh anybody have any adjustments to our agenda this evening now may have a motion to approve the agenda as submitted show me second thank you all in favor of approval of the agenda please signify by saying aye aye any oppose thank you that motion carries okay now okay yeah gwen if you would come up to the podium for us and you're welcome to have your family join you but we have yeah come on up we it's an honor uh to have gwendolyn canfield with us she won one gold and one silver key in the 2022 scholastic art key awards which is a national competitive contest and exhibition you can see the work up on the screen very impressive bexley high school art instructor

004mavi ponce de leon is also in attendance and shared with me that gwen is a scholar artist who is also enrolled in drawing and ap art and design you have created lots of masterpieces one of them being a children's book through your ap coursework you have explored and mastered acrylic paint graphite and charcoal inks and mixed media you've produced a master painting of a van gogh self-portrait using color line and brush stroke to develop form you've advanced i believe to this weekend to the states in the 2022 ohio use governor's exhibition with two of your works jeremiah clinton which is an acrylic painting and triplets triplets which is an ink drawing is that correct and one of my favorite things uh that mobby shares is above all else gwen is a friend to all so

005not only are you an amazing artist but you are an amazing human being and we're really proud of you we want to congratulate you on an impressive accomplishment sounds like you have such a bright future ahead if you want to take a second to introduce who you've brought with us and anything else about your uh your artwork uh now would be the time well thank you and again congratulations best of luck this weekend we're going to take a picture with the board if that's okay great thank you we'll take it with victoria and alicia [Music] here we go all right three two one great thank you very much congratulations we're going to move to the next slide we've got another recognition we'd like to take care of liam avaluto is quite an impressive artist as

006well you want to come up to the podium [Music] so liam is a senior tenor saxophone player who has been playing uh saxophone for nine years and if you've ever heard liam play that sounds crazy to me it sounds like you've been playing for many more because you are quite impressive he recently auditioned for the all-state jazz band his junior year for acceptance into the band your senior year hundreds apply and less than three are selected for each instrument liam performed in february at the ohio music education association during the snowstorm i was supposed to be there couldn't get there i think you went earlier in the week and that is quite an honor additionally liam has been a member of the top columbus youth jazz ensemble in columbus ohio for several years and has

007performed for several omea solo and ensemble contests he has received top superior ratings at these events he will be studying jazz performance next year at a top university jazz program yet to be released and under his leadership he has mentored and tutored the saxophone section in multiple classes including concert and jazz bands i first heard liam perform i believe uh at one of the school functions at i believe hispanic heritage month and was blown away uh by your your ability uh congratulations liam we are super proud of you you are quite an artist and uh if you would take a moment to interview or introduce who you have brought with us and anything else you'd like to add uh yeah this is um this is my mom susan and uh i just look forward to

008my future career love it give it up thank you [Applause] mom did i cut you off no i was just gonna say and we just got notification that he's received almost a free ride to the university of louisville to study faculty that's my all right well congratulations go cardinals that's a great tip that's a great school to study music yeah yeah good job it's amazing so we'll take a picture with the board [Music] all right three two one three luke carriello couldn't be here this evening and then we've got cooper dennison who we're going to honor next month check the actual agenda instead of my notes board reports so um last month i'm going to give a slightly longer board report than i'd like to and it's just because there's been a lot of activity

009in the legislature and i want to give everybody a chance to just hear what's going on and some of the bills that are most important to our schools last month i reported on house bill 51 that contains a provision that allows a public body including a board of education to temporarily meet remotely it also permits individual board members to attend and vote remotely at an otherwise in-person meeting the bill was signed by governor dewine into law in february and it became effective immediately but it expires by its own terms on june 30th 2022 if we want to take advantage of that we actually have to revise our policies a little bit so we may need to do that in the next few days just in the next you know talk about it and then bring

010it to the board so we'll take a look at that i have an update on house bill 327 relating to the teaching or promotion of certain so-called divisive or divisive concepts we've talked about that in several board meetings on february 16 the state and local governance committee of the house which is the committee that's looking at this bill accepted a substitute version of house bill 327. that substitute version makes a number of changes to the bill the bill is now focused on a prohibition against compelling any individuals such as a student to affirm adopt adhere to profess or promote certain specific concepts in violation of title 4 and 6 of the civil rights act of 1964 and so now that piece of legislation is directly linked to not violating the civil rights act substitute bill

011also prohibits school districts from compelling or requiring a teacher to discuss current events or widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy or social affairs i'm sorry could you repeat that yeah um it um prohibits school districts from compelling or requiring a teacher to discuss you know what the bill describes as um divisive or i think they've quit using that word widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy or social affairs so generally i would say that the bill is moving it's sort of pulling away a little bit from what it used to be it's still very vague and concerning but um there's been a lot of discussion outcry against the bill and i think these are um attempts to make it more palatable the substitute bill also contains revision as to which

012concepts are or not prohibited it removes the non-compliance funding penalties and it requires the state board to amend the professional code of conduct for educators it also now for the first time requires has specific requirements of boards of education if it is passed in its current form the bill would require the school board to annually adopt a policy approving a list of balanced partisan and non-partisan activities that are consistent with the bill's code of conduct provisions and that do not promote one opportunity over another and the bill would permit a school district school or teacher to require a student to participate in a political campaign lobbying effort or practicum involving social or public policy provided that the student selects from the school board approved list of opportunities so this is another movement to try to

013solve some of the problems that have been brought up about this bill by it used to just say students can't can't be can't get a grade for participating in any public um you know uh social activity um and in response to that now in response to people objecting to that they're now saying that the school board needs to say here's a bunch of stuff that would be okay and we would have to pass that every year and it would be it would have that list of things as described in the new version of the bill would have to be within the parameters of the what the bill requires but then students and teachers could um include things that were included in that list or in the description of that list to participate so they're trying

014to do better than where they were before um uh miss powers man asked just briefly so current events are what they are so a board of education adopting a list of events or a list of approved activities balanced partisan and non-partisan activities generally speaking though we as a district stay away from specifically political leaning um [Music] activities however social activities that might have some sort of social um impact like for example the study of the civil rights uh movement and and the civil rights era i'm trying to understand the arguments around the bill in particular saying a balance of partisan rights so what's the other word non-partisan non-partisan so the way i'm understanding this and this this has come out it there hasn't been an opportunity for there to be um proponent testing opponent testimony

015since this revised uh version came out um i i i think it is a real effort to move it to something that can be lived with um my i you know it's way too soon for our district to know because it's way too soon you know because this bill is still just a bill and you know i think there's a ways to go um i hope you know um but my sense of what the board would need to do is find out from our teaching staff what it is that they um i see working with their students to do and then put that on the list and just go go forward um as as you know we already have um a policy that governs how our teachers are required to teach controversial issues and this

016is just me speaking and it's just my commentary the way the bill is currently drafted i believe our teachers will be able to continue to do that as the as the policy is written currently i will say the bill continues to be written in a confusing way and it's my personal opinion that that is and and it's the opinion of a lot of other people too that that's a problem but that it might that problem might persist because it does lend itself to creating um anxiety around it and so um there's been a lot of discussion that these bills that this bill should be made less confusing but it still has a lot of vague areas and you're pointing yeah i think a year ago when we talked about it it was really just like

017what's the problem they're trying to solve in the first place and it sounds like they haven't fully identified that yet did they give a couple of examples of these so-called balanced topics bit no no fake on purpose they didn't mention anything with gender or orientation obviously no and so this bill is really the you know some people refer to it as the anti-critical race theory bill there are two bills actually 322 and 327. this is the one that gets all the adjustment and it seems to be the one that's kind of going forward some of these amendments are pulling things out of what was 322 and putting them into 327. this bill um this is the fourth version of it um but i think there's still work to be done and i don't think they're

018gonna give us examples um but they probably you know they're still tinkering around with what's okay and what's not okay right um but again it's now tied to the civil rights act yeah i've been watching some of the news in florida and other places too about some development so all right so i'll continue to watch this bill i get i get updates about it and i i look to see what's going on all the time so i'll continue to report on it and there isn't an opportunity yet for us to um you know with respect to this version there may come a time when there is an opportunity for us to do um you know to go downtown many of our students did that when there was in october september may be an opportunity for

019people to write something or present testimony opponent testimony or proponent testimony they've done those at different times so i'll i'll continue to watch for that as well because i think in the fall they weren't hearing any testimonies they they have they were i mean what i heard from a conversation that i had with our with our congresswoman um they were sort of surprised at the amount of opposition opposition um and so um i particularly do not like the um the disciplinary action towards educators right and so they've taken away as i understand it what's gone from the current version of the bill that was there before is a financial problem now what's there is the threat against the teacher and as i recall it the teacher could the first offense would be like a warning

020the second offense would be a you know a suspension of license for a short period of time and the third one i think this is new in the bill the the third offense would be a suspension of license for a year and and i also think the bill says that if you teach like three classes and you teach the same material in all each of the three classes then it's three offenses yeah victoria yeah also um in your next report next month there's also talk about how this would impact ap designated courses so i if that's brought up through some of your conversations with the state uh association just probably mentioned that might be helpful too because it's just being reported in news articles yeah that would have a big impact as well right i

021appreciate that i will do that thank you um quick update on house bill 290 often called the backpack bill on february 15th the house finance committee held sponsor testimony on that bill which would establish the backpack scholarship program under that program k through eight students would be eligible for fifty five hundred dollars and high school students nine through twelve grade students would be eligible for seventy five hundred dollars to use for private school tuition or other allowable expenses and their you know they're several a substitute version of the bill was introduced but the committee did not vote on whether to accept the substitute bill and i will continue to watch that finally i have an update on house bill 126. kyle has reported to us periodically on this bill in its original form the bill

022pastes placed certain limitations on the process for political subdivisions including a school district to contest the value of properties not owned by the the district for property tax purposes when the senate took up the bill it rewrote the bill to eliminate the ability of entities such as the school district from filing a property tax challenge complaint the ohio house considered the senate's amendments to that bill last week and voted 090 to not concur with the senate's changes so there was a lot of lobbying that went on and you know treasurers and others made their voices heard and the house said okay we're not going to do that so now that bill goes back to the senate the senate their three out possible outcomes the most likely of which is that the senate will insist on

023its changes and that will send the bill into a conference committee to to work out the differences so that the house and the senate would work out their differences or try to work out their differences so um i will stop there can i answer any other questions about that thank you as we move into the other reports i just want to make a comment about how we do our reports some of us have different ways of learning and some of us have different ways of speaking or presenting at this time jonathan baker has let me know that he's more comfortable using slides to support his board reports and he's going to do that tonight his slides are his own all of our reports have equal import whether they're on a powerpoint or simply presented orally

024i use notes so just so that we all kind of are on the same page about that so um alicia turning it to you thank you um so i have my quick notes here for the bexley education foundation bef is currently in the process of a rebranding effort um going out holding a few focused groups amongst the community just so that we can better understand what the what the community and understands about who and what bef is and what we do and how we support our schools and that effort is being led by a bexley community member very talented individual mr brad drezbach so we're really excited um to have that work be able to help us rebrand the foundation to something that people can identify um who and what the bef does uh bravo

025tickets bravo is still uh scheduled for march 26th it's the largest fundraiser for the year for bef and it's a really exciting time and it's a lot of buzz right now just to be able to have this opportunity to gather again so it's going to be a really exciting time the tickets are on sale they went on sale as of march 1st they're 100 um and then sponsorships many of you have probably received um in the mail opportunity to sponsor at different sponsorship levels uh and so we encourage you if you have a business that wants to do some sort of civic uh efforts that's a great way to um to get involved and support the bef um it is never goes unnoticed to to remind our community uh how the bef stepped up and

026helped us fund our one-to-one project had they not done that we would have been in a world of hurt like many many other districts and so anything that we can do to help those efforts it's great um the silent auction is going really well for uh bravo right now but they are still in need of a few things um osu tickets if anybody has a connection a donation of close crew or clippers for our sports baskets and then i have a couple of bottles of wine to donate i believe they still needed some bottles of wine so if there's some bottles and not the junky climate you don't like to drink but if you have a bottle of wine you could donate that would be great let me know i'd be more than happy to

027pick it up and drop it off to uh pam glasgow we had a um a finance committee meeting and i was in the thick of my my uh cootie fest and and fell asleep through my zoom connection so i apologize i do not have that report i was really really ill and these guys um were probably calling my name and wondering what happened and i was deep in deep in in slumber so i apologize for that but jonathan is going to report out on the finance committee for us and then the only other thing i want to just um remind our board that our um cheerleading team as you know uh took home another round of state titles and super excited for that as a former cheer mom and cheerleader it's always exciting to uh

028see um this year when we had a number of bexley students recognized for all district uh placement of accomplishments in their sports for winter sports cheer was for the first time recognized at the ohio athletic association event or for the msl event and it was a little interesting to have hear them introduce and i'm going to send some feedback to them about um not calling cheer a sport because that's absolutely false um but it was great to see our students up there and in our msl cheerleader of the year and our cheer coach was recognized as the the the coach of the year it was really great to see um that so when you guys go to a game just know that they're usually at several games throughout the the season not just the the

029basketball or football whatever the sport is they're they're typically trying to show their face in in their ambassadorship of the district so that's all i have for today alicia let me ask you a quick question back on the bef so bravo um is the 26th and you can is it right that you can attend remotely as well as yeah in the room yes you can um i can actually forward you guys let me just make a note to do that that information on the virtual uh attendance thank you yeah because i was thinking i couldn't go but i can probably attend virtually yes because i'll be aware that i'll take that link that's great thank you any other questions for alicia so cheer is not a sport or was not considered a sport they call

030it an activity so under ohio athletic association it's officially considered a club sport but they can letter um and i would argue if they ever came to at least one of our practices they probably would wouldn't say that um so yeah it's it's that's that's an education of the sport across the world and it's going to take some time but we have a nice big banner in our athletic in our gymnasium with the years that we're a state champion so keep adding those numbers up there they don't all the other sports they definitely have earned um they earned the opportunity to be recognized along with other athletes in our in our gymnasium and i'm really really proud that they took home uh the title for um building which is the the stunting and tumbling and

031then also game day which is uh so much fun to watch um so if you've never been i went to my first state championship it's quite an experience our team coaches just so exciting to watch but just the whole process yeah so really impressed that's awesome all right thanks so much alicia jonathan you're up all right thanks um that's good that works so the first thing we're going to talk about is the athletic board and so uh two policies in particular the first one was the substance abuse policy and uh harley dr williams chairs that that committee and so uh what he wants to do is look at the the wording and the timing and kind of make it current and so he wants to make sure that uh inc he's working in consultation with

032frax with uh marcellus braxton to update the policy uh not just from the dij standpoint but from an overall restorative justice lens so not a punitive perspective i guess you could say so we talked we had some good conversation about whether there should be a 10 percent of gains missed and some details there but the whole point is that it should be an impact but not too excessive right and so there's that conversation um and then there's more conversation about first offenses uh and whether there should be some kind of waiting there and there's an example that put about someone being a bystander versus a distributor next topic was the academic integrity piece and i found this kind of curious as an educator myself that athletics would be involved in the conversation on academic integrity

033so the idea is that um we want students to feel it in some kind of way like so if you have an infraction in the classroom you should feel it somewhere else too right where i guess it hurts you get you to say so so one idea is that i want to reinforce the sanction so they worked in consultation with seeing what goes on at ohio state or at capital um we don't typically put people on probation for you know cheating or something like that so just kind of get into more context about what other universities do um and uh yeah that's so dr williams doing an awesome job there next one uh will be the committee that alicia was talking about uh we missed her so uh and we tried to call her a

034couple times but we we need you to get your help your sleep and your rest so you come back ready to go so we thank you for that um so the big key thing there is my first time coming one of these meetings and uh a lot of uh what's the word harley used uh veterans or some um a sea of knowledge neg on that committee just like a lot of work a lot of wisdom there's a lot of wisdom on that committee that's what you said right and that council right so so i felt like i was a newbie with all this wisdom on the zoom there but the the levy passed in 2019 and the question was should we have another levy come up in 2023 or 2022 excuse me um but uh

035that was a plan back then like maybe but overall um mr smith did a great job of crunching numbers and said that hey uh if we do a levy coming up pretty soon it'll be under two it'll be under one bill so uh no one knew back in november 2019 that we'd have a pandemic in the next fall or the next the next seasons in the spring so that kind of threw everything for a loop if you will no surprises there but conversely uh we did get some covet relief funding is that correct so that kind of helped the phrase some of the and provide a cushion so long story short uh the commit the council is looking at maybe revising this issue for next more importantly i think it's kind of cool that it's

036we'd look at the whole bexley community right and you know our community continues to heal and recover physically emotionally from the pandemic in terms of um perspectives and so i think the stress on the community or in the community at this point with another levy could be a little tough um so that's kind of we were willing to kind of hold off um there was some conversation about bond levy versus facilities needs so we're gonna make sure we kind of uh keep those boats in mind um let's see here uh mr smith gave us a conversation on cash reserve balance we didn't quite get that but we will soon yes okay so we didn't quite we had too much heated discussion or a salty discussion about uh this other issue the operator loving so we

037said we couldn't quite get the cash register cash reserve balance and finally it's a little extra little dessert i guess you can say so the district was able to help me to attend a school finance 101 day day-long workshop i felt that i can finally talk to kyle with some great substance about school funding and about the formula and about things that go into it i it was great to see the inputs that center around student needs that was very enlightening for me as an educator as well to understand more about the state share local share average district costs and so forth to see the our budget on the website and and learn more about school vouchers all that was really nice and uh and then also i'm going to be signing up to be

038the uh an alternate for the osba audit committee they needed somebody they sent an email out um i said i'll do it and they said hey guess what you don't want to respond it so that's my report that's great thank you does anybody have any questions yeah i'm curious about um in what ways like when you can agree turn your microphone on that's okay um i'm curious about what in what ways are you thinking about how one previously like students got in trouble and then they got pulled out of the sport which was the thing that was taking up their discretionary time and by pulling them out we're just giving them more discretionary time to potentially make poor decisions developmentally appropriate decisions right so i'm wondering about how that isn't influencing the impact in the

039conversations that you're having like how do you keep kids engaged and balance that with i think maybe maybe harley or dr williams might speak to this a little bit later but i think there's a couple of things one is that um [Music] if a student has a leadership role on a sport and they violate this policy that leadership role is going to be compromised i mean you know the captain i guess you could say the other side of this was that we did have a component with community service uh being involved and so i think um that was not quite going as well as it could have gone uh but i think that with marcel's coming on board and just kind of looking at what other districts are doing the idea is how can we

040more developmental with the students how can we kind of like you know working in a progressive kind of way so i think that's that's the goal so we're trying to figure that all out and harley doctor williams has some uh some suggestions for next month so there's some intentionality in terms of embedding restorative practices yes that's right that's right and we saw some models that uh that were provided by marcellus too thank you okay marguerite it's you do you have any reports tonight okay perfect then it's over to joanne yes so the bexley recreation board met last week uh the large portion of the discussion was focused on the department's new masking policy not only for recreation programs but for before and after school programs um and then also for their jeffrey preschool program um

041and i know there's been communication about those new policies that have come out we also discussed a lot about the summer programming there'll be a new hard copy of the brochure sent out to homes this is a little different during the pandemic they do not send a hard copy but they will be and then registration uh is on april 25th for the summer uh programming and that's all i have for today because policy committee did not meet this week excuse me this month great thank you any questions for joanne no miss powers i did have one uh last thing i needed to report i forgot to report out and thank the district for um including victoria and i on our um additional professional development that we engaged in uh saturday march 5th um we you

042know osba is our organization that we partner with uh for boardmanship and education helps us with our policies and um i know you guys attended the um board 101 um training which we all engage in when we first become board members um and so this um opportunity saturday was a deeper dive um and for veteran board members who've had an opportunity to take that course um and now that you've completed the 101 i don't think i think they could take the at any time so the next time it's being offered i encourage you um to uh also participate in that it's always good to be around other board colleagues from other school districts because you get an opportunity to kind of hear that you know it you're not on an island by yourself facing these

043issues that many other school districts uh and school boards uh all also have similar uh challenges and and ways and they really just gave us some really great um uh lessons in the in that day-long uh seminar the things that are always great are we are affirmed that we are moving in the right direction in our district because a lot of the things that they recommend school boards do we already um have in place and have been doing for a long time and that was really good um it made me feel really good that you know having been on the board for a long time that you know how i can improve myself as a board member supporting as new people come on to our board and get them ramped up so it was it

044was a a long day seminar but it moved really good and it was on zoom and i didn't fall asleep this time so i was back to normal great thank you for for adding that alicia dr fine yeah i'll uh i've just got a couple of quick items that will zip through brad's going to help me with some of the slides but it has been a busy february as you see some of the the events some of those that were mentioned today it's it's the best part of the job is going and watching our students do their thing and our our staff members guiding them supporting them uh but we have such talented students in and out of the classroom and i'm just so thankful that we we have the ability to provide these opportunities

045to support the whole child and and watch them shine so it's been a great month we are full speed into the spring season and we look forward to other events as you know march celebrations as you can see it's irish american heritage month developmental disabilities awareness month deaf history month women's history month uh marcellus continues to work with our students and staff on uh finding ways to honor and celebrate this what i love about marcellus and our leadership team is having students take initiative and provide opportunities for our community i want to acknowledge yesterday was international women's history month i am incredibly thankful for the women in this room uh the women that we get to work with on a daily basis there are women in my life that i'm incredibly thankful for grateful for

046two amazing strong bright young ladies at home my wife as well uh my mother and uh i'm just thankful for the guidance and the wisdom and uh jill abraham i want to make sure that we acknowledge you'll see in your board uh documents hopefully you deny it but uh her resignation uh is on the agenda tonight i'm really happy for jill i'm sad for us she has been named the new assistant superintendent of hilliard and uh we're really excited for the journey that's ahead for you i am jealous of hilliard i know you will knock it out of the park i am thankful for everything you've done and you will be sorely missed but i'm excited to see where the journey takes you uh just so that uh you know the resignation would take effect

047uh at the end of march i think it's march 31st and then our first uh april first we're looking at uh possibly bringing in an interim superintendent to start hopefully on august 1st i'm sorry april 1st the interim superintendent interim deputy superintendent would provide us with additional supports for our students and our staff but jill abraham you are a really important part of our team and the success and i'm thankful that i had at least 10 months with you athletic facilities update we continue to hold discussions with our friends at the jewish community center for the possibility of enhanced athletic facilities for our students both sides are doing their due diligence and preliminary work which is important because of the unique relationship i firmly believe we are positively moving forward with our conversations but this

048is a process where we expect it to take a little time before official agreements come before the board i know we've had probably six or seven months of the similar updates it is still moving forward very positively we're excited for what's ahead but we're still trying to come to agreement with what the terms will look like and how we will move forward kyle smith has been a big part of that we will and uh dr williams's team and we'll continue to update the board as we learn more i'll turn to just a quick update on our leadership team i'm thankful for our leadership team and like many schools across the nation we are seeing an increase in behaviors that impact the experience of bexley students and staff as an administrative team we continue to review

049our practices regarding all areas of prevention and responsiveness including ensuring a community of care and respect timely and thorough investigation of reported concerns and communication with students parents and teachers we also continue to engage in professional study on a routine basis over the last few weeks our principals and leadership team have engaged in conversations and professional learning involving student behaviors and reported incidents school response and investigation practices and feedback from stakeholders we continually seek to identify ways to prevent challenging behaviors intervene most effectively and support all stakeholders following a challenge we have also participated in professional learning with district legal counsel to review policies and applications of these policies regarding investigations and our discipline our leaders are asking really important and thought-provoking questions and we continue to improve our leaders counselors connect clinicians and faculty

050continue to grow in their practices to ensure safe and respectful school communities and i'm happy you happy to take just have a discussion or questions now or at the end let's do something yeah i'm um based on your experience regarding how long it takes for somebody to understand a school district a unique school district's ecosystem what might be the benefits of working with the central office staff that they're currently in place to offer a runway about how central office might be structured as opposed to bringing in someone who would have to aim in the community learn the district you talking long term are you talking interim yeah so my thinking around the interim is actually revolves around that one we have many things that are a gap in terms of things that need to get

051completed from now till the end of this summer we feel strongly that the number one priority is support for our team which is our central office staff but most importantly our building leaders our instructional leaders staff and we feel that we want to bring someone in i feel like i want to bring someone in that can one provide that support to that level two i want to make sure that there are things that we can accomplish that have to get done because we're up against the clock on some things and we feel we have the ability with our leadership team to identify what is it that this person can do and what is it that we can take as a leadership team and identify what this person can't do because they don't have time to

052learn figure out process and within our team we would have the ability to hopefully support and complete the tasks that are now open the last piece is uh bringing in somebody that has incredible knowledge in the structure of these types of organizations obviously learning what that looks like is an important piece but having the ability to process exactly what it is how we are functioning what we look like and having input through a process with myself with our leadership team our staff a review of how we are currently uh situated and having a conversation at the end of uh i don't know maybe that's april or may board meeting to say here's here's how we're currently functioning here's how i believe we can function better and here's how we would move forward so the district

053has had a substantial increase in the central office in the last couple years so i think it would be super important to think offer some information to the board and have some conversations prior to that ass because it feels like coming today and this being the first that we're hearing about it is a challenge if if i may um just quickly um so we've lived through three major administrative losses if you will in a very short period of time and we witnessed as a the previous board witnessed the um the weight and the stressors and the compa lack of capacity that happened when those positions were turned over a lot you know people moved on whatever it was uh and so the board at the time elected to not only uh when we restructured and

054did a reorganization of our uh of our orgs chart was how do we build capacity within the staff that we have um as well as you know how do we get the things that we need to get done done and you know often that's a criticism from the community that you know our our district is top-heavy administratively but if you really look at the ratio to the number of staff number of students and administrative staff we're really right on par um i disagree and you you certainly can disagree as well but when we when we're looking at um you know when you make an assertion of you know we've had substantial increase in administrative staff you really got to look at the org chart and really um disseminate was this just a change in job

055description or title but the the administrator and their their primary duties are still the same so um i would argue that you know it's a good idea to have someone step in on an interim basis to take that like back administrative stressor off while we figure out is this a role that we still need to fill as it is now or do we need to revisit the work chart again um and maybe go to a chief academic officer or stay with an assistant superintendent i think one of the the intentions of um our our last couple of years and one of the learnings that we got out of the last couple of years is having depth in the organization and if you look at most successful organizations they have built into their leadership the ability

056to have um more people on staff you know to be able to absorb changes i i don't think it's a bad idea to have an interim step in and um you know support our team my organization of 30 000 people right now is facing that very thing and not having the capacity and then the result of the mental stressor in the the professional stressors that it causes on the staff because there's not enough people to do the work so i don't think it's necessarily a bad idea so i think i want to acknowledge i think an important piece of what you asked which is communication we will be in great communication and i admit i envision it being a conversation i'm guessing when we come forward with whatever that piece is one we'll all have

057lots of conversations individually obviously but two i guess i'm betting the question would be here's my recommendation i'm guessing the question would be why why is this the recommendation what why does this make the most sense for us uh so i feel like utilizing that ability to bring in a an experienced educator who has possibly done the work before brings us a fresh perspective to take a look at this because i've heard that i've heard that from day one when i when i met with over 200 community member staff members i hear about the top heavy well let's truly take a look and see now we have an opportunity what does that look like when we come forward with what that role looks like moving forward so i'm curious because i've asked for an org

058chart and a historical look at how the central office has evolved and haven't yet received that you didn't receive that initial board historical i don't want just this so and i i guess i would ask that you would consider what might be the benefits of you know hiring a consultant to help you think through that that we could pay significantly less than hiring an interim so i think there's lots of ways to look at it and i'm concerned about a the the concerns that people have already voiced about central office what are the historical look at the change in the org chart has been over the last five ten years and what might be some additional options we could consider in lieu of hiring an interim and my plan was having the interim support that

059work so that we could have a conversation when we get to that space as to the recommendation and the why including the historical context that you're talking about and there's options other than sure mr smith could you tell me i thought we have that information sort of readily available at some of our previous board board meetings um that might be easy to pull can you refresh my memory i don't know would that have been during it would have been some during dr miller but also with um our interim superintendent because we did that extensive work and analysis yes i've i've been working on on that and actually in my search and compiling it i found a document that that we did have um and it was just needed some updating so i'm gonna have a

060conversation with dr fine tomorrow um and then you all should have that i think before the weekend so let me just ask it's are you when we had an interim superintendent we worked with the esc are you working some with the esc on this also that would be an option for us to work through the esc yes um and in terms of just as a point of you know ease in terms of looking at the org chart our current or chart is on our website on the front page of it and when you go into the policies it's actually our last org chart so we got to update that but it's kind of convenient because the two org charts are right there so yeah because for just just like you marguerite i wanted to look

061and see where would where'd we come and so i was able to pull those pretty readily um other do you have other questions right now on that anybody i have one so when you say interim is there a time frame on that area of appointment how does that work yeah because obviously there was some time i'm assuming left on dr avery yeah we're looking for we haven't solidified anything we hope to start something on april 1st i don't know how long we would need that to go my worry is wherever we land we we're we have to move pretty quickly um we want to get it right but we want to move quickly to where we have the ability to if there's a posting at the end of this what that who that person is

062getting a high quality person i don't know how long that uh process would be how soon the next position if there's a position what that position is uh when that start date would be you often times look for a transition date to support but i'm assuming if you have an interim it would go through early summer mid-summer okay and i also think taking a look at the org chart would be a great exercise as you being a new superintendent org chart as everybody knows was done prior to your arrival here so yeah um that that i do think that would be good exercise just dr fine got to participate we were partners yeah yeah it was one of the things that we required was participating in and restructuring that um and i but i to

063your point i think it's a great time to now that you're not just taking recommendations from an interim has been there for six months you now are in the role and and uh have had an opportunity to see how your team operates and what you need and what what you think they need so i think that's a great idea um dr fine will esc support providing you with a list of candidates to consider yep esc has been very helpful in terms of possibilities out there there are not a ton of people looking to fill an interim role right now but we've got some some great possibilities wonderful yeah so joanne just so you know that request was initially for a 10-year historical org chart evolution and i think kyle what you're working on is a

064five-year yeah what i was able to find um was about a five-year okay yeah great thanks i just needed to update with this year and um we didn't have salaries as a point of data another data point so i've been working on collecting that historical information okay great thank you one more comment so and then one of the urgent pieces about this interim being filled and so forth is that one of the key roles for the deputy superintendent is summer school right so yeah so i will say jill has done an incredible job jill continues to work full speed and fight for for us here in bexley to put us in as positive a shape as possible to knock out some things or at least put our people in position to have success so we

065are working within our team to identify what it is that we need to do before jill leaves in a week and a half and then what we pick up from beyond so summer school being a really important piece as you know we opened those gates up earlier this week and had incredible interest and we're fine-tuning that process as we go all right i did have a chance to look at the summer school options and it just looks like a lot of great fun you know diverse projects 60 different that's really awesome so i appreciate that i also wanted to just say a word since we're talking so much about jill and her job here um i received an email yesterday from a community member thanking the district leadership for managing and navigating the district through

066the entire pandemic and when i read that email i did think of jill jill worked to keep our students learning every step of the way through the pandemic super difficult super uncharted waters pivoted regularly and did that to make sure that our students not only were learning but were learning the best way that we could manage for them at the time so um i have a really great memory of moving to what we call then hybrid 2.0 and the work that jill put into to making that a reality um time you know super time sensitive i know she worked just completely tirelessly to do that and she made those changes because she was listening listening to all of the stakeholders and in particular i remember a survey that she put out to students and it

067was you know the number of responses um was incredible and what she learned from that was how the students were learning best and so she recommended that we shift and we shifted to to make sure that our students with their one-to-one devices but were able to learn in the way that worked best for them and i was so proud of what our district was able to do at that time and so the gratitude that comes from the community i express to you so thank you and i'm excited for you in your new world yes thank you jill uh i've just got two more things senior takeover day last wednesday bexley high school students learned from governor dewine representative kristen boggs and judge chris brown along with architects designers artists writers pilots small business owners entrepreneurs

068doctors emts attorneys scientists members of the class of 2022 and much more you see some of the photos from that day up on the screen with help from many on march 2nd steve shapiro and several staff members hosted a large-scale day of self-determinate learning at bexley high school students were able to choose from 62 different learning sessions on the day that juniors were taking the a.c.t more than 200 students signed up for well over 300 learning sessions including career shadowing visits hosted by bexley community members senior takeover learning sessions hosted by those seniors and visits to the educational programs including eastland fairfield cyber security bioscience and architecture construction management teachers and students completed surveys about the day and we look forward to sharing that data in the coming weeks and months but it was a

069very successful student-driven day and we were really proud of our of our team and the last thing i want to touch on quickly before you get into the business of the agenda is just an update around our covid protocols we want to thank our community again for their efforts in assisting us with our transition to a mass optional environment over the past few days we were very intentional about our decision to provide a two-day runway to properly prepare our learning community and i am appreciative of everyone's patience which led to what i believe to be a positive transition i am thankful for our building leaders who met with staff to review ways that this can impact our school's environment our staff members for pressing pause to re-establish classroom norms and expectations and our families for

070discussing strategies at home our number one priority remains that all students staff members and visitors continue to feel safe and supported as we continue to implement these changes i am impressed with how our students faculty and staff have handled this newest change with the same patience kindness and compassion that they have shown throughout the entire pandemic so thank you thank you dr fine any other questions or comments to dr fine on his report okay so next we have our going down the agenda for b so what we have done in the past is we've just said you know here are all these pieces under the superintendent's action items i'd like to take them individually so that if there's any discussion or questions about any of these we can go through them individually and vote on

071them individually this evening because we've got different questions and comments on on each of them so starting with the personnel action items item 4b what i'm going to do first is ask for a motion and a second and then if there's any discussion or questions we'll take that one first so 4b approval of personnel action items administrative may i have a motion and a second second is there any discussion or questions about 4b i have a mere discussion point uh no question um i have purposely tried to look away because i am the emotional one i think um i would like to say to you miss abraham that the bexley community may not be fully aware of the loss that we are going to experience with your exit um i mourn that loss because i

072watched a soldier um i got to see you accept your appointment um and i'm glad to say that i'm here seeing you fly to your next journey so you are incredibly talented empathetic um smart um educator and a fierce advocate for your team and your staff and i know that they probably feel it too and i cannot thank you for the gift that you have given bexley schools over the last few years and i know it's not been a easy road it's been rocky at times but what an amazing amount of success you can hang your hat on and um so i don't want to belabor it i wish you tremendous success i i have no doubt that you will be successful what an amazing chapter uh for you to to go right so um

073yeah hilliar city schools ozo big one but good luck to you and thank you i count you as um a really special memory um for our time here with bexley thank you thank you miss mitchell anybody else have any questions or comments about 4 b if not let's go ahead and take a vote all in favor of approval of 4b please signify by saying aye any opposed thank you we'll go down to 4c please this is the certified staff changes can i have a motion to approve 4c yeah let's i'm going to do the motion and then the questions and then we'll okay so we've got motion and and a second and now questions okay and this is my understanding is that the district is doing um um so i know that hasn't been going

074on super long and so but it will eventually gather you know usable uh amount of data so i'm interested in um what you're learning because there seems you know as we're shifting you know what are we learning from the exit interviews how you're disaggregating that data for staff departures by department by school by demographics of the people who are staying or leaving what you so what are you learning from that process how you're disaggregating that data and then in particular jonathan i met with a group of community members who shared some concerns about the high mobility in the special ed department um and so i'm just sort of curious about what you're noticing and how you're responding sure so i'm going to speak a little bit on behalf of i think melissa klossman lando and

075marcellus have done a really helpful uh job in bringing the exit interviews to life i think uh and just in talking with melissa i think she's been doing this for many years but bringing it to her role as our employee relations has been really powerful i can't speak to what we've learned but i will tell you uh that she as soon as she finds out and identifies that someone is exiting and leaving she reaches out she includes me on the email and says first off congrats or whatever that moment is um and asked for time to to sit down and have that uh exit interview and that conversation and i believe the purpose uh that she has uh and marcellus have been using is to identify areas of growth so what are some of the

076areas that we need to work on why what is it that we can improve upon but also focusing in on what are the some of those moments of of uh success so what are we doing well in the district what are we doing that we can do better and where are gaps that we need to focus on so that we don't have people exiting she takes this information they take this information and are breaking it down i do not have that information at this point uh it's not been a ton of folks that we've had uh interviewed but melissa if you want to speak to a couple can you hear me now not the verizon or other um advertisement anyway so sharing with you i had to ask myself if he had done exit interviews

077because right now i have only been doing the exit interviews um and so that was a practice that i had previously done as a special education coordinator in another district it was really something that i wanted to have that person that was typically it was the retirements who had been there for decades share what were things you've seen over the years through change because a lot of the communities i'd worked in previously were smaller communities and just have expanded beyond and just to meet the demands of what's going on in the trends and so that's really where our questions started for me and then when i got here i realized we didn't do exit interviews or i did not know of them historically and so i thought i really want to know i want to

078know what what people loved here what did they why did they come back to work every day what are things that they saw that excited them about bexley city schools and then overall what do they think we should continue to do or what should we change and so in looking at that i've offered exit interviews i believe to almost everybody if not everybody since august and we've only had a handful that have said hey i'd love to participate i've asked a couple of times and said hey it would be something that you were no longer employed so you certainly don't have to but you can feel confident knowing that this information is something we want to glean some information from to inform our practices and so it's been less than a handful that have shared

079they would like to participate and then have participated with me in an interview um and those are the questions that i ask what successes did you find in bexley city schools what things brought you back to work every day or got you excited um what things do you think that we should continue to do that made you feel good about your work and then what are things that would you would change or you would suggest hey this might be something to reflect on and see is this something that's effective or efficient or we should continue to do and so then when i have that information what i do is bring it back to the leader or the leaders that it would involved and then i also help use it to inform our practices that we

080have in the district whether it be the processes that we have or things and again it's less than a handful of people um so that that's been the hard part because there just isn't a lot of data as of right now and um the majority of those less than a handful have been retirements so they're very excited to go on to the next phase of their life most of them leaving education to retire not going to another career you want to talk a little bit about the intervention specialist and how we prepare for openings yeah so share more a little bit about that because i haven't been here when we've had them resign or retire so i'm thinking are you you're just thinking overall your question is so let me go back to what you

081are already offered and just clear sure um so what you're saying is that you invite everybody right um resigning or retiring right to have an exit at you but not everybody takes you up on it correct so would it be possible for you to share like so we've had this many you don't have to do it now i'm not asking you about that number at this second but to share with us and it can be in in the week like a weekend week reporter the weekend board update sure um just how many people since you started the exit interview process how many people have retired or resigned and how many people have offered to participate in the exit interviews because it would be interesting to see who is and who isn't right and then to

082explore what might need to change in that process in order to get more people to participate so that's sort of a great question absolutely and then second i guess mike the question was and this might predate you and it certainly predates you in this role but may predate you in the district as well is to look at some sort of longitudinal data around the mobility of special ed staff [Music] and then you may or may not have exit interviews for that but for us to really be intentional because consistency right when we think about special ed students or other students who are experiencing on a challenge right that sort of consistent having a consistent um relationship having consistent staffing having consistent trusted adults matters in that environment in particular um and so what are sort

083of the practices in place to reduce the mobility yeah i think honestly that is an excellent question and i think one that i've pondered and many other school districts have pondered for a long time and i think we have some hypotheses why that is occurring i myself am dual certified like really triple certified in in my teaching which is general ed and then two areas of special education as an intervention specialist and i was also a special education coordinator for five years in a previous district and in looking at that that is something that always came across the board of education docket which is the significant turnover or changes especially those of us that are dual certified so if you're dual certified you might be able to teach as an intervention specialist and then you

084also have certification to teach in general education and so there were years that i exactly did that i did three years in special ed then we'll go two or three years in general ed and then back to special ed and so i think that is something that's one of the many dual licenses we see out there so for instance this week we completed pre-interviews um with capital students so capital offers an opportunity for school districts to interview or pre-interview mock interview they're candidates that are coming out of their education program their counseling program and their psychology programs and with that when you see an intervention specialist you see that they're dual certified and so i do think that's a piece of it um but i think that's an excellent question and it's not one that

085you alone seek the answer to right so i think we could ask those would be some of the questions we're asking right yeah where are we going and what because then we would know for sure whether dual certification yeah was a piece of that that's a great question the only person that i know that has been a part of the exit of interviews that would have any um any part in special education was a retirement and so that's all that i have right now right so just going forward to see so you're doing the exit interviews are is that something because maybe i misunderstood that you and uh marcellus are doing together uh no i i just do them although we do work closely together with a lot of things but not at exit interviews

086okay so i have a question so are the exit interviews occurring while they're still employed with bexley are they already nope it's a volunteer voluntary yep that they would say hey yes i'd love to and then it's been anything from some people when they turn in their keys or their computer the day or two after that that's the time they wanted to meet in person so we did that other people wanted to zoom we could certainly do that too so i will do one with jill if she's open to that as well as other positions too so i'm wondering i'm going to get back to the special piece in particular is thinking about what and this is not a question for you to answer right now but maybe a question for you to ponder and

087bring back and think about is how what what role how we how might the board support you in creating an environment where in bexley special ed teachers want to stay that this is a place where they want to be yeah and what might need to change or how might we support you in creating that sort of cultural environment sure and i think that's definitely something marcellus and i do talk about is retention um of candidates um and recruitment too but the retention piece and what does that look like and that can be very different from person to person or even role to role that's something to look at so i know you just you guys just did a culture survey so is that retention piece or what would keep people here or is that part

088of that conversation or some of that data will come out of that is that something you can yes there's current that's a great question so there's two parts one the administration administrative team and myself took on in the fall an opportunity to ask staff why why did again why are they successful or how can they be more successful in bexley city schools and that is working with administration or their colleagues or their building staff and so we were able to glean from that lots of perspectives but some overall themes um which included one purposeful an intention with time which we all know because we're all so busy clear communication transparency um it had many other things on there one was a social connection because through the pandemic we don't connect anymore you know or i

089shouldn't say anymore but it's not like we used to and so they're really looking for that social connection among their schools and among their teams and across the district so the things that came out through that but then what marcellus has done with the climate committee is he is currently doing a survey to staff and that's kind of through the initiatives of what the the people on the committee have wanted and have shared and then through what our staff have asked for so he can speak more to that mine was more in the fall all right so marcel is that something you're going to present on next time the culture survey would you like me do you have any more questions for me um i really just have some quick feedback sure a parent of

090special education uh students in particular and i saw the success of special education with one and one that struggled a little bit more um the one that was most successful was because there was um consistent see with his intervention staff from second grade through seventh grade in fact she followed with his group or cohort to the middle school and as a result he was able to transition from the needs that he had as a young um elementary student to a middle school student and now he's about to go to high school and not needing the same level of supports because he's had that same consistent um uh involvement and engagement with that same you know support person and um he had an incredible relationship with her an absolutely incredible relationship with her she understood him

091how he learned and really communicated that to his teachers and and um i think it really it really was a beneficial experience middle school was a wonderful experience for him so i do think i know nationally it's a problem but it's not a bexley thing to have high turnover because you have a high rate of burnout um and so to dr jade's point um if we can be the find that secret sauce in our little district um that makes that folks want to stay because we don't have a tremendous rate of turnover in terms of staff but that that area does tend to see see uh changes but that's you know a national problem if we can find a way to to fix it or make it better that would be great because i i

092can speak to the success of having that level of consistency um and that that's not to say that my other child wasn't sure tremendously or wasn't successful i just saw the difference from when she came into the district and then the the intentional efforts that bexley has made over the last five to seven years to improve it and so it had a huge impact on the younger sibling yeah you hit some oh go ahead i was just gonna say thank you for putting on the dual hats tonight because you're not our special but i love the experience that's right i love working with sam and kathy redefer and our is um and our principles too because they stand in his district reps but i think you hit the nail and had one we saw a

093larger turnover i believe last year because everybody did globally just after pandemic just people they reorganized their lives and some people and that's a lot what we're hearing in these pre-interviews of oh i decided during the pandemic to change my career and so we're seeing a lot of people come through that are they're older more experienced and they do have other careers under their belt um the other piece of that too is i totally get so you may not know and i'm not sure my family won it public but i do have two children and both have one has a 504 and one has an iep i always thought i probably would not have children with those because that was my area of expertise but i did and so i understand that too as a

094parent there are years where i just want to hold on to that is or that intervention person for forever and i write to the principal and trent bowers and superintendent and worthington say please keep them but it doesn't always happen that way but yeah i understand that too and i would say i think one of the the strengths of our people is that we we want to do everything we possibly can to support the child and support the parent that comes at a cost and that's where that and i'm not saying we're the only ones that do that yeah the the profession the hours of uh work that comes outside of the the moment of magic with the child in the classroom during a school day it's it's it's really intense so i think people

095are reevaluating is is is the time i'm giving to this worth the other things that that could be coming as a result so i'm really thankful for our people what we know uh with all of our staff that they they work really hard to to be great and sometimes it comes at a cost all right thanks thank you so much yeah about the retention yeah if you're [Music] it doesn't bend yeah there you go um yeah i also think it's a really great opportunity to uh talk about some of the work that sam mcmasters is doing and the reason why i can speak about that is because we had a meeting yesterday about it talking about what we're doing um with uh special education in particular so um one thing that she is initiating is

096a special education task force and what we're aiming to do is think about how we can support in a variety of different ways on the macro level on the micro level the micro level is what do we need to do right now what barriers exist right now also what do we need to think about policy and procedure and also thinking about in three different ways we thought about how can we make sure we're supporting students how are we making sure that we can support parents and the parent and student relationship but also within that piece captures your part where we want to do some qualitative work talking about the retention piece about being able to say what is happening in your work what do you need help with based on what we have obtained from

097the special education piece how can we then knowing what we know parents want how can we support you and doing that work and so i think that's going to really be helpful in the coming months about what we're thinking about with that retention piece in particular so yeah [Music] is because it hasn't been initiated yet so what has what um so for this task force in particular has been reaching out to everyone in the district uh every parent in the district who has the idea who is identified within the special education realm so they've anybody selected the task force it has not been selected yeah they well they had their first meeting last week i attended i know that there some of the feedback has been oh i wish i would have been part of

098that process so it's been opened up i think in the last uh families received an email i think yesterday providing new opportunities for people to get involved within the task force they did circulate an opportunity for people to sign up yep to show them lost in the in the shuffle so it's good that if we're extending it again for anybody who might because i know with the mountain emails you know maybe i saw it maybe i didn't so that's good if you guys are doing that yeah and that's something we talked about although there's been an initial meeting there are also going to be various opportunities depending on depending on the topic because one thing we talked about is exactly what the democrat demographic piece is because we're saying we can't just say hey all

099special education what we want to do is really narrow it down to like what are we talking about and what areas are we talking about there so that's why i believe over 40 people have requested to be a part of this discussion okay that's great i feel like we'll be able to have a real diverse group of subcommittee work too that'll come out of that that's good and so i think there are ongoing conversations with sam and myself about what exactly that looks like because the first thing we said was the outcome what are we actually trying to come like what is the whole point of bringing people together and i think that's what we're trying to make sure like are those outcomes really matching that because there's one thing to just get a group

100of people together but we want to go and then say okay so what are we actually trying to accomplish by getting people together and so they've had initial meetings to really just talk about what that looks like but they're also going to be various meetings with those specific outcomes in mind will the gifted task force be included in the i know they just did a mountain of work for that work um but they it was a really great group so i don't know if they'll also participate in the um special education task force or be rolled in into their the work that they did with the gift at work i think uh colleen will be able to speak more about that yeah at the next meeting yep um as far as the route i'm sorry

101you have an additional question about that i think my only other question might be is is the task force is it something of an audit of the special ed i mean what what is i think what's the problem what's the problem you're solving for with the task force is that and so i i think my maybe a recommendation would be because those conversations are happening right now to maybe next month or the month after be able to present what those outcomes look like to the board i think that's great i think that we're getting a little far from the issue that's on the agenda i think it's a helpful discussion but i think we i think to your point um giving people an opportunity to come back with you know answers to these questions updates

102yeah jim moore no i mean if mark says if you want to offer an overview of the survey or if you do yeah sure i'll be i'll say that within 60 seconds so um what we we talked about demographics in particular about what it looks like to support um because we know melissa's doing a lot of work with exit interviews we said well we don't want to just find out what people are thinking when they're leaving we want to figure out how we can support them so to each school we sent out a climate committee survey and so we are not we it is anonymous so we're not collecting the demographics based on race gender et cetera but we are collecting based on each school so we took the five schools based on where you

103work and so the questions we ask are what does it mean to have a good school climate um we also we also use some scales so okay what does it mean to have a good climate ask them where they really feel like they are and also what does it mean to be supported by administration so that includes building principles in central office we and once again ask the scale how supported do they feel at this moment by central office and by the building administrator whether that's principal assistant principal et cetera and then also we asked them what meaningful professional development looks like for them so they were able to provide clear-cut examples of what they want to see which is going to help them along the way and also what formal and informal pressures were

104brought up because i know the boar brought up in the last two months we want to make sure that we are looking at staff and looking at what formal and informal pressures they are facing so that we can all assist and also we looked at the collaboration as well to make sure that we're not operating in silos so we ask them how would we like to see collaboration between administration and staff and also the communication piece what kind of communication we'd like to see so it's a combination of the qualitative and quantitative that we're putting together to be able to put together a report that should be done in april and that closed monday yeah and there's more that i can speak about later on closed monday the survey yeah it closed on monday so

105we had about 120 responses so we had a very strong response we're also using that to inform our march climate committee which they're doing some they're going to do some work within the school where they get to have some peer-to-peer interaction and so that's going to be purely qualitative that they're going to do as well so i'll be able to share both of those thanks for coming up on the screen thank you so when you talk about retention too that's something that um came up in the first survey in the fall we talked about what wellness looks like and um mental health and well-being and so kyle and i worked together to put together a wellness team of any district staff members that wanted to be on it and then we were able to go

106through and do a wellness audit and so come up with ways was it financial wellness they wanted support in social wellness emotional was it physical wellness what did that look like and so that led us the first thing that staff said is social wellness and so that's why we put together the healthy participatory dining experiences for staff where we were able to have them come and they could make food and share um we had 97 people participate in the first fall um survey and then we had almost 100 um participate in the healthy participatory dining experience so we have about 340 staff so about a third so just want to give you that because retention is it's it's all over it's in a lot of what we do each and every day and how we

107treat our staff and interact with them so thanks melissa thank you okay i think we are at a point to vote and i've lost my screen here but i think we're on 4 b 4c so we had a motion and a second so all in favor of approval of 4c please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed to that thank you that motion carries so next is the classified staff changes um can i have a motion to approve classified that 4d and so can i have a second second thank you okay 4d are there questions about the classified staff changes hearing none all in favor of approval of item 4 d please signify by saying aye any opposed thank you that motion carries and now we are down to approval of supplemental contacts athletic

108contracts and volunteers and theater stipends can i have a motion to approve for e so can i have a second second thank you any questions or issues with respect to 4e okay um i'll call the question for a vote um all in favor of approval of 4e please signify by saying aye aye any opposed okay that motion carries we are now down to four f uh approval of extended field trips um is there a motion to approve for f please in a second a second thank you any questions about these um three field trips good to see you we're going on field trips we've been going on field trips we've been out of state on field trips i see that i see that keep it up okay all in favor um so we'll take a

109vote on 4f all in favor of approval of 4f please signify by saying aye any opposed thank you that motion carries and now we are down to 4g which is approval of a volunteer for lunches can i have a motion to approve 4g please no moved thank you thank you any discussion or questions about before g i do have some questions i think thinking about sort of i think about both playgrounds cafeteria hallways those open spaces what invite some of the challenging behavior that you guys are experiencing that the district is the royal experiences i'm wondering what systems are in place to invite volunteers into the building sure right and then you know what's the vetting process but and how am i thinking about spring and kids being outside and you know maybe even more

110recess because we need it right as a mitigator to some of the challenges that they're facing um i love that you asked that because harley thought he was going to get out of a meeting board meeting without speaking at the podium harlan i just talked about this a little bit earlier in the week harley do you mind talking to us a little bit about our volunteer process glad to be back a long week all right questions in general i i i can tell you how where we are with this and how we got here with this document um in my in a former role where i kind of saw hr so we had an issue with a parent who was putting on facebook things that she saw in the building related to a special needs

111student and this it was easily identifiable and uh and then when you look at the problem like i got we have no guidance no guidelines to kind of corral all this so i worked with the district attorney and and others find what i could find when i put together a little handbook that we gave to to our uh volunteers and we decided we would have two levels of volunteers you'd have them a certain level of level one would be a volunteer that has un unsupervised access to students or a sustained access for you know potentially worrying about grooming possibly or or having a availability to students that another staff member is not around we call them level one and then we made them go through background checks things like that and the level two would

112be i'm going on a field trip and i'm to be in the presence of a teacher wherever i am and like in a lunch hall or a lunch recess there's always going to be a teacher out there as well we don't expect them to go through background checks and pay for that they just would get an approval by the principal because these are all requests i know we have a lot of parents who want to be involved but it's still a decision made by the principal but what my needs are and how we can help and we try to encourage maine parents to get involved but it's ultimately a principal's decision about the number of volunteers they want to have in the building and how that operates and and so how that basically operates is

113in the past is that you would put something out in your newsletter looking for uh help and um parents would then request hey i'm willing to help they they get this document now it's and and there there's information that they have to go through and sign off on confidentiality agreements they sign off on whether or not there's an application in here a link for them as well and then they sign off that they're aware of everything in this document and then the principal then if it's a level two takes that information and then i think brings it to the board as an approval but now the background checks and then they keep that information in their office and then the level one would go to you as well but they would come with background checks

114and things like that as well and if this is because you're doing this transition because you're like really not having anywhere from schools um to really not have any people in the school so now potentially inviting more people in particular spring and then you've got parents who are you know kind of chomping at the bit right to come and help which can be overwhelming right so i guess i'm wondering how you know it's kind of like the two-day runway to the optional match like so knowing that you're going to want to have people that want to vint volunteer and that there's some upsides really just for having more adults and playgrounds cafeterias and space like that i'm just wondering sort of what you're thinking about or how you're planning for that or what are some

115how am i planning for not you personally us how are we planning for the district 24 principles or is there is what thoughts have been given i think it would probably go through the the principles building principles of what their needs are what they're looking for i mean i had um a couple months ago when that dr fine mentioned about how it was all hands on deck and and john and i were serving in the cafeteria and things like that well we we get a couple parents former parents and they have helplessness and rex who volunteer after they're seeing that hey would you like to have help in the cafeteria absolutely we'd like to have that help um so anything i think any word of mouth any advertisements out of the principles newsletters asking for

116we could use help for lunch recess we could use help for hall monitoring whatever their needs are should be probably communicated to their newsletters and then this document could be sent to anybody who expresses interest okay sorry i would also say we probably i love that we were trying to get back to a sense of normalcy visitors guests i want to make sure that we also protect our maybe some of our staff members who aren't ready just yet to get into that and and we want to be able to we support that i think at the building level teachers would be having conversations with their leadership their principals because i'm sure teacher or parents just like we heard i haven't been in the building for a while i want to i want to be there

117to help i hope that we give grace to those who are ready and those who may not be ready just yet but i want our staff to know we support it we're here to we're here to offer our support as a central office team um but we love that there's field trips and have been field trips we love that there's opportunities for for people to get involved and we love that people have stepped up and said hey i can help you in the cafeteria i know you're doing it how do i how do i how do i get involved volunteers requests it's it's it's they're requesting how can i help it's not it's not not we i mean we could have 500 people want to volunteer and we might not have that need and that

118so you got to kind of weigh that out it's an individual decision principles make with the people who who want to be who have the time and expertise and willingness to help help us out and can i just follow up with a um a question i guess we normally approve a long list of volunteers probably in august or so that's when i think you get your biggest list that comes in at the beginning of the year yeah and so just for the knowledge of board members who wouldn't have been on the board at the time that we do that we have a long list of volunteers currently um you know so when we get one that's just one that's really unusual because we get a lot in the fall that we approve and they're available

119to us for the new board too you'll get um you know either myself or mrs uh classroom orlando we'll be sending this to you this document for approval every year as well usually in the summer and i will say um the uh volunteer handbook allowed for a lot of clarity around what the role of the volunteer is with the how they interact with the district where do they go when they have questions and and you know what's the expectations when they're when you read my hand but that's great i appreciate that but it it's really really um it's it's probably a it was a wonderful addition to have and i'm glad that we have it because then it it really erases some of the gray um and and and makes it pretty clear on what

120their expectations are and of the district because when they once they're in that spot volunteer or not they're they're a representative of bexley city schools so thank you thank you so much can we increase the heat okay um if there are no further questions about uh for g um i'd like to call the vote on 4g so would everybody who is in favor of uh proving 4g signify by playing by saying aye any opposed that motion carries okay thank you we'd next go to kyle thank you uh first i'd like to thank jill uh for the last three years i've been in this school business for uh even though i may look young i may look young um but i've worked with a handful or just more individuals in that position and what what this

121role does nobody really sees you'd be surprised at the grant compliance that uh mostly she does and no one knows it um ode knows it they expect it and um you can get in a lot of hot water without these compliance checks um and i've never worked with someone so more efficient in that area and this is just a small area but um i wanted to recognize and thank you jill for that work you've made my job easier but most importantly thank you for the friendship um it's we've all been in trench warfare for the last three years two years but thank you um [Music] you'll be missed so thank you and um for for my reports tonight i'll just offer up do you have any questions um i i don't want to speak unless

122you really have questions i'm happy to answer anything about finance advisory house bill 126 i think uh both were reported on well and accurately so i i don't know that i have much more to add i was glad to hear um that that fy 23 because for a while when we first went to levy that was kind of the target date like that's the the go date um and it sounded like the the group um we're still feeling the same way and that that hadn't changed um for the next time that we have to go out to levy so um that that was good that means that we we had some pretty solid stewardship in a in a rocky time um that we haven't spent more than we needed to and um have a little

123a little bit of a breather so and i think our community will appreciate it too we just don't want to do nine years ago never can't yeah no i don't think that'll that'll be the case and we're we will have another advisory meeting uh in the near future to uh solidify that decision permanent i mean permanently and and come out with some communication of why we believe it we're not going to be on the ballot this fall because there's there's we we owe to our community to say why why we're not coming back or what what's led us to that that's a great idea yeah yeah and we have other important conversations to be had cash balance reserve which also is aligned with that that decision but also facilities that's come up the last couple

124of meetings and um we had conversations about that today internally of of how that's going to proceed within this committee first that's great just you you are offering to answer questions about all of section five of the agenda is that right questions about b c d yeah any any questions on any of those okay so we can take those as a as a group um can i have a motion to approve um sections for the pieces 5b 5c and 5d and a second second thank you since there are no questions or discussion all those in favor of approval of 5b c and d please signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed thank you kyle did we have anybody sign up for public comments no we didn't okay great thank you um we do not

125have an executive session tonight so um unless there's anything else i'll entertain a moment a motion to adjourn the meeting thank you um [Music] all those in favor of adjournment please signify by saying aye aye any opposed thank you that motion carries thanks everyone