Forest Hills Board of Education Meeting - 11/22/21

001foreign good evening we have two students from turpin high school that are being recognized one of which will be a second time member of the all-state choir and we have jake goldstein and alyssa burnside [Applause] hello everyone i'm stacy haney choir director at anderson high school and i am so thrilled and proud to recognize jenna calhoun who will be participating in this year's all-state also a a tenor nathan canar was recommended for this and he could not be here tonight but jenna is here so jenna thank you [Applause] on any given month in the state of ohio there are anywhere from we have two more and finally i'll invite my colleague toby biederman to come up as well we'll introduce our two all-state band band members stay back for the mic uh first is sudaharan

002who will be playing in the percussion section and grady bryant who will be playing in the clarinet section [Applause] and scott take it away so on any given month in the state of ohio there are anywhere from 609 to 611 school districts and we have 10 students in the forest hills school district that are part of the obviously the state choir state performing arts ensembles and musical instruments it speaks highly of the the dedication of those students as well as their parents and the support that they receive from our community and the excellent educational instruction that they receive along the way so i was really excited when i saw the elementary students having been a high school principal i expect because we are so good in forest hills that we're going to have this type

003of uh expertise show up at the state level um but it was kind of cool to see the little kids as involved as well so i'm really happy about that and it does speak volumes about our program about our parental support and our community so thank you all and congratulations to all of you and happy thanksgiving thank you paperwork i get a motion to commend our young students item 5.2 and 5 or 5.1 and 5.2 i'll make a motion to commend students naomi drake sarah grooby journey j caroline nierges for achieving for their achievement and that a certificate of commendation be presented to them mrs cropper was there a second no second sorry dr rasmussen yes mrs bissinger yes miss joyce yes mrs meyer yes sector heist yes item 5.2 oh yeah sure i'll make

004a motion to commend students jenna calhoun nathan gnar alyssa burnside jake goldstein sarvesh sudahran grady and grady bryant for their achievement and that a certificate of commendation be presented to them second ms cropper dr rasmussen yes mrs bissinger yes miss joyce yes mrs meyer yes dr heiss yes at this point i usually give them the green light to leave but they beat me to it one step ahead all right item 6.1 osba presentation mr steve horton thank you thank you everybody and thank you board of education uh mr prebbles uh ms cropper for having me here tonight to speak to you i am a senior board and management consultant for the ohio school boards association it's been my privilege to be able to come here and work with the community advisory group that was put

005together and uh and worked through um actually a number of issues that i'm just going to briefly report on tonight um board you have a report that i had submitted to you and uh so i was just going to speak to that um in a few minutes tonight i will say that uh i've had the opportunity to do quite a bit of both small group and large group facilitation in my time with the ohio school boards association and we kind of do that in two ways one is we meet with school leadership teams school board superintendent treasurer we work with them usually in shorter single sessions um and that's one type but the other type is we do a lot of strategic planning and other work that involves larger groups we've had groups as large

006as 70 to 80 people uh in those kind of facilitations that happen over a series of meetings and cover much broader work and that would be a closer description of what we did here with the the cag and while those facilitations are are challenging they're always challenging because we can't really say this is exactly how it's going to go we try to put together a process and work through that process there are so many variables with a diverse group of people in working through uh the things that we want to try and get through and and uh to outcome with those facilitations and so they're a little hard to work with and i will say that of all the work i've done this was particularly challenging um and we knew that coming in that it

007would be that we were going to talk about some very emotional uh very personal things and uh in the bringing this group together we knew that uh this was not a room where everybody was seeing eye to eye on things and that we were going to have to in a way that was hopefully of civil discourse and to an end work through that stuff and so it was it was very challenging and i would be not honest if i said i didn't come in with uh a bit of trepidation at times in working with the group but i appreciate those who worked with us and and were a part of it thank you for the participation we really started out the whole thing uh coming in to discuss the whole idea of uh critical race

008theory crt we wanted to really kind of work through three overarching objectives and those were to ensure that crt and its doctrines are not intentionally taught to students nor included in staff personal development in transparent fashion acknowledge the merits of the care team relationship and wellness cornerstone goals and prevent the inclusion of crt explicit content in the future develop a recommendation presentation for the fhsd board of education consideration uh of areas of relationship and wellness cornerstone policies processes content and communication so those were the three objectives and and we worked to work through those um and try to get through all three of those i uh my colleagues and i that were involved in this uh have looked back on it and we would uh say very transparently that if we could go back and

009do anything differently we would have stated those three objectives much more clearly at the very beginning of the process as we work through it but those were the the overarching goals of the work that we were doing um and so um for the purpose of uh coming into this we knew that we did not want to simply walk into a room of people and open up the topic of crt again very highly politicized very emotional and we felt that if we'd open that up we probably would have ended up in uh very much of a political debate that really wasn't going to serve the district or this administration and you as a board of education moving forward so but we did come into it very explicitly to talk about and try to get into the

010things that the group told us at the very beginning were most important to them we heard that mental health of students issues with bullying and and the social and emotional well-being of staff and students were really the top three things that came out of that question what do you want to get out of these meetings we also heard about uh suicide prevention yes we did hear about critical race theory and concerns about that uh in the curriculum uh and there were people who spoke to political divisiveness in the community um and the presence of that and uh the issues that's creating for the staff and and for the students that attend schools here so uh so we didn't want to dodge that but we wanted to come into it very uh intentionally uh into that

011work as we move forward and so we learned also as we moved into the work that really at the top of the list of what we heard back from people and this was through dialogue it was through things that they shared on chart paper on post-it notes there were quite a few things shared with us but to kind of sum that up that we say here that issues related to student mental health bullying suicide includes in an inclusive environment were of a high price priority we heard that in a lot of different ways that the idea of an inclusive environment something that would allow opportunity for all students is is needs to be uh of a high priority that uh issues related to student self-identification self-worth uh and in an inclusive environment are also a

012very high priority um that students should feel safe and secure at schools the idea of inclusivity in schools also included ideas of safety and feeling welcome that sense of belonging to something resonated resources should be devoted to individual student needs not classification of groups there's a was a great concern that students were being put into buckets classified in buckets um and and being tracked that way and so uh we we definitely heard that loud and clear the terminology here's here's something that we kind of took away that terminology used in the field of education has different interpretations among the community in in very clear ways and i can speak to that that when we got into the work our initial approach was to talk about the four words that really seem to be at the

013crux of of discontent and we even had a couple people in early on when we said you know what are the issues that we need to be talking about equate the work of the care team with crt and the idea of the four words diversity belonging inclusion and equity they have become known as an acronym dbie um and so i want to speak to that a little bit um the the words were stated in a couple of cases to equal crt and so from an educational standpoint um really there was an effort to try and learn where is that where where is the the discontent with the four words um that dbie and uh so we started with definitions clinical definitions that were brought in um honestly from an outside consultant that were brought into

014professional development in i think 2018 and 2019 right and they were related to a framework that got into the area of relationship and the administration in looking at that taking a critical look at that very freely states that there are aspects of that that do cross over into that idea of crt critical race theory or the idea that that we have laws and policies in our country and this is a legal framework that was developed there's originally critical race theory that uh that allow for systemic racism that allow for oppression to happen and that in that it's very easy to say that if you're white in america you're an oppressor if you're not you're being oppressed and that is a very black and white statement about a very very complex issue and honestly a high

015level legal framework critical race theory and talking to many legal people including our own attorney and he said osba they didn't study it in their legal pursuits but it is a much higher level legal framework that is studied and so with that said um we we wanted to set out to first of all find out what the issues are and and we did find out that the the original definitions were very clinical were very hard there was a thought that language should be softer um not as in your face as i i think for lack of a better way to put it and that as we work through that we heard that and and so we worked with the group to develop you know what what should these definitions be and the reason why those

016words and the definitions were important and i'll go back to that idea of terminology in the field of education those words diversity belonging inclusion and equity actually mean a lot to educators in the world of public education those who are working in the field would tell you that you know first of all if we're going to do our job effectively with all of the students that we have and i don't care what community is those students are coming from so many different backgrounds um there are so many different things that they bring with them from their own home life and and upbringing and circumstance that can be significant obstacles to being able to learn effectively in the classroom and so as as we got into that that diversity part of it for educators is is

017a necessary thing understanding where the children come from what are their obstacles what do we have to get past belonging we heard that from the group um in in more than one way that you know children need to belong they need to feel like they are part of something bigger themselves and and that with that dovetailing right in with that is inclusion that they are included that they are not uh segregated or put into buckets or tracked um that part of it i think everybody would agree is is vitally important and all that leads that word equity a troubling word for a lot of people but equity in education really means do our children have access to the curriculum do they have access to the ability to be able to learn can we help them

018past those obstacles that they bring with them in whatever areas they need that and help them excel and grow and and really be the best students they can be so those four words um as they are to educators are vitally important and that's why you know admittedly we spent a lot of time on it and i will also admit that we spent a lot more time than we intended to um kind of bringing that to a close and and i'm sorry that a lot of people um really had problems with that and i understand why um because we did spend more time on on those words and those definitions than we needed to but i think the definitions that came out of that speak to the words much more in a public education setting and

019for what educators need to do and so so we worked through that um and we also wanted to get to which we which we did and i appreciate the people who really did work hard on coming up with recommendations because ultimately that's what we wanted to bring to the board to consider and you know candidly this is going to be recommendations or work that the new board coming in may or may not work with we wanted to make it clear to the group that these are recommendations they're not mandates they're not demands they're simply what we want you to consider moving forward so we felt it was important to feed those back and to get some kind of idea of priority and we had uh 23 people respond to an electronic survey we put all

020of the recommendations and there were many of them uh into a survey and asked them please rate these in terms of your own import personal importance one through five and we're looking for consensus you know not a majority vote but consensus is a majority thought or idea or opinion um that is shared by a majority of a group um and and there may be aspects of that that you don't necessarily agree with but where do we come to consensus well we looked at the ones that ended up at a 4.5 or higher where we seem to have a much clearer idea majority of people that supported and interestingly enough maybe not surprisingly the top ones had everything to do with bullying there was one that got five out of five from people when it was

021give students tools for how to respond to bullying that idea of bullying in the schools was and still is a big issue and it's something that the district needs to and must work with moving forward um not easy you know and and then right behind that was giving administration and staff tools to deal with it and to help students better deal with it so those rose to the top behind that were very clear recommendations about uh relationships again this goes to the idea of how do we build relationship not just between students in the school but from between student and staff it's been a focus of the administration and the staff and and definitely the recommendation um from uh from the group was to continue that moving forward and to make sure that relationship one

022of them relationship resources not focused solely on race resources should be reflective of all students of our population and so and it's important to note too that if we talk about that dbie those four words four educators none of that has to do with race um but it has everything to do with the individual student uh and how that student comes into the district um and so uh so you have those recommendations and you have all of them and how they scored there is not anywhere close to consensus that the work of the care team moving forward i'll just say that that from the group that scored the lowest the idea that that work should be discontinued um there was very strong support that yes it should continue how it continues is going to be

023the work of the board and the administration as they work with the staff moving forward i would also say and this is just from me to you in in going through this work and something to think about moving forward that in whatever fashion you do it the professional develop needs to in some way the professional development needs to in some way get the feedback from or input from people in the community the parents and the community members that are investing in the school and that are invested in the welfare of the students in the schools um and so not sure how that work goes but that's further consideration and and that is just something that i think would be important for the district moving forward um and that again how you move forward with this

024well that would be the next step but probably the most important work is just knowing what questions you need to be asking and and where you need to be focusing your work moving forward and i think there are elements of that that that did come out of this work so so that's what i wanted to share thank you any questions or comments well thank you alrighty thank you thank you and again it was it was it was a privilege to be able to be here to work through this with the people in this community with your administration i grew from it personally and i will definitely take that with me so thank you all i do have some comments okay i wrote a whole bunch of notes i'll try to be brief um i appreciate

025that you talked about these terms in the context of education because that i think has been conflated and you know sort of distorted into something that it's not so inclusion means we want everybody in the room to feel included that's not a law school theory that's a simple content concept that as a teacher i'm a teacher i want all of my students and i'm going to call them kids they're adults all of my kids to feel like they are connected in our community in my classroom equity in ohio by law we're supposed to provide equitable education to every student that is not a law school theory right that is um giving students what they need that's not a law school theory that means math intervention reading intervention the to to label those as a law

026school theory is harmful to the students that need those things and that's just scratching the surface of intervention students with special needs but on the flip side that also is how we did last year where we added additional math courses because we have students that need additional challenges right so we gave them extra harder classes that sort of thing um so it's not taking away we gave so that context i think is so critical for our community at large to understand the new board coming in to understand that that is what we mean when we say equity in education these these terms they're not mutually exclusive right like this unfortunately i think what came out of that was this idea that um they can't be true at the same time and that is not true

027right if i say hey guess what it's diversity week and we're going to have a whole hall full of different art from different countries is that me teaching critical race theory which theory of relativity i mean the theory of what i mean it's a theory in law school again by the way that's that's diversity in education that is not something else that is being mischaracterized um so i just i'm glad that you really focus on what those mean in the education world because that is very very important um and i also want to thank mr prebbles too for moving forward with this concept um he it was challenging right from everything that we have heard as a board um and yet he's stepped forward and did it and he's received flack for it as well

028and you know everybody on this board can attest to this when we got the applications for the cag we were surprised at how many applications we got a couple people did not reside in anderson or newtown and they were ineligible one person could not provide a driver's license or anything that showed their residency until the thing got started and then finally was able to show proof that that has also been sort of distorted and used against mr prebbles as well there's no breach of contract there are administrative guidelines that people need to be aware of and that is not the board that's mr prebles and when we got that many applicants he called us every one of us and said you know if this many people in our community want to have their voices heard

029on this issue should i really be saying no we're only going to take 10 and go through that process and for the record i had a very very long like three hour meeting with the vice president of diversity and inclusion at xavier um and she told me when you do things like this and you facilitate meetings like this it is very challenging to have large groups we we never do this we don't recommend this because it's difficult and i did share that but bigger picture how upset would this community have been had had mr prebbles shut people out the outrage would have been bad on both sides i i firmly believe that and despite what i personally felt was the path for facilitating something like this i understood that and everybody on the board understood

030that and said yeah you're right we can't shut out this many people if they want to be on here and everyone had their you know their chance and i you know i just wanted to comment on those terms and provide that context but also to almost clear the air of some of this nonsense that was kind of circulated out there unfairly um when at the end of the day this was about a group this large was about the fact that dang we don't want to shut out all of these people let's bring them all to the table throw it out there and let's you know have you all come in and do your work and i know it wasn't hard i'm very appreciative of your time and your colleagues time um so thank you thank

031you i i will say one more quick comment and and i mean sincerely that mr prebble spoke to the 611 districts in the state of ohio they're members of the ohio school boards association one district of the 611 has reached out in a way that uh forest hills did and said let's try to bring people together um so the courage to do that work i think needs to be acknowledged and i have a comment along those lines actually um you know this whole time um i was struck by the irony deep irony that the goal of all of this was inclusion and belonging and it led to double the division so i regret that i regret that we were all a part of that and i hope that this revealed some things that will help

032fix that in the future um the other thing that i the other irony i kept noticing was that we kept hearing the phrase words matter for like two or three years on this board and that if a word is offensive or it really deeply bothers a certain group that we need to pay attention to it and this board did that so i believe we were very consistent in forcing this conversation and bringing it to the table like not many other districts do but we won't make progress until everyone respects each other so the bullying in the schools the kids feeling unsafe it's not going to happen until we adults do it so i don't know what this needs to look like but i just really hope that the next board finds a way to prioritize

033it in a way that really is palatable to everyone i mean that that's a call to action because it is important to everyone minus the the diverse of the divisive words so thank you mr horton i want to thank you kathy mcfarland and the team that came from osba who spent many many hours with our group i've had many conversations with many people in this room and others in our community regarding this subject matter it is the first time in my career where the answer has been so so difficult and where my actions inactions voice lack of voice commentary whatever in some instances was divisive for the first time in my career i could not find the middle ground and if i could do it all over again as mr horton said i would change

034a few things so i hope that you get a clear sense from me that this is work that is important to me because it is important to students it is important to the vitality of this school district to what we represent and who we are as a community and how we take care of our kids and ourselves so i have this big long statement that i was prepared to read tonight that i'm not going to read i'll let anyone see it who wants to that's not the point here i just want everyone in the room to know the final statements of my commentary is that i believe in forest hills deeply i believe in the kids i believe in our teachers i believe in our community i believe that we are a lighthouse district in

035the state of ohio and i believe that people follow our direction and so i am committed to the continuation of this conversation and discourse that is respectful that is open transparent and meets the needs of our students and the expectations of our community because at the end of the day what we provide to students and what they leave here with and how they influence the world that is our homework that is our legacy so anyone in this room outside of this room in this community that wants to come in and talk with me meet with my administrative team review information set the stage for a bright future and continued work in this arena i will meet you anywhere anytime that my wife approves because she's been away for a while waiting on me to come

036home but just know that it's important work if i've offended anyone along the way i apologize i did make mistakes along the way i have learned from those i am willing to come to the middle to do the best thing we possibly can for the kids of this school district thank you thank you thank you mr i'd like to say thank you for all that you've done for our district uh from our onboarding two years ago you've done a lot for for for us i know you've got some other things going on i appreciate you coming in and we as a border lifting you up so absolutely thank you thank you thank you thank you all right item 7.1 superintendent updates uh switching gears to more business of the board uh i wanted to provide

037an update to the board we've been talking for quite some time now about supply chain issues not only in this room but and in the school district but across the nation and we are not unlike other businesses in the uh in the country so we are dealing with the substitute teacher shortage and it is a real issue in our school district so as shared with the board's human resources committee in october forest hills school district is experiencing a shortage of substitute teachers we are not alone this is part of a national phenomenon which i just spoke to fill rates continue to drop across all of southwest ohio according to our comprehensive sub-solutions company that we work with uh regarding substitutes for perspective for everyone in the room in 2015 and 16 in that particular school

038year forest hills school district had a fill rate of 96 percent so 96 of our classrooms were filled at all times with substitutes through october of this year that fill rate has dropped to 85.2 percent now we can say that covid has a lot to do with that and i believe that it does that's down 11 percent over a period of five years but last year in the heart of covid our teachers absentee level it was 89 percent fill rate so our teachers have really uh and our and our other support staff have really done a great job of covering for each other during this time of difficulty with substitutes last year the covet 19 the district's fill rate was 89 percent so substitute shortages are real when positions are unfilled in our school district

039the burden of covering these classrooms falls largely to other teachers in the building who cover the class during their plan bell generally speaking it creates a very hectic situation in our schools especially at the middle schools and high schools throughout the buildings sometimes teachers aren't eating sometimes they don't get to the bathroom for seven and a half hours and most times they are giving up precious planning time otherwise devoted to students and to professional learning that they are involved in to better influence instructional practices in the classroom so ultimately it impacts students in many different ways and our teaching staff i would say is really getting overwhelmed with the amount of times they are having to cover each other's classes because of the shortage the current daily sub rate in the school district and this

040will come up in the hr depart report later on is 90 which is about 12 an hour for a substitute to come into our school district it is below the average in all 29 of the 29 schools that we are compared to in this in our consortium and so we are not keeping pace with other school districts who have increased that uh pay we certainly don't want to increase things at such a rate that it's going to influence the five-year forecast that we're about to hear of later but we do want to try to increase for daily substitutes for building subs that are staying in our buildings and lastly for those long-term substitutes who will come on if there is a little bit more of a competitive price one of the things we know about

041forest hills i spoke of it just a few moments ago people like to come to forest hills because they engage with great students great families and the environment is is very wholesome and so we have not needed to really spend a lot of time thinking about increasing costs because of that advantage of working or substituting in our school district so while we believe strongly that these increases are necessary to remain competitive among other school districts we do not believe that this decision will ultimately solve all of our substitute issues and as a result of that mr fellowes and i more mr fellows than me and his team are continuing to research and explore other opportunities within our community with partners that we have in our community who might be able to assist us with this

042issue so this will appear as item k in tonight's human resources report what the what the goal is is to increase those rates a little bit to try to entice people to stay with us and to make sure that our teachers and students have uh days that are not stressful and they are actually in quality learning situations throughout their daily experience so that'll come up later on this evening if you have any questions i'd be happy to answer i just want to thank you for doing what you do especially to do we can to raise those salaries for ourselves because i've known i've talked to a few of them and they work hard so thanks for that and i want to thank the teachers and other staff for everything they've done we see this in

043the cafeteria we see it in transportation department see it everywhere and there are a lot of people putting both hands and a foot on the wheel to keep us moving forward as we get as we navigate these very difficult times thank you all right thank you uh item 8.1 budget hearing organizational meeting i first like the i think we everyone here knows so congratulate our new board members um one of the first things that we do in the new year is a budget hearing which is pretty quick but then a organizational meeting where we set the agenda and committees and dates and things and that has to be done on the first 15 days of january so i thank you scott for reaching out and getting a hold of all of the board members in

0442022 the organizational meeting is recommended that the organizational meeting will be on january 6th at 6 30 pm not okay and our we don't do the pro tem until december is that right right so this is just to set the the meeting for um the organizational meeting which will be at january 6 2022 at 6 30 p.m in the central office building can i get a motion to approve i'll make a moment okay i'll make a motion to approve the organizational meeting date of january 6 2022 at 6 30 pm at central office as presented second second ms cropper dr rasmussen yes mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger yes miss joyce yes dr heiss yes item 8.2 board discussion so on november 3rd i had the pleasure of attending the forest hill council meeting i think

045some of them are here and i was just as always very impressed with what they do so with that i thought that i think it would be a good idea to request that the forest hills council which is the pto pta be added to the list of reports to the board agenda we all know how hard they work and they give their time they do what they can to bring joy to students as well as supporting teachers so i need to know do we have we have to vote on that well we could i believe we just added to the agenda the the question just did that come up with the meeting that they wanted to have i mentioned it to them to all of them that were there i think there were about 20

046people no i know did they want to do it yes okay let's make it volunteering them to come in so i know um no that that can be just added to to the agenda do you want this to happen in december that's fine well we can reach out to the forest hills council president and see uh what she would like so no that i think that'd be that would be good we so just for the for the record we we meet with forest hills council once a month at the first wednesday of the month in the morning um they have their meeting it's made up of uh all the pta presidents vice presidents um and then various other you know there's a forest hills county our forest hills foundation representative and about 20 25 people

047that uh that that kind of run all of the our volunteer organizations um the uh superintendent and the board member generally goes to the first part of that meeting answers any questions uh they're i always consider them kind of the lifeblood of the district and that they can bring any type of frank questions whatever they want to us we can provide them with answers or provide them with more information so um yeah i think that's good sounds good okay so as we get into the organizational meeting uh mrs choice uh if if we do it in december perfectly fine uh as we think about the upcoming year uh sometimes board members give that report as a committee report at the end of the meeting on behalf and so because uh the new board coming in

048like the current board decides who will go to those meetings and who will represent it might be between them to make a decision as to do you want me to give that report or do you prefer that to report come from the council so i you know as as time goes on and our new board starts to set its course those are probably some of the things that they will be uh making some decisions about but i think it would be fine to have i mean they do so much work for our school district raised so much money and influence that students stay in such positive ways uh having them here as a voice i i think is an appropriate thing how that happens would be the next decision to be made sure any other

049discussion i just have a brief update on the aquatics committee we had our first meeting last week and mr eckert did a great presentation of sort of where we've been so that everyone in the room probably about 20 people in the room coaches former board members current future board members community members swimming parents were in there and it was meant to sort of bring everyone onto the same page so we all were starting with the same information now we are we have a google doc where we're collecting questions and more information that people want our next meeting will be in the next few weeks and it is going to be what do you call it divergent convergent thinking so we're going to throw out a bunch of different ideas and possibilities and you know it's

050okay to have very different diverse ideas here and then see if we can't come with a couple recommendations for the board in february so i think the goal is a couple ideas so that the new board isn't starting from scratch and it's got some community input behind it so they can actually pick up some speed any questions from you all on that okay all right now on to public comments we have 13 public comments which puts us at 2 minutes and 19 seconds what's that there's one more so 13 14. we'll keep it at 2 19. that's okay uh so first up i'm trying to get names right jen siolino or chillino cielino okay i was trying to get my and uh is up and uh mana holley or mona hale is on deck thank

051you my name is jen ciolino i'm the mother of three students in the forest hills school district my family relocated to the region just over four years ago when i took a role as a vice president in the technology organization of a global fortune 50 company we selected forest hills because it offers a focus on the arts including theater opportunities beginning as early as elementary school and our now teenager is very artistically inclined and is in the english honors program at turpin the school also the district also has a strong reputation for supporting cognitively gifted children and my two youngest are part of that program and engaged in extended learning opportunities my children are biracial and my teen is lgbt my sixth grader was recently told by a peer that quote black people scare me

052his father is black and he came home quite confused and troubled by what he had heard my now teenager told me as early as age that he knew he had to behave better than the other kids because people see him differently because he is black i share these anecdotes for a couple of reasons one reason is that my children have been facing an experience of racial awareness from a very early age in a way that impacts their lives directly this is real even if others have not had those same experiences allowing their experiences to be understood and valued is part of how they will be free to actualize their best selves i also want to share this because i want to offer my gratitude and my thanks for the ways that their teachers and the

053school administrators have helped my children feel welcome and embraced as they have as they have adjusted to new schools and felt quite out of place i see value in every opportunity for our teachers to understand the individuals that each of our precious children are and to understand the unique challenges each of our children face as a global leader in a 65 billion dollar company i assure you that embracing diversity and helping our children to embrace differences is essential to collaboration and to keeping america at the forefront of our global economy i support the efforts of our amazing school district and i request please the teachers are afforded the opportunity to continue okay [Applause] i respectfully ask that we follow the rules i we're passionate but there are the rules the one thing that we can

054do again you can yell at us you can do whatever you want in your two minutes and 19 seconds but i respectfully ask okay all right okay thank you thank you my name is monica martin's on deck and i have a second grade son at wilson and an eighth grade sun at nagel i am here to thank this board for your tireless dedication to the students of the forest hills community time and again i have seen you make tough decisions always with the well-being of the students as the ultimate goal you have no hidden agendas you are not driven by fear but by love as a community we will not always agree but your leadership has given us the peace of mind that you put what what's best for our kids at the heart of

055every decision i will continue supporting leslie as she assumes the role of veteran member soon i want to give a special thanks to forrest heisz for his and his family's combined decades of service to the forest hills community i also want to extend my gratitude to the teachers counselors psychologists and staff of the district you are our champions keeping the social emotional and academic needs of our kids as your main focus your top priority as a former teacher myself i understand and appreciate the type of selfless person who becomes an educator and i am grateful for and trust their unwavering commitment to unleashing the potential of every one of our students the commitment to caring runs deep finally i want to thank scott for his leadership again you've made decisions with students top of mind

056and you've been open to guidance from experts in health science and many other fields scott thank you also for keeping the community apprised of what our teachers are working on in their learning communities on professional development days we can be assured that student centered defines this school district we are good people i will continue my support and engagement in the important work we do here let us keep our focus on the kids so we can continue co-creating a supportive world and future for them in which they can thrive thank you thank you john martin is up and eric chizik is on deck i would like to take the time to this time to thank the current board for their service and for allowing us to hold public comment at the board meetings it is a

057great precedent to set for the future during your leadership many great things have happened in the district forest hill school district received recognition from niche.com as an a-plus district our educators rank in the top one percent nationwide u.s news and world report once again ranked our high schools among the top four percent in ohio both high schools have national merit scholars and finalists again this year forest hill school district is being recognized on the state level for their for positive behavioral intervention and support which is important for growing adults student mental health has been at the forefront of concern recently thank you for recognizing that everyone needs a safe and welcoming place to learn the future is uncertain but i know this district is in a good place right now because of you thanks again

058and i wanted to thank uh thanks scott for putting together the cag group i thought it was uh very beneficial to be to be a part of that and hear different all the different sides i could tell that everyone involved in facilitating that uh deeply cared about the students and deeply cared about uh the the teachers and the faculty and i really appreciate the work that we did there and the work that we tried to do there i know it didn't exactly work out as planned but but thanks again and i appreciate it thank you erica chezek is up and sue wood is on deck good evening my name is erica chizik um i want to thank the current board you have been through some of the best and worst that the community can be

059with covid and the mascot changes racial incidents and bullying but you chose every time to prioritize the voices of the students and the needs of them and occasionally [Music] you made sure that minorities and equality were forefront i know that for some of you that that probably lost the election and um that was a sacrifice that was extremely brave and important that we should probably all remember i hope that the teachers know considering that four teachers died last week in butler county prematurely that we will do our best to ensure that the students and not our vendettas are our priority we will support the teachers and the students no matter what the next four years may bring i feel that a lack of compassion that has been spoken about in some of the plans may

060be a detriment to this board and this community and i want all children to know whether they have a dad or they are a minority or a majority that they are valued and welcome at fhsd and i hope that the new school board remembers that that children are our priority in this room thank you next up sue wood and ellen buscani is on deck can i just say ditto what sean said because he stole my whole speech [Music] now i wanted to bring up i don't know if you all received this this tells us exactly who our school district is we are awesome sean already told you all of the good things in here about our district but i wanted to say thank you so much to the current board thank you to our passports

061you all along with our amazing administrators amazing teachers and outstanding staff is what got us here i haven't always agreed with all of your decisions and i've probably been vocal about that at times and i just want you to know that i still believe in you and i appreciate all that you've done so thank you all very much thank you is up and kristen kala kelownik close okay hi i'm ellen bischani i'm a mom of three alumni and i not to sound like a broken record but i really want to thank all of you guys for the work you've done i've been so impressed at how you've kept your cool kept an open mind um through a lot of adversity and you know the the challenges that we're facing as a society right now with

062covid with climate change are are too big for any of us to do alone so we need to find ways to work together to have civil discourse we need to work with people that are different than each than we are we need to listen to them and i i think that the education that our students are getting in forest hills is enabling that to happen i know from personal experience because my older two children are working in jobs right now where their interpersonal skills and and ability to work with people different than than themselves are are part of their success anderson township is not demographically representative of the rest of the county or the rest of our country and our kids are going to leave the township at some point my daughter has worked for

063a non-profit supporting chicago public schools for the past four years in a school that couldn't be more different than her elementary school air elementary she's been promoted to management and leads in a very diverse environment my son is working for cincinnati park district he's the only white person on his crew and the youngest and yet he's still respected by co-workers and supervisors because he he listens and respects his people that he works with and and he's getting great job uh job reviews and and i feel like he's going to have a really strong future there neither of them could have been this successful if they didn't treat people with respect and empathy and you know we really need to be intentional about teaching diversity thank you thank you thank you [Applause] next up christian colonic

064and kimberly oltof is on deck i'm stuck hi i'm kristen kalanick i was going to say a lot of stuff that sean said so i'll just cover a couple of things but mostly thank you to all of those of you who have served who have also sacrificed for your time for your family's time to do the desperate work that the district needs to make sure that we remain focused on the importance of being a destination district of attracting top talent both for teachers but also for families as they migrate into our community the metrics that's that shawn mentioned the performance metrics have been amazing you guys have kept our per student costs below state average in some cases as much as 5 000 less than student districts within driving and moving area that is an

065incredible achievement given all the challenges that you've faced over the last few years and i worry that the change over will not see those same performance metrics so i hope that as all of you transition out that you will find a way to continue to inspire to continue to advocate to continue to support both the parents but also the incoming board with your experience because they are going to have a lot to learn this is not for the faint of heart this is not for people who don't have experience with this kind of decision making or with this kind of community feedback we need your voices still and we hope that you'll maintain that engagement going forward so thank you for your time your family sacrifices and i hope you'll stay with us thank you

066thank you kimberly althoff and matt gaul is on deck good evening now that everyone's riffing half the content for everyone else's speeches has been used up um i am a product of the forest hills school district and i just moved back here from texas at the beginning of august because i was a good ap student in english thank you mrs williams i often find myself noticing themes in our society the theme that i have noticed since moving back to forest hills is one of noise not just the volume of the voices but also from a technical perspective fluctuations that obscure but don't contain meaningful data or relevant information in that sense the noise that we've been experiencing comes in very frustrating forms conspiracy theories that turn over at a rate we can't keep up with

067them and disappear as soon as their political usefulness has ended comes in the form of armchair experts who aren't willing to listen to the people who have dedicated their lives to making sure that someone else has value added it's frustrating making we have politicians making promises of changes and blatantly disregarding the truth it's a reality that none of us really appreciate living in so i want to thank scott and the board i feel like you spent the last few years being able to differentiate between what is noise and what is necessary making decisions that were difficult and personal and impacted your own lives in ways that not many people in this community would commit to taking we look forward to your continued involvement we think your voices are valuable and we look forward to hearing

068from you and making sure that the needs of our children don't get lost in this noise thank you thank you matt is up and martha veeman is on deck hello again for the second time tonight um again my name is matt gaul i'm the band director at anderson high school along with my colleague toby biederman and then i also direct the forest hills marching band along with joeshi over at turpin high school um the past couple months i've spoken about the successes of our marching band so far and i'm here to kind of wrap that up because we have actually finished our season we competed in two circuits this year the ohio ohio music education association then the mid-states band association which is kind of like a tri-state circuit with indiana ohio and kentucky about

069two weeks ago we went to the the finals for both of those circuits and at mid states finals we place the highest we ever have with the bronze medal third place super like great achievement and then at omea they they don't rank bands they just give a rating of one through five one being the best and um we got a superior rating which is an overall one and we were only we were one of 30 high school bands in the state to get straight ones in every single category um yeah and for you math types out there because i know mr fender is definitely a math type uh there are about 1300 uh high schools about 1300 high schools in the state of ohio and uh doing the math of 30 schools i got straight

070superior ratings that puts us in about the top two percent of schools in the state of ohio um as we close the marching season we turn our attention to winter concerts the anderson bands this is an invite for the board as well as anyone who's listening uh the anderson bands will perform in titus auditorium on wednesday december 8th at 7 pm turpin bands will perform in their auditorium on thursday december 9th at 7 p.m nago bands here in the cafetorium on sunday december 12th at 5 p.m maddox air and summit elementaries on monday monday december 13th at 7 p.m and then mercer wilson and sherwood elementary on tuesday december 14th at 6 30 pm i thank the board for your continued support and i look forward to working with all of you in the future

071as we continue on the school year i'll take a second to kind of bring up anyone watching this is if you ever get a chance to watch our bands in the marching band it is incredible it is like a uh broadway show you feel like you should pay 30 bucks just to go so it's uh this year uh the rise above and then two years ago with alice i mean the whole alice thing still rings in my head so uh so if you get a chance in the future it is it is worth going to a game usually it's almost always the term anderson game it is there but uh they usually play at least a couple times there's we had a band expo here and um and usually there's one at west clermont too

072it's worth it it's it's worth the price of a mission to to to watch them especially later on when the whole show is in its full glory so anyway i'll just give that a little so shout out and to pony on what forrest said our um our bands as individual bands were great but our bands combined are amazing and and it's a it's it's an awesome thing to see uh collaboration in that regard uh i wish we could do more of that and i'm not alone thank you yeah you have 250 students on there it's it's something else so all right next up uh martha i'm martini kimball is on deck sorry um so as you've already heard i moved to anderson township in part because of the schools here and the recent community connections

073newsletter shows that this is still a smart decision so congratulations to the district for the a plus rating on the front page achieved while our tax rate remains low compared to other districts in the region yeah great job um so this is really wonderful news and of course that's why you keep hearing about it tonight i also trust that our educators our teachers our administrators the staff throughout the school are not going to be resting on these laurels they know that these achievements can't be taken for granted but have to be built upon that we have to keep working together as a community and as school buildings and a school district so that every child can be reached and can excel whether it's in academics or in music or in athletics and they can reach

074their full potential and that takes all of us committed to working together so thank you to this board of education for supporting our district so that we could see these achievements i hope that the the new board will continue to provide the support that our children and educators need to help keep achieving not only what we've achieved this year but to do more because we can't stand still thank you thank you [Applause] tiffany gimble is up and toby biederman is on deck good evening to everyone my name is tiffany kimball and i have been a forest hills parent for 19 years i've had four children attend schools at forest hills um i'm here tonight as a parent a resident but most of all i'm here as an advocate for the children and the discussion that

075we're having i think is important and i everybody here is obviously concerned about our children and all the statistics of excellence are things that we should all be proud of however i want to point out that our district since 2018 has lost five students to suicide a twelve-year-old a thirteen-year-old my own 15 year old a 17 year old and i don't know the age of the other student and the thing that's missing in this conversation is the voice of the students and despite all the accolades and all of our wonderful achievements of the district the first time i realized the importance of mental health is that i was reading to a group of third graders it was a story about a family and one of the little girls said i used to have a little

076brother but my mom's friend got angry and ran over him with the car and he died and i thought to myself as a parent volunteer oh my god this we're trying i'm just trying to teach her reading and this is what this child has on her mind and we don't have to do it all we have amazing resources right here in cincinnati cincinnati children's hospital has devoted millions of dollars and they understand that this is such an important initiative they're announced that just last week they announced 10 million dollars in a new project my point is our children are suffering and we're not including them in the discussion and we need to be doing that thank you toby and uh gail garza is on deck good evening i'm happy to report that sean martin has

077not written a lick of this it's all original material um so that's positive news uh i'm here tonight in three roles first i'm a 26 year old a 26 year old i wish uh 26 year veteran teacher in forest hills uh second i'm a father of three kids at turpin nagle and sherwood and finally i was treasurer and unpaid intern of wendy's campaign for school board i'm equally grateful and proud of each of those roles and that i've gotten the chance to to hold tonight i have three messages to accompany each role first focus working behind the scenes on my wife's campaign led me to see the importance that many uh place on the little r i or d next to your name i learned that while that may give you a glimpse into many

078of the beliefs and values it does not give a complete picture only an individual's character and actions can give you a complete picture in this space i want to encourage all of us to look past those who would distract us and keep the focus on the we in this room that is forest hills and our community second i want to say thank you as a member of the community of pound dad i want to recognize the time and efforts of the current board the job is a thankless one so i want to say thanks to each of you for all that you've done for our forest hills students and staff and then finally welcome as a forest tolls teacher i want to welcome our new board you're surely not entering into this arena for fame

079glory and the paycheck you are here for a purpose and the purpose is the well-being health and future success of the students in our charge i'm here to let you know that you've got some awesome teachers around to help you every step of the way whether that student's a bib or a heist or a beaterman we are all needing to remember the same thing is the most important thing and that's our students so thank you all thank you kale is up and amy miller is on deck good evening my name is gail garza i'm a teacher at turbine high school and i had the distinct pleasure of going to see the turpin fall show duh my brain just totally lost the amazing show that we went and saw a clue clue because it was an

080awesome board game when i was a child thank you so much um and just the maybe the thought is to thank the community the board of education for supporting the arts in these endeavors at both high schools it is truly an amazing opportunity for our young people to get them to see them in a role outside of their normal academic mode i had no less than 15 current and former students on stage either in black pushing around lots of amazing set pieces or on the stage in a way that i had never seen them in the classroom so i think it's truly a wonderful opportunity and that we should encourage and support these in the future and i know the show at anderson was equally amazing i didn't get to go see that one because

081you know after a week and a clue i like had laundry to do and stuff but i'm sure it was equally wonderful and that their children benefited just as much as our cherubs over at turpin thank you and thank you again for your support thank you amy hi our family moved to anderson township memorial day weekend of 2006. a few months later our community would unite to become an army that swept every inch of this township in search of a little boy who had disappeared while playing at jules park my husband returned home from the first night of searching when it became too dark to look any longer our oldest who was three and a half at the time asked if they found him and when my husband said it was too dark they would

082start looking again in the morning he went into his room brought out his toddler-sized flashlight and said here you go dad now you can go look some more for those who can't connect with that story marcus faizal was found weeks later his remains among the ashes in a fire pit along the ohio river in kentucky a foster kid who had died at the hands of people who were supposed to advocate for him and care for him for our township and village together today that same township and village can't seem to find it can't seem to find within themselves to advocate for kids who can't advocate for themselves and it breaks my heart to say that if we were in this same situation now 15 years later i believe the urgency to find a missing child

083would be drowned out by the division our community seems to be fueled by today that three and a half year old graduated from anderson high school last year our other son is currently a junior for the last 13 years i have been immersed in our schools everything from classroom parent to pto president to athletic booster board member to the co-founder of a non-profit that helps to fill the social emotional and economic gaps that forest hills students and families are experiencing i have never been an apologist for our schools or leadership i've had hard and tough conversations with lots of people in this room their intentions are all to do what is the very best for our kids even if i don't agree with them my child experienced three suicide attempts his junior and senior year

084of high school and i am looking at the people that made sure that he made it to that stage where our dear friend was able to hand him his diploma and shake his hand and tell him congratulations for that i will forever be grateful thank you and thank you to the rest of you that are exiting for all of your time and commitment to our students schools and community thank you so one of the things that we brought up is is i think in the first four years i was on the board i don't know that we had 14 people total in four years on public commentary so one thing that has come out which i think is a good thing in these past two years is the community involvement directly with the board i

085mean obviously the emails there's a lot more community connection with the board than there ever has been um so i look forward to that in the future it's it's been uh you know we've this was all positive it's not always positive obviously and there's we deal with a lot of high intensity uh things and and they you know the the the type of things change but the intensity doesn't so um thank you for all the public commentary flores you might share something um the lady that shared about her son i you know i'm so incredibly sorry so many of y'all were bringing me to uh almost tears tonight with your story so and i'm recovering from bronchitis so forgive my voice um but thank you for sharing all of your experiences and your stories i

086was going to bring this up next month because i don't have a lot of information but you shared that you know students voices are missing from this about six weeks ago i had an eighth grader at nagel reach out to me i asked if her parents knew just to make sure everything was okay and she broached the idea of having a student advisory committee and she mentioned i'm looking at her email right now don't go foya the kid all right um please but but she mentioned a lot of what people have really kind of touched on you know where where there's all these big conversations there are adult bullying there's adult bullying going on in this community we know that um she doesn't care about that she was telling me about what her and her

087friends and her community feels like um and how they think that their voice is missing from this conversation um and it is and i mean this incredible student put together really like a call for a student advisory committee and even a draft in an application so that we could try to get students from student representatives from nagel and the two high schools i think was the initial initial proposal but um i just wanted to share that because one like man this is the kind of motivation that we have here um and you know i think one of the other ladies that spoke i wrote down she said something like students not vendettas and hello you know if that's not a truth bomb i don't know what is um and this student is sort of reaching

088out and sharing like hey you adults are making all of this noise but we need a seat at the table and our voices need to be heard and i i hope that we can see this come to fruition in some form and i hope that the incoming board is supportive of that as well because their voices do matter you know and we're we're sitting really with this 10 000 foot view and we're not right there with them they are and their friends know more about them and sometimes our parents even you know so i just wanted to share that and also put some public pressure on my new colleagues to support championing student voices with this project so that's all just wanted to share that thank you item 10.1 or in the business operations final

089forms agreement slash quote thank you we just have i don't normally get to pick the microphone up usually it's pulled down we someone got it all right we after a failed comic start we have two things on the business the jet business operations agenda today at item 10.1 is the annual agreement for final forms as you know final forms is our registration portal and our athletic portal so uh we have to start this now go into the agreement now because we're designing the 22-23 school year process at this time because we will begin that in january with kindergarten registration the second item on the agenda today is a request they advertise for bid as you know as part of the preventive maintenance plan and the pi program there are certain items each year that we

090need to work large ticket items that we need to do for improvements on the school buildings and as part of the preventive maintenance plan we presented at the facilities committee meeting back in august or september i do believe the two projects that we would like to we need to move forward with are the blacktop asphalt for the and turpin mercer parking lot and the replacement of the nagel roof these are all over 50 000 so we need to go out to bid so what this what we're doing right here is just asking the board approval to go out to advertise to bid in other words that's when the architects come up and we gather collect bids to move on with the projects the one unique thing i would like to say because of the timing

091of this and we have some challenges with supply chain and materials we're going we'd like to go full bore first with the advertisement for the nagel roof to make sure we can get that out on the street and get appropriate bids and be processed and then later maybe even in within december we'll put out the asphalt bid so it would be two different days the the advertisements would go out but if we could ask have the board approve both advertisements today that would be very advantageous for us john if i may ask a question we um we had a question from a board member about what did the 12 the next 12 months look like as far as construction or maintenance and preventative maintenance planning is in our school district and how does that tie

092in with what we're what we're dealing with here as if we have an official maintenance program that we've put together uh five years and we'll be in a going another cycle looking another five years out and the program is what we anticipate with experts and architects saying these are the life spans and the everything of the product and the materials usually roofs and asphalt i'll be honest with you those those are the two big pieces and so next year i did look at we could very easily be having multiple roof projects next year of portions of roofs where roofs can be broken into segments so a couple out of my notes i looked at anderson sherwood maddox i'm looking at the wrong various roofs sherwood maddox i think are a couple of the small sections

093of roofs there wouldn't be a whole one the reason we're doing the nagel roof because it needs to be the entire roof so that would be one large project at this time thank thank you all right we're on consent agenda right now so uh item 11.1 human resources report whoever's covering for rob i will be doing that sir okay i am no match for mr fellowes so i'm going to do my best he he provided me 20 minutes of tutoring today so very happy to provide the report you see on the report that we have retire retirements in item a uh certified retirements would like to thank jill martin christine wolfer and joanne jo jorick 34 years 23 years and 21 years each and so we're thankful that um they're going to we're not thankful

094that they're retiring but we are hopeful that they have a wonderful retirement and thank them for their services in the school district you also see classified individuals who have tenured their retirement 22 years mary marker and there are some resignations there at the bottom of the page in item b for you and i would like to uh bring your attention to lori stout administrative assistant at turpin she will be moving out of state and so that's important because it influences some other adjustments that are part of the hr report you see uh supplemental consultants on there and appointments employment personnel items d e f g uh d is change of assignments those are individuals who have changed because of either folks retiring or resigning or accepting new positions in other places you see appointments there

095in item e for classified staff uh and uh one of the things i wanted to highlight this evening is casey blankenship will be coming to the school district if approved by the board this evening as a mechanic in the transportation department uh the nice thing about casey is that he does have many years of experience with peterman and with working with buses so it's difficult to find um licensed certified experienced individuals and this role it is really important because we have uh 5 000 students riding buses every day and so that's a very important position we're really happy that casey could come on board with us you see in there's some other classified staff initial assignments there provided for you special services appointments for work beyond the contract for home instruction and for our hope

096squad advisors who work with our kids uh food service uh contracts there at the bottom of the page in item f uh you see lifeguards there we have two students conor black and catherine salkin who will be working as lifeguards in our schools auditorium tech athletic workers in the athletic workers there was a question there from a board member regarding payment of these individuals it's about 15 an hour and these are for tickets scoreboarding team stats official bookkeepers and things like that and these positions have been in place for many years probably more than a decade where we where we've been doing that uh item g appointment of additional assignment and appointment and resignations uh you see their appointment uh of all of the seasonal pre-existing positions that we currently have in place and there

097are two pages ranging from dance coach to high school basketball cheerleading coach middle school basketball and on down to wrestling bowling and so forth and so we're glad that those individuals could be with us and will provide great services to our students at the bottom of page six in item h you see our student teacher uh interns and that's really great that we can have additional folks coming to our school district to learn about the profession and they continue to add value to the profession you see several there from xavier and you see northern kentucky so and university of cincinnati so we're happy to have those individuals coming on board if approved by the board volunteers and item i i want to stop for a couple of minutes and thank all of the individuals whose

098name is on this list there are 65 people once again who are part of the list presented to the board of education to continue to provide the best services possible to our students to enhance opportunities for students and to support our teaching staff and our classified staff and all the things that they do and i want to thank all of those individuals for that you see substitute personnel in that are available for you these are all in classified positions it is not related to my commentary or commentary earlier this evening about certified substitutes working in classrooms you see those in item k these are the substitute salary schedules that i uh recommended or that i spoke about that i would recommend to the board as part of that was part of an earlier update another

099important item is item l which is an ops 677 master contract back when the board negotiated there was a one percent newtown tax language that was involved in that process and we have clarified that that is not part of compensation after folks that were grandfathered in and then you see an mou with the ops 677 there were nine positions just recently approved by the board that transitioned in where there was a 150 payment related to that language that no longer exists in our contract we currently have 801.38 ftes in our school district and i recommend to the board that you approve the personnel items as listed that i spoke to this evening so um i'm going to go back just for a minute to the substitute teacher issue i i just i know rob's not

100here tonight but i bet he's watching on tv as he's he said he was going to so or online um i i think uh we owe him um a lot of gratitude for really digging into this elizabeth and i are the hr committee and we have woefully underpaid our substitutes for years and i mean i think one thing covet has taught us it's it's allowed us to do an adjustment especially on people who we are in the lower paid categories of our society to pay a substitute teacher to come in and teach our kids for 12 bucks an hour is obscene so we have raised it to a respectable amount i know the park district did the same thing with um salaries for their part-time seasonal employees and the permanent employees and i think that's

101one good thing that has come out of cobit is it's it's made us really look at what people do and their value so i want to thank elizabeth and scott and rob for all the work they did with this yeah for perspective when i subbed 20 years ago it was 80 to 90 a day and it hasn't changed and we were getting by with it because we were a destination but for our rates to be dropping like that and for the board's job to be looking out for having the best caliber adults in the classroom this is just really a big win so good job thank you item 12.1 local report card hi good evening um we just wanted to present our local report card data and update for you this evening this is a

102report that usually comes earlier in the year but our data wasn't released to us until mid-october this year part of it was just taking the time to go through the data and decipher what has happened in the last year and a half with students completing remote learning in the spring of 2020 and then not completing spring testing of that year and with many students choosing a virtual option last year ode provided data to the schools but they did not provide a rating in a typical year schools receive reports from ode on specific performance categories or measures and there are up to 10 measurements and six components so this year while we didn't receive a rating we still did receive the data around achievement absenteeism graduation rates and enrollment data while we don't have as much

103information as we usually would we still have data that helps us make instructional decisions about how we need to better focus our time efforts and resources to support students during the midst of pandemic related challenges and while the pandemic people claim to claim that it's over it's not we're still feeling it we're still living it every day some factors for us to consider this was a unique year for us because we had to put a priority on the health and well-being of our students and our families and so um we had a number of families opt out of testing this past year we typically may have a handful typically related to medical needs in the 2021 school year we received 56 formal requests to opt out of testing however that does not reflect the number

104of students who did not attend school to participate in that testing with the rules around testing security from ode and our need to follow guidance from our local school board to mitigate coveted concerns testing was only permitted within our school walls and by certified teachers while students who were provided an opportunity to opt out of testing they were able to do so without penalty the schools still receive a zero for students who do not participate so our denominator doesn't change that means that for students who i just repeated myself our commitment again while we wanted our students to participate because we wanted to see data because we did want to use that information to find out how are we doing we also wanted to honor the request of our families the best that we could

105i think again when we're looking at some of the factors to consider it's the change in some of our demographics we had a a slight shift especially when we were one of the few schools actually was we were one of the 24 percent of ohio schools who provided a face-to-face option um consistently throughout the year and so we had a number of students moving into our district and so we had a slight increase but what we also noticed is that the increase in students was also around students who came to us from an economic disadvantage we have increased from 8.6 percent in 1819 to almost 14 this past year and that number continues to slowly grow each year as it is this year while other subgroups have not seen drastic changes we also know that

106we have seen an increase in english language learners and hispanic students i mentioned people moving in and out of the district primarily n but our district mobility rate usually sits around three percent this past year as a whole it was five percent but what's interesting is when you look at some of our subgroups um ten percent of our economically disadvantaged students have moved in and out of this school year this year almost fifteen percent of our el students have been moving in and out and almost 10 of our students with disabilities that does have an impact on our resources and the way in which we identify interventions for our students with those factors in mind i want to go through some of the performance index trends now the state of ohio has been very clear

107that in 2020 we started testing with our students who are english language learners and our most significant students with disabilities then we went home so we didn't even get to finish testing so when you look at this column it's really not for comparison so when you do look at the difference there's seven levels of on the index that districts receive points for for every student who takes the test scores may be reported as advanced plus advanced accelerated proficient basic or limited the higher the achievement the higher the weight and the more points the school is awarded so that rewards schools and districts for improving performance of all students regardless of the achievement level i'm happy to say that despite the factors we faced forest hills has not experienced the significant loss of learning seen in

108other school districts all of our school districts have faced significant challenges and it's impacted all of us so i have some comparison data for you we are the highlighted out of the largest school districts in southwest ohio if you look we actually were first in proficiency amongst those other large school districts in southwest ohio we are one of the top performers within hamilton county with our data being part of the top five that includes school comparisons to mariemont madeira indian hill and wyoming and while we um like to compare ourselves to the other schools in the ecc or the eastern eastern cincinnati conference that's our athletic conference and we want to compete with them academically and athletically both and not one school district in the ecc has a higher performance index than we do i

109wanted to give you along that same vein when we look not just in our local region but statewide when you look at us at schools that are similar to us in terms of finances demographics size we still outperform in the third grade and in the high school we also hold our own while looking at the performance index is important i want to spend some time thinking about how we are how we grow over time value added allows us to look at whether or not our students who are in this district have an increase in scores over time that means if a student stays with us from kindergarten first grade second grade nothing's really changing except for their teachers there shouldn't be significant changes in their learning we hope to see a year's worth of grow

110growth for every student or ideally more and so what we've seen is that we have continued to meet or surpass the goals each year the state increases the performance index for value added and basically challenges the school district to meet the increased expectations set for all students the hope is to see again that we grow and so those little dots are kind of the represents the goal and so we have been able to do so with the exception of two subgroups our english learners and are students with disabilities and that is consistent with the trend in other school districts but it's also consistent with the trends that we've seen with mobility and enrollment that is also the data that is helping us to focus on the use of our essar funds the american rescue funds

111and how we are planning to use that money to support interventions paraprofessional support behavioral support and mental health supports [Music] with our plcs our professional learning communities and our work we spend time regularly reviewing this data but also using our common assessments progress monitoring and various measures to continue to identify where we are seeing growth and where we need to make some adjustments similarly in the area of math we are still focusing on economically disadvantaged our el english language learners black students and students with disabilities what i am very pleased to say is if you look at our graduation rate all of our subgroups exceeded our black or our gap closing goals for graduation and that's to be commended despite the trials we've faced we've done some amazing work for all of our students i

112wanted to take a second to really look at what our response through the last couple years has been our first response was to keep students in school in school and to focus on their achievement we could not have done this without the amazing support of our board without the support of our community and our parents and our teachers our counselors nurses bus drivers maintenance custodial staff paraprofessionals administrators it was all hands on deck to make this possible and i also want to commend our students that they have faced things that most of us have never seen in our time and they have been flexible they have followed our lead and they've given us grace our teachers and administrators developed a virtual academy and through the vehicle of professional learning communities our teachers aligned curriculum and

113developed resources in-house we did not go out and purchase a large and expensive online program we did what we did for our students with the expertise of our of our teachers we made sure that technology and access was provided for all of our students we made sure that they had if they were virtual that they had access that they had wi-fi our learning design specialist i watched them stand out in the cold and the in the rain to give out materials to students on a regular basis who needed to come and get those things picked up at the end of the day our students remained at the center of all of our instructional decisions we personalized learning we'll continue to do so with our strategic vision we will continue to make adjustments when when able

114and when needed we are going to continue to reflect on how we support our learners despite our trials we are among the best and i appreciate all that you've done to support our learners during these difficult times and we're just going to continue to get better any questions we able to differentiate between our virtual academy versus in school what yes and there hasn't there was not significant difference between with our academy and i will say bob buck i'm going to put him on the spot he hates it when i do that look at his face but the work that happened and the alignment with our elementaries and i know with with the work that we did in the middle school the teachers met regularly beyond their hours to ensure that we were aligned and that

115whatever child's experience whether they were air or maddox or mercer we were going to provide the best um and be aligned to our standards and really personalize understand the needs of our students so that we can adjust and so when you do look at the differences there is not a significant difference in whether they were in person or otherwise um yeah i'm really proud of him no i think that's it that's what i expected i know there was i mean when you have it all in house it was there was consistency that that when i talked with other districts that used a pre-bought program there was a wide variation because i think if we had done that um a number of schools used some online platforms that they didn't they weren't going to work with

116schoology and some of the other resources that we had so we really did a lot to research to make sure that we were doing what was best best we're fiscally responsive and responsive to our students so i have a question um so you talked a little bit about being able to watch the performance of subgroups and you can see if some are developing at better rates than others and then you can focus efforts on ones that might need improvement can you talk a little bit about how that looks in our district to be able to serve those groups without sacrificing services to other groups i know this is a complicated question but um i think there's sometimes a perception that we would focus on one over others it's amazing what our teachers can do when

117you have a number of bodies in front of you um and that what i what i'm most impressed with with our teachers is we don't have kids sitting in rows kind of doing old school traditional schools changed it doesn't look quite the same we have a large focus on personalized learning that's been our intent our focus for several years where it's really understanding what are all of the needs that exist in the district and how do you shift instructional strategies so that you are able to identify all of those different needs and keep them moving it's it's being able to go into a preschool classroom and see how the little guys how they can even work through their routines and um get through the day there's all of this activity that's happening and our teachers

118do an amazing job with being able to say this group's going to work here this group is going to work here this group and being able to use these resources around them so that we are focusing on whole group learning small group learning individual learning so if i may you go up about 10 000 more feet in this conversation and you begin to look at the structures that are put in place with our administrative team in the way that they organize and the way that they work with our teachers with walk-throughs and buildings with the evaluation process with the ability to have conversations plc's and all those types of things you will find that there are categories there are responsibilities and there is monitoring that's taking place in conjunction with our staff so we have

119our administrators in our plc meetings and working with teachers on instructional strategies those administrators are coordinating with our teacher leaders who are coordinating with our directors who are reviewing data ad nauseam about how well our students are doing and how well the practices and procedures that we have in place are working we have unbelievably phenomenal teachers who are committed to the classroom the administrative team in this district their responsibility is to eliminate the distractions from that work so that the things that are administrative type are done by people that are in administration and not taken on by the teachers we want them to be instructional specialists and so there is a tremendous amount of leadership that takes place in our professional development for how administrators can help the process of the professional learning communities how

120administrators can help review data and have conversations with teachers about data and mobilize teams of teachers in ways so that that is that example happens across the school district the development of consistency in a school district we've heard in the last months about inconsistent inconsistencies in certain places in our school district it's that oversight and that conversation that takes place between administrators and teachers that helps to pull that all together so you have a consistent format teachers are awesome they're doing a great job and i appreciate that that is one of the hallmarks of our school district our teaching staff they accomplish monumental things with our students and keeping those distractions off their plate is a significant part of the administrative responsibility in the school district so that's important to remember in all of this

121one of the things too is that we've spent when we think about personalized learning we've really focused a lot too on what do we aspire and we've talked about the profile of a learner and the portrait of a learner and how do we really want to aspire to providing that forest hills experience that will provide our students with the skills to do so much more beyond what they what they have here in our community with personalized learning too we focused on what we've called the core four which is targeted instruction evidence-based practices and using data collaboration to plan purposefully for students using flexible resources and tools which i think is a huge part of what we did last year and a half to meet all the needs of our students and also thinking about student

122reflection and ownership we talked about student voice tonight but also creating opportunities for our students to gain those skills so that they are owning their learning and they are active learners and again we're not we're not sitting in rows and doing the traditional learning that's just not how our kids engage and that's not how really any good learning happens so we're making those shifts thank you thank you thank you trying year but uh it's good to see that we've at least held our own [Applause] item 13 point resolution to contract with stepping stones uh miss ryan good evening 13.1 is a resolution to contract with stepping stones this is actually a revised agreement to now support the placement of two special education students with autism i took this particular contract by stepping stones back in

123july for one of our students and as as you know here we have now added another student and this was a student who was in another placement back in july so student is actually moving to stepping stones in item 13.2 we have a resolution to contract with clermont county esc the program is is called cec north and it is for the remainder of the school year to support a first grade special education student with autism and i've included the annual cost for the tuition as well as the cost for the attendant or paraprofessional to support the student throughout the school day superintendent recommends the board approved the resolution to contract with stepping stones in clermont county esc or cec north as shown in items 13.1 and 13.2 any questions okay thank you item 14.1 treasury

124report modified tax budget resolution 14.1 is a resolution that's been requested by the hamilton county budget commission the resolution permits the district to file a modified tax budget for the 2223 fiscal year the modified tax budget can print continues to present information for those funds that receive tax revenues and eliminates the requirement to present those funds that do not receive the tax revenues on the modified budget the district reports our approved five-year forecast and appropriations for funds that do receive the tax revenues that service permanent improvement and building funds agenda item two is a calendar that outlines the requirements and timelines that the ohio revised code places on presenting and filing the fiscal year 23 tax budget and as you can see by the calendar and your agenda we will be asking the board to

125approve the tax budget at our organizational meeting on january 6. prior to that the tax budget will be available to the public for viewing at our administrative offices beginning on december 7th by law the tax budget needs to be available for 10 days viewing by the public prior to being passed by the board we will be placing a notice in the december 3rd edition of the inquire announcing the availability of the budget to view after the board's approval the tax budget will be filed in the auditor's office prior to the january 20th deadline moving on to agenda item 14.3 it's the addendum to extend our service agreement for the third party administration of our workers comp and unemployment claims the provider is sedgwick claims management service and this contract will be effective january 1st 22

126through december 31st 24th so a three-year contract the first year is at a 2.5 percent increase the total cost of the contract is just under 15 thousand year two is a two percent and year three is a 1.5 percent increase agenda item 14.4 recommends the approval of our excess workers comp and station it's the insurance contract we have with star insurance company annual cost is 38 berry insurance is our broker and we did take quotes and star was the lowest quote that we obtained unfortunately it is a 10.4 percent increase from our last year's insurance agenda item 14.5 is a resolution approving a release of a subrogation lien this has to do with an injured employee who settled she was at a third party site she was injured while performing her forest hills job duties

127on that third party site and forest hills of course was responsible for the workers comp payments to this employee and since she settled with the third party company we are entitled to a portion of that settlement so we did ask the courts to make sure that she negotiated with us which she's done and this is us approving a release of that subrogation lien to get our portion of her settlement cost agenda item 14.6 is new accounting software unfortunately the software that we're using is so old and obsolete and has been in school districts ever since i've been a treasurer and i'm coming up on 30 years so it finally has a sunset date it is no longer going to be available as of december 31st 2022 so the treasurer's office will be spending the next

128six months implementing new software running parallels and hopefully going live july 1st of 2022 which is the beginning of our fiscal year of course the implementation cost we knew that this was coming and was a something that we had to do so we have budgeted for those the actual yearly cost of the new software so once we get through the first year is only one 1.5 percent higher and the new software has a lot more functionality than our our current uh software so we're looking forward to being able to offer new things to our employees like electronic time sheets also an employee access center where employees can go in and take a look at their balances and their leaves and also be able to print out a w-2 if they need it and not have

129w-2 or actually their any information that they have in there that they need they don't have to call us to get so we're looking forward to implementing those things moving on to the next item is the five-year forecast the department of education requires a five-year forecast to be filed every november and an update to be presented in may of the school year so this is the first one of our new fiscal year and if you can move to the next slide as you can see there i want to present all the funds of the district so that you you can see we have highlighted the general fund the general fund is the only one of the district's funds that is presented on the five-year forecast all the other funds the special purpose funds our food

130service our permanent improvement our building funds student activity funds state and federal grants those that money is not on the five-year forecast so it's important to remember that when we look at the five-year forecast we do have other sources of funds that take care of items throughout the district so that said the general fund does account for 79 of our total budget so it certainly is our operating uh funds as we go forward we can move to the next slide thank you it's always important to remember that the five-year forecast is a planning tool it's an estimate it's your best guess it's projections you look at past trends what has happened in the past plus your knowledge of what is coming up what's changing in the district and that equals what your future projections will

131be and if covetous taught us anything there were massive changes between last year's november projections a lot of things changes and changed in the school financial world over the past year and we'll talk about those a little bit later in the in the presentation there's always challenges to preparing to forecast a lot of uncontrolled uncontrollable items that affect the forecast the first two alone state foundation and the property taxes that affects about 90 percent of our budget so i'm not going to read each one of those i just want to keep those in everyone's mind as we look at this as to what the challenges are to forecasting next slide and as i talked about the difference in the past year this uh graph represents that this slide shows the difference in the ending balance

132from our last november forecast through the may forecast and looking at this forecast you can see that our cash balance has really improved significantly that's due a lot and we're going to talk about several of the items in the forecast but the vast improvement in the cash balance is mainly due to the fact that the governor reinstated 1.6 million in annual cuts that he had made so that helped a lot we also were able to use our covet funds for continuity of services and to relieve some of the pressure on the general fund next slide please this slide is as we look at our five year forecast we see three main totals that we look at we look at revenues which are presented by the blue bar and we also look at our expenditures represented

133by the black bar and then the green line is cash balance so if you look at this chart you will see that our revenues are growing at a much slower pace than our expenditures grow with inflation because we're subject to the same inflationary increases that you have in your home our utilities go up materials and supplies go up health insurance goes up everything goes up so our expenditures are subject very much with inflation and they grow with inflation however property taxes which comprise 70 percent of our budget do not grow with inflation so what happens is because our revenues don't grow with inflation eventually it eats out in our cat our cash reserve line which is represented by the grid line there and the chart demonstrates how our current spending patterns cannot continue without a

134new revenue source past fiscal year 23. the 24 balance based upon the trends as we know them now would end with an exceptionally low cash balance so we've got the administration and the board have to address that in one way or the other either adjusting spending patterns or asking for a levy so that'll be a huge topic of conversation as we move forward i'm sure in the next few slides we're going to take a closer look at the data that goes into the three things that we just talked about so where does the money come from the state divides their state resources based upon what they consider a district's local capacity is to raise funds and when they look at forest hills they do consider us a wealthy district so they consider our community should

135do should shoulder a larger burden of supporting our kids and the educational cost of our students than a community that is not as wealthy as forest hills so what has happened over the years that has continued to shift more and more of the burden from the state to our residents so if you look at fiscal year 19 our residents funded 64 of our general fund budget but in our current year that burden has grown to 70 percent so 70 of our our revenues now come directly from our residents either in the form of direct taxes or tif payments and of course you know with taxes the homeowner or the business owner pays the county and the county remits the taxes to us tiff payments um generally the county limits tiff revenues to the township and

136then the township gives us our portion of the negotiated tif compensation agreement but tiff revenues are taxes paid by our residents so to our residents and our business owners so it's coming directly to us when we look at our fiscal year that we're in right now our fiscal year 2022 only 26 of our revenues are going to come directly from the state as opposed to 32 percent that came from the state in fiscal year 19. so if we can move on to the next slide please so we want to talk about what drives tax revenues tax evaluation and our tax base here is we're mainly a residential community we don't have a lot of business here in our area eighty percent of our taxes come from a residential tax base and only um 12 come

137from business and commercial enterprises there is a misconception that as tax as your valuation goes up the school district gets no money it gets more money the misconception is that we get more money we don't get more money because as tax evaluations on your home goes up the county reduces the tax rate in order that we receive the same amount of money now sometimes when you look at your individual taxes you're going to say that's not what happened to me i paid more money well we get our taxes based on the average so if your home increased at a faster value than the rest of the average value then likely your taxes went up but then there are also residents whose taxes maybe might have dipped just a bit to take care of that house

138bill 920 that takes the inflationary edge off of property taxes was actually passed in the 70s when inflation was growing at rates of 15 16 per year and of course you could not get that sort of inflationary increases because it would tend to put people out out of their homes however there does need to be kind of a come back to the middle so that we get enough inflationary increases to take care of what we need here so there are a couple of exceptions to house bill 920 and those exceptions are inside millage which is 5.33 mills and also new construction however those exceptions only give us about one-half of one percent increase annually so not enough to keep up with inflation next slide please i do want to when we talk about house bill

139920 over the years there's been 73 mills voted for forest hills school here in our school district however house bill 1920 has reduced those mills to 39.1 so our residents have seen a reduction of over 33 mils of taxation due to house bill 920. if you take a look at where our residential tax rate ranks as far as the other hamilton county school districts you can see that we rank 12 so 12 of the 22 hamilton county school districts have higher property tax rates than we do and in fact our residential rate is below the average hamilton county school district tax rate by 2.98 mills so property taxes being the majority of our revenues the of course next major revenue is state funding which is only just 26 percent state funding is presented in the

140forecast on three different lines if you look at it and 19.7 percent of our total revenues come from this state foundation program which is the funding models that they use to fund schools but another 6.46 of the revenues come from state property tax allocation so we'll talk about that in just a minute so if we can move to the next slide to talk about the school foundation which is 19.7 percent of our funding we know that just reached recently a new biennial budget was enacted beginning july 1st of this year 2021 and ode it was a total overhaul of school funding so ode is still working on the total implementation of the changes and this slide presents three of the most significant changes that have been implemented to date districts the first one you see

141changing enrollment to district educated instead of residents district or districts are now funded on only the students they educate and not the students who reside within the district but choose to attend elsewhere last year we were funded for all students who resided within our district but then we received a reduction for those who attended other schools and the money was sent to them last year that amounted to about 2.1 million so this year our revenues were reduced by 2.1 million in our state funding but our expenditures were also reduced by 2.1 million so why is that important because it does have a neutral effect on your ending cash balance but it's something to remember when we talk about trending out to the future we need to address for that trend it's not a true decrease

142in either revenues or expenditures to add to the percentage increases and decreases the second most significant item also had a neutral cash balance one of governor dewine's initiatives in the last biennial budget was the student health and wellness funds it was money that he set aside to take care of health initiatives such as mental health other types of student health and also success things he wanted to set aside that money in it to be just spent on those things the new fair funding model abolished that set aside and is putting that money back in the general fund so if you'll remember when we looked at that long list of funds all it does is move what happened in fund 467 the student health and wellness fund and it puts it in the general fund so

143again that's 385 000 that is is budget neutral so but again something to keep in mind when we review trends so the net impact on our budget to date with what's been implemented has been an increase of 356 000 or a 1.9 percent in the 26 percent of state of our budget that pertains to state funding one of the things that we're keeping a close eye on that's not implemented yet is the bus purchase money so there was money set aside in the fair um school funding model to pay for buses and od has told us that they don't know how that will be distributed and they won't be able to have that implementation information available until next spring so should we get that that obviously would be a plus and a help with our

144expenditures there next slide so this line item represents the reverse the reimbursement to the school district for property tax reductions granted by the state to homeowners the property tax reductions are for senior homestead exemptions as well as the 10 percent in two and a half percent homeowner rollback and residency exemptions these were reduced from homeowners tax bill prior to 2016 and reimbursed by the state so the state gave a property tax reduction of 12 and a half percent to your average homeowner plus a little bit more for senior homestead a little bit more for seniors and they reimbursed the district for that so while the taxpayers got a break the state took care of reimbursing the district when the budget was passed in 2016 the biennial budget passed in did away with that reimbursement for

145new levees going forward so it's still in a play for levees that were passed prior to 2016 and it will not um be is not in place for new levees so what does that do it takes any new levy passed after would cost a homeowner 25 or 35 dollars per mil per 100 000 home prior to that it had only cost them uh 30 dollars and 62 and a half cents so the state kind of did away with that help for our taxpayers the property tax allocation line is forecasted to increase at an annual rate of just less than one tenth of one percent so not not very high moving on from revenues to expenditures what do we spend our money on next slide so salaries personnel takes up 61 benefits account for 23.5 of

146our budget purchase services such as utilities instructional services account for nine percent materials and supplies account for three percent capital outlay one point five percent and other expenditures two percent um we are just like a law firm a doctor's office we the service we provide is provided by people and the more the larger percentage of our budget that is in personnel benefits the more we're putting towards meeting our mission of teaching kids so this is about what a typical school district would look like in the state of ohio this is not unusual at all moving on to the next slide so what have been the changes in salaries and benefits we are still maintaining the just under 000 that we reduced from the budget a couple years ago and i know you heard mr fellowes

147talk a couple of weeks ago that we had to hire four paraprofessionals so we didn't increase our staffing by that due to enrollments and also a contracted position that has been contracted in the district for several years was replaced with an employee this year so while we did increase in employee it was we reduced the contracted position also when you look at trends and salaries on the five-year forecast we've made use of our esser funds for continuity of services and to ease the burden on the general fund and you can see up there fiscal year 21 we spent just over 2.4 million in out of fund 507 that would have typically been in the five-year forecast this year we're spending 3.1 million out of um esser funds so that would have typically been in the

148five-year forecast and then in year 23 we have 1.1 million remaining to ease the burden on the general fund so salary projections are based upon our negotiated agreements and past and current market trends and benefit product projections are in line with our current benefit package fixed costs represent about 6.4 percent of our total budget and when you look at student tuition charges this year we estimate they will be around 831 000 and that's down the 2.1 million that we talked about that would have been for students that were educated outside our district so last year that would have been closer to 3 million we spend about we have budgeted this year for utilities just under 1.4 million legal services insurances property insurances the workers comp insurance that we talked about tonight settlements add up to

1491.3 million in our current budget county audit and miscellaneous fees are just under 750 000. the largest portion of that is about 640 000 go directly to the county auditor that's his fee for collecting our property taxes for us debt service out of the general fund is around 455 000 a year and fuel for our buses cost around 411 000 which means that only nine percent of our budget remains for textbooks materials and supplies professional development and upkeep and maintenance of our buildings last line last night thank you that said i think that when you look at when you hear about the wonderful things that kim had to say about the performance in the district and you look at our spending which is less than the hamilton county average our tax rates are lower than

150the hamilton county average both of our high schools are rated in the top 50 nationwide and we have always been in the top 10 percent performance and you like i said you heard all the wonderful things that happened last year even in the midst of the pandemic so that said we do believe and we continue to strive to be a good fiscal steward of our communities money and provide a good return on investment for for their funds so that's kind of the end of the five-year forecast moving on we have the treasurer's monthly reports in agenda item 14 point a so 14.8 donations over the past month totaled over fifty thousand dollars um item b is the statement of board accounts which presents all funds activity for our current fiscal year through october 31. item

151c presents the general fund which is our five year forecast receipts for the month and the fiscal year to date ended october 31. october was a low cash flow month as we expected and at this point in the year revenues are tracking as would be expected by the just presented five-year forecast items d and e present the expenditures in the general fund for the month and the fiscal year to date as you know expenditures you can almost divide them by 12. it seems like expenditures are the same amount every month with 33 percent of our fiscal year complete we've spent about 32 percent of our appropriations so again we're right in line with where we would expect to be according to our forecast the october 31st bank reconciliations are presented in agenda items f and

152g and appropriation adjustment detail is presented in item h these appropriations are being adjusted due to actual revenues exceeding what was originally expected in one of our student clubs that said i respectfully request that the board approve items 14.18 through 14.8 h um i moved that we approved actually items 10.1 through 14.8 you get a second second any discussion comments concerns mrs cropper mrs bissinger yes miss choice yes mrs meyer yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes item uh reports of the board of education i am 15. item 15.1 is anderson township economic development committee report um we met last week and um really just did a review of homerama um there wasn't that much that related to the schools the committee has been led by paul kitzmiller for i think 13 years and at

153the start of the year it will transition to amy richardson she will be the new chairperson and it helps that she has contacts for the schools so i think that will help the link to remain and the committee gets new members at the first of the year too so this was the last meeting with this particular group of people that's it all right thank you item 15.2 finance committee report oh we've not met since the last one okay 15.3 forest hills foundation report stacy good evening hi my name is stacey gillard i'm so proud to be the executive director of the forest hills foundation i have some exciting news to share and loved all the commentary earlier around ways that our community can continue to come together to support our kids i have a great

154example that i'd love to share with you now um so in october we kicked off our focus around if you wanted to attend the fall soaree in november so as many of you know it's one of our signature events we host each year but we kind of took a little bit of different approach this year a couple things were one we know not everybody can attend that they're not available maybe this isn't exactly the kind of event they want to attend but we really outreached to our community and that included staff that included several people that were unable to attend the event we had a little over 320 people actually at the fall school a which our focus was around allies of mental wellness and i think also based on so much commentary tonight you

155can see that um i know tiffany shared some other folks shared that you know our kids are struggling right and they need our continued support in this area so i'm really proud to report that we set a goal of a hundred thousand dollars for this event um and for everyone to commit to allies of mental wellness and we were able to bring in 150 000 just from this event thanks and i think the thanks goes out to everyone that made a donation everyone that showed up everyone that said i believe and that we need to continue to support our kids in this area so it was a definitely a community effort local businesses got involved we had different sponsors for the event so i just wanted on behalf of the foundation to say thank you

156because i think this is a wonderful example of how our community has come together and our work doesn't stop here so clearly we know that from these funds the foundation is going to continue to support an additional child-focused therapist in the school district and also we are going to support surveys from the students around connections we talked a lot about tonight of like how they're connected with the staff with the students how they is there a sense of belonging and are we doing everything we can the school district um to make sure that that's happening for our kids so so proud to um share that news with you tonight in addition spark night was last week and so i want to give a shout out to adam samuels he's here tonight and i also the

157teachers at both anderson and turpin high school particularly those teachers that really inspire our kids around science and technology and engineering and mathematics the foundation is so proud to support this type of event and what i will say also i have a eighth grader and i have a fifth grader and i was able to attend the anderson event and the thing that i love most is you have these high school students that are so passionate about sharing like their project and then you have all these younger kids coming in and it's really cool to see the older kids like being able to share that versus just an adult and it was it was fun to see i think it's great that our school district does this the foundation is really proud to support this initiative

158as well um and a variety of other stem focused programs and then moving in a couple things i just wanted to share as we're wrapping up the year i'm sure like you or for me there's so much that we're grateful for right as a parent as a community member going into this week for thanksgiving um and i just want us all to remember that it's about the kids and i think a lot of people have shared that tonight um so there are a couple ways you can continue to support all forest hill students giving tuesday is coming up november 30th and so i wanted to give you a quick snapshot from a family and actually mana was here earlier which i didn't know she was going to speak but this is a message from her

159and her family um hi we're the hale family i'm mona i'm siggy i'm body i'm timer as parents we are asked each year about supporting certain causes and we absolutely want to support all forest hills students through the foundation i'm i'm in second grade in wilson and i go to 8th grade at nagel on giving tuesday november 30th will you join us and honor your current or former students for 20 dollars and 21 cents each send them a special message and know that your support is truly making a difference in the lives of so many kids thanks for your support just know that your dollars are going to work for our kids and we look forward to continuing to do the great work so thank you thank you [Applause] so i think it's great that

160it's 9 30 at night and we've been going for two and a half hours and stacy still has that amount of pep right um we hired uh the foundation hired stacy and nicole whiting as the communications coordinator this year and uh the foundation has always been great but they are taking it to a different level and it's so much fun to work with them and be on the foundation board it's it's a joy thank you both next up uh item 15.4 human resources committee report nothing new okay next up is legislative liaison report there is uh a bill going through the state right now house bill 290 and known as the backpack bill this is another attempt to divert public money to private education this one would create education savings accounts that are actually just

161more more vouchers the we just saw performance index report the charter schools did not do as well the average decrease in performance index of public schools in the past year was 10 percent all from covin charter which wasn't as good as the public schools went down 25 percent or absenteeism went up as statewide went up to 17 charters went up to 45 percent nearly half of the kids had uh were truants last year the money that i looked i asked atlanta we have our school district has provided 5.8 million dollars over the past 10 years to charter schools when they did a review of the performance out of 612 districts six of them were outperformed by their charter schools that's less than one percent so 99 of public education does better than their their charters

162and we certainly are in that so six million if you look at our our uh our five year forecast would go a long way to helping put off um uh more levees um so it's another but there has been a big push to privatization i i've talked with other people i know nobody here likes to pay taxes okay nobody likes it certainly don't like to pay taxes for public education you really don't like taking taxes for public and private education the vouchers don't cover the tuition and for me and the the biggest part of it is the accountability there's very little okay the the private schools are not obviously uh audited by the state even when they get public taxpayer money so as a taxpayer you have no say you there's no none of this

163there's no there's no uh public commentary to uh private education on what what's how your money's being used um the one audit that was done on the electronic classroom of tomorrow okay online school they they ordered them one year found that 60 million dollars was stolen not used inappropriately was gone was was paid for students that aren't that did not exist that was just one year and it wasn't it was in business for 10 years okay close to a half of a billion dollars potentially was gone one billion dollars goes into this every year out of our state budget so as we move forward and we look at this stuff back in the 80s we got 70 to 80 percent of our funds from the state now we're down to 30 no 25 percent and

164falling where it's becoming more and more on our community well now all of these things that are coming through are coming from somewhere okay now not that i don't trust government but i don't trust government um when the lottery came out all that that money was to education right it all goes to to fund public education what they didn't tell you that is true all of the money that from the lottery goes into public education what they didn't tell you is that dollar for dollar they took out the money they were given and just put it in the in lottery so the lottery didn't add anything it just took the money that they used to give out okay so so as this goes through and i don't know how much traction it's going to have

165i mean this one of the things that they've done in the past year um is to change the way they fund these vouchers it used to come straight through us and out well that looks bad now they're taking us well no we're not gonna we're just gonna give it straight to these people no accountability no transparency no auditing you can't question it okay and again i'm not against private education not at all it's private if you want your kid in it you you pay for it that's the whole idea public education though is accountable we have mandates we have all the things that we have to report to the the state a performance index no private school has a performance you don't even know you don't know how they do on state tests not that

166they do better or worse you just don't know and and again i don't have any problem with that but if you're going to take taxpayer money it's a whole different ballgame now you have to be accountable just like the public education is so some of the things the other things that we came up on this were you know we approved some special service contracts i'm guessing the state's not going to give us any more money for 81 000 for one student okay it's what we do it's our purpose is to be able to educate all of the kids in our community it's expensive to do that okay seventy five hundred dollars is not going to cover that that child uh the other one 54 000 is not going to cover that or you know it's

167not going to be covered so so those are things it's still important for us it's what we do as a community um but realize that all of these little tiny things that they keep taking out eventually they get out to big money okay 5.8 million over the course of of 10 years and that has gone up like this okay i mean it's it's a it's a marked difference so anyway that is that's the big thing that's going on in the in the state legislature right now um there are some other now that's actually the main thing that's going on so anyway uh 15.6 policy committee report yes uh the policy committee met on november 17 2021 to discuss neola policy updates from volume 40 number one we have a list of policies being brought to

168the board for the first reading no action is necessary at this time a second reading and formal request for adoption will be at the december 13 2021 regular meeting of the board thank you item 15.7 safety committee uh we have not met item 15.8 teaching and learning committee report no meeting 15.9 technology and facilities we have not met in the past two months yeah last month um and item 15.10 forest hills teachers association report good evening my name is donna lauver i'm president of the forest hills teachers association and on behalf of the 500 teachers we just want to make sure everybody knows we are very grateful it's a two day week [Laughter] truly we are grateful it's a two day week tonight there are three areas of our report first of all we want

169to do an extra extra special thank you to the foundation uh many years ago when we started that opportunity together and through the leadership i know randy smith is not here with us tonight but i want to make sure if he's watching i'm sure that that work and that work of d stone and we're seeing stacy and the team do that that's amazing 150 000 that's just amazing good stuff so three topics areas of concern in our workforce management and support within subbing two data does not always tell the whole story and fht has an executive board gratification to do tonight first of all i know we spoke quite a bit tonight about the issues surrounding our subbing and the workforce around that over the last few months and probably definitely throughout the last year

170working with the the board and working with human resources as our transition from assistant superintendent mike broadwater into mr fellow's time him and i are working pretty detailed to try to make sure we can understand where the real issues are and how are we litigating that how are we moving people and being aware of our needs one big point i know tonight thank you so much to the board for recognizing that we might need to pay these people a little more that's good and we hope that supports and attracts but also that it does create a stress when we're seeing those numbers and we're seeing a fill rate and so forth on the past week and a half rob and i have worked but we did send out a survey to the staff sometimes a

171fill rate when we look at it maybe it says we're at 89 percent or if it says starts getting into 70s when you start hearing teachers giving up their plan bells daily or they have meetings in between our vice president actually mike roberts had a pretty tough week last week and he told me that you know it's not that i want to be a team player donna but i'm getting really stressed and tired and i have to get through everything i have to get through too so i know right now that we're really taking a really close look to that and the research will show that we need our teachers to be at their best and i do appreciate listening tonight as a board and i know scott did a good job you know bringing

172that forward but really listening to the needs of where they're at and this week being a short week i kid about it but in many ways i do think they need it it's been tough and i appreciate the support where we are with that number two i talk about data does not always tell the whole story assistant superintendent pence tonight gave an overview of where our report cards are at and really that story is massive i know she has data and we have charts that are present but really the story is looking at where we've been in the last 18 months to where we stand and seeing our students grow is just an amazing contribute to our staff our leadership here in the school district and our parents support that we get from home and

173for the students who you know we are here to support regardless of their abilities or inabilities that goal this past year to keep kids in school but also keeping our staff and us working together to make that happen those stories are stories that need to be told and they need to be repeated so on that i'm very grateful for that opportunity from the teachers association to make sure that we are proud of that work all of us are proud of that work and you can't say enough about our students how resilient they've been with us thirdly i'm going to ask gail garza who's our secretary of the association and chris preston to come up we're going to do something real quick here for a couple people um it is the week of thanksgiving and it's

174a week to be grateful it's a week to be thankful and on behalf of the teachers association we want to recognize some of our board members tonight because we know what the next three weeks look like for teachers hold on tight usually what we say so i want to start with julie bissinger and julie this is my second time to say thank you for your time and thank you for your service and you're back so i'm just going to pretend like this is just you're leaving maybe you'll come back so we have a little gift from you thank you so much that's so kind of you um thank you for that thank you it's so cute it's little people on a tree you can't go wrong with little people on a tree yeah it does

175state if your actions inspire others to dream more learn more do more and become more you are a leader and that quotes by john adams of course because i'm a historian and john adams being one of the leaders behind the scenes in my book which is some place i like to be and i like to think our board sometimes you're not in our classrooms every day you're not in front of our students every day but you are the people behind the scenes and so your leadership when it expands itself helps grow and that's one thing with forest hills it's always been awesome to me is i think we should think about ourselves in that way that we're you know we're always trying to grow where we're at so with that elizabeth and i'm going to

176say something extra special about elizabeth i met elizabeth while she was pregnant with her son we spent a lot of time together over the years and i want to make sure i tell you thank you for sharing that time with me and thank you for giving and supporting to our students and staff and i know that your kids are having a great school year thank you this lady could not be more grateful for all the things that you've said done and supported me personally but also as being the person during covid that was present uh dd choice you've spent so much time with our teachers last year being present i know you spent a lot of time with me wandering through buildings and talking and listening and part of your role sometimes is just that

177part our staff loves to see you they love to hear from you they love to see that you're present they like to see their activities and their events and i think it gives you a lot of joy too as a board member and with that i can't thank you enough for your time from thus and look forward to seeing you absolutely having a great retirement thank you dr heiss i had to say goodbye to dr heiss once before if i'm not your father he's a mr heist but that's all i'm just gonna i hope your dad is watching he is a doctor too he's a jd thank you lawyers don't get to be called doctor i'm just saying that would be like in my family i have a doc my brother's an md and my

178sister is a phd and there's always a discussion i'm glad to be the thank you i'm glad to be the underachiever in my family that will have that argument at thanksgiving so on that note for me personally and from the teachers thank you so much for giving your time your dedication serving running for boards being involved taking the heat being here during covet during the good bad and ugly being a public servant is something that not everybody signs up to do and being in roles of leadership is not easy and with that i can't thank you enough as well as your family and your kids uh being board members with children sometimes gets a little crazy as we all know too and i look forward to seeing you and being part of our school community

179as always and my statement here also says to you which is thank you i did add one word deforest it says many years on it collaboration with the forest hills teachers association supporting our students in our school community our sincere gratitude and appreciation for creating excellence in public education your little talk here tonight when you just start talking about we were talking about oh here he is he's going to go on a monologue understanding no i you know i don't there's not many people left but understanding public education and the funding around school has been a passion of yours and understanding the difference between how that happens and the accountability this data the numbers and everything that's one piece of it but it's the story and understanding how education really works in the state of

180ohio that has been a real passion of yours and when you get fired up on it we need you so don't forget that so with that thank you and like to ask the audience to thank them publicly please you can turn the timer off now first if only i will say with the the mr versus the doctor it's the one time that the mr has all the power so blissfully we do not have an executive session this meeting i do appreciate everyone for sticking it out for the nearly three hours um our next regular meeting of the board of education is on december 13th 2021 he'll be in this room at 7 00 pm can i get a motion to adjourn i'll make a motion to adjourn second all right ms cropper miss joyce yes

181dr rasmussen yes mrs bissinger yes mrs meyer yes dr heiss yes thank you all for