001welcome to the wednesday september 15 2021 illyria board of education meeting i call this meeting to order madame treasurer would you please call the roll miss car starfin here mr bax here mr alec here mr gebhardt here and mrs sequin here thank you at this time would you all please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance liberty and justice [Applause] thank you so much at this time we will have introductions to my far right i have our board member elaine seguin next seated to her to my immediate right i have board member mr jim bax and vice president i'm sorry and to my immediate left i have board member mr greg ellick [Music] seated too much i get it right next i have board member mr mike gephardt seated next to mr gephardt
002is our superintendent ann sloss and seated all the way to the inn is our treasurer joy clickitcher thank you at this time are there any board recognitions no presentations visitors comments i have visitors who have signed in tonight for five minutes each i will call your name and you can come in that order first i have is this derek lingenberger is that correct thank you okay and then after derrick we will have andrew smith and cynthia is that barty yeah okay and when you come would you please state your address for us thank you you can come in that order derek you're first hi um [Music] turn on the mic for you there we go all right so it's derek lewinberger um 274 hillyard road illyria my son goes to summit cavity out the rain
003and we're just wondering about bussing if you had any plans to get that rolling or oh what was going on the biggest thing is that my my son in lorraine gets off of school at three o'clock and my daughter which is at the new northwood gets off at 3 10 so i have to take a lunch every single day come from downtown lyria over to northwood to pick up my daughter to get her because my wife can't be in two different places at the same time so it's a struggle for us so yeah i was just wondering if there was any plans on getting buses rolling out there let me check into the if you don't mind uh check into that and see what the situation is i know some had their own home buses
004for a while but uh myself and mr kokai will look into that for you thank you so much i know that there's five students that go there from malaria um so it's it doesn't have to be a huge bust how many vanilla will work okay but it's just yeah it's it's a really big inconvenience for us we've been making it work but i don't know how much longer my job's gonna let me do it there's been a couple days where he's had to stay late because i couldn't get there to her she's had to stay late because i couldn't get to her to pick her up on time so yeah it's been a struggle we appreciate your patience and i'll look into it and give you a ring thank you so much thank you thanks
005thank you thank you very much okay next is andrew smith hello um i don't know if you guys are aware but you're currently in violation of your own policy right now um every kid in the city of elyria school district is required to wear a mask whether it's age-appropriate whether it actually works or not it's not what i'm here to argue um for my children to attend school last year i made the decision to pull them out and put them into connections academy and it was based solely on the situation of the world that we were in at the time i lived with my two elderly parents so it was just felt like it was the correct thing to do it was probably one of the worst educational decisions i made for my kids i
006realized online schooling isn't the same as in person schooling um but kids shouldn't have to wear masks this is crazy i shouldn't have to be here today making these arguments it's a very simple thing all of us here understand the idea of personal autonomy and biological choice and a child shouldn't have to fill out an exemption form to be able to walk into a school building if there's parents who are concerned there should be some process for them to note that they would like their kids to wear masks but my young daughters shouldn't have to go into the school that i went into every day as a kid whether there was the cold going around the flu going around which are much more dangerous to children and have to wear a mask for something that's
007largely driven by the media and fear and society um we all have our own personal choices and our own personal decisions for what we believe right now um but i'm not going to sit here six months from now and argue that my child shouldn't get a third round of booster shots i'm not going to sit here in four months and argue that whatever mandatory vaccinations the federal government tries to push out is okay because that's not the place for this this is a place where we are designed to educate our children i went to school through illyria my entire life um we shouldn't subject kids to the whims and propagandas of what we see on television we're here to educate them wearing masks greatly increases the risk the risk of children to develop childhood asthma
008to develop bacterial pneumonia chronic bronchitis it reduces their emotional intelligence because when they're communicating with their classmates and teachers they cannot see the face of the person they're talking to and my daughters don't wear masks and i feel like that they get thrown into this i don't know chaos that all the rest of us are trying to deal with in a way that's not appropriate we shouldn't be reducing our children's emotional intelligence or ability to sustain their body through breathing just because we as parents may or may not be afraid of something because i'm far more scared of what will happen if we can just impose arbitrary limitations on our children's biological processes because it's something i won't do this may turn into a bigger battle my daughters are fully vaccinated with everything that's required
009by the school and that's a whole different conversation my oldest one may have actually suffered side effects but it was something me and their mother chose to do at the time when they were born in the years after before they even started attending school um all of these medical choices that we're facing and will come down in the future on us are something that we all have to make individually and personally and i don't feel like it is appropriate to have a school making a decision about whether or not the teacher standing in the front of the classroom can have her lip scene as she reads a book to my childhood there's very simple levels of things that our kids are losing out on right now interpersonal social skills the ability to read someone's face
010to recognize emotional expression and i don't want this to turn into a bigger battle um i don't i'm not going to give you the background of who i am or what i do or how i organize or what i've done but i just hope that we can find common ground here i don't care about your political beliefs and i hope you don't care about mine because having a child with the ability to breathe the ability to read people's lips see emotional expressions far outweighs anything else that matters right now so i just want to make sure that that's perfectly clear thank you thank you what was your address for the record 41835 at delbert street great thanks thank you and then we have cynthia barty yes thank you hi my name is cynthia barty i
011live at 413 georgia avenue illyrio ohio i have been back in ohio now for about eight years coming from tucson air force base in tucson arizona the two things i have most concerned with my son my last of my children graduated from malaria high in 2018. i am a graduate of the class of 83. i have a grandchild now in your school district my biggest concern right now is what we're looking at in the future as far as crt and dei now i know in columbus right now we have republicans bringing a bill called the jones bill to stop crt in our ohio schools which i will hope and prairie pass but as far as dei is concerned make no mistake dei is also a blanket for crt with your history teaching especially there is
012a low underlying of crt in dei so i would pray and hope that our school board here along with other school boards in ohio that would say absolutely not now i know that 111 of these school districts in ohio are implementing dei and what i need to know from our school board are we implementing this into our children our grandchildren because if we i it needs to stop period it needs to end we are here as educators it's your job to teach our children it's our job as parents and grandparents to teach our children their morals set their moral compasses it's not your job it's our job so i would hope and pray that you as individuals who sit up here and make these decisions for our children and our grandchildren that you would make
013the right decision as far as dei or crt is concerned now as far as the mask ditto what he said these children you're forcing to wear eight hours a day with masks on their face they are breathing in whatever they sneeze or whatever they cough into they are reabsorbing this into their lungs they are at risk like he said for asthma bronchitis infections of the lungs rsv it is proven so why would you endanger our children's health we already know that the vaccine doesn't protect you from getting covered you can't catch it whether you get the vaccine or not so if you all sat up here and all the teachers up there in our school district have had their shots they're no more protected than the child is period doesn't matter what you do you're
014not going to be protected the only way that you're going to be protected possibly is natural immunity now i've had covet in january 2020 i fought it for four long months i literally thought i was going to die but i am here to tell you right now my own personal position has stipulated to me you don't need the vaccine you've built up a natural immunity left these kids and my grandchild was there when i had covered so i know she caught it my daughter was living with me with my grandchild at that time so she caught it her mother just caught it this year she was with her mother living in her mother's home i know she caught it a second time let these children build up their natural immunities 10 to 1 odds they've
015already caught it [Music] you have already caught at some point someone has build up our natural immunities quit relying on something that's not going to stop it because it's not it's not even going to prevent it you're going to get one way or another and i'm 58 years old i can beat it the risk of someone 65 well and i just had two friends of mine just went and got the coveted shot and both of them are dead and they had both healthy doctor visits they were just in had a healthy physical and got the covenant shot and in one month prior to the father he died two months later the son died now you can explain that to me thank you and have a great day thank you thank you thank you thank you
016very much okay um board member discussion items are there any board members that would have any discussion items or rather were there any comments i don't want to move too fast okay any board member discussion items i went to the little rain game uh two weeks ago and uh one of our cohorts here won the 50-50 which is nine thousand dollars not quite but i did win the 50-50. okay now that's public record we don't see that on your taxes [Music] all righty anything else or no no okay um the f is meeting minutes the minutes have been posted and hopefully you've had a chance to review them i will entertain a motion to approve the board um the board of education records of proceeding for the meeting of september 1st 2021 as detail and
017enclosure f1 man please have a motion motion from mr ellick may i have a second second by mr gephardt are they are there any questions no questions madam treasurer would you please call the roll mr alec aye mr gephardt mr bax yes mrs seguin aye and ms karstarfit i thank you motion carries next is g which is treasurer action items thank you madam president this evening i have the monthly financial report for august and we have several donations we have a demotion of school supplies valued at two hundred dollars from commit otto kinniton we have a donation of a trumpet valued at a hundred dollars from julie parker we have a donation of three thousand pairs of socks valued at eighteen thousand dollars from the cleveland browns we have a donation of school supplies valued
018at eight hundred dollars from the community of faith church we have a donation of fifteen thousand dollars from emerson charitable trust slash ridge tool company and last we have a donation of one thousand dollars from dominic zunus memorial foundation and those are my items thank you may i please have a motion to approve the items recommended by the treasurer as presented move to approve move by mr jim bex may i have a second second second by miss elaine siegel are there any questions no questions madam treasurer would you please call the roll mr bax yes mrs sequin aye mr alec aye mr gabhardt aye and ms karstarfit aye thank you motion carries um h is treasurer other yes i have two items here they're routine items um the first one is permanent appropriations for the
019current the fiscal year that we're currently in and the second one is the amended certificate of estimated resources also for fiscal year 22. thank you may i have a motion to approve the items recommended by the treasurer as presented some move moved by mr gephardt may i have a second second second by mr ellick are there any questions if not madame treasure would you please call the roll mr gabhard all right mr alec aye mr bax yes mrs sequin aye and ms karstarfan aye thank you motion carries is there a treasure report um just a comment with the um capital conference yes if anybody changes their mind or their plans change and you're not able to attend the sooner you can let me know the better okay those are dates again i know i asked
020them november 7th through the 9th sunday through tuesday okay thank you um moving on to kay which is superintendent action items thank you madam president first of all to approve the payment of the following stipends to approve the payment of the additional stipends as listed below to approve one hundred thousand dollars to work with pcs for people to build a network that will support internet to our families in the wilkes villa and colonial oaks area and that concludes my action items thank you matt please have a motion to approve the items recommended by the superintendent as presented move by mr jim bex may i have a second second second by mr gephardt are there any questions yes uh what exactly is the august camp for the stipend so we did some camps through our esser
021grant funds to extend the learning for students and this was one um additional person that unfortunately got left off the list when we were paying them so we wanted to make sure we board approved okay so that was for the camp that just finished it right okay makes sense okay thank you okay no other questions madam treasurer would you please call the roll mr bax yes mr gebhardt aye mr alec aye mrs seguin aye and ms karstarf aye thank you the motion carries next is going to well we'll move down to personnel action items recommended by the superintendent thank you first of all to approve the appointment of the following certified staff as you can see we're still hiring as as class sizes are are growing to approve the supplemental contracts of the following certified
022staff these are mainly the elementary and middle school other than athletics these are a lot of the academic supplementals to approve the retirement of the following certified staff to approve the unpaid leave of absence of the following certified staff to approve the payment of up to 50 hours at the employee's hourly rate this one in the next one the payment of up to 50 hours for the video production jerry and jim do the football games for us the video streaming so that's what that is to approve the resignation of the following classified staff as detailed below to approve the retirement of the following classified staff to approve the unpaid leave of absence for the following classified staff and then we have the appointment of classified staff as you see below and that concludes my personnel
023action items thank you may i please have a motion to approve the personnel items as recommended by the superintendent as presented so vote moved by mr ellick may please have a second second second by mrs sequin are there any questions or comments uh question question and maybe if you wanted to address this in your report but the word is already out that the new facilities specifically eastern heights i've had a few parents talk to me about the size of classrooms there and i it's not an answer they want to hear but i did explain to them how the state funding is based on the formula it's almost 10 years old so that obviously is not what they want to hear but um is there and for i know that uh the administration is doing a
024lot um but is that something that you could touch on maybe in your report i'll follow like that okay okay great thanks and then i i just have one comment i'm not a hundred percent sure that on eric faust's um effective date we've got 9 13 i think it's 8 31 isn't it that's the one i was talking to earlier about no i think he submitted on the 31 and his last day was nominated right okay all right thanks okay all right madame treasurer madam treasurer would you please call the roll mr alec aye mrs sequin aye mr baxter yes mr gebhardt aye and ms starfin aye thank you motion carries are there any new hires here tonight or no i do not believe so no okay i just didn't want to move too fast
025um superintendent's report yes and i'll start with uh mr alex point about eastern heights a couple of things but let me start at the beginning and give one piece of historical data we did go back to the state because we were about 500 students more than what the state was allowing us to build for back in the day they said we should be at 5700 and we are not at 5700 and and we submitted that but unfortunately the state no longer had money to give us so they are aware that we were bigger than what we built for and that's why we made some of the adjustments throughout the district now that being said this year because of covid a lot of students move just yesterday our bus company had to make 126 address changes
026for students that norm have in the past ridden the bus i like a little bit of that i think might be attributed to the real estate market right now people are selling and buying and moving around a little bit um we're working with staff to to look at how we can remedy this we do know that we have to look at boundaries again at the end of the year which we knew we would have to do but we are working with um staff at the other facilities to see how we can at all the schools to see how we can remedy this and get creative so to speak it may come down the road that we might have to look at our open enrollment we did limit it this year and last year i think
027for the last three years mrs flatt haven't we so that that's not really been the reason most of it's just been that we haven't lost the students they predicted us to lose and actually from last year to this year at this time we're up 300 students than we were at this time last year now either they came out earlier we might end up being even bigger but we'll wait and see it seems to have died down a little bit but we will continue to work with staff on that mr alec and the rest of the board we know it's not ideal but the principles have started to get creative and how we can move some classrooms around using elas and other we you know at the northwood elementary we actually had to use the art
028and the music room this year because of class sizes so we knew there'd be some adjustment because of the building project and we knew that we would have to be patient to to look at the boundaries copen did not help us in that area because a lot of students either went online or moved went down to live somewhere else because they could and do it remotely so that that has put a little bit of uh interesting uh um but he would not in the whole process so but we are looking at that that that too has been a little piece of the bussing with all the changes and everything you know students have their old addresses in there and old phone numbers and they've moved so we're working hard to remedy all of this and
029and work on it but we've been we just hired as you saw two new teachers we're looking i think we have two more we're looking to hire so we are trying to there's a there's a huge teacher shortage as well and we're really struggling finding teachers so that's a difficult piece too and isn't a lot of the flexibilities in the westwood that will help manage the overflows which happens to be the last campus that's going to be finished correct and we can't really send additional westwood middle schools to additional students over there to help out right now because they're in the smallest part they can be in but we do know that once that opens we've provided we were able to add eight classrooms by doing the fine arts in the old westwood and redoing
030that in the expansion that might help us move some lines good okay great um and then yeah in regard to that would it be beneficial or when do we have our next update that that would be going out you know on a wide on a on a public basis you know is there if you're getting questions i'm getting a few it sounds like maybe i mean should we be maybe a little bit proactive here and issue an update are you talking about updates to staff or parents to everyone so we have been giving up on that particular campus sure so we have been communicating with the the staff um on a regular basis we also brought mr kokai has gone to some site-based meetings to talk to them they have been over there helping with
031the traffic flow and everything else um as far as parents amy i don't know if she made it in here yeah oh she did she was just doing some robo calls about busing and something for open house with the eastern heights campus and we also on monday have a letter that's coming out from the busing company on some of the protocols we're doing after our meeting today but as far as another wrinkle which i didn't mention the furniture we have been told that all of the missing furniture by the end of next week will be here and that has made it a little more difficult although i i have to commend mr kokai's department they they made it work um as as well as we could i agree it's it's it's a very complex situation
032and it's difficult and the scheduling is as good as we can do um that's why i was wondering if there was some if there was you know like an article in the paper or something that we should do as a as a guest columnist kind of a thing just because we've got we've got four out of five buildings in operation and we're you know and we're anxiously awaiting this shirt this next one of course because of the capacity it will allow us but um but yeah i don't know if it would if you would cover everything in detail you would need the entire paper but no i do have a guest column i can do and amy and i could absolutely work on that to talk about it we were trying to just get it
033it's hard to believe but really we've only had seven days of school and and um we are trying to get you know everyone in and really look at what the needs are it's been really busy and and really try to get the needs and everything else but absolutely we can do the guest column and do that amy's next newsletter is probably close to coming out too we sent one out last week to the parents i mean it and it may and and something like a guest column may not be needed sure depending on you know if amy's got something readily you know in the works already maybe that's fine the um but yeah just simply because of of the of the number of the number of new things going on that causes confusion sure i'll
034say it that way um you know i thought okay maybe it's maybe we know enough that we could actually communicate something sure and if if and if it would be worthwhile you don't need anything additional to do i understand oh no and and we're we will do whatever we need to do to to lessen the anxiety and everything else and i think um the what amy has set up with those regular s'more newsletters have been very positive and um and i know that she does that about every couple weeks so we set one out last week but we continue you know to communicate and try to get to everyone and and really to be honest it's always hard to know all the needs until the the students are all withdrawn and added and and we're
035working on that too so more to come but um i know we have a report coming the second board meeting of aug of october talking about everything we've done with with academics to to help through the yeser funds and we also will have some updates on how everyone's settling it in at the same time question how much furniture are we still waiting on so we're waiting on um 18 kidney-shaped tables we are waiting on 70 teacher podiums which were connected to the desks that went up and down and we're waiting on the teacher bookshelves at eastern heights that were back ordered unfortunately a lot of the furniture that is made today is made overseas which if if you've heard anything about building products they're all delayed right now and we ordered last may an extra
036order of money of furniture that we were told was 80 days out and it is now due in november so all of this stuff got ordered even before that and we're still getting it so i have to say kudos to the staff the teachers the classified staff for bearing with us of being patient it isn't ideal but they've pitched in and everyone's kind of working together with these um delays are we accounting for westwood like are we trying to westwood's been ordered and we're assured they're going to be here in november they were ordered a while ago um so the one nice thing is what we use to patch over there we're keeping to make sure if we need to patch at westwood but we've been assured that that it'll be here no more questions
037i just have a few more reminders i'm sorry um tailgate don't forget please buy a ticket to the game also because that's how you can uh work on the tailgate we are going to take a bunch of tickets i'm giving friday to the swc meeting ridgeville is our opponent that night we thought it might be nice for them to sell some tickets as well also this weekend on saturday is the special olympic golf outing and then apple fest is this weekend we will be in our little red booth and we'll be at lard on sunday and all the good things selling pink cookies correct amy as usual they'll be sold out in no time but a lot of a lot of great things going on and uh it's a parade of bands too great advance
038yes greater bands i it's so funny because i kept saying i'm forgetting something this weekend pray to be on saturday night and they have a great lineup they really do talked to mr pooka yesterday and he said they have people that haven't come in a long time coming i think five or six bands do we anticipate having enough seats for the football game so um [Music] yes uh kudos to christina buehler and tim brown they've been working together we moved the band their opposing band is now sitting on and we knew this was going to happen because they have big bands we put the opposing team's band down at the other end from our band so that they don't take up visitor seats um and we're looking at hopefully in into your future maybe adding
039some seeds because you can add but i think we'll be okay they had 6 000 people at the avon avon night game last weekend we hold 4 000 maybe 4 500 with the bleachers so we welcome any purple and yellow over on our side if we need to fill in but i'm hoping we get a big enough red and red and white to fill our stands too so oh yeah i'm sure yeah and the stadium was built with that open space there so if we have to yeah in the future yeah absolutely more seating okay good okay thank you thank you uh board of education do we have any board of education [Music] nothing nothing uh no executive session um already um anything else for the good of the order no okay i make a
040motion motion by second okay motion by mr gephardt second by mr elliot any questions comments nothing madam treasurer mr gebhardt aye mr alec aye mr backs yes mrs seguin aye and ms karstarfan i thank you you are adjourned