Forest Hills Board of Education Meeting - 9/27/21

001all right call to order this i'm calling to order this board of education regular meeting 7 p.m on september 27 2021 roll call mrs bissinger here ms joyce here mrs meyer here dr rasmussen here dr heist here please rise and join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all i'd like to thank everyone for coming item 1.4 safety briefing we have exits where you came in and there's also an exit behind me can i get a motion to adopt the agenda i'll make a motion to adopt the agenda second discussion we're gonna change the agenda to uh six and we're gonna flip six and five i

002know we have a lot of awards today we also have an executive session to go into so an effort to get you all out of here if you so desire we are going to do the awards before the executive session would you amend your motion okay i will amend the emotion with the consideration that we will flip agenda item six and five six and five second ms cropper miss joyce yes mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes item 3.1 uh we're going to do a consent agenda item 3.1 through 3.3 approval of minutes of the human resources committee meeting the special meeting of the board on august 11th and then the regular meeting on august 23rd i'll make a motion to approve the minutes of human resources committee meeting august

00310th approval minutes of special meeting of the board august 11th and approval minutes for the regular meeting august 23rd second cropper miss joyce yes mrs bessinger yes mrs meyer yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes correspondents i don't have any this evening sir all right but i would like to welcome uh betsy ryan to come up pbis awards correct not yet oh i'm sorry item 1.2 oh i'm sorry okay procedures for public commentary this is a meeting of the media board of education in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business is not to be considered a public community meeting there is time for public participation during the meeting as indicated in the agenda we actually go and fill out these forms um it is limited to 30 minutes we have 31 we'll

004have one minute per person now on to item now 5.1 which is 6.1 the pbis awards good evening i'm kelly brazo the director of student services for wellness and i'm delighted to be here with betsy ryan this evening our director of student services for special education and special programming each year we have the honor of commending our buildings for achieving recognition for pbis awards just last month we had the honor of recognizing may go middle school in anderson high school and then this evening we're thrilled to have the opportunity to honor six more of our buildings for pbis recognition congratulations to air mercer maddox and summit elementary schools for receiving the bronze award and then wilson and turpin high school for receiving gold recognition pbis stands for positive behavior intervention supports and it follows the

005same principles as what we're implementing system systemically to support academic interventions and pbis is the behavioral portion of this framework and it's designed to achieve social emotional and academic success similar to what we're doing assessing our students for academic challenges and targeting their skill deficits through tiered interventions we're also systematically addressing our buildings by reviewing their building data identifying problematic behaviors as a whole and then designing building wide expectations and instruction to support their needs this framework is built on three tiers tier one which would be the whole group tier two for small groups and then tier three for individual support so we want to take a minute and thank our buildings for creating such a positive school climate that benefits our entire school community these buildings will be recognized on december 9th at the

006ohio pbis showcase and then the morning of january 5th for a regional celebration as well next month we plan to recognize pbis at the district level as well so this evening accepting on behalf of their buildings pbis team we have mr david spencer with turpin high school [Applause] sorry about that took me a little while to get up here again betsy i don't know if you remember it's um this has been 15 years in the making for turpin i remember back then when you came to me and said hey there's this great program i think you ought to bring to the high school that you know it's going great at the elementaries and you can make it happen in the high schools and i said sure betsy sounds like a great idea not really knowing

007if it would be worth it or not but found a great component on how to gather data how to look at our behaviors and i thought that that in itself is great and lo and behold 15 years later after four gold recognitions that we received after having our team presented at the pbis showcase and having a great team that has been together for quite a while we've had two to three schools across the state of ohio come to turpin just to hear about our program and what we're doing and that really reflects the hard work and dedication of our team i mean i really like to think the incredible job that they've done our team is made up of kami eberhard who's an assistant principal for us carrie urschel who's our school psychologist amy mckitty

008our school counselor alicia champion who's a parent and tpa students our teachers profession academy so we have student representation on this team who bring great great insight has truly impacted our climate on our building so we appreciate the the recognition congratulations can we have erin's store now for another gold recognition good evening the wilson way has been embedded in our school culture since it was established in 2008 it creates a positive school environment for everyone in our school and beyond in fact on our community survey last year 69 percent of our families shared they used the wilson way language at home too we asked some of our wildcats about their thoughts on the wilson way fourth grader kennedy said taking care of yourself helps us not get hurt and taking care of others reminds us

009to take care of them if they are sad like i can ask them to play it is helpful to our school because we take care of wilson and keep it clean it helps our custodians too third grader schaefer said i'm glad we have it because it keeps kids from doing bad stuff and it helps kids learn how to behave i think blue cards are good because kids know they are doing the right things i think if the whole class does something we get a gold card and we know we did something good and should keep doing it i'm very proud to accept this recognition for our wilson community for the sixth year in a row can we have nicole ward from summit elementary [Music] good evening talking to kids is so much easier than talking

010to adults i'm a little nervous at summit elementary our pbis focus recently has been taking care of students and staff we have worked hard to align social emotional learning standards with our summit strong behaviors which is being respectful responsible and ready we have a fantastic pbis team at summit and i'm so so proud of the work that we have done we strive to create a place where students are celebrated for being summit strong not only within the walls of our school but extended into our community as well we are proud of the work that we have done so far and we're excited for another great year to come thanks [Applause] can we have steve traylor with maddox so the person that should really be here is heather milligan because she's run this for us over

011the last three years which got us the award and there's a team of about 15 teachers that work on this committee as well but it is essential to our work to make sure that the kids feel that they have a structure a safe predictable place to be to learn to grow and we've made huge strides erin mentioned her parents survey we have a student survey where from two years ago to last year we showed almost a 20 percent increase in the way that students felt connected to the school and felt connected to the teachers that teach them and that's what this works all about so thank you [Applause] representing ayers heather hawley hi everybody so at air we call this air cares so this just means that you are demonstrating behaviors that are respectful responsible

012and safe like aaron said our kids also parents talk about showing it at home i see some parents here who show it at home so for the classroom teachers and for our students really this is all just about recognizing and reinforcing positive behaviors it's important to us that we do that so for our students something recent that we just started we opened up a falcon store in the front office our teachers have been doing this for years but we're kind of having a whole pbis revamp this year like steve said the work it's it's a committee work it's teamwork our assistant principal joy o'brien is crucial in this revamp this year she's phenomenal with our entire pbis team we have teachers from every single grade level a counselor our school psychologist we even have a

013gifted specialist on our team which is pretty cool and then of course a parent rep um so something that is comes from this our students they can turn in their reinforcement tickets for a tangible incentive or an experience and at air the preferred option is the experience we have some teachers here they spend a lot of time welcoming other students in their classroom so students might turn in their tickets for an experience such as like a secretary helper or flagpole helper for the custodian lunch with an administrator but the thing they prefer the most is like turning in tickets to go read with their sibling going and visiting previous teachers it's all about the relationships and connections that air so they they prefer that the most the tangibles teachers were talking about eliminating the fidgets

014because that's the preferred tangible right thank you and then last but not least jody david said with mercer sorry i could say ditto to everything that was said with the previous group so i'll just share that at mercer this last year we spent a lot of time teaching our students the zones of regulation and that's how do you regulate your emotions and how do you carry that over to help contr have self-control over your feelings and your body response and so that instruction that goes along with pbis is essential and so we've really worked on that zones so that we can carry it over this year we're going to extend a little bit more with the zones so there's a lot of instruction that goes beyond the awards and tickets and so forth so it's

015a great program we really enjoy having it so thank you well with all of that said uh the superintendent recommends the board commend air maddox mercer summit wilson and turpin schools and their pbis teams for their achievement and distinction and a certificate of commendation presented to them i move that we commend aromatics mercer summit wilson and turpin schools and their pbs pbis teams for their achievement and distinction and a certificate of commendation be presented to them second ms cropper mrs bissinger yes dr rasmussen yes ms choice yes mrs meyer yes dr heiss yes and congratulations it is a another example of great things that are going on in our schools next up more great things going on in the schools we have our governor's thomas edison awards for excellence in stem education hi good evening

016um i would like to have dave spencer and kyle fender come up here and just plan to stay up here for a little while um we have lots of awards to give out tonight we want to recognize both anderson and turpin um for their thomas for the governor's thomas edison award for excellence in stem education for 2020 2021 i actually would also like to have i know we have several representatives our department heads are here but if we have other science teachers here from anderson and turpin we'd like for you to start making your way here so we can recognize you the ohio academy of science and the technology division of the ohio department of development once again recognizes anderson and turpin both with the 2020 governor's thomas edison awards for excellence in stem education

017during the 2020-2021 school year 45 ohio schools and 491 teachers received this award the criteria for this award is that we must conduct a local science fair with 12 or more students and have two or more of these students participate in the 2021 virtual district science day or have students six or more students participate in the 2021 virtual district science day when no local has been conducted we know it was a crazy year last year we had 306 students participate so students must also participate in at least one more youth science opportunity beyond the classroom is that my fault okay so we want to say congratulations to anderson and turpin high schools and their teachers for going above and beyond what is required to give their students the best in stem education and we have

018some awards do you want to help me so for anderson yeah we have emily dorsey our department chair alex bove dave brandon justin good jeff jeff granger luis kemp corey larrison holly louden patrick real jeff rodriguez taylor rose courtney snyder and troy spitz mueller [Music] i'll just leave that alone okay and then for turpin we also have our department chair with us tonight corey mullins but we also have other staff members we'd like to recognize aaron burling ben benking i'm saying his name wrong ben ken thank you bill benkin beth brill lindsey burton gail garza james glasser brett granger peter hoing carmen vendito the superintendent recommends the board commend anderson and serpent high schools and the teachers listed above for their achievement and distinction and a certificate this has been presented all right when before

019the you guys leave um when we see achievements from national organizations suggesting that our teachers are the top one percent in the entire nation we see that our students are performing the top four percent they're recognized that u.s news and will report niche reports and we're going to honor the students tonight but before doing that i want to thank all of you and your colleagues throughout the entire district pre-k through 12 who continuously give your best to ensure that our students have the best educational environments as well as safety and security environments possible so thank you so much once again for all that you have done because it's easy just to teach and not do the extra and that's what tonight's about it's another example that we're doing extra as much as we possibly can

020so thank you so much for all of your efforts [Applause] uh i move that the board commend anderson and turpin high schools and the teachers uh all before us and those not here uh for their achievement and distinction and a certificate be presented to them ms robert mrs bissinger yes miss choice yes mrs meyer yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes thank you again from the board you awesome job there's there's 491 teachers like half of them are on our district so that's great great job thank you all all right and the hit parade keeps going next up is national merit scholarship commended students mr fender and mr spencer good evening board of education mr prebbles it's always a great night when we can recognize the accomplishments of our students and the great things they

021do within our schools it's even a little bit more satisfying when nationally our students are recognized as being as great as we we know that they are each year in the fall semester both anderson high school and turpin high school administer the psat to all sophomores as well as to a select group of high achieving juniors approximately 1.5 million students across the nation take the psat each year and top scoring individuals before the national merit scholarship program is achieving either commended semi-finalist or finalist status we are extremely proud of the students who will stand before you this evening of their hard work their determination and academic excellence these are leaders in the classroom and are highly involved in other activities throughout the building i mean these students that you're going to see are our athletes

022our musicians are part of our theater program our leading clubs and different organizations within our school doing tons of volunteer hours and so not only are they very very smart let's make that clear but they truly impact the culture of both of our buildings anderson and turpin high school they are truly the best of the best we're also thankful for the parents many of whom have been able to join them here this evening parents thank you thank you for all that you have done over the years to guide instruct teach and affirm to your son or daughter the importance of hard work in the classroom if i could at this time all the parents of the students that are being recognized either commended or a semi-finalist in the national mayor program please stand so we

023can at least recognize and acknowledge your guidance and leadership most of them are already standing in the back as mr spencer mentioned 1.5 million students took this test the top 3 percent so roughly 50 000 qualify as commended and commended is a great word for this because that's that's truly what it is uh we're commending the the excellence and education that these students have demonstrated on this assessment and the superintendent recommends that the board commend the following students for their achievement in distinction for having been named commended students for the 2021 national merit scholarship program and uh present a certificate of condemnation to them i'll read the names for anderson and then i'll allow mr spencer a chance to read the names for turpin so from anderson high school nicholas gundrum catherine gursky owen newberry

024august pazzo and faith specter [Applause] did you see that question and from turpin high school garrick baldoff brooke heiss derek lynn andrew polline and darby thurston [Applause] i uh moved that the board commend the uh the the students listed uh nicholas gundrum catherine gursky owen newberry august pazzo faith specter garrett balduff brooke heiss derek lynn andrew pollin and darby thurston for their achievement in distinction for having been named commended students in the 2021 national merit scholarship program and a certificate of commendation be awarded to them second ms cropper mrs bissinger yes mrs meyer yes miss joyce yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes congratulations [Applause] item 6.4 national merit semi-finalists for semi-finalists the top 16 000 students qualify as semi-final status representing the top one percent of all students nationwide who took the exam within

025this group there's a process these individuals will go through in order to be considered finalist status and hopefully at a later board meeting we'll have that information and be able to share hopefully many of these that will be finalists the superintendent recommends the board commend the following students for their achievement in distinction for having been named semi-finalists in the 2021 national merit scholarship program and presented a certificate of accommodation to them from turpin high school joshua blavit foster fenner lauren ferguson jonathan lee jeffrey logan claire mingle matthew osterlund elissa ward and patricia wells [Applause] a little bit more one two three thank you um okay and the semi-finalist from anderson high school andrew kepner and adam barrett [Applause] so our agenda had um adam actually going to turbine high school so i was confused i

026was about to ask you what happened to adam but adam's at anderson so the board commends the following students adam kepner adam barrett i'm sorry andrew kepner adam barrett joshua blabbit fausta fenner lauren ferguson jonathan lee jeffrey logan claire mengele matthew osterlund elissa ward and patricia wells for the achievement and distinction for having been named semifinalists in the 2021 national merit scholarship program and they'd be given a certificate of commendation second mrs cropper mrs bissinger yes mrs meyer yes miss choice dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes congratulations guys good job all right this is the traditional time where the board president says that while you're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting it is perfectly acceptable to go on your way but thank you for coming uh next up item 5.1 executive session

027pursuant to ohio revised code section 121 222 g1 i hereby move that the board adjourned to executive session for the purpose of considering the appointment employment dismissal discipline promotion demotion compensation of a public employee or official and also pursuant to ohio revised code section 121.222g i hereby move that the board adjourned to executive session to meet with board legal counsel to discuss disputes involving the board and or the school district that are the subject of pending or imminent court action wait a second second ms cropper mrs meyer yes miss joyce yes mrs bissinger yes dr smithson yes sector heist yes out of executive session thank you for your patience we'll now move on to public comments we do ask that you address the board as a whole we do not regulate that though one of

028the things that came up at the last meeting is that you can say pretty much everything and anything you would like to say short of being outright threatening or obscene so we do ask that you do not be outright threatening or obscene we will start off with dan salcedo and julie sheffer is on deck we'll have one minute hey thank you thank you like to speak about superintendent who had contorted his board approved cag plan into an unapproved scheme in order to deceitfully gain the implied consent of the cag so that he could install crt related dbie scott's cag plane has premeditated ruse a sham he and his osba team one abandoned the 628 board approved cag plan two substituted an unapproved cag plant as a bait and switch using osba deceptive techniques in order

029to claim a cag recommendation to install dbie scott discarded his original board approved measurable objectives he abandoned his agreed small 10-person board 60 were selected 40 have resigned they're only leaving 20 so any recommendation made is a sham therefore in light of this demonstrated insubordination that board i demand that this board at minimum reprimand scott and recognize the potential breach of scott's contract specifically termination clause 17b next up julie sheffer and michelle rolfes is on deck hi i'm a very strong supporter of our schools our teachers our administrators and it's excited to be a member of the citizens advisory group i wanted to openly discuss and debate what worked well and what needed improvement instead a diversity belonging inclusion equity model was forced upon us by the ohio board of education consultants we weren't allowed

030to discuss it debate it or dismiss the model itself which is a foundation for bringing critical race theory into schools it wasn't supported by the member the majority of cag members by my by my account 40 people voted with their feet walking out and rejecting it the remaining 25 were split so 80 were against bringing this theory into our schools and 20 were for it that's a huge rejection the power rests in you the board if it's proposed i urge you to vote no it's very divisive parents are working aggressively all over the country to get it out of their schools i don't know why we would consider bringing it here we make real impactful recommendations we can make real impactful recommendations that won't be detrimental to our kids or cause widespread division in our

031community many have expressed a willingness to engage in this process again if it's legitimate send us back to the drawing board without the board of ohio board of education consultants they don't live here they don't know our community our schools are our kids let's do what's right first thank you michelle rolfes is up sue wood is on deck i was an active member of the citizens advisory group for four or five meetings the cag did not function as anticipated or described in the action plan approved by the board in june according to the superintendent's plan we were tasked with creating recommendations for future professional development and mental health relationships and wellness without crt ideology the board approved plan was never shared with cag members until meeting four we could not mention crt in spite of

032it being number four of eight prioritized concerns for the group instead we spent five hours redefining diversity equity inclusion and belonging the activity had no relationship whatsoever to the plan or what we thought we would do we had no opportunity to consider any topic specific to student needs in addition bullying and intimidation by a small group of members occurred inside and outside of the meetings to include cursing accusations stalking public shaming and doxxing attempts it was not a good use of time and it was a fraud on the participants the community and the board thank you mr office [Applause] next up sue wood sean martin on deck diversity belonging inclusion equity these aren't scary words these words their definitions and associated actions help create a more welcoming safe environment for all people isn't that we

033all what we all want for our kids don't we want our kids to feel seen for their unique qualities don't we want our kids to have a sense of belonging to feel included in the world don't we want our kids to be given the tools necessary to reach their maximum potential that's what equity means in a school setting my son struggled with addition in fourth grade his teacher knew he loved music videos and found a catchy one to teach him addition he was able to join the 100 club due to his teacher responding to his specific need that's equity in a classroom i'm requesting that the care teamwork be taken off pause and resumed immediately let's get our kids prepared to navigate and flourish in a world that is more diverse than ever and i

034want to say that i was also a member of the cag thank you thank you and what they're saying sean martin is up next and jason remmel is on deck all right i was also on the cag i saw quite a few people cut and run when things got tough and that's what i saw and that kind of robbed me of the chance to have discussions with people that didn't feel the same way that i did which i think is a little more productive and i was robbed of that chance but had nothing to do about that but anyway i think the care the care team was developed because of a real need and they started to create tools for kids to feel included in the schools and they created tools for the uh for

035the teachers to create an inclusive environment in their schools or in their classrooms and that's what they were they were tools they were options for the teachers you know they didn't they weren't they had to take these classes they were not mandatory but they had to take them and implementing them in their classrooms sorry i haven't i've never done this before but the tools they needed to foster it and thank you thank you mr thank you next up jason remmel and bill armstrong is on deck it was part of the cag meetings over these last few months when i went into the meetings i had had a hope that as a community we would be able to come together to work together to hear one another's thoughts and ideas my wife and i met with

036mr prebles and expressed that same thing to him in person unfortunately far too much of the time in those meetings ended up with people being shouted down and ridiculed and yes cursing everything kind of in between i think it was representative of where we are in our society honestly where our culture is is that we have quit giving grace to one another and we've quit extending the belief that there's goodness in all of us even when we see things different politically and i'd give anything for us to get back to a place that is is there at the end of five meetings we essentially ended up i felt like where we started um policies and good intentions but that i fear inevitably do nothing more than virtue signal and i think that we can do

037better as a community thank you next up bill armstrong and jackie dogstino the agostino is on deck all right you all took an oath of office to uphold the constitution of our great country i served you with an affidavit the tacit portion of that affidavit states if you do not respond which you did not that means you have admitted to all facts that are contained in the affidavit including criminal acts a person of integrity and good character would have stepped down i will now file this with the county commissioners sheriff's department and ohio department of education i will be sending notice to your bondholder if you have one and you can also be held personally liable for all damages good luck thank you mr house next up is jackie diaz agastino the augustina thank you

038diagostino i try and a gail garza is on deck so um uh you probably can't see the back of my shirt but i wore this shirt tonight because it says we rise by lifting others and i believe that in forest hills that's what we do my name is jackie d'agostino and i've been teaching in the forest hills school district for 18 years and i've absolutely been blessed to work with such an awesome district we have an outstanding outstanding sense of community we have an absolutely amazing staff that cares about the entire well-being of our children i tell parents every year that once your child is in my class they are always one of my kids as an educator who loves and cares about her kids it melts my heart when my students start calling me

039mom that's already happened this year so i'm ahead of the game when my husband and i had children i knew that anderson was where we needed to move our educators care about children as if they were our own we moved here about four years ago and it was the best decision we made i asked my kids every night what made them smile that day and every night they answered with the names of their teachers being a part of the fhsd both as an educator and an and as a parent to me is the best thank you what's up gail garza and matt gaul is on deck good evening my name is gail garza and i teach chemistry for turpin high school it is my 18th year of service for the forest hill school district i'm

040actually here today to speak about a program that is being run at a fun it's an event that we run every year at terpene high school it's a kind of a student mental health challenge program it's called cincy warrior run and it is a program regionally that supports mental health services for school communities uh it's a kind of one of those kind of things you sign up to like run or you can donate money it's kind of cool but all the funds that each school generates they're returned and they're available for usually through the counseling department to supplement extra mental health services suicide prevention and things of such nature um i must give the shout out to the gentleman in our building who runs and facilitates thank you ms garza larry schlaster is awesome matt

041gaul is that correct all right and aaron tetlock is on deck good evening my name is matt gall and i am the head band director at anderson high school and co-director of the forest hills marching band alongside my colleague joe wesche over at turpin i'm here to i'm here tonight to provide the board with a very brief update of the band department's successes so far this year while the fallout from the pandemic has caused a decline abandoned romans throughout the country and many districts i'm pleased to say that forest hills has actually experienced growth at all levels this year just two months ago we welcomed over 250 fifth grade beginners to the program which is the highest i've ever seen since my time here when i started in 2017. july 26th marked the official start

042of the 2021 season for the forest hills marching band with return of band camp despite the fact that nearly 60 percent of the students have never marched a competitive season before we have already secured a reserve grand champion and grand champion placements at the hamilton high school and tippecanoe high school competitions respectively this is a strong testament to all 193 hard-working students that strive for success and excellence day in and day out it truly does take a village to run a successful band program thank you to the board for your continued support next up erin tetlock and courtney youssef is on deck hi i'm erin tetlak i am in almost my 10th year teaching english at turpin high school as advisor for turpin student council i wanted to come before the board to speak to

043you about how about the amazing work that our students are doing to build an even stronger community within our walls before summer ended our student council executive team led by molly buckovich scotty nimmo brook heiss and alex lehmann had already set out plans to achieve an outstanding kickoff to the year pep rallies dances tailgates you name it they have it on our calendar much to my chagrin sometime i was especially impressed by their handling of this year's homecoming their goal was to host an event that reminded everyone what we love about our community and they did not disappoint the students created an event larger than any past homecoming in our building of the over a thousand students in attendance at the dance more than 800 were from turpin high school it was thrilling to see

044them having a blast thank you for your hard work appreciate it portrait youssef and donna laver is on deck is it that close yusef yeah that's it all right um right now an advisory at nagel um in my advisory each morning we are learning about one another through student spotlights we are showing images of one another to learn about each other and we are also doing something interactive i watched a student solve a rubik's cube in less than two minutes in front of me today i watched a student complete a handstand walk across the front of my classroom with the disclosure that she did have shorts under her cheerleading uniform and i watched a student assemble a clarinet in front of her peers as well we are working to build a sense of community and

045belonging within our advisory home space each day and i had a student this weekend complete 23 self-portraits of everyone in my advisory over the weekend that's what she chose to do in her spare time and i got to be a part of that 23 and i get to hang my self-portrait that she drew of me and my classroom starting tomorrow so just want to give you an update about advisory and our student spotlights we're having right now thank you uh donald donna laver is up and eric erica chizik is on deck good evening my name is donna lauver i'm the part-time community partnership advisor here in forest hills school district and i'm really glad courtney brought in the words community because that's what i'm here to talk to you about this evening i want to

046make sure that the board is aware that we are bringing back two of our most fabulous community partners fc cincinnati and mount carmel brewery who are going to be hosting again our fcc kick it up with forest hill school district and our students been both anderson and turpin will be participating in sports marketing management program they'll have the opportunity to be trained they're going to be doing activities within those organizations and then the big celebration will be on november the 7th i do understand fcc let go of their staff today so i'm thinking maybe if our students might have an opportunity thank you so mark your calendars uh students will be out and about and they will be recruiting uh for tickets and sales and doing lots of great activities with that thank you so

047much thank you erica chezek julie stevens is on debt hello my name is erika chizik i'm here to speak about caring and compassion children deserve the best of us they deserve our thoughtful level-headed answers to questions they deserve us taking the higher road they deserve to be protected and to feel safe and forest hills has not been modeling that behavior yelling and jeering at them and their parents during these meetings lawsuits and digging up dirt on the members of this board and each other shaming kids with racist and bigoted behaviors lies and gossip about those exact children on facebook intimidating them based on culture and race putting things in their parents yards this is not the sign of a healthy or caring community and i hope that we can get back there soon thank you

048thank you julie stevens is up erin cox is on deck hello i'm a parent at maddox elementary i have a third grader and a kindergartner last year my third grader had a rough year developing some positive peer relationships and not only did his teacher last year mrs d'agostino and the medics counselor mrs super do a great job communicating and mitigating these issues they never once made me feel like i was a burden for um bringing this up to them likewise this year when my same kiddo was so anxious about what the new year would bring for him um the ap heather milligan his um new teacher mrs munchen and the new counselor at maddox miss francis have gone above and beyond to make him feel safe and loved and ready for third grade so we

049moved to anderson for the schools and i am proud of everything that maddox and fhst is doing to support students social and emotional learning and i just wanted to shout them out this evening thank you erin cox is up and adam renard is on deck hi my name is erin cox and i am a third grade teacher at mercer elementary and a parent in the district so i'm here oh well at any given time in my building i wanted just to share what you might see as a teacher from a teacher's perspective you'd see teachers collaborating with their teams and staff members creating educational experiences for their students some experience you might witness at any given time are trips to the mercer creek to study macro invertebrates and study different ecosystems maybe a walk to

050the anderson urban farm to observe chickens in their inherited traits today mr fry and our head custodian were literally dropping eggs off the roof of mercer as a culminating project he had been working on with the students a way to create um create a connection uh between what they were learning with force properties of matter and velocity so at any given time you never know what you might see with these experience opportunities we're providing students one of my favorite at the moment is miss bohart our third grade art teacher is taking our students over to the anderson urban farm to sketch the barn and the student's artwork is going to be presented at the urban farm harvest fair next up adam bernard uh and lindy di maria is on deck do i get to like

051once you start it goes oh once i start okay hey um voice actors i'm adam bernard hi y'all and i am a 15-year teacher um who moved here in 2017 and one thing i wanted to share with you all because i feel like there has been a large negative presence about what is happening in our district this is my third district i had the misfortune of being rifted in 2007 and then again in 2009 and that was just part of recession culture but when i was there one thing we talked a lot about was differentiation and here in forest hills that's actually practiced every learner is actually having the opportunity to get what they need when they need it it's done through mastery and standards based and it's happening at mercer unquestionably i'm actually thrilled

052to be a part of the team that is putting it together from sixth grade fifth grade and fourth grade down and it's something that is an unbelievable amazing opportunity for students and i'm excited to be a member of the school but also thank you of the district maria and barbara purcell is on deck i would like to start by congratulating forest hills for earning niche.com's ranking of top four percent of school districts in the state of ohio wow what an awesome and amazing accomplishment it is because of this dedication to learning and outstanding work that my kids bounce out the door ready to learn come running home to tell me about their great day with their teachers and thank you teachers for sharing your amazing relational authentic experiences with us it's so great to hear

053as a parent but in recent months the concept of equity has fallen under attack both locally and nationally i know there are individuals in this community who personally don't like the idea of equity but i think these individuals have a limited knowledge of what equity and education actually is equity is absolutely providing academic and social emotional support to students of diverse backgrounds but equity extends far beyond race equity is providing extra academic support to students who struggle with educational basics equity is providing academic challenges to gifted learners equity is the iep and 504 accommodations provided to students with learning differences and also providing an inclusive environment for their students thank you go care barbara next up barbara purcell mary beth conklin is on deck oh did you just do that there i'm a parent in

054the district um forest hills school district's vision statement is striving to ensure the success for all students which we've seen tonight and i'd argue that that's actually the whole idea behind diversity equity inclusion and belonging and it's why every single person in this room should support the work of the care team because none of our children can succeed until all of our children can succeed but instead this important work has been needlessly politicized most parents that i know in the district are busy having dinner and helping with homework and driving back from soccer practice and they don't care about school board politics they want their children to be given the tools to succeed and the compassion to succeed as we saw just today in anderson township the work of the care team is too important

055to be put on hold for politics so i'd like it to continue thank you thank you we've got mary beth conklin and donna pruse is on deck hi my name is mary beth i work at air i teach kindergarten and every year we do many assessments to start the year as you can imagine there's an assessment from the state of ohio that we have to administer there's our own district screeners that we do and then teachers have their own assessments they also like to to administer and this year our reading intervention teachers pushed into all kindergarten classes across the district and they administered the the state test for us and our district screener and this allowed teachers like me to just be with the kids and create relationships rather than assessing all the time and

056it really did help our youngest learners have a better experience and just come to school and learn what it's like to be in school and so i'm super appreciative of bob buck and the work he did to to make that happen and to all of the administrators in the schools to make that happen and our reading specialists who were so professional and came in and did a great job so that we could just teach thank you and make relationships next up donna cruz and anita hughes is on deck hi my name is donna prus and i'm here to express my gratitude to my superintendent and to my board i am in my 27th year and i realized i've never had a chance to say thank you thank you for trusting me with the children and

057i because i have chosen to be a working mom i have sent three children through college my husband and i and i owe that to forest hills so i just want to say thank you thank you next up anita hughes and martha veeman is on deck i am anita hughes this is my 23rd year teaching at forest hills i previously worked at a district where i loved my job but we typically had two to four parents or people show up at our pto meetings so i just want to mention how grateful i am for the fantastic relationship that our district has and our board fosters with our pto currently the sherwood pto is planning a walk-a-thon to raise funds for an outdoor classroom space they are getting a huge amount of student input for that

058project and so i can't wait to see what they create and i just want to thank you as a board as a staff and our parents for fostering these great relationships thanks thank you martha veeman is up and corey mullins is on deck participating in the cag taught me that in our community there's two different languages that we speak so i want to talk about equity and demonstrate what it means in this district when my kids started in the early 2000s a student with no lunch money received a peanut butter sandwich that left students with peanut allergies with no lunch and it probably stigmatized pbnjs because kids figure things out but the policy changed so no students so all students would receive lunch regardless of the status of their lunch account the change recognized children

059need to eat to learn this year the district provides free meals to all students these policy shifts demonstrate what equity means removing barriers so kids can succeed so thank you for the good work you've done in evaluating policies keep equity in our district and keep up the good work thank you next up corey mullins and jen miller is on deck hi my name is corey mullins we met earlier this evening i have the great pleasure of being a science teacher at turpin high school 24 years ago this district took a chance on this brand new teacher who knew nothing i promise you and um when i started teaching here i heard this that it was a destination district for teachers right and i didn't understand what they meant over the last 24 years i now

060know what it means is this is land of opportunities if you can dream it we can make it happen one of the biggest things that that brought that home for me was we started an event called spark night four years ago spark night for those who are unfamiliar is where we as high school teachers and high school students create an annual event for the elementary students we invite them in we get them excited about science we get them excited about participating in our annual science and innovation fair it was a community event funded by forest hills foundation for education thank you to all them it was a parent event it was a student event it was students working with students and it was amazing and that's the kind of thing i love to see in

061forest hills thank you next up is jen miller and kevin mishack is on deck hi i just wanted to address the board and thank you so much for serving our community this job has become bigger and more challenging than any of us could have envisioned when you ran for this board i appreciate the leadership you have demonstrated as well as the district leadership you support i personally appreciate the experience you provided with the virtual academy last year under the awesome leadership of bob buck i was blessed to work with over 74th grade families that truly benefited from our district offering this opportunity each of the six buildings supported us with counselors and principal check-ins and our tech department was amazing during this endeavor to keep it going it was a well thought out decision whether

062or not to continue this opportunity and being back in the classroom i've witnessed our students transitioning comfortably back into our buildings and i am grateful for the continued support you provide with your decisions to make those families with needs feel comfortable in our learning communities i realize the pushback thank you thank you thank you next up kevin kevin mishack and pat berning is on deck 2014 voters approved a 103 million dollar bond the issue also included a 0.5 mill property tax to create a permanent improvement fund to provide revenue for future building maintenance 2016 scott prebles was hired as superintendent uh 2017 we had a cash balance of almost 20 million dollars 2018 a state audit found that forest hills school district had lost seven almost seven million dollars in one year 2019 voters approved

063a seven point no excuse me 4.7 million levy 2019 anderson high school pool was closed and remains closed the district i believe is facing two lawsuits regarding uh regarding the anderson high school construction project november 2020 the five-year forecast provided by the treasurer of this board calls for a deficit of almost 13 million dollars by the year end of 2025. by my calculation thank you sir [Applause] next up pat burning robert douglas baker is on deck thank you i am here reading a letter from louise lawrence who couldn't be here this evening she would like to express her appreciation for the wonderful work the cares team has done in the past she would also like to clarify a quotation by dr martin luther king quote his four little children not be judged by the color

064of their skin by the content of their character this quote is often used to create the false notion that dr king meant we should not see color of a person's skin that we should be color dr king was not seeking a colorblind world but a world free of racial discrimination he knew how deep seeded it was he wrote 1968 a quote america is still poisoned by racism which is as native to our soil as pine trees sagebrush and buffalo grass end of quote adults who acknowledge the reality of that systemic racism still exist can create lessons to help students at age appropriate levels understand injustice and the role of citizens in building a more perfect union they can establish welcome safe inclusive classrooms where every child can thrive thank you thank you next up is

065robert douglas baker and megan wilde is on deck my name is robert douglas baker i'm a head custodian at sherwood elementary school i'm also president of local 177 oopsy which covers the bus drivers administrative assistants health aides cook head cooks custodians and head custodians i just wanted to go over kind of what we do we're we're kind of at the bottom of what happens in the school we're the support staff we're the people that keep the wind beneath the wings i didn't want to use that but i'm going to anyhow so you know i always get uh asked by the parents what do you guys do what did you do for summer did you have a great summer no i cleaned 65 000 square foot of sherwood elementary school along with two other guys some

066female sometimes so that's what we do we touch every square inch of our building throughout 10 weeks which would be nice if we had of that building as we go throughout the summertime thank you thank you [Applause] next up is megan wilde and jessica cunningham is on deck hi my name is megan wilde my daughter is a first grader at wilson elementary and we love this district she came home this year talking about the wilson way and taking care of others and i'm just so grateful that she's already learning equity and inclusion through the wilson way i think it's imperative that we stay committed to the social emotional well-being of our students we have such an amazing district as evidenced by the awards that were given tonight and when we decided to move to ohio

067we knew forest hills is where we wanted to be so we just have such an opportunity to equip them with learning centered around equity inclusion diversity and belonging and i think it would be a mistake to not reinstate the care team and continue its work thank you thank you [Applause] next up is jessica cunningham and allison shields is on deck over the past couple months i've been a participant in the citizen advisory group committee i have spent over 10 hours learning about the care team and how it is implemented going over definitions ideas and speaking with diverse minded community members i want to be honest about how brutal these meetings could be at times for everyone this kind of work is truly hard work it's uncomfortable but it's important there were times and there were

068times when the meetings were completely derailed by members who had no intention of actually learning but instead injecting conspiracies despite these distractions we did prevail scott prebles did a tremendous job of explaining equity in the context of education and we learned how diverse diversity belonging and inclusion were essential for students and teachers collectively we were able to form a list of tangible suggestions for the board regarding the care team one thing is abundantly clear we need the care team our teachers students and community our community which once again made headlines for discriminatory discriminatory behavior we need the care team i personally want to thank the school board last stop we have allison shields hi my name is allison shields and i am actually reading for someone who cannot be here tonight her name is tina

069mooney and she says as a resident alumni and social worker i urge you to reinstate the care team a primary task of the care team is to provide teachers with the skills and resources they need to ensure every student feels seen feels heard and feels like they fit in this not only improves learning it reduces bullying and where bullying continues it mitigates the effects in teens and tweens we know the victims of bullying as well as the bullies themselves are at dramatically increased risk of suicide that's why i support the care team and as far as myself on a personal note if you watch the news tonight that's why we need the care team because of what happened in people's yards overnight last night because we need more inclusiveness we need people to come together

070we need our community to not be so divided it was hateful and it was wrong thank you okay i want to thank all of our public speakers i we do appreciate you your comments next up item 8.1 anderson high school site project resolution recommendation i'm i'm trying to get to it sir thank you i'm sorry district item 8.1 anderson high school site project resolution i recommend that the board of education approve the resolution as shown in the attachment in conjunction with the anderson high school site lawsuit no motion i make a motion to approve the resolution as shown in the attachment in conjunction with the anderson high school site lawsuit a second second ms cropper miss choice yes mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes so full disclosure that was

071one of the lawsuits that was mentioned earlier um we have a preliminary resolution it is upon once it's fully executed we will make all the documents public item 8.2 return to learn health and safety update uh okay [Music] i need to [Applause] go to slide number one please we wanted to try to provide an update to the board of education this evening regarding a seven day or excuse me a 37 day review because uh many parents many concerned citizens have contacted us regarding what they've been hearing on the national and local news and so what we try to do today is put together a sort of a comparison for the board of education and those present in the meeting to to show where we are so the then would be 2021 last year and the

072now obviously is 2122 uh and so then uh with covid19 there was no vaccination obviously available to us last year last year we had a virtual option that was mentioned this evening for our students based on family requests to be able to ensure the children were safe and out of harm's way without as much information as we currently have regarding the situation with the health and wellness six foot seating options last year based on what we knew we really spent a lot of time prior to the building opening schools opening to ensure that our students had six foot distances not only in the cafeteria and other places in the building but in classrooms to the best of our ability we also know that at that time we all we included the academy of pediatrics so

073that we could wear face masks and have those distances be reduced to three feet meeting the cdc and pediatrics guidelines we were in a universal masking situation last year that we are not currently in and that was in pre-k through 12 all throughout our school system we had community masking guidelines last year a significant difference between last year and this year if we can all remember is much of what happened after school for kids stopped and all of us by governor rule in the state of ohio were required to wear masks and so there were no large gatherings in our schools and basically were not permitted in society at least in the state of ohio for weddings so forth we met we had orders in public places of what we could and could not do

074there was limited restaurant availability much of the restaurant was pick it up at the door or online ordering or telephone ordering and if you were in a restaurant they were scattered tables and most of them had an outdoor opportunity and we began to see tarps and extra extra venues on the sides of restaurants to ensure that people had a safe environment and then there were no spectator sports within the school system and much across the country collegiate and pro professional sports so we were in an environment last year that many of us were unaware of the realities of the pandemic and all things associated and so we had very we had very several mitigation uh plans in place and we all know about the way kids move throughout the buildings in patterned hallway trafficking and

075things like that and so that's where we were and we've learned a lot since then but we still have a good bit of controversy wrapped around the pandemic and mitigation related to it this year we have covit 19 plus we have the delta variant now coved 19 we have a sense of what that is many individuals have actually had confirmed cases and they've seen that in their families and we all know the numbers and the statistics related to that and what it looked like not only in our state but in our country last year in the december january february time period where we were experiencing a pretty significant spike in confirmed cases at this this year we what we didn't have last year is that we can have a vaccination for students that are 13

076years and older and so in the 7th and 8th grade also through nine through twelve we have students who have had an opportunity to be vaccinated i am not recommending vaccinations i'm saying that that is something that is available this year that was not available to parents as an option for their children we still don't have that available for our younger students but i think there's been some indication that pretty soon late october well late october maybe november we'll be seeing something like that we have 10 more percent of the students in our building than we had in our buildings last year because of the virtual component that i spoke of a few minutes ago so not only do we have less masking taking place in our high schools and middle school we also have

077more students back in the building which really stresses that three foot six foot parameter that we had in place last year that we were pretty much sticklers on throughout the year six foot seating is limited in our school this year we do to the best of our ability in all situations try to keep students six feet apart from each other in our elementaries that has become a significant issue because of the significant more amount of students that we have in our schools we also have had some situations in our high schools and middle school where that seating is pretty close and so we're we're happy that there's opportunity if people choose to have their children take advantage of the vaccination universal pre-k through six is what we currently have in place and we are operating

078with that universal pre-k through six in our instructional settings in our elementary schools we are allowing students to have the six we we absolutely have the six foot distances in our cafeterias in our hallways and other places where students are not necessarily in an instructional environment and sitting closer than six feet we allow them to have the mass breaks obviously outside during our recess time in open spaces students are not wearing masks in the elementary and also we have opportunities with the weather being as nice as as it has been for our teachers to allow students to go outside in instructional groups and enjoy the uh the warm or the the fresh air and get a break from being behind the mask we have no restrictions right now in our schools or at least in

079hamilton county on our elementary students and secondary students outside of the school day and when i go to meetings on friday mornings with the other superintendents from hamilton county butler county warren county there's a significant discussion that happens every week about masks and the way that masks may be data related impacted the number of cases that we are experiencing this year in our elementaries as well as in our high schools but there are no mask regulations at least at this point in time you know one of the things about tonight and about being a superintendent in this particular day and age is that there is now a lot of data that has been collected about masks about mitigation about vaccinations about contact tracing about six foot three foot so forth and so on and so

080in my days of being a community builder in the last 18 months it seems as though the superintendency and the decisions related to many of these decisions puts me in a community divider position i don't like that at all because it's an educational environment board of education and superintendents across this state are being asked to be epidemiologists asked to make decisions about health and wellness for students that's a very difficult position to be put in when the data suggests and is collected by different sides of each issue where we make decisions and that's when the debate starts and that's when the agitation starts and the trust issues become prevalent in our role as superintendents and that's discouraging for me because i want to be a builder of our community and opportunities for our students and

081this environment that we're in right now is difficult next slide so here you see in 2021 versus 2020 last year versus this year last year in the first 37 days of the year we had eight students with isolation positives meaning they had confirmed cases this year we have 150 at this particular point in time that is a significant change from last year however i think it's important to try to the best of our ability to have comparisons that truly are comparative so what we did is go back to last year in that november december time period when the entire county state and country was in a spike and so what our doctors are doing now is working with us to better understand last year's spike in november december and january compared to this year's spike

082that we're dealing with at the beginning of the school year and so what we see right now is 106 last year in the nation's spike and 150 right now in our current spike so we're about 44 more students this year in a spike period than what we experienced last year not discounting the first 37 days of last year at eight and remember all mitigations full throttle face mass everywhere in all areas i personally believe because we're not seeing transition within our schools right now that much of what we're seeing that's causing students to be absent is happening outside of the instructional day for our younger children and brought into the schools we see with our teachers we don't have as many teachers that have contacted covid this year and i believe that that may that

083may have something to do with vaccinations nonetheless again i'm not a doctor and therefore this is my opinion it certainly isn't uh the re you know it could be anyone's reality but if you look up there to the top right you see staff isolation positives and you see the numbers from last year and you see the numbers from this year it was 38 at this time last year and this year it is 11 the number of staffs who have confirmed cases and there's a little asterisk there this does not include john central office administer central office staff all staff is not included this is relative to the buildings in our school district so this is the data that we have right now and so um you can you can see all of that it's available

084for everyone yes we have 150 confirmations but in a spike spiking comparison last year at the 106 plus this year we need to consider the fact that the delta variant is also a contributing factor and it apparently is transitioning from individual to individual at a much higher rate or what's the term doctor heist a reductive reproductive rate thank you so um if we could go to the next slide please we want to talk about where we are and what we'd like to you know discuss for the future we'd like to continue the reduction duration 2 quarantine protocol this is a shift this year from last year and the reduction 2 is once quarantined it's a 10-day quarantine it can be reduced to seven days if within the fifth day er on the fifth day a

085person gets a test and they have a negative test if that happens you can reduce to the from the 10-day to the 7-day quarantine so we've instituted that into our school system this year and we'd like to continue in that direction uh from this point forward until we learn until we learn more we'd like to continue location-specific remote learning options i can tell you that we had a a real tense afternoon uh this afternoon because of a situation at anderson high school with cafeteria workers we went back and did our contact tracing and what we thought was going to be no staff coming to the cafeteria between tomorrow and a 10-day quarantine period that was reduced based upon the time that the individual started to have symptoms their location in the cafeteria and not being

086within uh six feet of anyone for 15 minutes periods of time based on the responsibilities of their position so we have to go back through all of that stuff so we we were talking about pizzas and boxed lunches and remote learning and all sorts of things today between about 2 and 3 30 uh when we received indication that the person was not uh in a situation where we were going to have to have no one in the cafeteria available to us so those are the types of things that we're going through on a daily basis nonetheless we'd like to continue with location specific remote learning options for students so that would mean if an elementary or a high school middle school needed to have a class or a grade level or the building that it

087would not influence the rest of the district the next one is continue the current pre-k through 6 and 7 through 12 mask protocols and they seem to be working for us given the fact that of the numbers that we saw and i know that for some of our pre-k through six parents this is a difficult thing for them because of the social and emotional issues that they believe wearing mass brings to their children nonetheless what we're doing right now seems to be working for those children in the circumstance that we're in with not having the full six foot distance in our classrooms or even the three foot distance with the both children wearing masks offer vaccination clinics for students and staff both newly approved and booster options and so when these become available this is

088not done i believe that this is a board decision this is a policy decision and i'm offering it as a recommendation it is not something that is slated to happen but last year we provided we provided vaccination opportunities for our staff we also did that for our high school students if their parents felt that they wanted to do that and this year if those things become available to us then our recommendation would be to make that as easy and accessible for those who would like to have it as we possibly can but again that is a board of education decision for you to consider provide updated communication for voluntary elementary after-hours activities what we have learned over the last couple of weeks and we're going to talk about this at cabinet meetings tomorrow and extend

089that over the rest of the week is making sure that our volunteers that our after school activities our sponsors coaches so forth and so on know what the protocol should be across the board for all of our elementary students because we want to make sure that our parents are not placed in volunteers parents who are trying to do good work with kids are placed in contentious situations because one elementary is doing one thing and another elementary is doing another so we're going to tighten up on the communication on that and we'll provide that to our parents in the upcoming days and then we did want to inform the board of education that we are in fact going to be in a lighter level than we have done in the past providing community rental opportunities for

090those who want to use our facilities and who will abide by our recommended policies regarding mitigation cleanup so forth and so on so i'd like to ask john if i missed anything he he coached me up today um very well done okay thank you so so pretty much where we are right now is that the board's decision we continue to monitor it on a daily basis we'd like to continue following through with that with some of these things as thoughts as we move along in the process if you have questions or concerns i'm happy to have john answer so so far we're not seeing much transmission in the schools is that no statistical significance no we we talked to the board of health on that on a basis and there's nothing that's triggering anything with

091them that's any significance and then what's so in warren county the governor allowed them to trial what they're non-quarantining methods i don't have i don't want to quote it exactly but some methods where they will not quarantine but they still contact trace so all the work the administrators are going is still exactly the same the students are coming in and what their goal is overall goal is to see if they start seeing reoccurrences of transmission within those contact groups and that data is not out there yet now are we still sending all of our data to the county or the state or whatever so okay we take everything to the state and we send it all to the county also daily to the county and we do a weekly report to the state i assume

092they're gonna they're doing what they did last year which is to compile all that data yes last year we had a 14-day quarantine then a 10-day quarantine then a seven-day quarantine then no quarantine with mass based on that data so they're still they're getting all that data not just from us but from everywhere yes sir there's this old county and all state and they're working to always look at various protocols and practices to see which is the best because they know as a fact that the county when i talk to them they know our goal is to keep kids in our vaccination clinic that we did last year was that a cost to the district okay we have the vaccination clinic we did for the adults for after-hours clinics that we held here and for

093the high school clinics all we really had to do is provide an area for them to do that in the high schools and those were done during school hours any large vaccination clinic my recommendation would be for after school hours to not disrupt any time with the education process high school level was pretty nice they were able to do it during study halls things like that do you need um if that if we do another clinic did you say scott that we need to approve that as a board for that to go ahead i don't know that we absolutely approved it last year but i don't want to make that decision without certainly having board conversation and board direction as to as to how you would want to do that i i did we i

094need to look that up and i think that what we should present to the board is the best thing from a legal perspective and we'll talk to the district's attorney to ensure what we should do regarding that decision but i'll provide that information to the board so that you have it when you get to that point in time if we get to that point in time thank you i just can't remember today what we actually did i'm sorry all of the clinics today have been voluntary yes the community rental updates you said is lessening we're actually opening it up more to the community now but it's going to be much less certainly time restrictions on the elementary buildings everything has to be finished by community we're saying anything that happens once the students leave but

095they have to be out by seven o'clock that's something that custodians feel they can still get all the cleaning protocols taken care of and there's going to be limited because we're still using a lot of our gymnasiums as cafeterias and we are not going to be tearing down our that that would be totally cost prohibitive to tear down the gym so practices so there's not going to be a huge influx but i do know there are some groups that are you know would like to get in and do some good things for the community and the kids so we want to open those up sounds good all right anything else no sir okay next up uh this superintendent citizens advisory group update the cag has concluded its fifth of five scheduled meetings though recommendations are

096not completed draft statements have been submitted are in need of additional edits and full committee affirmation to forward to the board for its consideration we had measurable objectives to ensure crt and its doctrines are not intentionally taught to students nor included in staff professional development in transparent fashion acknowledge merits of care team relationship and wellness cornerstone goals and prevent the inclusion of crt explicit content in future relationship and wellness cornerstone professional development and we wanted to develop recommendation present a recommendation presentation for forest hills school district board of education consideration in areas of relationship and wellness cornerstone policies processes content and communication this has been a long process filled with high emotion and in some cases partisanship the district's relationship and wellness cornerstone work with and without care team involvement has been based on what

097is in the best interest of our students and their well-being though due to the number of participants the process has been slow and cumbersome the cag has in my opinion done good work in fact during its last meeting this past thursday where a crt audit of videos materials and slide deck presentations was conducted members shared thoughts of ways to eliminate connection to activists and or controversial activities subject matter and support materials in professional development planning additionally as mentioned this evening the dbi model specifically the term equity and its connection to crt remains connect contentious however solid draft relationship and wellness recommendations inclusive of the need for additional review of student discipline bullying and social emotional learning information as well as the role of the care team to lead in the development implementation and communication of

098all future related professional development are yet to be completed for board consideration this has not been easy and it would not be truthful to report that consensus has been reached in all areas discussed including the process of the cag but we will continue in the work and i am personally grateful for all who have attended meetings met with me privately and by phone or through email to discuss their concerns not to mention those that are committed to potential future meetings and the development of final recommendations regardless of what anyone may think i am certain all and i mean this all of the people that attend and participate attended and participated in cag meetings are devoted to the best interests of our students and have demonstrated through their involvement a commitment to further develop of further

099development to ensure quality relationship and wellness programming is available to all students thank you item i'll go to business operations i'm 9.1 payment in lieu of transportation mr eckert good evening yes we have two things in business operations today the first one is we have a revised payment in lieu of transportation as you know last board meme we brought that in we've had more people come up to where we need to offer the payment in lieu of and item 9.2 is just as we'd said we're reopening the rental facility so this is just the board review of the fee schedule for the facilities rentals so at this time the superintendent attendant recommends the board approve the district use of premises fee schedule and the payment in lieu of transportation thank you thank you item 10.1

100human resources mr fellows well good evening to the board it was mentioned earlier this evening that forest hills is a destination district and a perfect way to start things off this this evening in the hr report with a handful of retirements i'd like to give a congratulatory retirement to kathy burton 28 years at nagel teaching stem classes joe newton 29 years at nagel as an art teacher in pam benomini 20 years in the district most recently at nagel as an intervention specialist and then on the classified side donna aiden 21 years as a bus driver combining 98 years of service to the district and we're grateful for for them and wish them all the best in their future in retirement item b resignations you have a couple of classified resignations item c appointment of employment

101personnel items item d we have a number of change of assignment and salaries listed there for the board um item e appointments we have a number of appointments and most of those are appointments of the bus monitor positions under the new opc 677 contract although there are a couple esser positions that are to be appointed this evening as well and then the classified staff appointments there ending probationary status item g we have appointment of additional assignment and and or resignations of consultants coaches and advisors we have 67 positions listed for the board great people working with kids and coaching and extracurricular positions this evening that list goes on for a couple pages item h is a student teacher or interns we have seven that we're excited to have working with our teachers and learning the

102the art and the science of teaching item i um we have 119 position or 119 individuals volunteering in our district and we're thankful for their service and what they provide for kids and teachers item j is the reappointment of the superintendent contract and it is recommended that the board approve the superintendent contract per exhibit item k the reappointment of the treasurer's contract also recommended that the board approve the treasurer's contract per exhibit item l is the exempt salary schedule for and it is recommended that the board approve the exempt salary schedule per exhibit item m substitute personnel a number of individuals coming into the district to sub for us in various capacities and we're grateful for their service and as um i have stated in the past reconciliation of the ftes between 21 22 will

103be presented at the october 21 board meeting it is recommended that the board approve the personnel items all listed uh item 10.2 premium resources section f so we had pulled that separate do you want me to move i think so i think so also i would move the hr report as presented by mr fellowes items a through m with the exception of f which is a separate item and noting that items j and k have been amended per the executive session her earlier tonight and the new revised contracts are with our treasurer yeah we need to do a consent agenda from 9.1 through 10.1 absent of j and k okay can i get a motion for sure i will change it all i move that we approve items 9.1 through 10.1 with the exceptions of

104items j and k and f and can i f a second second ms cropper mrs bissinger yes miss choice yes mrs meyer yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes all right um item 10.1 j and 10.1 k um 10.1 j and k i move that we um approve uh the contracts as amended in executive session as exhibit a to j and k and in the hands now of the treasurer she has them a motion for the consent agenda on 10.1 j and 10.1 k second second ms cropper mrs bissinger yes miss joyce yes mrs meyer no dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes now we have it is actually agenda item 10.2 human resources section f section f is special assignments um we have a number of special assignments for the board to consider and the

105superintendent recommends the board approve personnel items listed in section f motion to approve i'll make a motion to approve the human resources report item 10.2 section f as presented in a second second mrs cropper miss joyce yes dr rasmussen yes mrs bissinger abstain mrs meyer yes dr heiss yes thank you thank you item 11.1 hamilton county education service can i make a comment really quick i just wanted to clarify my no vote on those contracts um i want to be clear that that is not a reflection on the performance of my colleagues these were mid contract extensions to contracts that were already five years which is longer than i personally would have preferred in the first place this world is changing fast and a lot happens in five years and so i simply believe shorter

106contracts that are reviewed more regularly would be better thank you item 11.1 hamilton county education service center service agreement revised miss ryan 11.1 is actually a revision to the hamilton county educational services center agreement that i presented to you back in june of 2021 for this school year we had to make the revision from 1.70 fte school psych services back to .7 ftes this is a reduction of a hundred thousand and four dollars and this was due to a school psych shortage that we're all experiencing we've had to make some adjustments significant reductions or adjustments to be able to accommodate this change but we have done that um so we are making that reduction to this contract um would you like me to go to eleven point two or so this is just separate we'll

107do each one separately i have a motion to approve item 11.1 i'll make a motion to approve item 11.1 second ms cropper miss joyce yes mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes item 11.2 11.2 is a agreement with hamilton county educational service center to provide psychological services in a different way so this is in response to 11.1 in this case we're utilizing an educational specialist to support the planning and observation as part of the required special education evaluations there will be licensed school psychologists oversight of that so that will continue so we'll be able to provide [Music] quality reports for our students the total cost of this agreement is 34 000 superintendent recommends the board approved participation in this special instructional services to the forest hill school district all right

108can i get a motion to approve item 11.2 make a motion to approve item 11.2 participation in the special instructional services as presented second ms cropper miss choice yes mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes thank you next up technology a department update mr meeks good evening everyone i appreciate the opportunity to give you an update this evening i'm going to give you a quick update of what's going on with the technology in the district and give you an overview of the one-to-one program that we've implemented here this year just to go over briefly this is the the team that we're working with this year kelly monk adam samuels myself and then we have six members from our partner ford edge that are in the district every day doing work

109with us as well so this is the uh matrix that was presented to the board when we approved the one-to-one program in the district essentially what it shows is where the devices are being injected infused into the district when they're going to be there and how they basically move through the district from year to year they move with the students as shown in this graphic the infusion was in fifth grade and ninth grade as approved by the board and those devices will move up from year to year with those students until they get to the four-year old range and then they will move back down into the district and be used in other ways in other classes in the district next slide please so this is a one-to-one update so what we've done is we

110ordered devices early in the spring delivery was delayed unfortunately until middle of august we were suffering along with everyone else with supply chain disruptions that is a problem that we're still facing now of all the devices and equipment that we've ordered we ordered chromebooks for students we ordered laptops for teachers we ordered equipment for classrooms we ordered other peripherals almost a piece of everything that we've ordered so far has been delayed and the projections are that this is going to continue through 20 23 microchip shortages and things are going to cause that problem however we were able to acquire most of the devices that we ordered for the students and we were able to distribute them this year so what we did in students in grades two to four and grades six to eight they

111received a chromebook from our existing fleet so those were chromebooks that we had already within the district grade 5 was infused with new devices anderson and turpin high school their distribution began last week now what we did for the elementary schools is we put those devices in carts so the students had access to them in the classroom and if they needed to do so they would be able to take those devices home with them at nagel middle school we did a distribution it was on their days when they came in before school started we distributed the devices on three different days so almost all the students received a device during that time period and again just last week anderson and turpin started theirs and i believe they're just about finished except for a few straggling

112students that were left behind here um so like i said all the new devices we focused on getting into fifth grade and ninth grade which was per the the plan that was accepted by the board however we did use all of the existing devices that we had in the district and we did have some other new devices that we distributed as well in the high schools as well next slide please so one of the other things that we're working on right now is a grant opportunity it's called the emergency connected emergency connectivity fund grant this is a grant through the fcc this is again part of the whole coronavirus relief program this program follows the fcc rules and what that means for us as forest hills we're at what we're called a 40 discount rate

113so by the fcc and usac that means that we're considered to be a wealthy district so we're kind of at the bottom of the pecking order in a way this money is doled out and so the schools that have the higher rate so 90 80 percent whatever they will be the districts that get this money first and then we will also get the money as it goes out now the last i heard about this if fcc were to fund all of the requests through this program so far they would still have billions of dollars left over so i'm very hopeful that we're going to be able to get some money from this this funding will provide 100 of the funding for a device for students up to 400. so essentially we can basically get free

114devices for our students we do have to show a need for that though so these students have to have a specific need in order to get those devices this will also fund connectivity for families that are lacking connectivity in their home such as broadband connectivity we will be able to supply them with either such as a hot spot or we could even uh pay for that connectivity ourselves um the funding lever letters were going out this week we have not received ours yet this week um so i'm i'm still like i said i'm still hopeful that we're going to get some of that funding i expect that to hopefully come through this week there's a second round opportunity for this grant which opens up tomorrow so we can figure out where we are in the

115funding process and then whatever we haven't received we go ahead and reapply for continued funding for that next slide please so these are projects that we're working on currently we're doing still working with the chromebook distribution and support of that obviously we've infused thousands of more devices into the district so we're working to try to support those and make sure those are continue continue to work the way that we want them to make sure the students can get to the curriculum that they need to get to we're working on staff device upgrades unfortunately this is one of the items where we ordered these devices again back in in the late spring and these devices have not yet arrived but we do have plans to get these devices in and distribute them out to the staff

116when we do get those we're working on classroom upgrades so we have devices and we have equipment and classrooms that are due to be upgraded for this year that was all part of this five-year plan that we're working on to try to get the the equipment the existing equipment and the classrooms up upgraded to where it should be now we're also working on distribution of broadband equipment to families so families that need or are lacking internet access we have devices lte devices that we can provide to them which will give them broadband connectivity from home for those students that lack that capability and again another project is e-rate filing that's always a fun thing so filing for e-rate funding again which is the process of us going and applying for that 40 discount on any

117um projects that we have going on for technology for the next year so next slide so it was a brief update there any questions for the ecf funding does that would that be retroactive to what the stuff that we just bought or is that more for so this would be new equipment that we knew new purchases it was what that would apply to so essentially any device that we would think that a student would need upcoming that we have a demonstrated need for they would fund that okay so we've been we have a plan where as fifth and eighth has went so for next year's fifth and eighth graders that's where that would be applied it could be applied there or we could buy those devices now and we could even that out a little

118bit in the district we do have still have some need in the district where some devices are older and it might behoove us to maybe upgrade those now and and put that off and use those funds that way this year would that be am sorry that would be in addition to what we already have planned it would be in addition to what we already have planned yes sir thank you and how much are the each how much is a chromebook uh so the you what when you buy a chromebook you buy the device and you have to buy a chrome license for it so any you know for us it's right around that 400 mark is what it is i remember right they had some type of case or some type of so what we

119do for our one-to-one program is we have what's called adp which is accidental damage protection so every one of the devices that we supply to the students does have that protection so if they're if they drop it they break it whatever we can send it off and it gets repaired for free it does not cover things like intentional damage but if somebody breaks a key off of it or something we can definitely get it fixed for them another question i had was about the about our broadband coverage i mean it seems like every five years or so we get more than we'd ever need and then five years later it's not enough so how are we standing with that right now so with with i i see you're talking about the connectivity to the district

120out right so what like our testing and all that for the right so we did an upgrade last fall so we upgraded our systems to it's a two gig connection and right now we're hovering right around 1.5 gigs so we've got about a half a gig of play right now in what we're doing with our connectivity so i would say though probably within the next year or two we're probably going to have to upgrade that bandwidth again okay another questions questions thank you very much all right thank you all right treasurer report item 13.1 item a are donations donations over the past month total just over three thousand item 13.1 b is the statement of board accounts which presents offense activity for our current fiscal year 2021-2022 item c presents the general fund our five-year

121forecast receipts for the month of august and august is typically a cash flow month as we received our final settlement of the summer tax collection during the month we received 3.7 million and at this point in the year still early but revenues are attracting are tracking as expected by our five-year forecast items d and e present the expenditures in the general fund for the month in the fiscal year to date ended august 31st expenditures as you know are very stable are spent evenly throughout the year only a couple of months into our new school year but appropriations are tracking as we would expect at this point in the fiscal year august 31st bank reconciliations and investments are presented in agenda items 13.1 fng and agenda item 13.1 h lists the permanent improvements by fund for

122our current fiscal year these are these appropriations are within the limits set by the five-year forecast passed last may and this appropriation measure as you know is required by the ohio revised code to be passed by october first of each school year and filed with county auditor i respectfully request that the board approve items 13.1 a through 13.1 h you get a motion i move that we approve a through h second second thank you uh miss cropper mrs bissinger yes mrs meyer yes miss choice yes dr smithson yes dr heiss yes item 141.1 board discussion i have an item so the pool committee remember when i brought that up i think probably in june um if you recall what what we were looking to do was put together a group of citizens and you know

123stakeholders coaches athletic directors to come review the situation and tour the pool and just get some outside insight that could inform the board so what happened was that was june that we attempted to get it started we had some administration turnover mr eckert kind of got into his role he put the information together which came from mr broadwater so i think it was about july by the time we had that together and then by the time i started reaching out to people in july august we were into the school year and it is there's a whole lot of other things going on so i finally scheduled a meeting for maybe two weeks ago and at the very last minute i cancelled it i'm being brutally honest right here i cancelled it because i was second

124guessing whether that's the best way for us to move forward the reason i did that is because this involves we're going to have to use permanent improvement funds and this really is a board level decision so i wanted to bring it to you all to say do you think we just need to have a board level discussion about this i don't know if it needs to be in a work session or how we should proceed but my concern is that i think the community perceives us as kicking the can down the road we all know that's not what we're doing there's been extraordinary circumstances the past few years and we all have so many emails and subjects on our plate but we also need to do something so i just wanted to just bring it

125to you all honestly to help figure out what we should do my only my only concern off the top of my head about i mean you are you are so interested in this issue you and i worked on this issue in various other years yeah um but i i don't want you to lose your bim and vigor and involvement when you go off this board so i i don't know that if you give it to the board if you will be able to continue i mean i don't know well one of to be totally honest one of my hopes in having a committee was that i could continue to help because the knowledge that i bring from the township committee and all of the external stakeholders just to be totally honest i mean the y

126has been involved in discussions and the parks and the township so and mr broadwater was really involved so to lose his history and then also lose mine i know that we lose something but i don't know how to get over that hurdle so that's really why i'm just talking it through i i just brought this up to forest today for the first time um so my thought on it we don't have to solve it right now the advantage of a committee is you have people that are devoted to the idea that can truly explore a lot of different things and and i brought up that three or four months ago the y had brought up a plan a very ambitious plan that uh that had that they made a comment that they were the why

127was committing they looked at all the different areas in greater cincinnati and anderson township was one that they looked to to want to push into and they had a multi-million dollar project with the clough um emmy lyons uh ymca where they took out the the tennis courts which i don't think are being used now and had a 50 meter pool and a recreation pool and they brought it up to the district and the parks and the township um some people in township rather have it down they want to develop the riverfront area too so there's some there's some competing interests there but but it was something that that came up it was a one-time meeting and that's where i see committed people to go through and to explore that that further so you know to

128to find out we you know it's it's a complex issue uh and you know we've lost this season but to get to get that to see if that's something i don't want to get into bring up another bad thing a beach acres thing where we go and we lose sight of of thing but to explore that or to explore you know the the other or ultimately you know other opportunities where ultimately obviously it comes to the board but right now there you know there isn't we have some data on different schools and what different places are doing but we don't have you know i i know that whatever you know lebanon rents out their wife or ten thousand dollars a year but i don't know what's what's available here and to do that you know

129everything that we do on the board is done in this meeting in this room so it's it's hard to do that uh and to explore all of that in open session you know week after week or month after month where a committee of of uh concerned or yeah dedicated you know community members i know can can do that to a degree so i mean it's and and after you go off the bo after you go off the board it doesn't mean you can't be still the chair of the committee i mean it can still be a superintendent's committee um and you can still be the chair you don't have to be on the board to do that if the board thinks that's the best way forward right um yeah yeah leslie you're going to be

130here i would be happy to have your experience yeah well you know i just think the pause comes because you guys i was a swimmer at anderson nobody would like a new pool more than me honestly but it's a two million dollar investment to do it right so it is really tough to make that absent thinking about turpin needing a similar investment in a couple years and so that is the reason for the pause it is not kicking the can down the road it's that we were headed down a path of a solution two years ago and the whole world changed so do you think that because of dealing with covet issues that's a big part of it it is i mean everyone has a lot on their plate to fundraise right now would be

131difficult to supply chain to source i know construction is difficult so i just didn't know if we would kick up a bunch of energy and then it wouldn't go anywhere and timing is everything so i kind of think that we're probably going to have to wait i don't i don't see how we can do it well i mean i i don't know i i'll just agree i think we need to we need to do this i mean we need to it's never going to be a good time and and in the foreseeable future it's not going to be a good time so we need to we need to know you know and and we're getting in there'll be a new board in in in january i know we're not going to fix the pool in

132three months but on the other hand to be able to give that new board hey this here's all this data to get it moving is what you're thinking right no to get it moving i i mean i would love to come right now to have a plan from the summer that we can say look this is what it's going to be this is the timeline this is where you know this is what makes the most sense this is what we're going to dedicate funds resources and time to we don't have that so you know for all the reasons we just don't have that but on the other hand doesn't make it less important so you know i would say let's let's push in these next three months to to get you know the y plan

133is a is a it was a one-time meeting but they did have some ideas on that um but we all know that sometimes those you know they're just ideas so is to try and firm up some of these things uh and to have you know whether it's a heat map or have something for the new board to be able to say okay this is we've done this work now now here we are yeah so sorry you saying wait no i'm saying well i'm going i'll start the meeting start the meeting start the process let's get the let's go let's see at our recent facilities meeting john um john has really embraced this i know mike was the one who was sort of in charge of it before and now john has embraced it and we

134talked about this at our facilities meeting at length and we talked about what ifs you know everything from making the anderson pool area oh good as an indoor training facility you know not using it as a pool anymore to you know how do we how do we get both schools in a place where it seems like it's easy to it's easy to jump in the pool after school if it's in your building but it's not so easy to go to the other school and a lot of the a lot of the students that are the competitive swimmers are already training in their personal clubs so really the kids were losing it's a not no-cut sport so the kids were primarily losing or kids that are just going out to swim and aren't really that competitive

135but it's their sport so i mean we talked about a lot of things we got some good ideas and um john's john's primed ready to go okay well that's good yeah that's good okay well if you're ready to go then i'm it's i'm fine to pick it up that's i just didn't want to move ahead of that could be your legacy oh geez i got elizabeth meyer [Laughter] okay thanks you guys you're welcome um i had a thing a statement i was going to read uh tonight actually but i don't want to ruin this vibe we got going um so because it's you know it's a little downer but i'm just going to give a little update um about a lawsuit filed against us in august over a meeting notice that suit also included some

136unrelated fabrications and allegations against me and others i was determined to get to the bottom of it because it didn't make any sense and on september 15th with the help of our i.t department and a couple of other really smart people we were able to uncover the paper trail and the evidence that proves those allegations are false and defamatory and libelous and damaging to my child who is in third grade at maddox steve's back there he knows that he knows last fall i was ready to pull my child out of school and take her actually take her to xavier where i work which has also been dragged um because of what had happened to my family to me to others children are involved they're watching and it seemed last week on the fifth when the

137first card fell the entire house fell and it's quite disturbing um so i spoke with my own attorney and i have since filed a grievance with the cincinnati bar association and i've provided all the messages all the emails all the facebook screenshots everything to disprove all of the fabrications in the suit the school district's attorney will be filing a motion likely tomorrow to strike the freight flagrant lies from the record um it's disappointing that people have engaged in this sort of retaliatory tactics that have really damaged and hurt not just me even though i'm sure they would like it to just be me but other innocent people in our community and the fact is they were 100 fabricated and people made the choice to take those fabrications and put them on line as though they

138were statements of fact when they were not those people want to make decisions for our kids so think about that um right now the matter's been handed over to the proper entities my personal attorney is figuring out exactly the next move on that front and the district will continue to push forward i look forward to that resolution and to the transparency of this situation and providing the emails and the text messages and the facebook screenshots that show that this was entirely fabricated and then hopefully maybe then we can have a productive conversation that actually moves our community forward so that we can get back to what really matters which is doing the business that serves our kids in this district that's the only reason i ran and so i just want you all to know

139that they're aware that the motion is going to be filed tomorrow and there may be some other things that come from that as well including the release of all of this the grievance as i understand is public record as well so and all of these things are public record if there's any question about that yes just to piggyback on that it's um you know it's pretty sad when people are defaming us as school board members but it's something that we can deal with but when you start attacking people and you know following lawsuits and it it just becomes it it gets it's out of hand and i don't believe that our school district is like that i think that a minority and it's unfortunate and and what i wanted to say to follow that is

140that it's my hope that we will continue to have these discussions but that they become calm discussions you know that that we come together as a community uh that we help each other and that we in some form or fashion that we will be guided in a direction that will bring us back together that's it one of the speakers tonight use the word grace and it's the it's the word that i keep thinking of over and over again we need to give each other grace yes and perhaps provide evidence when you make claims right you're an attorney and that when we have these discussions you don't it's you don't attack each other that's as simple as that well we i i was not even planning on commenting on this but i noticed something interesting tonight

141when the speakers were were talking there were people out there getting livid over things they were livid that teachers were giving positive remarks to the district furious then there were people livid about the word equity there were people livid about this and livid about that what about what is happening in a public school district is worthy of that this is a school board meeting i i i'm i'm just being brutally honest because i actually had somebody make a comment to me after our last meeting like you just looked furious up there the whole time you looked sad you looked mad you looked disheartened and i am because i cannot believe that school board meetings are showing up going viral for people screaming at each other that's like the heart of our country is our kids

142education so i get that people want to debate things but this room it shouldn't happen here it should not happen here we can be kind i agree with you the word grace was exactly what needed to be used and the comments act tonight were actually respectful but what i observed from here was hard to watch and i would encourage all of you who are still in this room when you see that and when you feel that from your peers please come alongside them and talk them through give grace be the one to defuse these arguments take up take the higher road because you guys it's not worth it it's it's it's a and it's a skill in life to agree to disagree it's beautiful no and and on top of that we're in a district

143that is phenomenal we've got staff we've got teachers you know i sent a thank you to richard porter about how hard he works with buses and so forth and so on but i don't know anybody in this district that doesn't work hard that doesn't do everything they can to protect our children i don't know of anyone i mean our teachers they're amazing out of all the school districts they're going to pick our school district and talk about how horrible we are it doesn't make sense to me you know i spoke to the i didn't speak i had communication though with the gentleman that talked about grace and full disclosure we are on different sides of that particular issue and we had a really good conversation i thought about personal responsibility from from both sides in

144that in those meetings you know we did not attend but we all heard stories um about it and i thought you know i was really glad that he attended i think he attended the last one he said right he did come back and i was really glad that he did because even other people that disagreed with him said you know at least we could talk to each other we might have disagreed and maybe i didn't like what he said but he was just like he was there right and that need to show grace to each other um and we can say that all we want i i hope we can model that because our kids we say this all the time are watching they literally are watching my child asked me today mom does this

145person like you and i asked her why are you saying that or why are you asking me that and she said oh well my friend said she lives next door to this person and her mom said blah blah blah and it was again these baseless lies that are going to be exposed as soon as this is made public um that's a eight-year-old i mean come on people like it's just it's infuriating that our children are wrapped up in this not one of us is perfect myself included i fully admit that but it is time to end this nonsense this hate this vitriol because it is not just affecting me my students at xavier even um my university to i mean everything um but it's it's impacting our most precious little people um and it's not

146right it's not moral it's not ethical just disturbing is what it is actually well not a lot of these comments i think i think today was it was a of our last four meetings we had uh respect and decorum where people are very passionate about things and that's one of the things that makes our district great the one thing i did want to bring up was the the custodian that was here he said he's the bottom what he said he's not the bottom the foundation they're the foundation of the district the the people of the bus drivers the custodians none of us are here without them and you know i like to think that we truly show them the appreciation and i i like to think we do i mean i know in in the

147buildings they are beloved but uh but for him to say that that he's the the bottom or whatever he said under the dirt no no no he's there they're the foundation of what what makes us this district great so see you back there doug [Laughter] you still here [Applause] all right reports of the board of education item 15.1 anderson township economic development committee report it is wrapped up in homorama and it's going great that goes through october finance committee report yes um bear with me this is my first time giving this report so we met on september 3rd and we received updates on the general fund five-year forecast the current coveted relief funds and the overall permanent improvement fund over the past year our ending cash balance on our five year forecast has significantly improved

148this was mainly due to unexpected revenue which we covered the governor as you all know reinstated 1.6 million dollars in annual cuts to our budget and then we also received an additional 8 million in clovid relief funds we also reviewed the savings that began in fiscal year 21. primarily we looked at staffing reductions due to attrition and then the higher resigned personnel that equaled uh on an annual basis this was great i thought the building budgets were reduced by sixty thousand dollars annually and there was also an epa award of three handicapped buses which saved the district 341 331 dollars and i'm not sure who i can't recall offhand who was involved in that um richard it was richard carter yeah who you know dede just mentioned um he does wonderful things and that you

149can't find another like a cheaper bus you know sometimes or always right we know what they cost um and then these particular ones are outfitted um to meet the needs of our our our students um so that was i you know just super wonderful news and very commendable and then we contracted we contracted with a new power supplier to achieve a savings of 440 000 um sorry 44 400 each year so those are the big highlights from the september 3rd finance meeting forest hills foundation report gillard good evening i just want to give a shout out for everybody that's still here it's lovely to see everyone um i actually asked um adam and shared uh presentation with scott prior to the meeting but i'm gonna keep it real short because it's what 10 o'clock and

150we're all tired but um my name is stacey gillard and i'm the executive director of the force hills foundation everybody should have received when you guys were in executive session i passed out these um that just gave some more information about what the foundation is really focused on this year and the one thing i just always want to hit home because i think this is a very captive audience very committed individuals is that we raise funds to support all students across the district no matter which school they attend no matter which grade they're in in these three specific areas so mental health and wellness access to innovation as well as experiential programs so i won't go through those but i encourage you all to take a look at the stuff that we will be supporting

151this year and i also thought it's a great opportunity to share a current campaign we have going on so adam a few yep right here honor your student so the foundation kicked off this campaign so you can get out your phones because i know you all have them and if you're interested you can honor your student you could honor a student in your classroom you could honor a former student and really the goal here is is that we want to again raise funds it's a great way to send a special message to your students um and so we would encourage you all to participate it's also on the foundation website so we're doing that right now and then the next slide adam so a couple things that are happening that are going to be pretty

152great in the next few weeks is the foundation has collaborated with nine united for our all-in collection drive so i'm sure many of you have heard all in for the big win it's had many different names um we are thrilled to partner with nine united this year in our efforts to support inner parish inner parish ministries that effort is going to take place october 18th through the 22nd we will have drop off locations at all the schools and at district office as well as we will be at the turpin anderson football game where you can also bring items as well so what i think is great as we continue this theme for the evening is that we are part of a community no matter what school our kids go to and how great to come

153together and help feed families and nourish souls with ipm so more information will be provided but we encourage you all to get involved and really make a difference in helping particularly a lot of families right here in our community next and then yeah it's about the kids so um just thanks for everything everybody does and um look forward to also the fall soiree so those are two things the other thing that's coming up november 6th if any of you are interested in attending that information will be on our website as well so thanks for allowing me to share a few minutes of the great work um and the other thing i wanted to say mrs mullins came up earlier and she was talking about spark night and one of the things that after taking on

154this role that i want to make sure that everybody is really clear on is that we are able to do the work that the foundation does based on people like you that allow us to cr to have the money to do that and so really it's yes it's nice to say the foundation does support that but at the end of the day it's about the parents it's about the staff it's about our community that allows the foundation to do the work for all the kids in the district so have a lovely evening i think we're almost done thank you item 15.4 human resources committee report all right item 15.5 legislative liaison the house and senate are back in session as many of us heard earlier this week governor dewine has announced another vax to school

155program 50 scholarships for the ten thousand dollars each and five 100 000 scholarships uh additional information to come there is uh there are some other less exciting uh bills uh one major bill senate bill 1 has a as a mandate to complete at least one half unit of instruction in the study of financial literacy and they changed allowing some certain teachers to have uh or to exempt them from validation requirements you know this kind of goes along with something i've said a long time we get a lot of mandates from the state financial literacy is something that we all is very important to all of us and to all of our kids mandating it and and i checked and the whole thing doesn't mention anything about additional funding to to pay for any of it

156so it's a great idea and that's something i've i've talked to tom brinkman about multiple times if it's a if it's a good idea to make a law it's a good idea to fund it period i mean that's and oh yeah well you know we're going to exempt some validation well no that's i mean it's we have to get teachers you have to have class space you're having kids do that not that it's a bad idea i mean i'm not saying i think it's a great idea all of our kids should come out with financially literate they're going to mandate it though let's let's uh let's support it um yeah the other ones are all very much in their emphasis there's there's some uh yeah first hearings and second hearing so moving along policy committee

157report we have not met okay safety committee report i have not teaching and learning committee for meeting thursday yes meeting thursday morning technology and facilities committee report we met on 13th yeah the 13th of september we had a discussion on various improvement projects as far as blacktop roofing we did have a discussion of the pools how that affects you know what what we use when and how how that affects the the pools and then we have a naming recognition opportunity uh for from the bells uh regarding the weight room um i think this is the this is the first review correct so um that is available by uh from uh mr fellowes uh they have been strong supporters of the anderson community for a long time so can i just add i think it's important

158to to remind the board you all devised this process for naming rights um last year we're following it to the letter and we're at the stage now where the contract is before you and it's like i don't know policy review or curriculum review you get it a month in advance so you have plenty of time to look at it it's open to the public we're being good stewards yes it was really wonderful to see that come through okay i i really was because it took a lot of time and effort to develop that and this is how it should be done all right and last up on the agenda is the forest hills teacher association report mrs laver good evening on behalf of forest hills teacher association we are a very proud community partner with

159forest hill school as we bring the closure to the first full month of school all in person my ad three areas of focus but i first want to make sure i do thank our administrative teams and our building principals and teachers and staffs throughout the district it is not that simple to get through a whole month again with basque and quarantining and mitigation so i want to make sure tonight that i say thank you to everybody for that work so we're going to focus on our niche report covid and meet the candidate event first and foremost last week when the reports came out from the niche reports i have the simplest job in the world sometimes and that is representing the 500 plus teachers of forest hills school district who come to work and do

160a great and outstanding job so the report indicated that our teachers were 9th out of 106 teachers in ohio and even though this number may not seem really amazing to you i think that's pretty outstanding and the other one that really caught me was 86 86 out of 11 656 schools in the nation our teachers ranked 86th we are a public school working with tax dollars that is an outstanding opportunity we rank 25th out of 608 schools in ohio and our teachers placed 31st out of the 600 and 8 as a great place to work and we did also see them rank in the top 1 percent of teachers in ohio that's because we have dedicated professionals who are constantly becoming lifelong learners and passing that skill on to students second for you i took

161a little bit of time as i did throughout coba last year in the association we sent out survey and i just want to make sure you get some information from that as i share with the members of the school district it is a partnership what we do teachers could answer this from i strongly disagree to disagree to neutral to agree to strongly agree so through this one a couple of the questions i want to make sure you know so you can see where the staff and how they're feeling these were just done about a week ago first question was i support the poor's decisions around around mask wearing and the mitigation protocols for the current term and 89 percent were in agreeance we asked our high school middle school if they were in favor of

162wearing masks and solidarity for all staff 95 of them said yes if that was what was needed they would do that with their colleagues currently asking the staff as well i'm supportive of keeping students at school and willing to mitigate a safety process and procedures in order to keep our students stay excuse me staff safe 98 of our teachers said whatever it took they always want to be in school with our students that's a large percentage it also says that that time period that sometimes we've forgotten in 2019 there when we were closed how difficult that was on our whole community our teachers and our parents and students and really making sure we focus on the needs of hand of being present one of the questions mr fellows and i had the pleasure of working

163with was subbing even though we are in this and we're here at school and we've had vaccinations and so forth we still have a burden large burden on the staff as well as our bus drivers and you know some schools are struggling with getting transportation they're having to cancel events so one of the things there is we've been asking the staff are you subbing how much are you subbing because we have to be careful on that not to over stress people that are you know already doing a lot of extra things in the building so right now we're holding steady but we still have some numbers there that we're working with where the staff are really trying to say hey we're willing to support but they need their plan bells to do great lessons and

164also to keep things moving thirdly is the event that's coming up here on wednesday evening meet the candidate event we'll be here this coming wednesday and here at nagel middle school nothing is more important than this event for our school community forest hills teacher associate has been an active supporter of the forest hills council it is very common event here that we've done when we have candidates going for board office so forth in those positions and it's important for the association because we want to make sure that we're supporting candidates that are willing to be cooperative listen and be involved with our not only our teachers but what's important to our school community this coming wednesday night we have invited over a thousand friends of education to be in attendance i'm thinking that um trying

165to make sure one of our forest hills council people are in the room so they know that i said that out loud but also to make sure that as we do this that we're asking all the candidates and fhta has reached out to all 10 candidates to share their insights to us later questions and those we're also sharing with the members of our educator community as i close this evening i'm very proud of the work of every educator and i know my friend doug's back there in the back who is our president of opsi and we're working closely on lots of different things but it's really important for all of us to know that it takes all of us and we have great students and we have a great school community and i'm very proud

166of the work here in forest hills that we're continuing to do um with that i think i made it under 10 o'clock dr heiss barely but yes yes i did thank you thank you all right before we go into executive session i would like to remind everyone that the next regular meeting of the board of education is in this building on october 25th at seven o'clock um we are going to executive session we do not anticipate any actionable items afterwards so you will able to get out of here at the crack of 10 p.m i look forward to seeing you next month uh three i've been in motion for item r for uh however price code one two one point two two g sorry absolutely i know she's moved on i was really disappointed pursuant

167to ohio revised code section 121 22g3 i hereby move that the board adjourned to executive session to meet with board legal counsel to discuss disputes involving the board and or the school district that are the subject of pending or imminent court action second ms robert mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger ms joyce yes dr rasmussen yes sector heist yes thank you everyone for coming