001i would like to mention that our it seems like our live stream is we're having technical difficulties it won't be live stream today but it is being recorded and it will be posted on the website tomorrow item 1.1 call to order mr bib here mrs jonas here dr rasmussen here mrs stewart here mrs hospital here item 1.2 roll call oh sorry that was all right in 1.3 we're going to do the pledge of allegiance everybody please stand for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all item 1.4 safety briefing i want to note the emergency exits most of you know the door that you came in there's a
002door behind you and a door behind us item 2.1 motion to adopt agenda may i have a motion to adopt the agenda as as president presented i'll make a motion to adopt the agenda mrs stewart yes mr bib yes mrs jonas yes dr rasmussen yes mrs hossfield yes item 3.1 approval of minutes of budget hearing organizational meeting january 6 2022 we're going to approve the minutes on items 3.1 through 3.4 as presented so moved mr bib yes mrs jonas yes dr rasmussen yes mrs stewart yes mrs hosfeld yes item 4.0 correspondence and procedure for public commentary i i don't have any correspondence mrs housefield thank you no correspondence from the treasure as well item 4.2 procedures for public commentary the board is committed to conducting its meetings in a productive and efficient manner to assure
003that the meeting is completed in a reasonable amount of time while also recognizing the important importance of fair and adequate opportunity for public input in order to conduct an orderly and fair representation of expression the board will allow a period of public participation at every regular board meeting public participation will be a total of 30 minutes each speaker will have three minutes of time limit if there are more than 10 speakers individual times will be adjusted down to fit within the 30 minutes the board does not discriminate based on an individual content of the speech or viewpoint of the speaker if several people wish to speak on the same topic the time limit may be adjusted at the president's discretion those individuals interested in speaking during the public comment need to fill out the public
004participation sheet located at the entrance of the room the president will call each speaker to the podium when it is time to speak while speaking please remember that comments should be addressed to the board as a whole item 5.0 candidate for graduation like to ask mr fender please to come to the podium we have a special announcement this evening good evening everybody and uh thank you all for being here we have um as mr prebble said a special announcement tonight we have um one of our very own graduating early going to play football at indiana university so i know my predecessor mr fellowes is extremely excited about that as a proud iu alum and i come from an iu family as well so i'm pretty darn excited too brody uh foley is the student's name
005he's an excellent young man uh high cal high character uh individual who demonstrated skill and dedication to his craft in football as well as maintaining a stellar academic record during his time at anderson high school in the fact that he's able to finish four years worth of graduation requirements in three and a half to be done early to enroll and the reason for that is to enroll early at indiana university so that he can begin his academic and athletic pursuits there as well we're extraordinarily proud of brody and superintendent recommends the board approve in early graduation for brody foley we make a motion to approve the granting of the high school diploma to brody foley a second mrs husfeld yes mr bibb yes mrs jonas yes dr rasmussen yes mrs mrs stewart yes well thank
006you all very much [Applause] item 6.0 commendations and recognitions good evening i am here to actually have kyle come back up i'm also i have some friends with me this evening that i would like to present the superintendent i would like to rep or recognize representatives who presented at our science and innovation expo on january 22nd adam samuels he's often the man behind the curtain if you'd like to come on up he helps us quite a bit in the world of technology but he has also been very student-centered and student-focused and making sure that we have opportunities for our students um beyond the classroom and it has been kind of a passion and brainchild of his and emily dorsey and corey mullins to to really offer some opportunities beyond a typical science fair so we
007had over 300 students participate this year we have approximately 150 that were also they made it to the finalists they were finalists for the regional science and engineering expo at the university of cincinnati that could then lead to state science day in columbus in may so i was going to have adam come up and share a little bit about his journey thanks kim so my name is adam samuels i'm the technology teaching and learning support specialist in the district um and a little bit about the science and innovation expo uh basically at one point um back in kind of the early mid 90s we had a traditional science fair and you can go to the next slide here jody thanks um we can go one more so kind of early 90s to really 2017 we
008always had a traditional science fair like many school districts do and for us i think one thing we do really well as a district is we look at things we have in place that are successful and say you know what's the next step how can we expand opportunities to our students so for us the science fair became the science innovation expo and basically we just took our traditional science fair but we combined it to create more opportunities for students our science fair used to be for grades 5 through 12 our innovation expo that we added on to the science fair event is for k-12 so it just gave entry in a lot of different grade levels and kind of kind of expanded some of the learning opportunities for our students as well so if you
009can go to the next slide so kind of how we were set up in september we kind of share a little bit about this event um as we get into november we've added uh an event for the past uh four years as well called spark night and spark night basically it's it's one of my favorite nights of the year it's an opportunity where all of our elementary students are invited to turpin high school one night or anderson high school they can go to either many go to both because they have such a good time but basically what we do is we have our high school students thanks to mrs dorsey and mrs mullins they they help support the students in organizing these projects that students come up with and they're basically hands-on engaging examples of
010what maybe an elementary student might create as a project so so on those nights you have a ton of high school students hundreds of them working with hundreds of our elementary students and uh and just helping our elementary students kind of we call it spark night because we feel our elementary students it sparks creativity and really helps them figure out what kind of project they might create um so both of those nights this year we had uh close to around 300 uh families combined a 10. like i said many came to both nights because they had such a good good time so just an all-around fun night great way to connect our high school to our elementary students a great way to bring our community in and and that to me is what you know
011our learning is all about so if we go to the next slide um kind of showing an example of what our spark nights look like and i would encourage you if you've never been to definitely join us sometime completely free event and just great hands-on good energy so we had everything from our robotics students at anderson high school allowing students to try different different robotics activities from coding to all sorts of different different goals that were set up by the students and then we also had these are little like coding caterpillars so students could kind of predict and create algorithms or step step-by-step instructions for how that caterpillar would move through a maze so again this awesome opportunity high school students working with elementary students and it's just it's a blast to watch the interactions
012so so kind of taking you up to our main event is our science and innovation expo like i was talking about and this event every single year has brought anywhere from 300 to 500 students to present and you know i think we're one of the few districts that have something like this and i think it's a testament to the fact that um between our community and between between our staff it's just everybody's all hands on deck when it comes to supporting learning for our students and uh that's huge you don't find that everywhere and forest hills is a special place because of that so um kind of taking you in in the doors of that what it looks like so our innovation expo is a little more informal um grades k-12 can sign up and
013um we have community judges who come in for the science expo and for the innovation expo both of these events are happening on the same day at nagel middle school and for the innovation expo students come up with any types of projects that are stem or steam based so science technology engineering arts mathematics anything that meets that category they come up with an idea they create and then they share out and i think you know what better than to give a platform for students to present to the entire community and share out their ideas and really a very authentic audience so um in that slide actually going to go back one if it lets yeah there you go um so kind of a couple examples we had 11th graders a couple years ago that they
014took an rc boat and they took all the motors out of it and they put a hydrogen-powered fuel cells in it so they want to see if they could power the boat that way um we had a student who wanted to learn to be a dj so she took that on and he did ghostbusters the entire time for the innovation expo so that was added a nice little little bit of pizzazz to our event we had students learning more about physics concepts through different mazes that they created where they cut different types of wood and represented those concepts through that but just a wide range of projects and it's so cool when you go there because you see everything from coding to robotics to these types of projects to art based creations there's anything you
015can think of it's there and it's hundreds of students and the energies is great so um for a science expo on the next slide sorry one more for innovation expo so this was a great project by nagel middle school they had a couple students and mr varner worked together to create they wanted to create like a topographic map and so they wanted to show how runoff and different types of erosion and weather patterns can create change landforms so they created this sandbox and they worked with a couple different universities when they ran into some different issues and they created this sandbox where basically if you hold your hand over it it simulates rain and then it changes the colors of the map based on the elevations so that was all created by students partnering up
016with the universities partnering up with myself in the technology department so just for you know for them to get involved and to figure out who do i need to you know contact to get support with this um who's the best people to bring in to help with this that's the kind of learning that you know i think best simulates a real career environment and then up top from our engineering class mr glazer some of his students created what are called automata and it's basically uh simple machines and demonstrating how those work so just a lot of really cool projects that you see along the way moving to our next slide for our science expo rather than walking through a couple demonstrations we're very fortunate to have sia and sir patel here today so if you're
017going to come up and join us and they brought their projects and they're just going to share a little bit more about what their project was all about and uh yeah um so we did our science project on how magnetic fields affect blind sure so we were like interested in this because we were interested in how like magnets work and how exactly they affect microorganisms and if you own fish you probably notice that like people grow grind shrimp to them feed to their fish because they're good protein for their fish and if you want to grow grind shrimp you have to like submerge them in water and then let them grow like that except in the end not all of them grow so we thought that maybe if we submerged brine shrimp in water and
018then exposed them to magnetic fields maybe they would it would increase the rate of hatching yeah so um and then we had like two support games to support that stick and then one side was exposed to magnetic fields and then when we submerged the brine trip in there we tracked the process of growth every 12 hours and we kept them submerged for 48 hours and we noticed that there was a higher like rate of activity and hatching on the side that was exposed to magnets so if we could lose the rate of hatching with magnets then what else could we do with the magnets we could like expose fish eggs or other microorganisms and see if the magnets awesome thank you big round of applause for and cnn projects are just you know one of
019many examples of just the type of learning that goes on with with this event move into our next slide basically i think when you look at the project they did or any of these projects whether it be from our science expo or innovation expo um they're career connected they're the things that we hope are students the skills we hope they have when they're moving on to college to their careers whatever it may be and i think one of the biggest things is you know when you take students and you put them in a situation where they're solving ill-defined problems that aren't just straightforward answers uh that's to me the crossroads over the most critical thinking happens um in a lot of collaboration and a lot of working through unknown situations um so that i think
020we accomplished through this event i think we accomplished it on a very large scale and like i said not many districts have this so we feel fortunate that we're blessed with a team like mrs dorsey like mrs mullins and many others who help make this event what it can be and uh and i hope it continues for many years to come so last slide here just kind of an overview of where we've kind of been since we started this in the 2018-19 year but almost a thousand projects over 1500 students have participated uh 283 families this year at our spark nights between anderson and turpin um and you can kind of see our breakdown of projects this year from science expo projects to innovation expo um so with that being said we hope you know
021you guys will at some point if you've never been out to our expo or to our spark night um it's open to everybody in the community you don't have to have a student um so you know we'd hope hope you join us because it's just it's an awesome day so thank you yeah if i could get your pictures cnn sir i want to get your pictures too also um i do want to recognize too that while mr fender is here we did also our students are very successful in the classroom and outside of the classroom so getting kids to stay after school today was difficult i'm very grateful that you took time to be here i'm glad you took time to listen having our students come and share with us as important as they are
022the reason that we are here tonight so so we're going to hear tomorrow some more this evening about the things the connections that take place outside of our classrooms and the many things that we have in our district that support what's happening in classrooms that'll come with a foundation update i want to thank both of you the level of sophistication in your presentation as well as what you are studying and the way that you present that to your your peers as well as to our entire community it represents all that is good in forest hills and i greatly appreciate the fact that you're with us tonight and all the individuals who uh participated in in the innovation and the expo i thank you certainly the judges who participate from our community extending our partnerships and
023making sure that people who are in our community that have interest in our schools have the opportunity to engage with our students and provide expertise even in the way that they judge and ask questions and interact with our students it is a big circle you've closed it tonight you make it look so simple and so easy so thank you both i appreciate it well done thank you [Applause] yeah emily if you want to come up yeah we have to recognize miss dorsey as well she's been a huge support for all of us [Applause] mrs housefield while we're transitioning into 7.1 uh wellness update we have a few very exciting things that are happening in this in the school district regarding wellness so i want to update the board and members of the community on that
024it's all good they are way more important than me so qpr training is something that we have extended beyond our staff in our school district to parents and community members who have interest and qpr if you do not know is a question persuade and refer and we have gatekeeper training that's taken place in our school district night in our school district right now for suicide prevention and it is a one sometimes one to two hour educational program that is designed to teach lay and professional gatekeepers if you will the warning signs of suicide crisis and how to respond gatekeepers can include anyone who is strategically positioned to recognize refer someone at risk of sues and refer someone of risk for suicide these can be parents these can be friends neighbors teachers coaches caseworkers police officers
025fire department folks anyone who is close to kids and the process pretty much follows three very simple steps we need to question the individual's desire or intent regarding suicide if that became an issue we need to persuade the person to seek and accept help either from someone that they love someone that they know or an agency or a partner that we have in our school district certainly someone within our schools who can assist them and then refer the person as i just said to appropriate resources so trainees receive a qpr booklet they also receive a wallet card as a review and resource tool that includes local referral resources and so the training is delivered in person by certified qualified question persuade and refer keeper instructors we have it in two ways in our school district
026in person and virtual a couple of weeks ago we sent out uh requests for individuals who would have interests parents who would have interest in qpr gatekeeper training we had 160 slots available for our community to come and participate within three hours those slots were completely full we have added another 160 slots available for individuals who would like to participate this is awesome that we have the ability to increase the awareness and the ability for not only individuals in schools but individuals in homes and individuals in our community to be able to assist kids who may be struggling it also advances not only to kids when you get the training but in your association with other individuals that that are in your life so this is a very good tool that we're bringing in our
027school that we've brought into our schools our entire staff has been trained in this and now we're expanding that to a larger network because we've learned over the last few months years that increasing the partnerships with our community advancing the conversation beyond the walls of the school is something that is going to be good for our children and for our community so i'm very happy that we have qpr in place right now if you have interest if you would like to participate receive training you may not be in the first 160 or the second 320 but you will definitely be involved and you will receive training because we are not going to stop until people stop knocking on the door which hopefully will be never so we will consistently offer this opportunity i would also
028note that qpr training can advance to another level so once qpr is people are trained in that there can be specialized modules for schools teachers classrooms and for other individuals who have interest to actually become gatekeeper trained nurse of others so expanding that knowledge is a great thing that's happening in our district um forest hills has offered eight sessions we originally offered four uh i forgot to say this sandy kaufman is the master trainer from grant us hope who is working with the school district and she's leading the training with us along with kelly brazzo and betsy ryan it is free for families and anyone who wants to participate which is very good and again we will continue to offer this and we are expanding that towards our coaching our coaches as well including our
029advisors which is another subject that i'd like to bring to your attention tonight we have lauren ammann i'm sorry who is in the audience with us she is here uh probably as a guest or a colleague of mike glenn who is working with the anderson collaborative and lauren has been working with us on plans to advance opportunities for our coaches that are working with kids to understand the delicate aspects of physical physical health and mental health and how all that comes together and how we can provide coaches with the tools necessary to be able to talk with students to be able to assist students and to be able to refer students who have not suicidal tendencies but certainly have issues of of anxiety sometimes depression a lot of anxiety in athletes because they are involved
030in so many things in school out of school a lot of pressure and it shouldn't only be athletes it should be any student and so the idea over time is to expand this program that we are currently in the middle of putting together to a larger audience which could which will most likely include other students who are involved in after-school activities and how we can have those conversations with them that's really good news and i want to thank mike who is also with us this evening he's been in to see us a few times we're collaborating together and we are expanding our relationships with several other individuals in our community as late as today we are aware of assistance that we are receiving from mercy hospital from children's hospital from grant us hope from child
031focus from the university of cincinnati and also from the hamilton county department of health so we're collaborating with individuals who have a national footprint understand national trends and they too are partnering with the school district so there'll be more to learn about that as time goes on as far as wellness is concerned i think we're turning the corner a bit with increasing our information and our education for our parent for our students our parents our teachers as well as our community on the slide that's coming up now this is related to wellness and people uh have had great interest over the last few months about covet well this is a chart that came out it's on the district's website it is not up to date it is an example for everyone who is here to
032see again how we record on a daily basis the number of co-vid positive cases of students within our school district so back on uh 1 28 22 we had 118 students for that week that were that that were identified as having covid the good news is there is a tremendous amount of reduction that's taking place not only in our school but in our zip codes and in hamilton county and thank goodness across the state in the country but that hasn't necessarily hit the hospitals yet they are still dealing with the many aspects of covid and individuals in icus and other entities so if you know a nurse you know a doctor you know anybody who's in the hospital system give them a high five thank them for their work because it hasn't slowed down just
033yet for them so i'd like to go to the next slide to give people just an idea of where we've been and where we are over the last few weeks as we've talked about covid so back when we've returned from the holiday break on 1 7 22 about 3.1 percent of the students in our school district had been identified as having confirmed covid that was 230 students at that time at that time we were also with those 230 students that represents about 1500 contact traces so we were inundated much like the hospitals are right now with people running everywhere trying to make sense of all of the covid related situations within our schools our board responded to that along along with hamilton county to try to make some adjustments with that so not to bore
034everyone but if you follow down the chart you see we went from 230 the next week 259 the next week 231 the slide that i showed you a couple of moments ago was the 118 that you see in the middle of the chart here and you can see we are moving down from as high as 3.5 percent of our student population to where we are now at 0.5 percent of our population last friday when we exited the school and today we have seven students this week that have been identified and obviously we have three more days to go in our school week but you can see the reductions that are taking place in our school system and we're very happy about that the next slide is also important and we've talked about this all the
035time as we've navigated through covid do we have staff in the building capable of managing our schools when our uh when we are experiencing covid so a fill rate is the amount of individuals who are filling those classrooms it doesn't mean that every classroom is covered but it does mean that the individuals who are not in school we have a fill rate of these percentages and i do want to thank our board of education for dealing with that with compensation adjustments for our substitutes because it it does help and you can kind of see that reflected in the numbers so uh back then on monday 2-7 last monday we were at a fill rate of 79.7 percent and you can see on tuesday wednesday thursday where we are 100 percent on friday 97.6 on that
036dubious bengals monday we dropped to 86.3 and we are back up now at 88.1 percent just yesterday so we have a healthy school as related to covet i'm not suggesting that it does not exist in our society but we are on the mend so to speak we have staff in classes we have kids in classes we have the covid numbers going down we still need to be mindful we need to be uh concerned about mitigation and distance and all those things but these are these are positive signs that we're beginning to see the next slide that's up there for you this past saturday our board of education met for almost eight hours and they did a phenomenal job of working through priorities for the upcoming school year and so what you see up here not
037for tonight but further conversations down the road are the areas that our board of education is prioritizing as we move forward into the upcoming school year and i will tell you that they do not appear on this list in any order that is more important than the other these are the topics that come that are aligned with our district's strategic vision so when you take a look at aligned curriculum in our school district this is aligned with preparing students for post graduation success through rigorous learner empowered approaches core content and real world applications like you saw this evening so we want to have our curriculum aligned so that all students have similar experiences high quality instruction i think tonight again it's not only instruction in classrooms but it's instruction across and opportunities across our entire
038school district mental health and wellness you can tell from tonight it is on the minds of our board of education we continue to work together with our partners in the community and our board of education to identify best practices and the way we can continue to move forward to provide healthy environments for our students so they can be healthy not only from a mental perspective but from a physical health perspective finance and facility planning you cannot be on the board of education if this is not on your mind and most of the time you are not a community member if you're not concerned about finance fiscal responsibility and efficiency and so we've spent some time there and we will continue to be working on those things and then consistent and centralized communication i've said it
039uh and others have said it we can do a better job with communication you're beginning to hopefully see that in the wellness components that we are bringing forward and the way that we're including more people in what we know about kids and how we can expand the aspects of what we're doing on a daily basis with things like qpr and with other options we have available to our teachers and expanding that to parents so again our board of education work very hard there will be additional meetings uh forthcoming but i felt like it would be appropriate to at least let people know that it was it was a long and productive and very um i felt a positive day this past saturday so thank you thank you scott item 8.0 public commentary we have four
040speakers this evening first up will be jesse dipmore and then second up will be bill armstrong yep right there i want to first and foremost just say thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight all i ask and i won't i won't take too much of your time um i just want to say please hear us out and don't give up on the redskins that's all i'm asking my whole entire family including myself went to anderson and represented the mascot brock vogel was trousered to death reminding me how important the mask got meant to me and so many around this community the mascot is a resource in this town it's a symbol of hope strength and respect my late mother always told me that if we keep taking resources out of the neighborhood and if
041we keep diluting the legacies and memories created by this mascot there's going to be no school left standing and look i'm guilty of it too i thought changing the mascot and being content was me doing it all for the right reasons but i was wrong i was wrong reinvesting in our community reinvesting in this mess in this mascot is the right choice anderson deserves his chance of being great and getting back to know getting back to what we've always known getting back to who we are i respectfully ask that you think long and hard before you cast your vote thank you mr timmor bill armstrong's up and then bryce phillips good evening distinguished board to follow up with what jesse has brought up we the people are requesting the forest hills school board take into
042consideration following the points towards pride honor and respect of our students to have the redskins put back number one the people did not get the vote on such a big decision to change this logo two money will be raised through private donations to place redskins back there's no direct cause to the budget of forest hill school district the former board failed to understand the total cost of what this change would be so now we have the opportunity to turn back the debt decision stop the bleeding and any other futures monies donated would then go to mental health support thirdly naga native american guardian association who has the voice of the federally recognized tribal members in america has stated that 90 percent of the tribal members have no problem using the redskins is a logo emblem
043or icon they do not ever want to be eradicated they are willing to give us an official certification from tribal leaders across the nation calling the a racist move is a direct result of the democratic narrative and it is ironic that the critical race theory involves the same wording that we now are removing from the red skin district never been used in a derogatory manner as they stated there's actually no proof that we could surmise mental health is a major problem in forest hills at this time anything that can be considered polarizing and hurtful to the students should stop immediately we believe the former board did not understand therefore couldn't consider the absolute negative impact and consequences of their decision to eradicate the logo we are asking officially to reinstate the logo as our culture
044of pride honor and respect of our students here in forest hill school district we also ask that they cease and desist the woke mob chaos and public doxxing on social media as this perpetuates the already stressful situation thank you for your time and considerations sincerely the concerned parents students both current and former and certain staff of the forest hills community i thank you for your time miss hospital for you and this is all documentation of what thank you mr armstrong next up is bryce phillips and then our fourth speaker is martha veeman good evening everyone my name is bryce phillips i'm a member of the greater cincinnati native american coalition and uh i guess it's probably obvious that i'm here to say to urge the board to not even consider the ridiculous notion of re-adopting
045an offensive racial slur as a mascot it's one thing when that's just like exists on inertia but to decide to re-implement that in 2022 and spend your money on that i mean what kind of message does that send about this community and but there's a couple things i want to clarify that i'm not here for um i'm not here to speak in defense of critical race theory i actually think that the writings of derek bell and robin d'angelo and people like that are frankly overly pessimistic about our ability to overcome racism not here to speak in defense of something called the 1619 project from what i hear most historians agree that it's very inaccurate and probably shouldn't be taught in schools we're just here for basic common sense and you know if this community wants
046to show the society and show the world that we don't need things like critical race theory one of the ways you could do that is by you know permanently bearing the offensive racial slur mascot and just burying that for all time i can't believe we have to be here saying this it's just it's sad and i don't understand this notion that it's some kind of legacy um you know i'm of pima descent you know our one of my ancestors are in my tribe always not directly because you know ira hayes who held up that flag at iwo jima like so we're you know we're not some dead thing or some cartoon character we're an integral part of this nation and we deserve more respect than that than to have an explicit racial slur as the
047mascot for this school and we've come and we've said it again and again and again as far as this native american guardian association it's like five people that are getting paid money by big sports teams to say whatever they are told to say for a check it's just tokenism majority of native people do not support this and that's why we've come out here in numbers to come and say to really represent how our community feels about this matter going forward like i said it's not partisan it's not about who people vote for i didn't vote for joe biden i i've been watching the canadian truckers on the live stream you know it's not about it's just about respect it's about having you know decent values of teaching respect to the next generation as americans so
048that we don't need things like uh you know racial sensitivity training let's show that where we can move ahead that we're better than that as a society thanks everyone for your time and have a good evening and i urge you to not uh even explore a racist mascot thank you mr phillips our final speaker is martha veeman good evening i want to touch on two topics at last month's meeting i heard three board members say they would not support mass mandates for preschool classrooms where children are not eligible for vaccines because they support individual freedom they were in fact affirming the importance of individualism which is one of the key tenets of democracy in america in fact it was almost 200 years ago that a book called democracy in america by alexis de tocqueville noted
049this country's love affair with individualism de tocqueville also expressed hope that our focus on the self would be tempered by a commitment to community de tocqueville new as countless others have affirmed since that our country is strongest when individualism is balanced with service to and even sacrifice for the greater good finding the balance between serving the self and serving the community is the continuing challenge of our nation and i hope that our school board is up to that challenge next i'd like to touch on the topic of mascots we heard the connection between mental health and mascots there's only one group in this nation where there's a clear connection between mental health and native american based mascots that is alaskan native and native american youth throughout the 21st century this small population has had the
050highest suicide rate and it is also the only group where sports mascots that represent them are listed as a contributing factor to poor self-esteem and increasing risk of suicide and suicidal ideation native american themed mascots increase the risk of suicide among native youth uh gaap has greater anderson promotes peace of which i'm a co-director has a document that we will deliver to you tomorrow prepared by experts on this topic so before taking any action please look to the experts to understand this issue please understand that the previous board did not make an ill-considered decision they did not make an ill-considered financial decision that this topic has been studied for 20 years in this community we know what we're doing and i believe that the board has made the right decision and bringing it up again
051will only increase the divisiveness thank you thank you miss beeman [Applause] item 9.0 business operations i'd just like to mention that with item 9.1 we are beginning our consent agenda recommendations through 13.1 thank you i just have two items today on the agenda 9.1 is the request to advertise for bid as uh you know before we go out to a bid project we have to advertise them appropriately and the process uh will be the advertisements will begin if the board approves will begin tomorrow the specifications for the asphalt projects will be available on the 18th and we'll do a walk through with all the contractors on the 24th before the bid opening and build submission on march 9th the second item today is a residency waiver for a senior student whose parents had to move
052out of the district during their senior year and with that by rule if the board adopts we are able to allow that student to finish her senior year as a forced hill student so those are my two items that the re respectfully request that the board accept during the consent agenda thank you thank you item 10.0 human resources well i'll say it because john didn't nothing clears out a room like a good old-fashioned biz ops report followed by hr well it's always mr broadwater's line and i think i'll keep it i like it um good evening board we have a very straightforward hr agenda this evening for you to consider item a we have a handful of resignations both certified and classified as with all resignations we wish these individuals all the best in their
053futures and in their careers ahead item b we have one leave of absence for your consideration this evening and item c is appointment employment personnel that includes items d e f g and j so we'll kind of work through those one at a time here the first one being item d there is a change of assignment listed for an individual megan ashby for your consideration item e we have a number of appointments which i always like to see because it means we're bringing some good people into the organization so we have a couple classified staff um coming in new and a couple who are coming off of the initial and contractual probationary status for your consideration the item f is our special services appointments always nice to see a lot of people working in a
054lot of different capacities with with our staff and with our students and i'm trying to think there i don't believe there's anything that i need to draw to to your attention specifically item g is another list of new uh supplemental positions appointments to work with students in various capacities running club basketball or baseball so so on and so forth and then we all we do often have for your approval our student teachers interns coming in to work with our staff as they complete their undergraduate degrees in anticipation of a future in education item i a list of volunteers for a recommendation for approval and item j always like to see those subs coming in listed there in those various capacities since the board's regular meeting of january 26 this year our staffing is at 799.27
055as in the exhibit so if unless there are questions superintendent recommends that the board approve the personnel items as listed you no questions thank you item 11.0 teaching and learning curriculum well good evening i would like to bring before the board the outdoor education program for 2122 which is camp kern this is a three-day two-night uh overnight field trip for may 2nd through the 4th for maddox and sherwood elementary may 4th through the 6th for aaron summit elementary may 11th through the 13th for mercer and wilson elementary and this would be for all fifth graders in our school district in all six elementary schools this takes a great amount of planning so that's where we're putting it for you today so we can start to plan those excursions with our directors of camp kern there
056is a cost of 150 per student which includes transportation meals accommodations and the activities that will take place in camp kern there are full and partial scholarships available for students that need financial assistance through the building level it is recommended by the superintendent that the board approve our outdoor education program for the 2122 school year no questions thank you mr buck while bob's heading back i want to thank all the principals mr buck also kim pence this is a great opportunity for our students and i'm glad to see it's back uh another indication that covid is moving out of our world and we're trying to get back to some normalcy this is a fantastic opportunity and a partnership we have to make good things happen for kids so thank you bob i appreciate it i'm
057sorry [Laughter] i am 12.0 teaching and learning student services thank you for clearing the room mr fellows [Laughter] teaching and learning has two items 12.1 and 12.2 the first is an overnight trip by our deca students which are marketing students 48 11th and 12th graders and four chaperones plan to travel to columbus for the deca state conference on march 11th and 12th which is a friday and saturday um there's a 100 student cost to this trip which includes and i've listed in the agenda their lodging registration meal and great oaks will be providing the transportation this is a satellite affiliate with the great oaks this particular these particular courses item 12.2 is an agreement with hamilton county developmental disability services for the 22-23 school year and this agreement is required by hamilton county dds to
058provide students services to students for districts in hamilton county for the 22-22 school 22-23 school year it is for one year and they ask for each district to inform them of their intent to continue services each and every year for students in grades k to 12. and this is for students with very very intensive needs special education students and the placements are determined by the iep team at this time and for many years up to this time we have not had a student placed at bobby b fairfax school we have been serving our students in the school district who have those um intense needs um but again we have to we plan to bring this to your attention every year um the superintendent recommends that the board approve items 12.1 and 12.2 as noted in
059the agenda thank you item 13.0 treasurer's report the treasurer's monthly report begins with the donations received over the month of january donations totaled seventeen thousand eight hundred and twenty four dollars over the last month moving on to item thirteen point one b this is the cash activity statement which presents all district funds it shows the beginning balance at july 1st which was the beginning of our fiscal year it also shows fiscal year revenues to date fiscal year expenditures to date and the last column of numbers you see there is the cash balance as of january 31st item c presents the general fund our five-year forecast funds it presents the receipts for the month and the fiscal year to date ended january 21st and as you can see january as typical was a high cash flow
060month we wish all months brought in as much as the month of january however during the month of jan january we received just over 5.4 million as an advance on our first half 2022 real estate collections in addition the state continues to implement the new school funding model and as a true up for the first few months of the year the district received just under 3.7 million just to catch up from the previous months on implementation and again wouldn't it be nice if we receive that every month moving on to items d and e that presents the expenditures in the general fund again for the month in the fiscal year today it ended january 31st as you hear me say every month expenditures are very stable so we would expect 1 12 of our annual
061budget to be spent every month and at the end of january with 58 of our fiscal year complete we have spent 57.6 of our appropriations so again spending tracking right where we would expect it to be in this fiscal year the january 31st bank reconciliations and investments are presented in agenda items 13.1 f and g and appropriation adjustment detail is an agenda item 13.1 h these appropriations are adjusted due to actual revenues either exceeding or following short what was originally expected so we want to adjust our spending authority to to match those revenues i respectfully request that the board approve items 13.18 through 13.1 h as part of the consent motion beginning with agenda item 9.1 make a motion to approve items 9.18 through 13.1 h linda linda made it katie seconded mrs husfeld yes
062mrs stewart yes mr bibb yes mrs jonas yes dr rasmussen yes item 14.0 board discussion i might i can start if you guys don't care sounds good i just wanted to start by saying a big thank you to all of our teachers and our staff administration janitors bus drivers everybody thank you so much for going above and beyond for our students and making sure every day that they're able to learn i sincerely thank you for that it's been a real learning process these last 47 days so i wanted to especially say thank you to scott elena and administration for answering all of my questions i know i've been asking a lot so thank you for that um congratulations to mr foley and his hard work to be able to graduate early i think that's amazing
063so congratulations on that and i'm excited for camp kern i'm glad we're able to start our outdoor educational programs again i think that's really great for our students so i hope everybody has a good time and they get to enjoy the activities so thank you thank you anybody else [Laughter] okay item 15.0 reports to the board of education mrs housefeld i have a report for you for 15.1 okay if you're ready for that i'm ready yep um the economic development committee meeting did occur i was unable to be there in person but i do have uh notes from the meeting that were presented to me it was the first meeting of the year and so there was a lot of there were a lot of introductions in that meeting and people getting to know each
064other they did discuss real estate update on new neighborhoods within our school system and monitoring that closely and the relationship with the economic development committee and us and me personally being a part of that it's nice to to hear what's going on and how that impacts our schools and i can tell you that the committee is extremely mindful of the school district everyone from the youth in our school to the senior citizens and all of us in between and trying to provide the best community possible so it's always fun to hear what the planning looks like and how they're moving forward with that they did create subcommittees for key sites within our community to be able to keep an eye on those for potential development and opportunities on those sites they talked about kellogg avenue
065and the opportunities that exist in our in anderson township to offer opportunity on the kellogg avenue sort of corridor as an entrance into our community and they also did talk about the pool project that we have been discussing and they are more than happy to coordinate and assist as needed to try to help the school district or partner with the school district probably better stated to try to design some methodology to deal with those resources within our community and the next meeting will be on march 22nd so i'd like to thank amy richardson she's the president of the economic development committee and glad she's there and i look forward to continued work i see you here tonight hi thank you scott next item is 5 15.2 finance committee report we'll meet on the 24th item
06615.3 human resources committee report we are meeting on the 23rd 15.4 legislative liaison report nothing to report on legislative issues 15.5 policy committee report we have not met yet but we are scheduling a meeting for next week the last set of policy updates were in december so i think the the next expected is in march so 15.6 safety committee report we have not met yet there are big things going on though in that area i can tell you so that's going to be an exciting committee meeting it's a very positive one that's coming up and john you won't clear the room that day there's a lot of people that are going to be participating so that's good news for the district 15.7 teaching and learning committee we met last month i reported on that at
067the last meeting there's nothing new happened thank you 15.8 technology and facilities committee we met last month as well we went over that in the previous board meeting we got we need to schedule another meeting though item 15.9 forest hills foundation report good evening did anybody else leave the room rob it's totally you it's only you [Laughter] good evening my name is stacey gillard and i'm the executive director of the forest hills foundation at the last board meeting i know that i shared some information about our upcoming event the forest hills 5k we're back in person which is awesome and i would just like to point out who is ready to have some fun because i feel like we need fun and bring this community together for an outstanding event around promoting physical health for
068all you joggers runners we're going to hear from a couple of them in just a second as well as also may is mental if you go to the next slide may is mental health awareness month um and so we are also going to really focus in on creating awareness i was really glad to see that out of the board priorities and had a good conversation with mr pebbles today that part of mental wellness is also understanding and having information and resources and so we are at the 5k this you're going to have several organizations there that will actually be able to share resources with parents community members kids um that we have so many great organizations um that are right here in anderson that do such great work so we're excited about that um so
069save the date saturday may 14th part of me is like may seems like a long time away and then you're like and it's here so but i have two awesome people with me tonight so i'm not going to talk any longer this year we looked at having what we're calling race ambassadors and so what that means is that they are full in they're ready to commit to participating sharing information about the 5k as well as helping fundraise for the event too so i'm going to first turn it over to zoe and then josh hi i'm zoe i'm a junior at anderson i'm part of hope squad i play lacrosse i am really involved and but the thing that really spoke to me for this 5k was the mental health aspect it's really important for me
070it's always been a part of my life and i think it's important to get information out to people hi my name is joshua owens when the opportunity to be a race ambassador for the force hills 5k came up i said yes i'm going to do this i didn't take a second to think about it because the race means so much to me i'm so passionate about this race when i was 28 years old i was diagnosed with heart failure and i you know lost the ability to do anything on my own i had to depend on somebody else to do everything i couldn't get out of a chair on my own couldn't um go to the kitchen to get a glass of water on my own i took several years to [Music] kind of rebuild
071my health and i did this through like making small goals like take extra couple steps to get across the room take a couple extra steps to the mailbox maybe next month i'll try to get to the neighbor's mailbox and i eventually set a goal like i'm going to do a 5k i chose the for sales 5k because you know it's local i see the signs for all all over the place and i did that in 2018 it wasn't about running it was just get to the end of this race however i could um but i wanted to do it like healthy and happy so i could celebrate at the end i did this race and loved it there's their kids from all of the elementary schools um there are so many parents there we had
072i think marching band people one year there were cheerleaders one year it's fabulous came home from that race and i told my wife like who was there to support me but um i said i have to be a runner i don't know what i need to do to do this but i am going to be a runner and it's because of that race so i've done it this is this year's gonna be my fifth year doing it in a row the last two years really boring no one's been there i've gotten up i did them same race day same course same weekend i did them by myself three o'clock in the morning so i don't get hit by cars um but i'm you know i'm just so passionate about this race so every i know
073this is not live stream today but hopefully when people watch this everyone watching it sign up come out come do it it's great say hi to me you know i just i love the race so thank you i appreciate the opportunity thank you josh i had the pleasure of hearing your speech at the foundation meeting the other night and it has impacted me and again this evening it's an impactful story and it's one of it's just it's excellence at its best and it is another person who has been touched by the the forest hill school district who now is giving back and leading something that is so important it was important to you and it's important to our community and it certainly adds value and as well i certainly thank you for for helping us
074out with this appreciate it so much thank you yeah can i say this yeah you sure can one more thing i forgot to say so i'm a parent in the district um i have five kids they've all gone through the district summit nagel anderson um i went to anderson my wife went to anderson so just so you guys know like i'm a part of the community i've been here for a long time so you know thank you awesome yeah well and just the last thing i want to share is i think this is another great example of how we continue to bring people together right i think people are inspired in different ways i think it's important for our community and for the foundation to highlight this event of how we bring people together as
075well as promote physical health as well as mental health so thanks to zoe and josh we have about 12 other staff members parents and students that have signed on to be race ambassadors so if you go to the next slide everything is going to be sent out tomorrow um as nicole writing sits in the back who's in charge of like the website and is freaking out no kidding but we're really excited so everything will kick off tomorrow if you have any questions let us know um also josh will be able to share his story on social media about what he's doing and so we're going to be really intentional about the ambassadors and their kind of journey and promoting that until may 14th so thank you for all you do for our community for our
076district and we're really excited to see you at may 14th thank you very much uh okay item 15.10 forest hills teachers association um they are um not presenting this evening item 16.0 executive session there will be no executive session this evening and item 17.0 um adjournment the next regular board meeting will be march 16 2022. i make a motion to adjourn the regular meeting of the forest hills board of education i'll make a motion second mrs stewart yes mr bibb yes mrs jonas yes dr rasmussen yes mrs hospital yes there we go