Forest Hills School District - Board of Education Meeting - (7/26/21)

0016 2021 roll call mrs fissinger here miss choice mrs meyer here dr rasmussen here dr heiss here please rise and join me for the pledge of allegiance pledge allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right safety briefing we have exits at all four corners of the room can i get a motion to adopt the agenda make a motion to adopt the agenda second mrs cropper miss choice yes mrs bissinger yes mrs meyer yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes we'll now go through the approval of the minutes of the the extra meetings we'll do it one at a time can i get an approval to of the minutes of the special meeting of june 3rd 2021 i'll make a motion to

002approve the minutes of the special meeting on june 3rd 2021 as presented second ms cropper miss choice yes mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger abstain dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes item 3.2 approval of minutes of special meeting june 9th 2021 make a motion to approve the minutes of the special meeting on june 9 2021 as president second ms cropper ms joyce yes mrs meyer yes mrs missinger abstain dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes uh next uh 3.3 approval of minutes of special meeting june 10th 2021. make a motion to approve the minutes of the special meeting on june 2021 as presented second ms cropper ms joyce yes mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger abstain dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes item 3.4 approval minutes of special meeting june 16th 2021 make a motion to approve the

003minutes of the special meeting on june 16 2021 as presented second ms cropper miss choice yes mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger abstain dr rasmussen yes sector heist yes item 3.5 approval of minutes for the regular meeting june 2021. i'll make a motion to approve the minnesota meeting on june 28 2021 as presented second ms cropper miss choice yes mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger yes dr rasmussen abstain dr heist yes all right item 4.1 correspondence i do not uh have any this evening dr heist i have none board members right procedures for public commentary the board is committed to conducting its meetings in a productive and efficient manner that assures the regular agenda of the board is completed in a reasonable period of time honors the voluntary nature of the board's time and uses that time

004efficiently and allows for a fair and adequate opportunity for input to be considered the board offers public participation to members of the public in accordance with the procedures below the board applies these procedures to all speakers and does not discriminate based on the identity of the speaker content of the speech or viewpoint of the speaker in order to permit the fair and orderly expression of public comment the board shall provide a period of public participation at every regular meeting of the board and publish rules to govern such participation in board meetings individuals who would like to share their thoughts concerning a topic on the board's agenda should do the following list the agenda item topic on a note card and sign the card using your name address telephone number and give the card to susan

005monk who will give it to me the presiding officer may prohibit public comments that are frivolous repetitive and or harassing interrupt warn or terminate a participant statement when the statement is too lengthy offensive abusive off topic or irrelevant request any individual to leave the meeting when that person does not observe reasonable decorum or is disruptive to the conduct of the meeting request the assistance of law enforcement officers in the removal of the disorderly person when that person's conduct interferes with the orderly progress of the meeting call a recess or adjournment if there is a lack of public decorum no participant may speak more once on the same topic the portion of the meeting in which the participation of the public is invited shall be limited to 30 minutes we have nine right now which gives

006us everyone their full three minutes on the other thing that i like bringing up that i didn't is that at at the allotted time that i will interrupt you i do not mean to be rude it is that's the time is up and that's my job is to to stop you it has nothing to do with what you're saying how you're saying it or where you are in your presentation all right so district updates from the superintendent thank you dr heiss you see item 5-2 on the agenda it is the relationship and wellness superintendent citizens advisory group that i wanted to provide an update on first of all i want to thank there were two applicants who wanted to be part of the citizens advisory group that is an unbelievable number and that is fantastic

007to have that many people interested in participating in a process to help with the relationship and wellness side of things for our students speaks uh volumes of our community and their investment in our students and so i'm appreciative of that and thankful for that many people applying there were some some criteria to participate in the citizens advisory group one is is there were preferred criteria that you have some strategic planning participation professional background in that or something to do with health and wellness or a civic responsibility in the anderson township or a village of newtown area so there's a connection to the community and a connection to the school system the only two required criteria were to live in the forest hills school district and to agree to attend all five meetings and so there

008were some applications that came in where individuals actually did not live in anderson township or the village of newtown and so they were unable to participate and there were some who really wanted to participate who just were unable to participate for all five meetings and so those 72 applications that were eligible there were six who did not meet the criteria there were 50 people invited to the actual meeting and when we started the process i thought that the committee would be smaller but based upon the number of applicants asking 60 people to not participate that had that type of uh investment probably would not have been appropriate in my opinion and so 50 people were invited or excuse me 73 were invited and 50 individuals rsvp'd and on the evening that we participated last week

009there were 45 actual participants in that meeting because there were a large amount of participants we used a small group facilitation process so we broke the large group down into smaller segments so that it could be more intimate and more inclusionary to ensure that everyone's voice was heard during that meeting we talked about the strategic vision of the school district we provided education or information about our cultural cornerstones that were derived as part of the strategic vision we also talked about those cultural cornerstones and the one that we worked on mostly that evening obviously was the relationship and wellness cornerstone of the school district we talked about the model that was presented it is the dbie model and we also talked about the school's learner profile we started out that evening with norms of the

010activity so individuals who participated said these are the things that we will abide by to ensure that there is a respectful decorum as well as ability for everyone to speak and everyone to be heard that worked out wonderful the ohio school board association provided the logistics for the evening they started out with you know why are you here on a personal card i do not have those cards in my possession the ohio school board association took them with them and they will be putting them into themes and they will come back as we continue in the process over the next four meetings so we had personal cards that people filled out again no one from the school district has those they are in the possession of ohio school board association and they will provide that

011information to us we talked about developing consensus in small groups as well as large groups steve horton and kathy mcfarland from the ohio school board association did the facilitation that evening and so at this particular point in time we were able to as as we progressed through the evening we had four topic areas that we wanted to get through on the first night and we were able to get through two of them and we will come back and finish the other two and then continue with the agenda that was uh provided to the board and community the last time i spoke at this meeting on this topic so at this particular time pretty excited about the number of people who participated i know on that evening because it was in this room and in this

012room without as many people the acoustics can be difficult our next meeting will be held in the commons area so it's even more intimate and the smaller groups can be easier heard among themselves and so we did have a couple of just logistical issues but i think we worked them out and in the end of the evening we we covered a lot of information and so i'm i'm pleased to provide that report and i'm very thankful for everyone who participated and who will continue to participate in this very important discussion the if there's questions or commentary okay the the second report uh that i need to present to the board um last year at this time we were really reeling because of all the things that were taking place with covid 19 and what was

013happening at the national state and local level so we want to talk a little bit tonight about the return to learn plan that we have in the school district that's what it was called last year and similar name this year we're getting ready to invite our students back we're getting ready to provide communications to parents and we're getting ready to put in those communications the best safety options that we have based on recommendations not requirements and not mandates but recommendations that are coming to us from those individuals in the in the country in the state and locally who are providing us with uh guidance the first slide i have are the cdc recommendations and it you know i don't want to read to people i certainly don't want to be but masks should be worn

014indoors by all individuals age 2 and older who are not fully vaccinated consistent and correct mass use by people who are not fully vaccinated is especially important indoors and in crowded settings when physical distancing cannot be maintained i want to remind you when physical distancing cannot be maintained so we also worked last year in our planning to include the american academy of pediatrics and last year they were pretty much in line with the cdc but this year they're they're stepping a little further out than the cdc all students older than two years and all school staff should wear face masks to school unless medical or developmental conditions prohibit use and that's very similar to last year the american academy of pediatrics recommends universal masking in schools at this time again these are not mandates these

015are not requirements these are listed as recommendations to school boards across the country so we go a little closer to home to the ohio department of health and this was updated this morning at 11 55 a.m this was released and the ohio department of health will issue updated guidance for back to school again guidance for back to school that will strongly recommend those who are unvaccinated should wear masks and this was said by dr bruce vanderhoff and he's the state's chief medical officer so we have the cdc we have the american academy of pediatrics we have the ohio health department and what i wanted to then move us toward is they speak to vaccinations so in our school district the 2021 year that was last year we had vaccination opportunities for our staff and we

016believe that approximately between 90 and 95 percent of the staff in the forest hill school district received vaccinations based upon the number of individuals who went through as everyone knows we are not permitted to um say who those individuals are because it's it's um it's a medical violation of the federal law so we did count the numbers though and we feel pretty good about that 90 to 95 percent not only do we do our teachers and our staff inside the building who interact with students on a daily basis we offered a second round of vaccinations for all of our coaches and you see the pfizer and the moderna in both situations so we had about another i think john mr eckhart about another 350 coaches after school advisors those types of individuals who also were

017vaccinated so a very high percentage of our staff have been vaccinated the other thing that we will be doing and we are coordinating with the local [Music] medical officials is vaccines will be made available to all of our new district employees coming to the school district so in our back-to-school um plans that we will be providing to new staff members coming to the district we're going to offer them dates and times specific where they can go and get themselves vaccinated because we're hearing that vaccinations are a big part of the mitigation process for adults in hamilton county right now regarding vaccinations you can see and this again is from the ohio department of health and this was updated on 7 26 that was um you know very recent obviously you will see that 0 to

01819 and the reason i have a red number there and 85.34 is because in the 0 to 19 category that is our most important focus for us as a school district serving students in that particular age group and right now according to the ohio department of health there are 14.66 percent of the students who live in hamilton county who have been vaccinated which means that approximately 85 percent of the students 0 to 19 are not vaccinated and so that is something to consider as we continue with our conversation regarding vaccinations i would like to remind everyone of what we experienced last year that's the next slide and that is that there were 394 students across the year last year who were diagnosed with covid 19 confirmation and we had 4910 students that were quarantined due

019to close contact that number of 4910 would have been much higher absent of the governor's changing the ohio officials changing the rule on contact tracing and quarantining in the second half of the year based upon what was happening with the data and what we were learning about covid19 so 394 students last year obviously none vaccinated so that 394 there may be some impact there we had 132 staff members last year who were confirmed cases of of covid19 and again we've had a very high percentage of our staff that has been vaccinated and there were 237 staff quarantined due to close contact i spoke with our local health official today he informed me that hospitalizations in the state of ohio the great majority of individuals who are vaccinated with under 200 in the entire state who

020have been vaccinated vaccinated are in hospitals in the state of ohio so 200 individuals vaccinated people are talking about the breakthrough impact that's taking place right now he indicated that that is a very small number in region 6 that's the region that we are in when we were at our peak last year there were individuals who were in hospital care in region 6 at this particular point in time i was told this afternoon that it is approximately 100 individuals right now so we're greatly reduced from our peak last year but it is anticipated if things continue with the trajectory that they are now that that could double by mid-august so we're seeing the variant or something similar to that having an impact on the local population this individual also informed me that the fda if

021if if the fda approves the vaccination legitimately that hasn't necessarily taken place if that happens then there's opportunity for businesses hospital schools and the like to be able to have required vaccinations and that could potentially happen before december of this year there is no guarantee on that and certainly much work needs to be done but one of the one of the big things that could happen in the upcoming months is that the fda officially approves this which then provides additional vaccinations to entities that would require that like we would for chickenpox mumps and things like that to be in schools so there's still more to be coming with with the data one thing that we did do this year that's important excuse me last year that's important to remember is that our board of education

022worked very closely with our teachers and our buildings to say if we have remote or isolated areas within our school district where we're seeing a flash so to speak there's a larger number of individuals contracting or quarantined or unable to come to school because of a covid related uh in not infraction but a covid related situation then what we did last year you see that we did close wilson we didn't close wilson elementary we went remote at wilson elementary in the sixth grade the dates are up there once the dates passed and we were able to get our teachers back in the classrooms we were able to move forward turpin high school if you remember that was a cafeteria situation that wasn't necessarily students that was cafeteria staff nagel middle school one of the houses

023in the house three i believe it was in the eighth grade needed to have an extra day sherwood elementary on 1214 last year and then turpin high school later on in the school year very much related to quarantines that were impacting that building and that was a pretty big deal at that particular point in time i'm going to ask mr eckert to come to the podium at this time because john can respond to questions on this one because we start to now get into the specifics of what may be happening in the school district and as we all know john is the director of safety and security business operations within our school district safety security is one of the responsibilities john was also the individual who worked so closely with hamilton county and all other

024health officials to ensure that last year went well so first of all thank you for everything you did last year and second of all thank you for helping me with the details of the next part of this so in hamilton county at the public health we have mitigation recommendations that stand at this particular point in time and they are the social distancing three feet when both individuals are mass so we were able to move desks arrange rooms in different ways and the way we were doing hallway traffic so forth and so on to try to achieve that three foot remember this is when both individuals are masked this has nothing to do with vaccinations but that's that's the distance we were hoping for desks and furniture also three feet we would still be working this

025year on a lunchroom distance of six feet mandatory or that's what's recommended i should say and then we are hearing that from the from the federal government all the way to hamilton county that masks on buses will be a mandatory uh require or are going to be mandatory so where it gets a little confusing is the changes that have taken place in the second half of last year will will not stay in place john's going to help us through that because we may need to go back to the original requirements that we started the school with school year with last year so john if you would please take us through the contact tracing and the quarantine guidelines or requirements that we have yes no if you remember when we were originally had to quarantine and

026the principals had to go into the buildings you know student a became a positive cova case they then had to figure out contact tracing within a six foot radius okay and all those people students and or teachers who were in that six foot radius for close contact time which is a cumulative 15 minutes that's always been the the same the cumulative 15 minutes were uh then quarantined for 14 days to work through then they made some adjustments because of some data that they looked at mr prebbles talked about that they thought they could take it down to three foot because everyone was masked okay that's the key factor right here i just had some conversations with the director of environmental services for hamilton county and the outbreak specialist for hamilton county this afternoon and without

027universal masking that we will be going back out to the six foot radius okay so the three foot distance is no longer going to be a thing and i want to preface this at this time okay this is all this is such a great deal of flux but at this time let's talk to ms blinka we would be at the six foot radius and the quarantine time blinds as far as the quarantine timelines if you remember if they came down we were at a 14 day then we could go down to a 10-day quarantine if you remember that section if you hit the link it hopefully it will it'll pop up okay but what we did we had a uh we were at the 14-day quarantines and we were able to go down to the

02810-day quarantines if you go up so you can see just a little bit of the second the town there you go we were we decided that we would go down to reduction factor one which took us down to the 10-day quarantine that will still as as of today that would still stand there's been no adjustment in the quarantine process okay close contacts expand again quarantine timelines will stay the same does that make sense the way i'm explaining it okay i'm i'll take silences yes so that will be the same but without universal masking and miss blink of this as me said just like without universal masking quarantines will be on the uprise okay if we could go thank you john if we can go back to the now to the next slide you know last

029year when we were going through these discussions i was able to come to the board of education with official recommendations because much of it was related to requirements or mandates that were coming to us from the ohio health officials as well as the governor of the state so at this particular point in time i don't have an official recommendation for the board regarding face masks other than the data that we have provided to you tonight as information my recommendations as as the school superintendent is i still believe that the absolute best instruction for forest hill students and for any student is face-to-face instruction i think the data is pretty strong on that i think we should still maintain once the board makes its decision regarding face masks or not that we we still utilize that

030model for building specific remote options where we don't shut down an entire building or the entire district we take care of the problem at the closest flash point i don't believe that we have a virtual option at this particular point in time that was something that we talked about last year and based on the way things were moving the virtual option uh was was not going to be an option that because we didn't think we would be needing that we do have the remote option if if we get to that point in the building specific remotes and i do recommend as the one requirement that i can bring is that we have masks on buses and so it's it's kind of unfortunate that we're this close with this little of direction provided by health officials

031i know i'm a school superintendent i'm not a medical doctor and so uh my recommendations are those as they stand on that screen and i am certainly more than happy to to move in the direction the board would like to and we will do everything in within our power to make it the safest arrangement possible once the board is able to make its decisions thank you are we discussing this now i think this would be a good time to discuss it in fact it says more discussion no one wants to talk about it my recommendation is that you discuss something yeah you pass the book oh oh i know i don't think there's any win um i don't have prepared comments i'm just gonna talk and i just ask for grace because i'm a parent

032figuring this out just like the rest of you and i'm not i'm not in medicine i just know what i've experienced so i'm just going to be honest what i struggle with in asking kids to wear masks to start the school year is that we've had a good three or four months without them and lots of activities are happening without them and we aren't seeing a huge uptick with them in fact we are seeing some spread even in people that have been vaccinated so i have a friend that sent her kid to a sleep-away camp and 14 of the girls were vaccinated and 13 got covered yeah um so i think that is the hesitancy in my mind um that said last year we were so good at watching the numbers and when we saw

033a flare like you said we we pivoted and our system is set up to pivot it may be more difficult this year because we've had some staffing changes but for what it's worth um i would probably support starting the year with the choice um you know i'm seeing a lot more of that people are choosing to wear them themselves and i think the important thing from the parents and the teachers perspective would be encouraging kids to be incredibly respectful of other people's decisions right so if i choose to send with no mask i have a right to do that and if someone else chooses to then they have a right and you know my kids keep their distance now they're they're they're just trained to do that and i realize that this this may not

034be popular with some people but i would just say to you that we do have the ability to change course quickly and safety is important to every single one of us hopefully you saw that last year um and you know i actually do like the requirement on buses don't don't love it but i think it's smart because you cannot be a part i mean that is a enclosed space in a classroom i mean the kids did awesome last year they did and even though they were masked and our numbers were pretty good you know the kids would come home and they would say yeah they're not really wearing them that well so i know they were wearing them but i don't think the masks were necessarily the whole reason for why we did well we

035had excellent sanitation we had distance they weren't even singing my kids at air did sign language and they didn't even sing so this is my just honest mom heart please don't tear me a new one i'm just trying to lead from what i know so [Applause] i i think it's i think it's important in the beginning of this discussion to understand that and i i didn't fully understand this until fairly recently that house bill 244 which was passed a couple weeks ago has to do with how you treat students differently vaccinated versus non-vaccinated when i originally came out all the conversation that i heard had to do with college students well it doesn't just affect college students it's k through college so you can't i hate to use the word discriminate but that's the word

036that they're using in the media between vaccinated and non-vaccinated so in essence whereas you you think it might make logical sense to treat middle school and high school differently because age 12 and up has been able to be vaccinated and you could say your choice for age 7 and up and let's keep the masks on the kids in elementary until vaccinations are available we can't do that we have to be either all masks in school or your choice in school so julie just to add on to that a little bit oh sorry because it's closer we just i think we got to push the button it's been so long thanks so just to add on to what you were saying um a way to also look at this is to say mass for everyone and

037if you choose to disclose your status you can go without i work at a university today i had to report my status voluntarily well no it's not voluntarily it's required but that is another way to look at this or to consider that mass for all unless you choose not to and you know i have some thoughts but i just wanted to add that as a i don't i am a lawyer but i'm not a school board lawyer um i don't know that you can do that with privacy concerns but we could but we could until october 13th that law doesn't go into effect until october 13th so we really could start the school year that way and ease into it before that was something that you know we really had to make some tough decisions

038about enforced you're a surgeon you can tell me i mean i spoke with a researcher at children's hospital who said masking protects the person wearing the mask a little bit but it's really about those around and we've received several emails from parents that have said you know listen i have a immunocompromised child and i have two immunocompromised children myself i have a daughter who is one pound 15 ounces at birth and people look at her and say she looks normal whatever that means no they they don't see my bills at children's so just in case you missed it i think this is important too leslie said it but she said it quickly the house bill 244 does not go into effect until october the 12th it has a 13th down yeah when we reached out

039to the district's attorney today there's a question as to whether or not you can have well there's not a question it is the opinion of our attorney that having different models at different levels of the school is not something that the school district can do i only say that because that question was asked specifically because as the day went on we were learning more about what the ohio health officials were saying and so we john and others were pretty adamant at getting in there and kind of finding out what we should or shouldn't do or could and couldn't and that's one of the things that became apparent at least right now it would be difficult to have a different set of standards for different levels of students and certainly with vaccination not being known and

040not being reported that makes it difficult at this time with one decision only or the other decision only that's why it's a tough spot right now it is a tough spot and i really like to discuss this part and people out here may not know i've tried to respond to emails that we've received to say that we really haven't had an opportunity to discuss this because we haven't been together at a meeting um so this is really the first time we're kind of throwing everything out there um so just so that that is also where um i i do air to i do i am that's my position is that mass for all unless you choose to disclose and also with the caveat that we try to get in the teams with the individual buildings

041and find ways to incorporate more mass breaks more time without the mask throughout the day as opposed to how it was all together and my mom heart wants to know is going to want to know is going to question and we've had people say this in email to us what if my daughter who had two holes in her heart kidney problems and all sorts of things is next to a teacher who choose not chose not to get vaccinated and is unmasked and my daughter is eight and does not have the option to get vaccinated we don't have a virtual option unfortunately this year and that's a real i think a real concern for parents and that is something that we need to address but one thing i would like us all to talk about or

042maybe say how you feel if you're so inclined is you know last year we were one of 23 districts to keep kids in school and ea for that that was incredible 23 in the entire state of ohio and we did that by following the aap recommendations so i'm unsure why well i'm struggling to understand why we wouldn't follow those recommendations again there's not mandates i get it but those are the recommendations from the you know the cdc the aep they're slightly different but essentially the same just two to five i think is the age difference between those two and then of course the ohio department of health chief medical officer which mr prebbles mentioned earlier so we have those strong recommendations and we followed them last year and it allowed our children to be in

043school none of this is forever so that's those are real questions and concerns that i would like to know if our why posit if positions are changing on following what we followed last year so that we could keep the most amount of kids in school when we especially right now when we don't have a virtual option if it were no math and we had a virtual option my child because of her health issues would be in the virtual option i mean that again the mom in me that's where i would be but i don't have that choice the first day for our staff to come back to the school district is august 16th and the first day for students to come back is august 19th and remember we have a hybrid this year we will

044have half the students it really worked out well last year and so so i guess what i'm offering now is absent of clear more clear recommendations that we have right now we have some time to maybe have an official another meeting of the board with more information coming from people in ohio if that was necessary it may not be but know that we have about two weeks to have another meeting and i know the board has been having lots of meetings nonetheless without better let me rephrase that without more detailed information we might be able to have another meeting someplace in there could i ask a question please i was not on the board when i think the decision was made to not do virtual for next year um why why is that and could

045that be reconsidered we surveyed our parents and we had a very low number of individuals who said that they would like to have the virtual option and based on that low number uh the economics of that are are difficult um because the numbers are low and it's not only economics it's because the numbers were so low we were unable to have groups of children in the same age group to be able to be efficient with our staffing and so it was harder to be able to provide that staffing for numbers of kids that made sense so that so that there would be um economy of scale so to speak and be fair i think when we were going over this we asked we actually had a survey in january so that was the that was

046the that was the worst time of the worst time it was it was horrible and i want to say and i'm guessing on these numbers but 80 it was like 87 of parents when it was at its highest said no my kids are going back to school in the fall this has been great but i want my kids back in school now there's the 30 said i don't care you know they're going back another 50 some sense well we'll see what it looks like then but we would prefer our kids even our kids that are in virtual and we love the virtual the virtual got high marks across the state we would like our kids to be back in school well that brings you know and if you go 700 minus 90 now you're down

047to about 70 kids or so know i say there's like three high schoolers and things so it really got it down and so we were looking at it in march and april and of course in march and april things were looking a lot better last month things were looking a lot better okay they still are a lot better than they were in the worst part of it um so so to yeah to answer your question when when we that discussion and what we were looking at the numbers were looking at is pretty much everyone 80 plus percent wanted their kids back in school we said okay if we're going to start looking at this we're going to make an effort with the thought being is that that we wouldn't even have some of these recommendations

048it would be okay we're vaccinated it's gone or whatever and it's time to go and we're back in school and let's just do it but but they wanted their kids back in school based on the fact that we were doing masks at that time and there was no indication we weren't going to be doing masks again so to me that's a big fact well i think that well i think the part of the thought was is that things would be better now too overall if we were at and i don't think we put on there why you think that we should go back it was just whether or not you want your kids back in school so i don't want to postulate that but i you know and a month ago when the when the

049state had a hundred cases in the whole state and it was looking like we finally just got done with this you know before we even knew what delta virus or delta variant was you know life was great now it's a little bit different not as bad as it was and we're a different world than we were in january but we're also a different world than we're in may so yeah i just wonder i don't mean to be a troublemaker but i i'm just thinking this through we've all been thinking it through for days um i just wonder if you sent that same survey out and said we're going back without masks that's that's what the majority of the board wants how many people would then say yeah i don't think so i want to do

050virtual i'm just wondering it's not a you know there's no answer it's a rhetorical question i guess i don't know my comment on that would be that survey needs to be done tomorrow if that's i know i am being preference of the board because that is a significant puzzle to work and and you know what that doesn't matter it's kids first but if we're going to serve kids in the best ways we need to move on that quickly so that we would be able to accommodate their needs in the most efficient way most practical way so if that's an option then i would need to move very swiftly on behalf of the board to make that happen which then would require a meeting between now and the beginning of school absolutely because there's going to

051be staffing adjustments we have two mous on the board's agenda tonight one specifically related to covid and assignments for teachers and so forth and so on so i'd need to be speaking with the you know the appropriate individuals there to ensure that what we are moving towards is consistent with what we have agreed to tentatively agreed to that the board has to approve obviously but make sure we you know get all of our ducks in a row so to speak on that i i think the main difference for me between last year and this year is that it was mandated last year so we didn't have a choice and you know i look around the room right now and i have no idea how many people are vaccinated but no one's choosing to wear a

052mask so i can't really i can't really rationalize forcing it you know enforcing it suddenly in three weeks i don't want it to get agitated um but but that's sort of where i'm coming from and it could very well be in the next two weeks like he said there's another mandate and this is an easy decision but school boards all over the country are wrestling with this right now and like i said there's no way to win no matter what there will be angry emails no matter what and the one thing that i struggle with with what i spoke about tonight was what you actually brought up is i said my mom heart that's for my kids who don't have the compromised immune system so how do we address the ones who really do need

053extra care i think that's the piece that you know like someone suggested you you separate people out and you can't do that so that's what you can't that's what i don't know how to reconcile the same thing with flu and stuff like that i'd like to know that well you know it is but it isn't i mean um that i still go back to my initial question that i posed to the board which is why are we in essence we're saying we're choosing not to follow the aap or the cdc what we did last year and that allowed us to i mean we did have struggles at various points and i it cannot be understated how incredible the teams were at going grade by grade building by building class but i mean it was it

054was very technical but we still had those struggles and you still had to do all of that while following these two leading health organizations and now i can add in the ohio health department because they said there's not going to be a mandate but we strongly recommend it um so again back to the board why are we choosing to no longer follow their recommendations if we're in a you know we're kind of back in this terrible position again and you're right elizabeth there's no no not everyone's going to be happy and that's that's fine but we got to keep how we keep kids safe is and i'm not again not it's that's what matters um and i don't know well i'm just curious how y'all feel about that about about no longer following those guidelines

055how how do we know that we're not going to follow the mandates well if we're saying no mass or parents can choose then you know but we haven't said that yet yeah no i know but people have suggested and that's why i'm just i'm just you know wondering because i know that scott and his staff has done an awesome job yes last year you know keeping kids in school in person and so i just trust that once we look at everything try to figure it out go through the process and we follow that pretty closely we did not not we but you did and we followed that pretty closely and we made out okay so you know we're having this discussion but i think it's going to be a few weeks before we can tell

056our community where we're at well we don't have a few weeks is the thing i mean school starts in before the next board meeting right you just said right the night 19 yeah yeah the 19th we have the ability to have special meetings right yeah yes i know 6 a.m i'll say my thought on it is is one is i i am disappointed in our public health system okay 99.9 of school boards do not have a medical doctor on their board okay it's made up of teachers business people farmers lawyers but not medical professionals this board has a medical doctor and i'm not a public health expert i'm an orthopedic surgeon i'm not a virologist now i look at that stuff i mean everybody does and i have a little bit of a different eye

057for it but it's still not what i do so for the experts to come out and and on one hand last year say no this is this important we need to have mandates and then this year to say well we strongly recommend but we're not going to mandate it is i don't know is is disappointing do not have better guidance the that being said one of the things la and i was thinking as we're sitting here is the one of the things that we had last year which really helped i think everybody was a couple of options in that last year at this time we had the same nervousness maybe even more so because we didn't know what was happening we had no idea we had the cdc that said you have to be three

058six feet apart period that was their their rule well we knew and and every school district knows that if you have six feet for every single kid then you have too much space okay you know you're doing something wrong you're you're over built and that's where and so for the academy of pediatrics they're there and and i talk with chris peltier who's the uh he was a classmate of mine who's the president of the ohio chapter of that and and the idea was is now we understand that face-to-face learning is critical for kids it really is it's more critical in some ways than the risk of three feet of cutting that down by half we would rather have people in school understanding that maybe well although we found out that that 300 doesn't happen but

059it probably does because most of it happened outside of school even though mass weren't worn perfectly and and all of that it happened outside of school but we didn't know it was a leap of faith and by far i would say that at this point last year if you would have told me we had to get through october without shutting down i would have gladly taken that okay and i've talked with other school board school boards around the county and and most of them felt the same way as it was just a matter of time before we were going to shut down and go virtual but we were able to do it we were able to get through the advantage was and i i noticed you know scott doesn't necessarily want to hear this knowing

060that you you'll do whatever but one other thing was is we had you know so we said hey we're going to go three feet well we had very concerned parents who very legitimately said wait that's not what the cdc said you're not following the rules i don't i'm not comfortable having my kid in that situation well that's where we provided an option which was taken by originally 900 i believe and then by the second semester it was down to 700 uh parents to to have a a full virtual option and it wasn't just people who had severe immunocompromised you know uh kids it was i mean there are people just had severe concerns like we all do so and that helped because that was a good community i mean that was the the virtual community

061the difficulty is from a from a school board and school district perspective is it's another building we even described it like that that was a tenth building that we had last year without walls but with teachers and staff and support in order to support that that community so you know as we move forward so a couple of things so yeah i was i've made a lot of phone calls too one of the the concerns is is is the quarantine thing coming back in and just just to be clear john brought it up but i mean i had one kid who's quarantined three times last year so it's 30 plus days he was at home he's a good kid but i still don't want him at home that much and he was nearly on the fourth

062it was just when the mask if you had a mask you didn't have to quarantine it was like the next day that he had another exposure um so a a mask optional option throws all of us back into that now to the concerns that we have all of this i mean this it was 11 55 a.m is when we got this information today you know there's still a lot of questions the the the vaccination part actually plays in i didn't think it did but i found out just now recently that if you're vaccinated and have a close contact just like if you had kovid you weren't didn't have to be quarantined so there was some advantages of having that so there's some things though i mean for me the mass on buses it's kind of

063like uh you know having the six feet separation when you're getting on the airplane and then you sit next to that guy you were six feet away from for the last three hours for the four hour trip i think that's one of the problems with all the things that we're doing is some of the stuff just obviously doesn't make sense to just regular people wait a minute what's going on here and and mass i mean i know they're sitting right next to each other in a bus for the 20 minutes to an hour that they're there but but that's a federal i mean if anyone's flown that's that's federal law right now and and that's where that is i can see changes happening in the next couple weeks my thought on it is is to

064take the recommendat the recommendations as as they're presented meaning they we strongly recommend masks in schools but we don't mandate it okay that's what the recommendation is from the cdc that's what the recommendation is from the aap um that's a recommendation from the ohio health department and and but to your your concern is to look into very quickly a virtual option for the people that find that unacceptable perfectly reasonably finding unacceptable and i think there will be more things that come out over the next month i don't get a sense of urgency from the from the public health departments on this even though our classes are going to start in three weeks and and so is everyone i mean this isn't a forest hills problem this is a state problem and um i think there's

065going to be more things that come out including the possibility that things get worse i mean things are worse now than they were a month ago if they continue to get worse or you know if we now to uh elizabeth's point we were very good and leslie too is last year we were we were on it as far as the numbers go and when things happened and you know i don't want to have optimism beyond you know reality last year worked out far better than i thought it would the entire year far better i'm trying to to rationalize that well if we come in and if we can have the same year with less restrictions this year you know then so much the better if it doesn't happen that way and we have to do

066something different well we're going to do that too i mean we're going to take a look and any decisions or even guidance that we have today can change tomorrow and if nothing we won't learn anything from this virus that's that's the case so i don't know that that's my viewpoint on again i know i mean especially you you take out the medical part of it and you get into the the just the the heartfelt feelings it's there's no perfect answer i mean there really there's there's no perfect answer so i i think the i think there's going to be a strong feeling of waiting until we may have more information but as you have said it's an ever-changing dynamic and two weeks from now we may know more which may change some of our hearts

067and minds here from where what we're thinking now but i think if we're less than a month out we owe it to parents to give them direction as to what's going to happen now so i would rather not put it off for a week or two i would rather make a decision tonight and then if we get new information circle back and change but if you have you know the the the emails that i think affected me the most are the same thing that leslie is saying it's like if i you know it's it's it's one of those but for the grace of god go i or it doesn't affect me in the way it affects you so i don't have to think about it as closely but if you some of the heart really

068heart-wrenching emails we got from people who have they weren't angry they were fact-based they were emotional in a good way lots of statistics parents that have immunocompromised kids are like if you if you if we're going mask free i need to think of other options so i think we owe it to people to let them think about what their other options might be whether you're a person that's in favor of mass or person that's not in favor of mass because there are also some people that are saying if you require my child to wear a mask i'm thinking about putting my kid in another school so i don't i think we should i think we should make a decision tonight um i have a question for you forest based on your comments you said you

069think we should do what the aap said which is this but not mandate it so it sounds to me like you're saying optional is how you're leaning however you said mandate can we get some clarification maybe maybe you or john know can the aap actually mandate masks in school because no correct so they're never going to be able to mandate that they strongly recommended it so i just want to make that clear so that people don't think that correct the ohio department of public health though can mandate it and they also strongly recommended masks but they did not mandate right and today the governor of ohio said he does not have the authority to do that even though he did last year so take that for what it's worth but it is in fact [Applause]

070that's the political piece that i frankly don't care about i care about safety and the health of kids period so you know i kind of agree with julie though that and you too elizabeth you said grace right all of and when i spoke to scott last week about this i said all of this is with the caveat that things can change on a dime i mean they really can we could get something federal state i mean anywhere um but i did want to make that clarification that the aap cannot mandate so to your point it's you know about the aap anyway is a little questionable on that one but i'll clarify the ohio department of health can and that's and that's what i'm going through so okay so are we ready to move on is

071it my recommendation would be for those of us who have children it is my understanding that 99.95 percent of the people who are in hospitals who are unvaccinated or who are 99.5 99.95 99.5 of the people who are in hospitals with covid19 are unvaccinated so the vaccination apparently is effective at least so far now that's what mr falci said just this past sunday and that's also what i'm hearing from our local officials that they know of no one in region 6 hospitals that is in there with covid that has been vaccinated that's not me that's what i'm being told so apparently vaccinations have an impact and i am a father and i will do with my children what i think is best and i promote that with others however i do think that when we're

072talking about data we should review that data from experts when we make our decisions as parents that's all i'm going to say on that those are those are the facts as i understand them and if i've messed up a number i apologize but that's pretty much the conversations that i have been in in my role as a superintendent my recommendation further to the board is that we watch the ohio department of education and the ohio health department over the next few days and that we move swiftly on potential requirements and mandates that come out and i think what i would also like to know at this particular time is the question that was brought to the table by mrs bissinger is there a need to discuss this further with our parents through a survey or

073get some indication on what parents are thinking at this particular point in time or do you want to wait until after the information comes out yeah i was kind of talking to julian i feel like julie suggested maybe after a few days we have enough information and that we meet get together look at all the information and then make some decisions so i don't i'm not comfortable tonight making a decision like that because i don't feel like i have enough information but if i've got some stuff in front of me that i can go through i think it's worthwhile to let's let's serve we did it last year we've done it a couple of times to survey our parents and let's see where we're at as far as that goes including a virtual option and

074we can ask about mass and i'm going to ask whatever and hav and we'll have that information that we can work off of and that should help us formulate a plan for next year and i think a lot of i know as as a parent right now the school year is quickly much faster than i thought it was coming up on us so i think it's just now coming up you know the thoughts of wait we're three weeks away so uh so i think getting that out quickly and then we can and i think we'll get plenty of feedback and then we can help that can help guide our our recommendations my last comment is i don't want the board of education or anyone in the room thinking that we have not considered this and

075that we haven't pursued some modeling along this venue however i mean we're not you know just hanging around the office not thinking that there may be a possibility that we have a virtual option but given the last survey that we had there were so few people who wanted that we too were waiting for more data to come out and absent of additional data then there was no reason to develop the virtual model into anything that would become a reality so well the the interesting way that things might have shifted is that if masks are required there might be other parents who would opt for virtual so that their students don't have to wear masks and there were last times so it's i remember what we could go either way we collapsed our all-day everyday kindergarten

076program we know how important early intervention is and how important early reading and and i'm not suggesting health isn't as important we know why face-to-face is the predominantly chosen model it is the most effective that that we are aware of at least right now to be able to provide adequate appropriate education for children on a daily basis and so we will start tomorrow on something that we can seek additional information but mrs meyer brings up a very important point it's not only going to be people who are concerned about potentially attracting covid it would be i i don't want my child in a mask anymore and i'm not happy with that so i think the million dollar question at least for me is if the school board recommends that students return to school with masks

077being optional will you choose if you had the option to send your child virtually that to me is the million dollar question because again that gets back to what you said before about economics and the small numbers because that could change or it could still be small which i think would be a valuable piece of information for all of us even if you are you know are pretty firm in your belief right now it may add a different nuance yes and what was difficult for parents last year that would have to be put back in places if you make this choice if it ever came to that then that's going to be that way for a semester because the staffing associated with that going back and forth could be difficult another question yes hopefully you

078have an answer to this um well so last year we offered a custom forest hills program for remote have you thought about one of those ones that we would just contract with somebody for we have and is that a possible way that it could be pulled off quickly do you recall the cost off hand yeah i would not promote that well that's that's the kind of information that i think we would need in the next step okay well we'll get this if you're comparing it to wiping out all day kindergarten again and i mean you can't wipe out all day kindergarten three weeks left there's no child care options so okay so again we have we have done a little bit of spit bowling and so i'm going to ask kim pence the assistant superintendent

079to provide some information we have right now and i would before we even say it i would say this is all estimation and this is all possibility it is not confirmed because i don't want to give the wrong impression although so go ahead thank you there's no very good option when it comes to contracting with other schools there bob buck and i spent some time last week researching what some different options are we have used apex in the past that we have a contract for for credit recovery it is not recommended for first time credit the state of ohio has been speaking quite a bit about some different virtual programs and we spoke to a group last week last week who offers a virtual learning program to several school districts in ohio there's been language

080that has changed where if we are going to have a permanent setting and this is by no means a plan to be permanent we're looking at temporary options right now because of the situation but the state of ohio would require us to have a separate irn so we would have to make sure that we were very clear that this is going to be something that's temporary and what i know one school district they have been earned it's an esc that has been partnering with different schools around the state it's hundred dollars per student can you repeat that seventeen hundred dollars per student and so depending on what numbers we're looking at it's also an additional thousand dollars for the learning system that we would have to have access to that is also without having their

081teachers it would still put the responsibility yeah when you start adding up how to what does that mean for us it's it's ridiculous so um i think that that's i mean the numbers that we have will certainly have an impact but when you start doing the math that again does not include what it would cost for a teacher to super we would still have to lean on our teachers to do that work if you would ask their teachers to facilitate it the number increases so there's no real good solution there we can continue to investigate but that's that is the cheapest that i've been able to find so the reason i asked that was i wouldn't want to put a survey out leading people to believe we could very reasonably have virtual in three weeks

082if we can't and we know we can't wipe out all day kindergarten in the matter of three weeks if we know that we can't afford that that's my only hesitancy in that but in what doing a survey yeah because i would love to know too but i would be afraid that would give people false hope how long does it take to get i'm sorry i might have missed this there's been a lot said how long does it take to get virtual up and running how long would it take if we did the like how we did last year maybe yes if we did it like we're not contracting that way we're actually trying to if we were doing it in-house tomorrow yes our teachers would be able to to pivot quickly you saw that last

083year the question is though is is what is the impact for because we don't have it's not like all third graders are going as a group we would have to really look at what those numbers are to make sense of and i have faith that our teachers can pivot but we also would have to hire more bodies to help facilitate because we're going to be splintering off into smaller groups so i know a couple high school teachers that had like two or three kids in a class in every class that's a small number overall but it worked great so i don't understand the small number thing i don't understand if there's two kids in a class that want to do it aren't the teachers still miked in a camera i don't understand why that's what

084i think is different for high school than we're talking about okay so that's that's the difference right okay and that's where that's the virtual um desire would be primarily yes our memorandum of understanding that's coming in your direction tonight has some specific requirements for virtual and streaming and recording and those are some things that we've worked on over time with our teaching staff and every teacher will be given the option to virtually stream their classroom or pre-record the lessons so it won't be asynchronous where you would have the class and the student where you're streaming at the same time you're teaching in that period it will be at a different time so that's a little bit different than what we experienced last year but remember last year we had volume we had we had every

085course that was available for students asynchronous with students at home versus at school this memorandum of understanding is not the same model that we had last year because we have learned over time about recording and the many things that the nuances of the classroom in that situation is very difficult and we were extremely thankful for the way that our staff was able to pull that off but it became very cumbersome in some classrooms to have that type of thing happening so recording is now a part of it there's different times that the recording can happen and students can watch it outside of the time period where they would typically be in class so it wouldn't be similar the same as what we had last year where they're locked step outside of the school virtually as

086they were this past year and so again if we move in this direction there will be some constraints inside the classroom with streaming that we did not have in play last year and that's not only about teachers that's about quality of instruction for students and quality of instruction in the classroom with them with a variation of what's taking place at a single time it's two dramatically different instructional styles being incorporated into one period of time and although our teachers did very well with that last year it was cumbersome for students and it was cumbersome for them and that's why if we were going to ever have if we were going to have that in the future we need to design something that was one good for instruction and two good for those who are instructing

087and so that's how we came about with this mou and so that would have to be reviewed if we were going to go to a virtual option just be aware that there are some adjustments and we believe that this is a good memorandum for kids and for teachers so i would still say that this needs to move forward tonight because it sets in place the parameters of the questions that you're asking now if we were to go to virtual absent of that we wouldn't have sort of the guidelines for instruction that we would want to have in place so back to what elizabeth said about her concern about sending out a survey um i'm not advocating virtual i'm just wondering again i keep wondering if having information more information from parents would help us with

088our decision if you don't think the benefit of sending out a survey like that is important well i shouldn't put it that way is um substantial for our decision then we we probably shouldn't do it i'm i'm not advocating that i'm just wondering if that would be a good piece of information to have i would i would love to have it i'm just afraid i don't want to get false hope that's it well if it comes back and it's clear like we don't know what could happen if it comes back and says a thousand people say yeah we want it we're all in that'll tell you a lot more than if 20 people say yeah i want it well even that tells us a lot though so i mean that's we just need to do

089that right right sir yeah i think it's worth it okay but we just need thank you for what you thank you kim i know you guys have gotten ahead of it okay so we will pursue more information from our parents and we'll work on a survey that asks the questions based upon this conversation tonight that gets us more information in addition we'll follow the information that's coming from the ohio department of health and uh i appreciate the board's conversation because we really haven't had a whole lot of time and we're not being given you're not being given a whole lot of time between now at 11 55 today and when school starts so i appreciate your position and i certainly respect this conversation and we'll make that in we'll make that happen right out of

090the gate tomorrow morning we'll start working on this thank you thank you thank you thank you any other updates no sir i just i have plenty i just want to make sure all right so now we're at public comments the meeting is a meeting of education for public of the purpose of conducting the school board of business and not to be considered a public community meeting our remarks should be addressed to the board as a group and b within a three minute we'll have the full three minutes we have nine speakers and we will get started first up thomas hagedorn in april this year our teachers were given training that described seven group categories into which all people fit and the training suggested that our students are either in a position of superiority or inferiority

091in our society based purely on their membership in these particular groups now their membership in these groups is a product of immutable characteristics things that they cannot change or that they are not responsible for they result from the genes or the culture that they inherited from the family into which they were born i'm told that school surveys have been taken to determine which of these groups individual students are members of this is wrong if this was done this is wrong morally morally ethically perhaps perhaps even a violation of anti-discrimination law results of these surveys need to be destroyed immediately no future surveys of this nature should be conducted except those that are required by federal or state law these surveys if they were done are an invasion of privacy but far worse they invite discrimination

092based on group membership equal employment opportunity commission administers and enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination now this includes the civil rights act of 1964. while the eeoc deals with workplace discrimination we can learn from their work to see how discrimination can be prevented so quoting from the hartford company which is a respected insurance firm i believe they probably carry eno insurance against such things they say you can stay in the eeoc's good grace is by avoiding questions that appear to be discriminatory ones that relate to and i have edited this for a little bit to for simplicity so the uh they should avoid questions that are discriminatory which deal with a candidates that's a work candidate's national origin family status race color religion gender or sexual orientation so for adults in the workplace you

093can't ask those questions is it appropriate to ask children in public schools these questions as part of the pause or halt on care the study of halt i think that these invasive surveys need to stop never to return to the forest hills school district okay thank you thank you michelle rolfes is we all agree that every student should be accepted welcomed supported respected and encouraged toward achievement and that no barriers to access or to success should be tolerated in our school or community ninety to ninety four percent of our students indicated in a questionnaire at school that they feel connected and they have adults upon which they can rely at school and at home eighty-five percent say they are comfortable interacting and getting along with students who are different from them but 53 percent of

094our students say they can't express their feelings well and about 45 percent say that they are concerned that they can't understand or perform as expected in their classes they seem to be expressing concern about academic competence among other things why is academic competence not a focus in this wellness effort it is highly correlated with self-esteem positive self-appraisal and a personal sense of success why not foster those by training students in social emotional communication compassion empathy conflict resolution service to others and read resilience in addition to improving competence why would a district so concerned about relationship and wellness invite an expensive county consultant to train the teachers on their own racism microaggressions implicit bias white supremacy and privilege are these training experiences supported by research as impactful to student outcomes in fact there is no evidence

095at all that these training activities described are effective in improving a child's sense of belonging social emotional communication wellness relationships with others or academic competence why three years of prioritized focus on race and gender cultural appreciation can be taught to staff and students without teaching them they are oppressors supremacists or micro-aggressors has the district audited existing district resources that address relationship and wellness has the district used the counselors and school psychologists who are the experts in the district on relationship and wellness and who know our students in our community you already pay them to do this sort of work why weren't they used as trainers for relationship and wellness topics learner profile data seems to suggest that academic competence and social emotional communication may be needed as a priority in the district of course understanding

096cultural ethic ethnic and gender differences is very important but it may not be the most important focus at this time so now our district has brought in state level experts to prescribe oversea and direct planning effort through this cag exercise i hope it's truly a citizen and parent advisory effort and not actually a state-imposed advisory effort let's use the resources we already have to address the problems we seem to already know with the solutions that we know how to provide thank you up michael fullen [Applause] i'm sorry michael fullen michael fullen time's up a little feedback is that better yeah i spoke at the last board meeting about this and it hasn't been publicly addressed yet of course i spoke at the last board meeting about this and it hasn't been publicly addressed yet by

097the board which i believe is a mistake recently a school board member has said during recorded board meetings recorded public board meetings excuse me about public records requests these are adults harassing this woman and there are shades of racism all over it and a white person does not get to tell a black person that they should not feel harassed by their actions or scared or afraid a white person does not have the right by not addressing or denouncing these statements this board is allowing these statements to become a new standard you better not ask questions lest you be called a racist also people with fair skin tones are not permitted to do some things that other people with other skin tones can is this really the new standard for our school district do you realize

098how much of an impact this has on your employees and students now an employee of the district will think twice about questioning a bad policy because they don't want to be accused of being a racist your employees have different rights based on their skin tones you as a board have said as much because not one of you objected at the time or in the many weeks since these statements were made congratulations urine action has indeed institutionalized racism and created a hostile work environment to relieve the district's taxpayers of the liability you have created i ask that you immediately denounce these statements and reprimand the speaker dr rasmussen please i wouldn't have sir you heard me at the beginning you are not to address you address the board as a whole and not to direct your

099comments at a board member i wouldn't have to do it if you did the right thing okay i understand that to paraphrase edmond sir you're done you're done to paraphrase edmund burke or john stewart the only thing necessary for the triumphant people is that good people do nothing are any of you good people i went over them initially we're a law and order type people here aren't we okay you're broke i have a first amendment right to speak freely and you as part of our civic arrangement are beholden to the taxpayers and the voters i am allowed to address you you are i am not doing anything inappropriate rules that were clearly stated the bylaws clearly stated at the beginning i gave you full opportunity you just need to follow the bylaws why is that

100why can't you do that why can't you call out racism in all of its forms why can't you how about following the bible that's what we ask you can address us address this as a board i am addressing your failure as a board that's fine but you are addre you are directing comments directly at one of our board members in direct violation of the bylaws correct yes fine i'll finish to paraphrase edmund burke or john stewart mill history's a little shaky on who actually said it the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people should do nothing are any of you good people are any of you brave enough to denounce racism in all of its forms if you are not your collective in action constitutes a new standard which violates

101the first amendment the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment the civil rights act of 1964 which prohibits public institutions from discrimination on the basis of race and the equal opportunity acts i don't want our taxes paying for legal settlements due to a management failure of this board instead i want the taxes collected to be directed at educational improvement i implore you to take the appropriate action and make sure your employees students and the district know that you respect and follow these aforementioned essential federal laws we cannot effectively fight racism with more racism thank you for the record i did let you finish your statement next up brian lobock first i'd like to thank the board and uh superintendent prebles for establishing mechanism to to hear our our concerns and uh it seems to be

102moving well and that's a good thing well i think we've got some past events that we need to speak to when the people first voice their concerns about crt and anderson this response was ignation followed by intimidation by the board members of the group have been accused of harassment just for asking for for documents there have been charges of racism for questioning if math standards are being dumbed down or just by criticizing crt calling someone a racist when they question where their children be taught is is well you folks talk about microaggressions a calling person a racist is not even a macro aggression it's a nuclear bomb of aggressions totally out of place there's been a member of the the board came up and said talking about the people that were speaking out and says

103i i know their names that was just intimidation there's no basis for it there's no reason for it it's totally out of place and there's been other acts of intimidation uh and not necessarily by the board but some people have received some person received a glitter bomb in the mail another piece in person got a message saying that we know uh who you work with your employer how would your employer react if they knew you were taking part in these empty implications racist activities uh retaliation against public officials for people criticizing them and speaking out is totally wrong it's against our system we're supposed to be a government of for and by the people you've uh you folks are elected to represent us you're servants of the people this isn't your little fiefdom that you

104rule totally you're servants of the people uh we've had instances of of uh attacks of people coming from the board and in your in the care program you talk about the zero tolerance policy i haven't i i think there's some uh been enough actions by the board members that you need to apply some of that to yourself i haven't heard any instances where the board's done any policing taken any action nothing done has any discussion of their their performance uh if you the people that are involved can't make a heartfelt apology you're not fit to serve the public you're not fit to serve on this board of education for anderson township and i expect the board to start policing itself to make sure this kind of thing never happens again thank you [Applause] kevin meshach

105evan meshack my name is kevin mischak my daughter will be a sixth grader at the summit my son will be a ninth grader at anderson this year we moved to anderson township five years ago based on my research on the best schools in the cincinnati area that i could reasonably afford i'd like to thank each of you for your time tonight um offhand i like to address the covet issue and the mask issue the 394 six students of our 7100 represents 5.5 percent of our population the district should be commended on the success of that but the other side of that might be the flip side that 95 percent of the students never got sick never got vaccinated they didn't need vaccines they went on with life and they had a very successful school year

106and i thank you for that it regards the mask first of all hipaa and medical information is private you cannot put a mask on vaccinated and not backs unvaccinated students that would be a red scarlet letter you just flat out calling people out also we ignore the fact that some people have had covet 19 i have been tested my immune system is fine but i also had the antigens and i'm good to go i don't need a vaccine but thank you for offering now with regards to my other comments the state auditor did a report in 2018 and this is available on the website you can look on the treasurer's report for this information at the end of fiscal year 2017 forest hills school district had 20 million dollars in cash reserves the district lost

107seven million dollars in 2018. all right the five year four class plans recently released plan to lose the rest of those cash reserves and another 12 million seven hundred and thirty nine thousand eight hundred and twenty six dollars by 2025. that's not a plan that's 32 million dollars lost in eight years you got a 100 million dollar bond you got a levy increase and you're pissing away the money what are you doing where is my money going i can't afford another property tax increase i literally cannot afford the equity increase the escrow increase you have a you have a two million dollar bus depot in newtown how much is the building on beechmont avenue cost and you still have the old administrative facility sitting there half empty half used i looked on your your directory

108you have administrative assistance for this and that and and just everywhere your administrative costs are 39 of your of your admin costs are of your budget teachers are only 45 thank you [Applause] next up jessica cunningham good evening my name is jessica cunningham i'm a mom of two forest hills students a small business owner and proud resident of anderson township my husband grew up here attended forest hills schools and graduated from anderson high school i had a very different school experience most of my education was in a majority white evangelical school we were not taught tolerance inclusion accurate history or sex education of any kind it would take me quite a bit of time to describe to you and all the ways that i was not prepared for this world for these reasons it is

109deeply important to me as i know it is to other parents that our children receive a robust education that allows them to compete in a multicultural world and instills empathy that we know is vital for successful leaders and team members i'm here today to speak in support of the care team and in support of our teachers having the tools needed to be able to be the best for all of our students it's difficult to understand why so many people feel threatened by the care team but we should clearly identify what is at work here and across this country this is about politics it is a right-wing movement backed by politicians empowered by white supremacy and bigotry words words like diversity and inclusion and belonging only spark fear and prejudice minds every moment spent placating and

110reasoning with ignorance is a moment stolen from our students and every breath wasted on comforting and apologizing to bigotry is not only a disgrace but energy taken that could be spent supporting our teachers it's my hope that the care team will get back to work as we will need them now more than ever i would like to make some comments by a time regarding the mask wearing i i believe that forest hills district did a phenomenal job last year i had a virtual student and i had an in-person student and you all went above and beyond to meet those expectations and make them feel important my mom heart wants to follow the recommendations of experts my recommendation would be that we start the school year with mask and then everybody and then revisit it later

111when everyone has the option to have vaccines because at that point then people could either choose to have a vaccine or not but children would be able to defend themselves against the new variants so thank you so much thank you lindy lindy di maria good evening my name is lindy di maria and i'm the parent of two children at mercer elementary and a 1998 graduate of turpin high school i have also been a high school teacher for the past 20 years additionally i'm the founder of a community group called the blue crew and the organizer of the school supply drive outside prior to the meeting thank you for all who donated today according to the united way students of color are twice to three times more likely to drop out of high school than their

112caucasian peers the national association of secondary school principals claims that students living in poverty have lower literacy rates than students with financial security u.s news and world report states that over 3 million children are being raised by grandparents which sets them on a tougher road to adulthood there is no doubt that many of our community school-aged children fall into these demographics and it is because of these facts that the care team is vital to the well-being and education of our students i want to thank the district for the important and necessary work that the care team does as a parent i'm happy my children attend a school where diversity and inclusion are valued this work is essential not only to cultivate a loving and supportive culture in the schools but also to teach our children

113how to be empathetic and responsible citizens of the world they need to leave school equipped with the tools to work with and engage with people from all walks of life as a veteran teacher i know the greatest asset for success is the relationships i build with my students positive teacher-student relationships can boost student self-esteem give them a sense of belonging in community and are essential for academic success for teachers to effective effectively develop these relationships they need to be aware of their students racial and cultural backgrounds unique learning and socio-economic needs and other diverse factors to ensure that all students feel included accepted and supported the work that the care team does helps to professionally develop educators and evaluate best practices to meet eat to meet each kid's unique needs all kids deserve a high

114quality education all kids deserve to feel seen included and supported all kids need to learn the importance of diversity and inclusion as citizens of the world i ask you to continue the work of the care team and its support of educators and students thank you thank you next up is martha veeman good evening thank you i recently heard assistant superintendent kim pence report on a survey of forest hills students a question asked the students if they had an adult in school they felt they could count on no matter what 95 percent of students said yes ms pence stated that however she would not be satisfied until all students answered yes to this question and the other questions in the survey this is laudable and shows that our district cares about all students however over the

115last few days i've been thinking about the focus on students having a single adult they can count on it's important but it doesn't feel good enough my own children's experiences in our schools let me know that each of them had an experience with one teacher who couldn't be available to them at all and that's what i'm really worried about an elementary level teacher lacked the cultural competency to deal with my neuro-atypical son so that teacher could not advocate for my son in the development of his social skills with his peers my other son had a high school teacher who made an assumption about him on the very first day of class and that assumption meant that a relationship with that teacher was impossible for my student my son never engaged with the subject matter although

116he did succeed in the class because he had the skills to to do the work regardless for those uh teach for these particular teachers biases kept them from understanding the character of my children wouldn't it be wonderful if all students felt at least some sense of security with all adults in the schools this is why i support the care team it's this kind of professional development that will help staff develop a better understanding of how to support and relate to all students especially those that are different from themselves thank you thank you last time we have jeff greenwald thank you asking a child to determine whether he or she is oppressed or an oppressor is the basis of critical race theory this is a divisive ideology that begs for equality of outcomes rather than equality

117of opportunity this diminishes personal responsibility that is exactly the opposite of what i wanted to install instill in my children i ask that you the board of education clearly and publicly reject the divisive ideology of crt in all aspects of the forest hill school district curriculum your failure to do this will cause failure of school levies as the more affluent parents in the school district withdraw their children from public school venue and pursue your competing forms of education thank you thank you [Applause] okay item 7.1 parking lease agreement with the christ hospital yes we have two things on the agenda day under business operation 7.1 the christ hospital parking lot agreement that is where we get roughly 80 spots in the christ hospital parking lot to be distributed in for anderson students and 7.2 is

118the approval of the pre-k 6 and 7-12 student handbook on both of these the superintendent would recommend that the board approve each 7.1 and 7.2 as presented and just for clarification the the parking spaces are provided free free of no charge yes no thank you like a 20-year lease if i get a 20-year lease on that that would be great that would be awesome believe that right now it for that year for sale sign now okay thank you we're going to do this at consent agenda 7.1 to 11.1 so next up human resources report thank you john i'm going to provide human resources for mr fellows who is unable to be with us this evening so please bear with me i haven't done this in a while you see on your report there item 8.1

119the following individuals submitted retirement resignation letters uh i'd like to congratulate margaret askew she's a head cook's been with us for 27 years so she's had 27 years of service i'd like to thank her and wish her the best in her retirement which is effective 8 1 21. you see resignations below of certified individuals as well as classified individuals item c on the document is the employment employment personnel in items d e f g h and j and you see the change of assignments that we have there presented to the board in the elementary school in cook head cook administrative assistant and other positions that are there appointments in the certified area teacher at wilson erica schulte is also part of this at summit in sherwood you see mary frazee who is the beginning at

120816 and carrie royce who will be beginning on 8 16 as well classified staff who will be joining the district as well as initial statements assignments that are presented there in also item f excuse me e classified additional staff appointments in item f reappointment of personnel special services appointments in item g of all of those that are listed there before you with all of the associated work that they will be doing for the district item i is our student teacher the interim individuals who will be coming to the school district to assist with classroom instruction and also pursue their degrees in education you also see item j our substitute personnels for administrative assistants aides bus drivers paraprofessionals and there is a memorandum of understanding that's available for the board to consider and that memorandum of

121understanding is when our district shifted to offering a virtual academy during the 2021 school year in response to covet 19 pandemic we could not have anticipated every implication for our teachers in light of what we learned from that experience this mou was developed collaboratively between the administration and forest hills teachers association as a proactive measure should the district need to transition from in-person instruction to online instruction and so you receive that information that was provided to you there keep going here so those are 8.2 section h 8.2 now is coming next you see um appointments and additional assignments resignation and consultant coach advisor so you see here a listing of all the names and resignations of individuals who will be working with our students there's a complete list of them and there are five pages

122of those individuals who will be coming to the board of education so those are the that is the hr report for this evening and i recommend that the board approve the report as presented including a memorandum of understanding k and memorandum of understanding the second one that is available all right thank you item nine could i ask a question would that be okay or do you want to wait until it's just on the it's just on the hr report the second memorandum of understanding were specific courses um are listed german personal finance lifeguarding and experienceship entrepreneurship why did we separate these courses or why are these courses only in this memorandum of understanding they are they are in there because those are courses with if they were not offered within the memorandum they would not

123be available to students because of the low class size so this virtual opportunity provides opportunity for students to take them virtually and therefore we have more students available to take the courses okay good thank you any other questions on the hr report all right i'm 9.1 miami valley christian academy auxiliary funds tech support good evening this is a quick one this is a motion to approve the attached quote for smht consulting llc where they have been providing tech support for miami valley christian academy this is something that is funded completely through auxiliary funds and is something that we do annually um so if there are any questions otherwise the superintendent recommends the board approve the attached quote for smht consulting and that like last time that was money that that comes to the district that

124goes straight to mommy valley but we're just the to show to allow the public to see that they are getting that money yes correct thank you item 10.1 band classes overnight field trip good evening student services has 13 service agreements contracts and overnight trips i'll try to move through them as swiftly as i can and answer any questions that you may have 10.1 turpin high school administration is asking permission for 100 students and 20 chaperones travel to new orleans on february 16 through february 21st they're going to be participating in the new orleans performance tour twelve hundred dollars per student which includes all um of their transportation lodging food and all of their costs on items 10.2 we have anderson and turpin requesting permission for 30 students in three chaperones to travel to europe in

125the spring of 2023 this is a revised trip it was originally taken to you for approval on january 27th of last year 2020. it has been obviously postponed due to covid and will hopefully be able to resume by spring of 2023 i've included the cost here of 3260 per student which includes all of their expenses and ef tours is sponsoring this trip the next 11 items 10.3 to 10.13 our service agreements for the 21 22 school year they include the student placements for students who require very intensive programming and services as well as contracts for student programs throughout the school year i did provide a breakdown to you that included the description the cost the increases and the changes there are no changes to our student contracts i think i i mentioned that um these

126are all students that are continuing in these placements for this year um i do want to add that for this year all of these agencies did include it did increase their cost for this coming year so item 10.3 we have the hamilton county educational service center head start mou for 2122 and this is to allow us to serve 16 children preschool aged children who qualify for low-income programming to be served in our head start program at mercer elementary the only change with this particular agreement is that they will be operating a full day session for this coming year instead of two half-day sessions 10.4 is our service agreement with hpc healthcare processing consultant and that's to allow us to participate in the ohio school of medicaid's program we have reimbursement we receive reimbursement for the

127treatment of our medicaid eligible students and that includes any services such as occupational therapy speech therapy school psychological services and nursing services we bring in quite a bit of revenue for this particular [Music] for medicaid reimbursement so hpc assists us in doing that and there is a fee increase for this coming school year has not been increased since 2016 and the increase was 5 000. 10.5 clermont county educational service center we have a service agreement with them to provide itinerant hearing impaired services for this school year and this is to support direct services for 11 of our students who are deaf or hearing impaired and there is an increase of approximately 20 dollars per day for the two day per week hearing impaired support teacher that comes into the school district item 10.6 is our

128child focus service agreement this is to provide our school-based mental health services to our students while they're here in school during the school day there is no change in cost to this particular agreement and this funds four full-time school-based therapists in our buildings item 10.7 is a resolution to contract with abs applied behavioral services in westchester and this is to support a student in a year-round program this includes all of the costs for this particular student and this is increased due to some program changes that are being provided 10.8 is a resolution to contract with stepping stones center this supports the placement of a special education student who is preparing to actually move on to adult services in march of there is a increase per month in tuition and support services for this particular contract

129and this will run august through march item 10.9 is a resolution to contract with linen grove school and this supports a placement a 10-month placement for a special education student including tuition and registration costs for this coming school year and there is an increase in this particular tuition cost of 2100 10.10 is a resolution to contract with clermont county educational service center and this is to provide a placement for a student who is in their genesis center which is a program that supports student with social emotional and behavioral needs there is a increase as well in that particular program for the upcoming school years of 632 dollars for the school year item 10.11 is a resolution to contract with the children's home of cincinnati and this is with their height center which services high school

130age students and we have two students placed there for the full school year uh uh supporting them through their ieps 10.12 is another resolution to contract with the children's home of cincinnati and this is in their campus program located on madison road there are two separate locations at the children's home for these two different programs and this supports two special education students that we support in that particular program for the 10 month school year that also includes a tuition increase for the upcoming year item 10.13 is sjo kids incorporated doing business as new path child and family services agreement this was formerly altar crust they have since changed their name to be and they'd like to be referred to as sjo kids and i should add that as you know in the past we have

131provided two special education teachers to support our students in that educational program because they do reside in our school district they are referring now to that program as a residential intervention program so we have quite a bit of changes in terms of this particular service agreement to make sure we have obviously referenced their proper their proper name and title we do pay for in addition to the teacher costs we do pay for the 66 938 dollars to provide educational aids to support those two classrooms and there is no increase to that for this upcoming school year and as i have indicated we have pulled item 10.14 10. 14. we'd like to put that on next month's agenda until i received some clarification to that particular contract the superintendent recommends the board approve the service agreements

132the resolutions mousse and the two overnight trips in items 10.1 to 10.13. thank you any questions um yeah so in our special meeting i know you painstakingly brought us all up to speed on all of the changes in this area and i do still think it would be a value to lay out how the numbers have increased in these programs and how the needs have changed over the past five years or so i think what really hit me reading through these is you know we talk a lot about our cost per pupil being low and for most students it is but the truth is we have some that it is incredibly high and if we don't kind of get ahead of that and aren't watching that that is the sort of thing that eats away

133like your comment said that eats away over the years if we don't get ahead of it and we don't communicate it openly with the community so that they understand we have to take care of these students even if it's a hundred thousand dollars a year i don't know that everyone is aware that those sorts of things take place now you are correct you are correct there is a lot based in this federal law that requires us to ensure we provide special education services and all the related aspects to their programming so i i would agree and be happy to provide that information okay and and betsy um to to tag along elizabeth um we had talked before the meeting some of this is is we get funds for but the vast majority we do not

134is that correct or a good portion of it at least that's correct we get some um as i mentioned in this in the one item related to medicaid we do receive quite a bit of funding for medicaid services i think i indicated for just half the year there was close to half a million um and i think for the the full year we receive a million atlanta that yeah actually yeah in medicaid we received 1.1 million this year this has been a very high year for that a lot some of that's timing but we typically get anywhere from a low of 500 000 or half a million all the way up to 1.1 million this year so it's been the highest this has been the highest year has to do with the timing that they

135release the payments as well but it's been increasing over the it's been increasing in line with what the costs have been increasing yeah that's my understanding as well and this was a a much higher year we also receive um categorical funding uh for students with disabilities in addition to our cost per pupil and and i i believe this past year um elena and i were talking about this earlier we've received about 1.8 million in categorical funding and we also receive a small amount of catastrophic costs where there's a threshold of of cost for students that we can apply for to receive those excess costs that are applied to many of our students who go over that threshold the only other thing i wanted to say was a comment and that is that child focus we

136the district funds four school-based mental health therapists and last year and this year the forest hills foundation is funding a fifth so we are we're blessed to have the foundation supporting us we have a combination of great folks and and groups that are providing those services the foundation being won um the um the hayden foundation is another that is supporting um a full-time and even child focus has kicked in some costs to support when we started off these services in our high schools so all nine buildings now are receiving school-based services that's great thank you thank you item 11.1 treasures report 11.1 a presents the list of donors whose gifts totaled just under 26 000 during the last month item b is a statement of board accounts which presents all funds activity for the fiscal

137year just ended june 30th item c d and e present our general fund detail both revenue and expenditures and of course as you know the general fund is the five-year forecast fund june 30th being our year in we did finish the year with a positive variance for our cash balance after accounting for some timing differences between the forecast and the trends we ended the year with a positive variance of three hundred thousand which is four tenths of one percent so it's always good to be on the plus side of where we expect it to be items f and g present the bank reconciliations in the month for the month just ended june 30th and item 11.1 h is a housekeeping item from the federal department of education they are changing their accounting code for a

138title for part a from fund number 599 to 5 so once approved you'll see that change on the treasurer's report on item b that said i respectfully uh recommend that the board approve items 11.1 a through h as part of your consent agenda thank you how many questions can i get a motion to adopt the agenda 7.1 through 11.1 excluding 8.1 and 8.2 i'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda 7.1 to 11.1 excluding 8.1 and 8.2 8.1 and 8.2 second ms cropper miss choice yes dr rasmussen yes mrs bissinger yes mrs meyer yes sector heist yes can i get a motion into a dropped 8.1 make a motion to adopt 8.1 consent agent second ms crawford miss choice yes mrs meyer yes mrs missinger yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss motion to adopt

139agenda item 8.2 make a motion to adopt agenda item 8.2 second second ms cropper miss choice yes mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger abstain dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes thank you all right next up is a delegate appointment for the ohio school board association annual business meeting on november i actually need to vote on this i appoint dr leslie rasmussen who's the only person who is guaranteed to be on the board as of november 8th appoint myself as the the back up or the alternate i'm 12.2 for discussion any items for discussion tonight beyond what we've already talked about i just have a brief thing that i wanted to cast it out one more time about the pool we will be starting discussions about the anderson high school pool via a committee that is open

140to the community i think i've received four or five community members interested in volunteering and then there will also be a mix of administrative and staff members but the board will hopefully have a recommendation on that in the next few months it's going to be very important because the comments that one of the speakers made about the future finances that's very real so to be talking about a multi-million dollar pool investment it has to be considered within the context of income and i would just remind everyone of that as we enter these conversations for the next few months because the board is getting ready to turn over and yes i would encourage people to volunteer if you're interested thank you item 13.1 uh reports of the board of education anderson township economic development committee report

141we have a meeting tomorrow afternoon all right finance committee report uh we've not met but uh i'll email you tomorrow to schedule them okay forest hills foundation report so i'm sure some of you are thinking that i'm much shorter than d stone but good evening my name is stacy gillard i'm a parent here at force hills and i'm also the new executive director of the forest hills foundation i'm thrilled to be here wanted to just share a few things about what's happening with the foundation one our goal and just being in more recent meetings with the foundation board is ultimately to support our kids to provide them additional opportunities and that they all have access to different programs and initiatives no matter which school you go to so i look forward to myself as well

142as some other board members will be attending all the back to school events at the elementary level as well as at nagel and we're going to figure out some high school opportunities in addition as we continue to share the different initiatives we're promoting it all comes back to the kids right what are those additional mental health and wellness initiatives innovative learning and experiential programs couple additional things we will be recognizing five individuals this year for distinguished alumni it's actually the same weekend as the turpin anderson football game on friday october 22nd um from anderson it's amy connolly and stanley jones and at turpin it's dave maris sydney trout and zach shiel so we are going to be sharing more information about all these folks we're always looking for really um excited and passionate alumni that

143went to school here i know there are lots i interact with a lot of them um so we're always looking for good people to join the alumni committee through the foundation and i'd also like to give a quick shout out we have two new foundation board members um last month we did their orientation randy martinez he's a recruiter for starbucks and he is a maddox parent and heather morenci who is a staff member she'll be teaching anderson and she joined the board meeting as well or the forest hills board and then finally i just would love to leave you with a great quote i think it's always good to be mindful of the work we do thank you for everybody's work um up front too but it's a great quote about maya angelou and it

144says when we give cheerfully and accept gratefully everyone is blessed thank you thank you item 13.4 human resources committee report we have scheduled a meeting for august 10th at 4 pm at the district office legislatively liaison report our main thing that was came out today and then and then before that was the requirements from the the governor about the state mandates as far as you know the vaccinations or uh we do we didn't have the fair funding program go through i think that was before our last meeting uh limited to two years but we got two years so um policy committee we've not met safety committee we have not met but i anticipate we're going to meet very soon and i'll have something to report next month uh teaching and learning committee report we have

145not met a technology and facilities committee we met on the july 22nd to review naming recognition opportunities for district owned property one was a opportunity for the anderson weight room we have proceeded we agreed for the second step and we're moving on to the third step where the administration and the donor get involved there was also a request for signage at stadiums as far as working with anderson township uh with the homerama program uh we are getting three dollars for for tickets that are sold so there's going to for every ticket that's sold so some of the signage that you saw on the uh the parade will be utilized in some of our high schools to help promote that as well forest hills teacher association report oh i'm sorry we also had we also oh

146we're supposed to do that now we're supposed to approve that for the the auditorium according to the naming rights document we can bring something to the board if it's ready for the board correct i mean yeah so there was also an opportunity from the uh anderson drama uh that they got new chairs that have a place for a plaque uh they want to sell the plaques for 250 for a uh to put the plaque on the chair something they've been working on for quite some time came up with the the uh the appropriate amount and are looking forward to doing that over the next couple years that could raise i believe it was 168 thousand dollars so uh that being kind of an inclusive type thing the uh teaching and or sorry the technology and

147facilities committee uh approved that and wanted to bring it up to the board for a recommendation to approve so i move that we i move that we approve the um ability for the it's it's all the fine arts uh to uh go ahead with this program to uh fundraising program for 250 for a naming plate for the chairs in the auditorium and i will second committee i will second that thank you as the other committee member any discussion questions um i would i mean i don't think so but i that's kind of the first that i'm knowing about the whole thing could as part of the process could we know could could you give us a heads up if there's going to be a vote yeah information update was there something though because i knew

148about it right like it's the little tags on the back yeah they have little indents on the i think little indents maybe on the arms but um you know in the future um forrest just mentioned that that might be a good thing for us to um uh address maybe the the week before the board vote to let you know so what i would prefer in a circumstance like that is exactly what like is there a proposal that has exactly what it is how much is it going to raise are these plaques rotated over time like i would just like to know the details do you want me to tell you it or do you need it in writing well we might as well just you might as well just tell me i mean i i'm

149fundamentally am probably okay with it but i'm just i just feel like i should know more um there's a really nice proposal and and it would have been you know we're this is i think the first time the board is actually dealing with this process so um yeah lesson learned yeah um it's a document that is called naming recognition opportunities for district owned property donor proposal the anderson high school they're asked to describe their rationale implementation plan estimated cost donor financial contribution and sustainability so if you want me to i'll read this it's three paragraphs it'll just take a minute you want me to do that probably a good idea okay so um the contact information person is chad weddle and the opportunity states the anderson high school performing arts directors along with their respective

150booster organizations are excited to pursue a fundraising endeavor for enhancements in and around titus auditorium currently each seat inside the theater has a place for a seat plate on the armrest through this fundraiser these seat plates will be sold for 250 dollars there exists 659 seats in titus auditorium less the anticipated expenses of actual leak of actual producing the seat plates the anticipated net profit of this fundraiser is approximately 160 000. the goal would be to begin selling seat plates as soon as approved and on an ongoing basis until the auditorium is sold out there is potential that donors may purchase one seat with his her name and or several seats with the name of a family our performing arts directors and booster organizations have developed a five-year plan for significant upgrades in titus auditorium

151that will benefit all all capitals students staff who use the space this fundraiser will be a key factor in the success of this long-term plan implement implementation data is negotiable however fall 2021 is requested that's pretty good right yeah yes that is sort of how i i thought that it was going to work so that we saw those ahead of time so i totally trust you i knew it was happening i just thought that we would see something again lesson learned yeah it's better about it in the future that's all right it's communication is hard okay it's tough when we can't talk as a group outside of this um yeah that's fine that's great i think this is a first step toward learning how to raise private money to help us out in certain circumstances

152yeah and for the for the weight room proposal we asked mr fellows to go back and work with the potential donor before you get something this nice and neat great no i think that's well done ms cropper mrs bissinger yes dr heiss yes miss joyce yes mrs meyer yes dr rasmussen yes now there you go donna uh 13.10 forest hills teacher association report good evening first i want to take a moment and personally thank as well from the association to mrs bissinger for stepping back into the role of a community servant we really appreciate that she did an outstanding job for the years that she served and we know that it's a lot of work but truly do appreciate from the association your time and energy to take on this period of time for the

153transition time the focus of fhta is to continue to establish a positive collaborative and working relationship between the 515 teachers within forest school district and the board of education as well as the community our ability to promote high quality financial responsible social emotional educational opportunities for all students in anderson township community is quasi-essential fha supports the continuing professional development of our teachers to provide high quality skills for today and in the future very simple words but over the past year i think we had some challenges and we were absolutely at the point of being able to bring that to the forefront so tonight the association's report will focus on three areas our past work a collaboration with the board in the community and a request for a shared focus i wasn't here last month and

154i know that our delegate chris preston spoke but i wanted to make sure tonight again that we focus and i heard many of us saying this and there was some people even that had comments tonight the value of having us at face to face last year i hope that we capitalized on that sometimes but really as you have been out in your scene that was an enormous undertaking and tonight as you're making decisions and you're listening to the challenges that are ahead of us that work is never undermined and it's such an important role that we played with our students and our parents and the students and i'm very grateful that our teachers were able to find themselves in ways and to get there and to help support our students i'd like to ask the

155board tonight to join me informally thanking the fhda staff for all they're serving above and beyond during the covid 2020-21 school year and really just put our best foot forward as we move forward as we start school this year looking at ways to make sure that we officially make sure that they all know how grateful we are for that time and the work that we've done secondly it's collaboration 53 years the board of forest hills school district and the forest hills teachers station have worked to maintain highly qualified individuals well-trained continued support for continued education post bachelor's degrees and we value that opportunity to continue that this year i will start my 21st year in forest hill school district the positives outweigh the days that had challenges i've been through several superintendents treasures principals board

156members except forest because there was another forest and overall we are forest hills school district and the focus on kids focusing on the good and focusing and allowing our community to make sure that it maintains that relationship and making sure that we're always looking out for the well-being of the community the community kids all kids all parents all different situations and opening our doors to embrace that what's made those opportunities great is that we have a working relationship that is able to think forward and provide those opportunities that allow our teachers to be able to perform well in the classroom but also then promote our students to perform well for life and it starts from all the way our preschool all the way through our high school and i think i mentioned that in may

157that it's not just that senior year it's pre-k through 12. tonight i know there were some mous that were presented and those are opportunities for us to work collectively to make sure that we're making adjustments that are financially responsible that are thinking positively and that are making adjustments during this cover time to help us move to make sure that everyone's being served and moving forward in a positive direction thirdly tonight was a request for a shared focus i know this evening stacy was here and appreciate that stacy that you're before me because the microphone came down which i appreciate and she's taken on big role and have big shoes to fill but i'm sure you're highly able to do that and we're looking forward to that relationship the forest hills foundation and the forest hills

158teacher association have worked collectively over the years to help raise funds for the support of our students to do great things in the upcoming school year we will be working again from the association side to be able to provide more opportunities for our teachers to support the foundation but also i'm going to ask that we look at an opportunity i know that we did this a couple years ago and if you weren't aware of it but it's something i think it's important for all of us to be able to do the make-a-wish foundation has been an opportunity unfortunate or fortunate whichever way you want to look at that but for me personally two years ago we had two of our students in our school community that were in need of participating in that program and

159the teachers association raised funds to do that and i know with scott's support during that time we were able to move forward working within our school community here as a collective whole as the school district to be able to help raise those funds and we were able to support those students during that time period and it's you know very very exciting if you know that program the forest hills teachers association received funds from the ohio education association as soon as we raised a status number of dollars oea did a match and that provided directly to our students and their families the chance to share that time during the make-a-wish time both of those students are doing well and uh very happy with that so one of the things we'd like to suggest or work with

160the board is to help maybe take on that opportunity i know i spoke with stacey a little bit from the foundation side that preparing for situations of that nature for our students is something that would be great if we could work together as a board to say this is something that we were able to support so just a small request on my behalf from the association we'd like to continue that opportunity if it should arise tonight there was discussion about the covet protocols and as we're moving forward and it is a moving target and i know from us the most important thing is maintaining safety and equality in that area to make sure that not only are we protecting our students but also helping making sure that we're protecting the staff and those teachers of

161the school district i had a call in uh earlier today with scott tamar who's the president of oea and also just like where you're at scott said that you know we're always looking to maintain safety is number one issue for all members of our schools but also waiting with the governor's office to make sure that we're seeing some of that direction i know last year we did a good job of working within the county following those recommendations so from behalf of the association we respect that work that you're doing and hope that you know from our side that we're here to support that work as well and if there's anything you need from me or from the association as you're making those decisions please feel free to reach out we're pretty quick at surveys so

162something i'm pretty decent at so if you need some support from that from the teachers let me know and with that if there's any questions comments concerns thank you very much all right all right before we go into executive session the next regular meeting of the board of education is august 23rd 2021 at seven o'clock it will likely be in the learning commons if the carpet is done we do not anticipate we will be out of executive session at some point tonight we do not anticipate any action based off of that thank you everyone for coming pursuant to ohio revised code section 121.22 g1 i hereby 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

163also pursuant to ohio revised code section 121.22 g3 i hereby move that the board adjourned to an 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 mrs meyer yes mrs bissinger yes miss choice yes dr rasmussen yes dr heiss yes thank you