001Mr. Bur. >> Uh, Mr. Balot, >> Mrs. Bidder >> here, >> Mr. Gosnell >> here, >> Dr. James >> here, >> Mr. Harris >> here. Uh, could everyone ple please stand and face the flag and we will start with the pledge of allegiance. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. You can be seated. All right. Before we start the meeting, I'd like to start off with our district's uh mission and vision. And our mission is to create a culture of academic excellence through inclusive and innovative learning opportunities for the whole child. And our um vision is to empower all learners to reach their full potential in
002a globally competitive society or comp world, excuse me. Um all right, we need to approve our agenda. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Bidder, for your motion. Thank you, Dr. James, for your second. Mr. Burson, can you please call the role? >> Mrs. Bidder, >> I. >> Dr. James, >> I. >> Mr. Balance, >> I. >> Mr. Gosnell, >> I. >> Mr. Harris, >> I. All right. Is there a motion to approve our minutes from the work session on 4926? >> So moved. >> Thank you, Dr. James, for your motion. Thank you, Mrs. Bidder, for your second. I do have some uh comments on the the the minutes. Um you know, I think there's just so there's just um when I read through the minutes,
003I don't think it captures a lot of what went on at the meeting, particularly around the work session topics. I mean, it just says what they were, but it doesn't give any detail about what the discussion was. So, not asking to change this, but in the future if we could see, you know, we had a great discussion on pros and cons of the different levy types as well as the vouchers. Just some more detail put in there. >> I don't know what are other people's thoughts. >> I agree with that and Mr. Bot and I think we should just amend it to to give a short summary to say that we discussed um the levy options and that we um are going to talk about it in the next upcoming meeting. I think we should
004go ahead and just add a few sentences, okay, for each one. I'm fine with that. >> And then we had a good discussion about the vouchers and we came up with a decision there, too. So, I feel like we did some positive things that I think it would be helpful to give like one or two sentences to summarize what we did at those two. Yeah, for sure. On those two topics, >> I can make those updates and distribute them. >> Yeah, that would be helpful. And then, you know, it doesn't when we have people talk at the meeting as well. I think if somebody's coming to talk, we ought to put their name in at least what the topic of what they were talking about. And I went back and looked at a couple of
005the past agendas and it's the same thing or the minutes. I'm sorry. We haven't um put people's names and topics and so I'd like to see that as well. I'm open to other people's thoughts. >> No, I think that's a good idea. >> Yeah, I agree. I think that I do believe that that's what um Mrs. Logan had done in the past. So she and I know that you're coming into this role. So maybe just a little summary uh for under each one that kind of gives the general gist of what's happening and then I know she would say see the video for the full transcript um as well. >> No, absolutely. Thanks for the feedback and I'll I'll update the minutes accordingly. >> Thank you. >> Uh do we need a motion to approve
006uh change to the minutes or can we go ahead and approve those? Let's do let's do a motion to do Yeah. Actually, I don't know. What do we have to do? >> The people that made the motion would have to be okay with the amended motion, which is basically adding those additional sentences. So, I think Dr. James made the motion. I don't remember who made the second, but as long as you two are okay with it, then we can go ahead and proceed with a vote. And with the feedback that you've given us, we'll update them accordingly and post them with those additional sentences in there. >> I I don't think we can do that until we know what's been written because if something was written that I think, you know, I I think we
007either have to try to draft it now, which I'm not in favor of, or postpone approving it until the next to the next meeting. >> That's what we could we could do. There's a there's a there's a motion and a second on the floor, so we'd have to take a role on that. And then so if they if they're not approved >> then I can bring them >> and I can bring those back for the next meeting. >> But we usually if we had like let's say there was a typo we can we're allowed to say fix that or change that and then we vote on it. Um so maybe we could >> I think you could approve it and then later on you could amend it. I think the minutes today should reflect that
008there was an issue with the minutes and that we needed to because if you recall, we've got gotten criticized for not posting our minutes the next meeting. So, I think we should reflect that there's a problem with the minutes and we're going to correct them accordingly and then they will get posted at the next meeting. >> Posted at the next meeting and we'll vote them at the next meeting. Yeah. >> Well, we'll vote on these minutes now, right? So that we're Oh, no. Okay. >> Yeah. I think what the what I hear the team saying is they don't feel comfortable unless we sit here and craft sentences and I think with the length of our agenda I would advise against that uh with the number of topics we have on it so we could >>
009yeah because once we vote on it Mrs. better. It's official record. >> Okay. Got it. I see what you're saying. Yep. >> So, we will So, >> you have to withdraw. >> You want me to withdraw my >> We can. >> Yes. >> And I'll withdraw my second. >> We'll approve those minutes. Uh we won't approve the minutes now. We'll approve them at our next meeting >> with our with our revisions. >> With the revisions. Okay. All right. Um Okay, that was it. All right. And now I guess we have some public participation. Um, just a reminder when you go up, remember you're limited to three minutes. Um, um, Dr. James will keep the time. We'll try to give you the one, two, three thing. I know it sounds rude. I hate doing it, but
010it's just kind of keep everything going there. So, um, make sure you speak, uh, to the entire board of education. Don't mention people's names personally, those kinds of things there. When you go up to speak, and when you speak, please give your name and your address. Okay. Uh so our first speaker uh is Josh Becker and the topic is uh second grade teacher and um state testing. >> Great. Thanks. >> Testing good. >> All right. Hello. So yeah, I'm Josh Becker. Um 10468 Shadyside Lane. Um I next year I'll have three kids at Montgomery Elementary. Um, and I'm here tonight because I'm worried about second grade class size. So, I know the projected class size at 25 sits right at the required Ohio district average. I've read the data, and I'm not standing up here
011claiming that there's going to be a catastrophe at 22 instead of 25. Um, but the strongest meta analysis on K3 class size finds that every five fewer students adds like 1 to two months of reading per year. Um, exactly the gap between 25 and 20. And I don't see Sycamore as a district that just wants to stay around the average. Looking only at elementary buildings like from last year's NCES data, Wyoming was at 15.9, Marrymont 168, Forest Hills six elementaryaries were 171. Um our four Sycamore elementaryaries combined are at 17.6. And in Montgomery, where my kids will attend, um the average is 18.3, which is the high end of our district. And what brought me here tonight isn't just about the data about second grade. It's about what I'm worried about that comes after what
012I've seen in third grade. The OSTs are here and the kids feel it. I'm hearing from parents whose third graders are crying about the test, asking whether they'll be head back, internalizing pressure that eight and nineyear-olds shouldn't be carrying. I personally know families who have put kids on their private school weight list specifically to avoid third grade at Montgomery Elementary. And when parents in a district like ours are making backup plans, the board should want to know why. And a class size of 25 isn't easy on teachers either. The AFT published positions 15 to 19, which I know isn't always realistic. Um, but a second grade teacher leading small reading groups and conferring one-on-one with struggling readers at 25 kids is doing a meaningfully harder job than at 20. And that matters for retention as
013much as it is for instruction. And second grade is really that runway to that third grade OST pressure. It's the last year teachers have to catch struggling readers, run formative assessments, and get every kid Please, >> one minute >> left. >> Yes. >> Okay, perfect. Before the OST window opens, uh, two final things. First, I want to say I do support the levy. I know budget budgets stay tight even when levies pass. The state is not helping us with all these private school vouchers and bills pulling funds away from public schools. Um, and secondly, I haven't seen overall FTE numbers for next year. Maybe that'll be discussed or published. So, I'm not standing here claiming teachers are being cut, but whatever shape the budget does take, I think classroom teaching positions should be the last
014place we look, not the first. And if staffing is holding steady, then I'd ask, can we direct it toward a second grade teacher or another second grade teacher? Smaller groups in second grade is the most direct investment we can make in how our kids walk into third grade academically and emotionally. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you very much. All right, next speaker, Mr. B. Do you mind do you mind if I make just a couple quick comments? I know we normally don't, but I just want to make sure I don't want our community watching this and getting misinformation cuz a couple of the numbers that he quoted the numbers from the report card, the data from the report card are not reflective of the data that we use to staff our buildings. Um,
015and when I say that, the numbers that we use um to staff, and I'll use second grade at Montgomery as an example, it's just students per teacher. Um, and we try to hit a target of 25. Um, for grades K and one, we try to hit a target of 22. That doesn't mean we can't fluctuate above or below. Um, but those numbers that you heard from the report cards are reflective of the additional staff that support those students because we I you know and I'm looking at Mr. Levelville. I don't think we've ever had a class size of 17 point I think you said six at second grade in any grade in any building. Um because that would be I would say a miscalculation on our part about enrollment. that's adding in the additional like
016intervention teachers that assist at second grade. Um those kind of things. So I just wanted to make sure the clarity between like the Marrymonts, the Maderas, the Wyoming's like the numbers are the same except for you've got to compare how many intervention people, how many, you know, staff people are assisting at those grade levels that cause that impact. So um Mr. Becker has been a great person to com converse with. Um he and I have dug into some of the numbers just so that the board hears it. Um our average uh and and I'm doing an average of the whole building now, but our average uh class size at Sims Elementary is 21.6 and that's projected for next year. Uh the average class size at Blue Ash Elementary is 22.5. Uh Maple Elementary is I'm
017sorry, Montgomery Elementary is 20.87 87 and Maple Elementary is 21.9. So, I know we take great pride in making sure our youngest learners get the most support because we do realize that that sets a baseline and a trajectory for their education long term. Um, it's important to us that we try to keep those class sizes low. Um, but we're also very uh particular about when we come to you about adding a teacher in a grade level because we do realize the cost uh associated with it. So, I appreciate Mr. Becker's conversation with me um an ongoing conversation and I appreciate his engagement because more people need to care about these kind of topics because we should be fighting for every dollar to support our teachers to be able to make sure that they can educate
018our kids. So, I appreciate his passion. I appreciate all the things that uh he's bringing to the table. And I hope more people will ask us questions cuz um as I explained to a group of parents last night, we're not scared to have these conversations. We want the community to feel informed on these topics. So, thank you for indulging me. And we'll go on to the next speaker. Uh, next we have uh Jenny Barker who is addressing the levy and state funding. >> Um, hi Jenny Barker, 7425 Baywin Drive. Um, I guess I just you guys I thought you might be talking about this tonight, but um I guess my question is I've been an educator now for 25 years in a district that was decimated by the funding with the state and so to
019read the sycamore financial that we're possibly putting up a levy when I have two different sources that we're actually getting somewhere um 2.9 to three million more from the date. I'm curious why we're putting up a levy when other districts are getting demolished. We're getting more money and you guys want the community to give more money in addition to the somewhere around um Cincinnati Choir said 2.9. My district um treasurer has you guys at like 3.1. So that was all. >> Thank you. Any more? Okay. All right. Thank you and appreciate the public participation. All right. Um that brings us up to um uh board business and talking about the levy discussion. >> One quick pivot, Mr. Harris. It's something I switched on you. >> Um >> Diane Fel is here from Oopsie. So, if
020the board will indulge us to allow us to um shift the OPC agreement up to board of education business because number one, she drives a bus really early in the morning and she may not want to sit through the whole meeting. So, we appreciate her being present and uh being able to get to her kids tomorrow morning. >> If you refresh, >> make a motion. Do we need to vote to amend it or we can just change the order? >> So, the agenda that actually that the board approved is going to be the one that's on board docs and it was already updated after that we moved it up. Um, every everybody in the audience has the one that was printed hours ago, but we did go ahead and move that up. Um, just for
021clarification on that, you'll just you'll just simply see that it's moved up >> on the screen. Yeah. >> All right. So, is there a motion uh to approve the oopsy agreement? >> So, moved. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Bidder, for your motion. Thank you, Dr. James, for your second. Okay. Mr. Burson, could you please read the role? >> Um, sorry, Mrs. Bidder. >> Before we before we take a vote, would would you like to me would you like to say anything, Mr. Levelvel, please? >> Yeah, I mean, I can. I'm >> just a little understanding for >> sure. Sure. So, um many of you may know or not know that we um have two unions that represent our employees, cross-section of our employees. And Oopsy represents our classified staff, which is our I'm I'm
022not going to name them all because I'm going to forget a group, but our big groups of education assistants, um our cafeteria workers, bus drivers, maintenance, custodial um and so we are um on the agenda is a new agreement that we've been working on. It's been a labor of love with our union. And I just want to give a shout out. I know Diane's here and celebrate celebrate Diane twice. once because she's retiring and so she's going out having settled this contract with us and um secondarily to that is just the pleasure that I get to work um just not me our entire team with um Miss Freel um this has been um such I I don't know how many people out there can say um negotiating a contract is a delight but it's been
023a delight and I say that because we have been super aligned to what the mission and goals are of what we desired and we said from the very beginning it was about um retaining and recruiting the very best to work for Sycamore. And when we were aligned with that and we knew what we needed to do, um there were points and moments that we had to disagree and do whatever we need to do, but in the end um I truly believe and I believe Diane does as well um who represents all of her members that this contract represents a big step forward for Sycamore um and being able to recruit and retain the very best to be here and work alongside our teachers, our staff, and our community and serve our students. So, I'm thankful
024for Diane. thankful for this contract and um where we got Yep. >> And Mr. Levelvel, could you just >> could you just touch a little bit since we have our community here just on the the bus driver shortage and just how Sycamore has a transportation department and what impact >> that has on our students and our district as well and just a little bit about that. Yeah, and I think I I can speak a little bit more broadly as well because when we talked about um recruiting and retaining, we have different cross-sections of our classified employees that are just really difficult right now to um hire. Um bus driver is number one. There's a national shortage. So, finding um willing people that are wanting to come and drive buses every day um takes very unique
025language um but also a unique ability to go out there and think different about how we're finding employees to come in. Um, and so we were able to tackle that within the contract and think about some things that we can do to help honor some years of experience and things like that. Um, but we also have other groups of employees as well. It's harder to find some of our custodians, um, as well to get in and specifically education assistants. Um, and so, um, yeah, we've got a lot of groups, but we're doing great. We've got a common vision about where we want to go next year. I wish Diane would give us a couple more years, but I get she wants to go into retirement. I don't blame her. So, thank you, Mr. Love. You're
026welcome. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Burson. Could you please call the role? >> Um, Mrs. Bther, >> I. >> Dr. James, >> I. >> Mr. Balot, >> I. >> Mr. Gosnell, >> I. >> Mr. Harris, >> abstain. All right. Now, we're going to talk about the uh let have our levy discussion. So, Mr. Uh Lewis, you want to start us off here? >> Yeah, I'll just get you started by saying uh I think the board has done a wonderful job over the last few months of doing a deep dive into uh our finances, looking at um the why behind why do we need uh this additional money? And you know, I think since a community member asked, I don't think it's inappropriate to just maybe share quickly why. Um, our last operating issue passed
027in 2016. Um, we committed to the community that it would last 5 years. Um, it obviously we're in 2026, so it went well beyond 5 years. Um, we are getting additional funding from the state. Um, but we are what is considered a state minimum funded school district, which means that only 10% of our funding comes from the state. So, um, even though we're getting additional funding, it essentially doubled our funding that we were getting from the state because the other 5% that we get is essentially federal money that the state is a pass through for even though they consider it part of their state funding. It's not really their state funding. It's federal funding. So, we only get 10% of our funding from the state, 5% from federal. The rest of the percentage comes from
028our local tax base. Um we are fortunate to have a a very diverse tax base of residential and commercial u taxes, property taxes that fund our schools. So, um you know, no one likes to talk about new money and requests for new money, but um when we've over um achieved on our commitment to the community, um obviously the way property tax millage works is that eventually our expenditures are going to pass our revenues and that's that's where we're at. Um, and we have and Miss Parker, if you go back and look at some of the previous discussions, and if you ever want to know which ones they were, I can certainly highlight them for you so that you don't have to watch hours and hours of meetings. Um there were some really particular discussions around
029this topic of where we deeply discussed finances and um you know I commend the board for doing the homework and I know that no one likes to make these decisions but the really the decisions that is in front of you is just do we go with the traditional property tax millage um and what millage is appropriate or do we go with a earned income tax and as we've talked and debated and really dug into both of those topics and better understood those. I think there's been some clarity for the board members and also I think some community members have shared their input just through um some of the meetings that have been attended to give us some um really important I would say decisions to make around the future of our uh school district. So,
030uh, thank you for leading and thank you for being leaders of our school district and understanding that we don't make this ask lightly, but um, it is time to, uh, make a decision on what type of levy we're going to run and what that would look like. So, I'm happy to answer any questions. I know Mr. Buren is happy to answer any questions. Even though Mr. Swan's not official on duty, uh, we we can always throw him right into the discussion. Um, so anything that we can clarify for you while you're having your discussion, please let us know. >> Mr. Harris, how how I think we as a board should decide how we want to conduct this conversation. I I would suggest that we do um a pros and cons approach for each for both
031or uh if someone has an alternative approach to how we would discuss it, I'm very happy to hear that. Um, I think pros and cons are fine if if we have those. I think we might get a little repetitive with some of those. So, >> but maybe but just sort of weighing those the way weighing the two, right? >> What do all of how do you feel we should do it, Dr. James, Mr. Balant, Mr. Cosnell? >> I mean, I think we've done a really good job in the last couple meetings already putting the pros and cons up. So, I I don't know that that we need to go through all of them again. Um, I would think it's we're just to a discussion. We've had community listening sessions. I think you know each of
032us have been to with different groups and heard input from community community members. I would just throw it out as we have a discussion on kind of what where we stand on you know definitely talking about some of the pros and cons during our discussion but I don't need we know that we need to make a list again because >> well I guess what I mean is do we each one of us go through and just say this is what I prefer and here's why or do we >> I would I would be more apt to that. what I have. >> Okay. Okay. All right. Sounds good. >> All right. Who wants to go first? >> Let's start down at the end. Mr. Balant, why don't you go ahead? >> Gee, thanks. I guess I
033shouldn't have volunteered. Um, you know, so, you know, we've been having this discussion for a long time looking at different options for the levy, uh, be an earn income tax or property tax. Um, there's obviously a lot going on at the state level, a lot of unknowns about what property taxes will look like. Um, and that, you know, that is a concern. Um, I do firmly believe that there will be some type of property tax reform, but nobody knows what that's going to look like. I don't see any way that the state can do away with property taxes because there's legal obligations that the school district has. There's fire and police protection that need to occur. So, you know, again, my opinion is it's not completely going to go away. When I look at at
034the two different types of um options for the levy, um the one thing that really stands out for me is if we do an earn income tax, it's taken away the burden of taxes from our businesses, property taxes from our business or uh revenue from our businesses and putting it 100% on the property owner. Right now, our businesses pay about 23 24% of the property tax revenue that we're getting uh from the local community. Um, and that would over time, that's not going to go away because those millages have already been voted in, but that's going to gradually shift more and more towards uh the residents of the community, the the income earners of the community away from the the businesses. our businesses directly value uh you know they they directly um have value from
035being in our school district from being in our community where our community members go out and frequent businesses you know and help our businesses thrive. So I think we've had a really good give and take between the businesses and the community um and and that's kind of where I'm starting to to or not starting where I'm leaning towards the property tax to continue with the property tax reform. I think there's a lot of unknowns with the earned income tax that still concern me. The um timing on uh you know up to 18 months to get the money looking at our 5-year forecast really concerns me because again, for lack of better words, you know, you're drawing your reserves down farther and farther and then it's going to be harder to build those back up. It's
036going to take more of an ask or the next levy is going to last shorter time period. Um when we did the comparison, you know, we we uh one of the one of the imperatives of the board was for 5 years not to go back to the community and ask for money. Um we don't get there with 1% earned income tax. It's only four years. Um and that's a big concern of of mine. Whereas the property tax would be um 5 years if not a little bit longer. Um, you know, um, so, you know, the other thing that I that I'm again, I'm not 100% certain, Mr. Buren, you can correct me, but I don't believe on an earned income tax we can split it between capital improvements and operations. Um, and that's something that
037I firmly believe we have to do with with the uh, property tax. >> So, it it would be unique to be able to split that. A lot of districts do not. they would just simply um take that revenue into their general fund and not make a not make a PI um operating split. But then working with Dinsmore, there is there is an option to do that. However, we would have to get creative on what the language looks like in the ballot because wages are going to continue to increase and we know what our capital needs are. We can spell that out more specifically with the property tax, but with the earned income tax, we have to designate the percentage that we want to to all lot to PI and the percentage that we want to
038all lot to um to operating or the general fund. And if we so it would take for each year that when Tom would then explain that to me, he's like we're going to have to explore. If the board wants to go that route, we can make it work, but we're going to have to get um get creative in our language to make sure that we don't overfund our PI. Um so that that's the that's the struggle. >> I believe looking at what other districts have done that we really need to have that that bucket of money for capital improvements so that we can maintain, you know, the $350 million worth of property value that we have in this district. So going back to the you know again what's driving me towards a property tax is
039having that ability to say X X mills goes towards permanent improvement and X mills goes to operating. I think it's cleaner financially that we have a set bucket of money um that is that is being spent on capital every year and obviously that can grow somewhat over time and then we can use some of that for for projects as they come up versus taking money out of the general fund. um and continuing this what we've been doing is transferring funds back and forth. Um I think it muddies the five-year forecast when we're doing that. And I think that doing a property tax split um adds financial clarity to our community. >> And I would just like to add that some of the districts that are pursuing an earned income tax right now, they already have
040established a PI fund or a levy that that funds their PI. So there's that, too. And and you know, again, we're focused on this levy, but if you look out to the next levy, if we do have that bucket of money already set aside through property tax for um capital improvement, the next ask for operationals, whether it's an earned income tax or for property tax, should be significantly less than than what we're asking for this time. That's uh that's why I'm looking that's why I'm for the continuing with the property tax. Dr. James, >> not wanting to be repetitive, but you have pointed out uh some of the factors that um I've considered as we've mowled over um which type of levy to put on the ballot. Obviously, we are very concerned about so many
041unknowns uh with the state of the property tax. Um and yet and still I feel that that is the best way to go. our uh community is used to property tax. So I do believe that we should separate um our operating levy into operating levy plus a um permanent improvement u levy. I am concerned that if we were to go um with the earned income tax that first of all it is extremely difficult for people to understand what uh earned income tax levy would do. it is up to the community to report their income and so that even delays further the monies that could come in with a um an earned income tax. Um, so without relaboring all the other things um that you mentioned and that I have um considered and all of us
042have considered, I'm leaning toward property tax for our next levy. >> Mrs. bitter. Um, I I would say that we've had this we've had this conversation um over several meetings and I have I have always leaned towards the property tax um levy and I continue with that because I am not convinced that the earn income tax is something that community would or the board really fully feels uh supportive of and I don't know that we would be able to explain that brand new type of levy to our community quickly enough for an initiative in November. So, there's that. Um, for the I like pros and cons, so I put together I know we as a board have put together pros and cons, but I myself for myself put together pros and cons. And for our
043property tax level or levy, it would be a predictable version of a levy that our community is is used to. It's a stable revenue stream for our district. um you know it applies to all property owners and it includes also you know it includes also the businesses which I think is really important and rental property owners which we have quite a few in Sycamore. Um I think that would make it I think with the makeup of our community that that has been successful. Um I do think that um we already have um admin the the county auditors have already um administered the values of our community. So it's well established and it's known and if we looking at just income levels that is unknown. So I'll get to my cons on that one later. But
044I I think that um you know with the earned income tax levy I think it's you know although it it could the idea was that it could last longer and that we wouldn't have to go to the community so often I think what Mr. Balance said I completely agree it the math that we've done we still have to do it the same amount like we still have to do a levy every five years or every 10 you know not even every 10 years on that one. So to me, the whole point of trying to do an income tax levy would be to prolong that need to go back to the community and it doesn't do that under the scenarios that we've had. So I again I'm just not convinced. Um, I will say another thing
045that concerns me a little bit, besides the fact that it's a new version of bringing in money, um, when we take 1% of someone's income, earned income, that would come out of your paycheck every month, and you would see that every month. And it could potentially and my question would be does that mean that every single person who lives in our community, we all know how much every single person makes every year because it's public document. It's public funds, right? So every single bit of money that you make comes out of your paycheck is public. So now I can find out how much every single the income of every single person. So it's almost my question would be that. So I feel like is there a question that has ever been asked of that? And
046I I don't know. Maybe the answer is no. And maybe you know that. Oh, you're not the board. We're not going to know that. It's it's funded. It's it's run through an organization. But your your your >> a public record. I'm just >> Your tax record is public record, too. >> Yeah. But >> anybody could request tax anything. >> Yes, perhaps. But I think this just makes it more I I I'm concerned with the public records request that school district. >> I'm not going to know how much. >> No, but No, but that would be a public potentially a public My question is I didn't I don't know if it is. That's my question. would it be a public records request that we could just find out for every dollar that comes in how much
047money? And again, I again I'm just giving you my pros and cons. So, um that to me is a question that I that I have. Um I also just think that again the levy the earned income tax levy is un it's unpro it's not been proven in a district like Sycamore. I know there are some new new districts that are doing it. I would just like more time. So, if we, you know, we're talking with the public now about this and let's say we do a property tax uh levy this time with a PI fund and we divvy that up and then five years from now we learn that wow the earned income tax levy is just so great and or here's how we avoid certain things that maybe we don't want to have. That
048gives us more time. And so for me that's that would be my reasoning. I mean, I have a whole list of pros and cons, but I am for um the property tax levy. I think it is um it's never um enjoyable to go to the community and ask for more money to fund, you know, your schools and your buses and your teachers. Um it's important though, and I think if we're going to do it, we should focus on the type of version that our community knows um during these times of uncertainty. I think certainty is helpful right now for the district. So that's my position >> and I can kind of touch base just a little bit on the the earned income tax flow. So it would be on your employer to set up that
049deduction. Um no matter where the resident, you know, would work um the employer would be responsible for setting up that deduction. um in Ohio. I'm not sure if in if if we had residents who worked in Kentucky if I don't believe that they have to set up the deduction, but when you ultimately when you file your taxes with the Ohio Department uh with with the state of Ohio, that is a part of filing um your taxes through them and then the flow comes from the Ohio Department of Taxation. So, we don't get individualized numbers per se, but that's how that that's how that would work. um on a high level from my understanding. >> All right. Um yeah, so uh I I I want to start off by saying that we're currently discussing the what
050the levy is, and I think that's important. We've obviously discussed pros and cons. We're going to make a decision. We're going to move forward. The real questions that matter, I think, are the how we tell our story and what our story is and why our district needs these funds. Going back to the community to talk about that, why we're underfunded through the state, why we need to go, why we need to support our students, why we need to support our amazing teachers so that we can have these amazing programs. That that's where I'm ready to invest my energy. That's not the question you guys asked me to answer for right now. That's I'll I'll skip those pages of why how important teachers are. 89% of people believe teachers have a really hard job. 87% of
051people wish they had told the best teachers how much they appreciated their efforts. Anyway, I have a whole bunch of ideas on how we can go about um showing the value of our district. It was really interesting. I'm going go on a tangent. It's okay. I can do that. Um, when we were at UC, the president of the university gave a talk on the future of UC and talked about the value of UC for Ohio. What do Ohioans want to see out of UC? And they were able to show these are the number of graduates that we've put out every year. These are the number of graduate nurses. These are the number of graduate nurses who stayed in Ohio to help with the shortage of nurses in Ohio. So, I think there's a lot of
052really awesome stories that I hope we get the opportunity to tell after today. Anyway, so my initial thought was we should do the earned income tax. Thanks, guys. Um, and and I do I I don't want to do a whole bunch of redundancy, so I'll tell the pieces that I feel like stand out just so we're transparent and we get everything out in front of the community. Um, my initial thoughts on that was because it would support our fixed income community members who are having a really hard time handling the affordability crisis, especially with higher property values and they're on a fixed income and that tax burden is getting heavier and heavier for them to be able to to carry. Uh the second reason was because I am uncertain about the confidence in our state
053legislature. Meaning will we get productive, meaningful, healthy property tax reform and or fairly funding public education. Both of those I I have concerns about. Um and then finally just in talking about financial diversification I mean a key strategy is always you diversify your portfolio to handle risk management right so trying to not put all your eggs in one basket so that's where I initially sat at we got a ton of feedback about u you know property taxes are historical people understand them better which I don't know if that's completely true I think we still have a lot of education to do whichever route we go in, right? Like I I really do think one of our strategies is to be able to sit down with people and talk about math and actually do like some
054math education. I'm not afraid for us to have to do that. Um the anxiety over the changes, it's a new system, filing collection, uh the collection of funds, all those different things. Um, and so the the only other lens that I wanted to view this through was more of a broad brush of how does income tax versus property tax work as far as it being proportional or regressive or progressive. Where where are we asking the funds to come from more within the community? It was pointed out that businesses um do pay anywhere from like 23 to 30% of the property tax, but there's also been studies by like the Mercada Center at George Mason, the American Economic Association that suggests that about 70% of those costs are passed on to either consumers or workers. So
055yes, businesses do pay part of the property tax burden, but they also pass some of that along. And that and that same justification goes through to renters, right, would be more harmed by income taxes. Um, but the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that landlords do pass 50 to 89 cent on the dollar of property taxes to renters. So, it's again, we're getting into like really muddy math conversations, right, when we're talking about some of this stuff. So, I looked at it as a tax burden of percent income using all these different passroughs. And what I came up with is that the highest financial burdens are going to be a property tax on fixed income or lower income houses, which told me that I felt like we needed to lean in that direction. Which direction
056was that? Mr. Fel earned income tax. >> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. First of all, I'd like to thank everybody for doing that. I took a few notes as we were going along um just um thinking about this issue and this is an important thing. Um, obviously anytime you're asking a community for more money, that is not either a pleasant feeling or a great decision to have to do that. It's not an easy decision to do. Okay. All of us are feeling the pinch. Um, I think gas prices went up 60 in two days. It is now I was driving home $4.29 29 cents per gallon to fill up your car. I mean, and that depends on, you know, you got to stay away from fields or at the bottom of my hill.
057It's always more expensive, but that's not neither here nor there. Um, things are getting more expensive and schools are getting more expensive. Okay. The value for dollar for the people in our community to Sycamore schools, I think, is unsurpassed in this area. The value of the education, the preparedness of our children going off to college that they get from Sycamore schools cannot be matched by many communities in the state of Ohio. Um, paying a property tax, all of us are partners in our children's education. The businesses are partners. We're all partners in making sure that our kids are successful in financing our schools. um that earned income tax, it would it would basically take 30% of our tax base away from us. Now, as someone in the state of Ohio when they came up with
058the idea of getting rid of all property tax and everybody said, "Yes, let's get rid of property tax." And then everybody went, "Wait, hold on. Wait, how am I going to pay for the police department? How am I going to pay for the fire department?" You know, and the same thing if we take away the 30% of our tax base, where's that other 30% coming from? That's gone us. That comes directly out of your pocketbook there. Okay. Um, Sycamore has made an operating levy last for 10 years. I don't know how many districts around here have made their operating levies last. How many? All right. Southwest for 19 years. There you go. Yeah. Now, we'll get to the vacancies of that in a little bit. But again, there are not many districts that go around
059and make levies as that last that long. If you look around, you know, every election time, you see the same districts are up for school levies about every two to three years. Okay? And we've managed through uh financial planning and sound fiscal policy able to keep that happen for 10 years. And to be honest, if we can make that that would I would love for that to be and I can't publicly say that, but I'd love for that to be our goal is to try to make this last for 10 years. Just the way school finance is going, I don't know if that's possible. We're going to make try to make that last as long as I can. Um great schools are great in um great investments for property owners. And if you look at
060the places in Cincinnati that have great property values, it's the places that have great schools. I mean, that's it. They go hand in hand, okay? Uh, you know, that higher. And again, we'll talk about assessed value versus what's your property worth, but I don't know. I've been in Sycamore for 20 22 years, okay? I know what the value of my house has done in those 22 years, you know, and I haven't put on a gourmet kitchen. Although the Hamilton County seems to think I've done that. Um I haven't put a gourmet kitchen in or a swimming pool or anything like that. You know, it's just because it's a great school district and that has helped the amount of my property. Um there has to be some property tax reform. I think states are starting to
061look at that. Okay. But we have to also do something to finance our schools. we can't sacrifice the things the police, the fire, the zoo, the mental health levy, you know, all of those things. Um, take away those things and and need those services and take away money. So, that is something the state has to definitely find out. Um, I also think that the earned income tax credit will be more expensive for obviously our higher earners as opposed to, and I can't remember our numbers, um, you know, the increase in tax that will go through, you know, anywhere from $800 to maybe a few thousand to in some cases, you know, $11,000 via an earned income tax credit. Okay. I don't know a lot about math. I taught social studies, but $1,000 is a less
062than $11,000 the last time I checked. Okay. So, again, I'm leaning towards the property value. I think that is something that um again, people are used to. I think it's something that people can see in the in the increasing value of their homes and I think that's something that um the community um would support. So, that is my opinion on that. I just want to clear up one thing. You know, according to AI, and I actually believe this one, but um the school district's income tax would be administered by the Ohio Department of Taxation, which is confidential. So, you could not the nobody could make a public record request to the school to find out any of our incomes >> until a lawyer sues the state for that. But you're probably right. Either way, it's
063a good question. I mean really. >> So, Mr. Paris, based on the discussion from the five of you, it sounds like um and I guess my question would be, do you feel prepared to vote on a direction tonight or do you want us to prepare um and essentially it's a correct me if I'm wrong, but it's a resolution of necessity to be able to move forward a levy path at the next board meeting because you still have to decide one additional piece which is if you're going to go down the property uh tax process the amount of mills >> and I know we didn't discuss it yet tonight and I think we're all in the same board and Mr. Burson mentioned it. I think someone else mentioned it in their comments. We know that we
064have some capital improvement needs and then we also have our operating needs. So we would have to um provide you a model of the millillage that would accomplish both of those. So you know previously we just modeled a round number of seven u but I think looking at Mr. person and just thinking about some of the things that he has modeled it may be closer to and I'm just saying a number 6.95 um but I think we want I don't know if we've have that confirmed by our bond council um to be able to vote on that tonight but I'll let Mr. Bur speak to that. >> First of all, aren't there to be two resolutions? One resolution for necessity and then another resolution spelling out millillage. >> So for for the property tax, the
065resolution of necessity would go ahead and specify the millillage. Whereas the resolution of necessity for the in the earned income tax is going to spell out a dollar amount. So, the Ohio Department of Taxation, when you file with them, they need you to state the dollar amount needed um and then they will round that to the to the nearest quarter percent. Which for us is is based on the the data that they've given us is going to be um the 1% is going to be equivalent or it's going to be close to the the estimation of of around the seven mills or 6.95. um we can we can hone in those those exact amounts. Um and we can model anything that the the board would like to see. Um but then yes, we would need
066to spell out first in the resolution of necessity which you do have some examples of those. Um and those would be what we would use. But then there would be another vote for the resolution to proceed and those are the ones that will be filed with either the Ohio Department of Taxation or with the county. um and Dinsmore, our um advisers would walk us through that process. >> Dr. James, your question, there's a resolution of necessity, then there's a resolution to proceed. >> So, if we were to do a resolution of necessity today on property tax of 6.95 at this time, do you have to spell out if it's capital improvements versus operating? >> Yes. in in the resolution necessity that the the example that you have, we do need to spell that out in
067the resolution there. >> So, I'm not Yeah, I'm not comfortable until we really look at what what capital improvements I know we did it in February, but I think we really need to look at what those capital improvements are and we need to make sure we get our operating number right and see what that's exactly what that split is before we vote on a resolution. So, maybe maybe that would be a good work session topic at our next meeting. Mhm. >> Would can you just at our last meeting we we as as we decided as a board that we would you would go to bond council and you would get to two resolutions drafted for today and we would make a decision today which version we were going to do and you have a consensus.
068You have a consensus from the board. So we have two you did do what you said you were going to do. Can you just explain like what the two things are that we have and then I guess I'm not understanding are we changing our plan or we like what's happening. >> So So I didn't go to bond council. It's just to our municipal adviserss on on that. They're the ones that's give us give us the instruction on what you know what the resolutions actually look like. So, what you have in front of you are just examples of what it would look like for a 1% earned income um tax uh resolution of necessity. And then the other one is the property tax levy um the resolution of necessity. And and in that one, just an
069example, we did split out um you know, approximately the millillage where we anticipated a $5.4 million uh need on average every year for PI. But we can certainly model that again and look to make sure that that's the number that we want to hone in on. And then I would re that would um leave five mills for the operating which still this is just an example. We could get the okay, you know, we could we could revisit the modeling again to make sure what split and the exact ask that we're going to have to put forward. >> So today I guess my question is for the board. Okay, I see what you're saying. So do we do do is does the board agree that we have a consensus that we will be doing a property
070tax levy and that we would be choosing the version of property tax resolution whatever the final details are will come later. Is that what we >> I think the board has reached consensus of a property tax levy is what we're looking to do. >> And then what do you what do we need to do next? at our at our next meeting. We want to make sure so we we've identified a PI need of I think it was the me the amount you mentioned was 5.4 million >> 5.4 million. To do that we need to spell out in that resolution and I'm just pulling these numbers out of the air so don't quote me. >> It's not here. >> Okay. Is it on there? >> 1.95 and five would give us >> um the 5.4 million
071for the PI and then the other money that would go into our operating fund. We do want to make sure that math and all of that stuff is correct. We want to make So that's why at our next meeting, we will have a prepared resolution with that divided up. Okay. In which case, we'll formally vote at the next meeting with the actual resolution and introduce that. >> And is that what we as a board right now are asking our superintendent and our treasurer to do, which is get the right make sure this is the right math and then put it on the agenda next meeting. Is that what our board is asking you to do? >> Yes, everyone. >> Yeah. Okay. That's Thank you. Just that helps me. Thank you. >> And we appreciate the
072direction cuz we hadn't made the decision between property tax and earned income tax. So I think that was an important decision tonight and now we can proceed with the millage numbers confirming them. And I I think it's a prudent step. You don't want to approve something that you're not 100% certain achieves the needs. And I think we want to make sure that that five mills also accomplishes the five years and gets us to where we want to be. At least five years, I should say. >> Yeah. And that's an imperative to me that we have that five years because that's a commitment we're going to make to the community. So that's Mr. Lewis, I agree with you. It's it's both that the operating funds are going to get us to the five years, which is
073what we've seen in the models that we've that you've put together, and then also that the 1.95 is going to cover the capital improvements. And I I just have one follow-up question. I want you to know that I'm I too am okay with having an operating levy portion and a P permanent improvement or PI version. I'm I'm okay with that in our resolution. Um but I just want to ask if we know right now that we believe first of all our numbers for permanent improvement were too low, which is why we kept having to take money out of our general fund. Um but really the number is about 5.4 million. So that's what we were aiming for. So, let's say um a roof collapsed and we now roof's going to collapse. Uh something happened and
074we needed it was an emergency because of tornado or something, right? When we had to get we needed a million dollars and we didn't have it in the permanent improvement, but we know we needed to fix it. Um would we we would still do be able to do that if this doesn't bar us from like using our general fund money to do necessary permanent improvement. It's just saying here community this is how much we've allocated every year you this is what we're how we're doing it is that do I have that >> it's actually almost the reverse um we have never had a permanent improvement levy here I >> and we've never had dedicated permanent improvement funds so I think what it does for our taxpayers is it it shows them a dedicated fund that
075is and we can only spend it on the capital needs of the district so the 1.95 once that's designated and if it's approved by the voters, we cannot use that to operate the district. It can only be used for the capital needs of the district. Now, if you if we had a catastrophic event, it's no different than what we do now. We just essentially transfer operating money into the capital improvement funds to and that's more for I would say tracking purposes because operating funds can be used for any of the operations including capital improvement. So, it's kind of the opposite of what we've done, which I think it shows our dedication to our taxpayers that we're going to identify this fund and make sure that we always upkeep their investment in this community, which is
076uh you know, in 2019, they approved $127.5 million to make sure that we had schools that were sustained for uh the next 50 years. So I think it's important that we continue to invest in them and that means roofs, paving, all those things that need to be done. So um but it's a great question. >> I would like to supplement and add to what you have just said in saying that we have always budgeted for permanent improvement. Might not have been a PI fund, but this board, this treasur, this superintendent has always done that and we continue to do that. So, even if we didn't have a PI fund, we're still we are still investing in the public um improvements that we need each year like roofs, um all all the parking lots and things
077like that. So, we are we are doing that and that's what the 5.4 is. And then the other thing I'd like to say just so the community hears this, um we are not asking for more. That 5.4 is not more than what we need for PI. It's actually updating the amount we need for PI because what's happening is we it's more with inflation. It's we need more. Buses cost like twice as much as they used to cost five years ago, right? So, we have to update the PI because that's just what costs are right now. But we're not asking for more for that PI fund than what's needed. So, two things to show that the district, the the superintendent, the treasurer um and our human resources director has been um and our board have been
078allocating and um these resources appropriately. >> To clarify also this there would not be two different ask on the ballot. >> Correct. The language will spell out >> ask >> the language on the ballot will spell out a total amount of the ask and then it will differentiate between the operating and the PI portion >> but there'll be one vote >> there'll be one vote >> that's what I meant yeah >> I just had a couple of follow-up questions and as the uh dissenting opinion um I appreciate everything you guys said and I'm really excited that we've made this decision and I'm ready to move forward so I want you guys to all know that I I do agree with splitting it out for transparency. I think that helps us tremendously. I think that helps
079in all reporting. So my my only follow-up questions then would be at the next meeting, are we done with this? You know what I mean? Like like we have our details. We have we've we've >> we've ironed out you know what I mean. You know the ask. Are we done defining the ask and now we're ready to start >> rallying the the troops? >> We're ready to start rallying the troops now. It's just it just would, you know, I don't think the split holds us off from starting to form a levy committee, starting to rally the troops and and that type of thing. So, I I I don't think this pauses anything that we need to do between now and our next meeting. It's just a little more clarity for what that split looks like
080next meeting. And that that was my second question was the the levy committee like where >> where are we there? >> That is not a question that myself or Mr. Buren can be involved in. So that'll be a discussion with the the five of you and I think at one point we kind of designated Mr. Harris to be the lead of discussing that. So and getting names and people who are interested in helping out with that. Okay. >> And all that. So, people are interested in doing that, please get in touch with me and uh we'll try and get that off the ground and running. >> And um we will make sure that all the deadlines are met for the proper resolutions. So, we'll be working with Tom on that to make sure that you
081have them. Obviously, next meeting the intent is for the resolution of necessity and then we'll need to uh the board will need to, you know, ask for the resolution to proceed um at a future meeting um meeting the deadline before I think that one is in the middle of July when the deadline is. Um so, but we'll make sure you're updated on that. >> One's in July and one's in August, I think, but we'll meet those deadlines handily. >> So, u thank the board members for a very uh civil informative discussion. um this is the way these things should work. So I appreciate everybody doing that. Even our lone descending voice um still feels comforted and being able that he was heard. Okay, you got to stop reading so many books. Okay, just joking there,
082Will. All right. Um now, speaking of uh school funding, we had talked before about um the uh vouchers lawsuit and we had talked about just a general need for more uh reform in school financing. What we have done is prepared a uh general resolution um and it is included in um um it is included in board docs and everything talking about a need to support um just school funding and fair funding of schools. Um each of our board members has had a chance to look at that. Would anyone like to discuss anything out of that or talk about that a little bit? And the only thing I wanted to point out to the board members is this was just a again you guys had a discussion at the last meeting. Um I will say we
083tried our best to try to capture it but we knew we probably went to uh went beyond our capacity at least from a standpoint of putting together resolutions. So Aaron um your legal counsel did put this together from I'm sure a boilerplate of things that she has worked on in the past. So if there are adjustments and changes, this is not concrete. So if there's something that you want to add, something you want to change, we can make that adjustment and you can still uh move it forward. >> I I really like the resolution. I don't have any changes. >> Yeah, I have a couple changes. Um number one, you know, I think based on our conversation last time, we really wanted to add something more about fair fair state funding uh for all students.
084I don't see anywhere in this where it talks about um you know that we're advocating at this that for for fair state for fair fair funding across the state. So I would like something added um that express expressly states that um and then the second one is in section one uh where it says the board of education finds and determines that the voucher funding is detrimental to its schools. I agree resulting in the deduction of funds from the from the school district. I I'm not certain that we can say that we're getting more funding from the state, not less. Uh so I would take that sentence out. I'm fine with saying it's detrimental, but the facts are that we are not getting a reduction in public funds from the from the state. >> I I
085mean I'm okay if you I I mean I think you should just say resulting from the deduction of funds from public schools and harming school districts in Ohio. And I >> I would be okay with that. I mean, we don't know that was that was the the the muddiest question of all was was that what you just said and I I agree with you. Uh I don't know what the answer is, but I think we know that some schools are and that was the point. >> So saying like resulting in the deduction of funds from school districts >> from public schools. >> I don't want to say the school district. >> Yeah, public schools I think would be a good addition to put there. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Mr. balance. Do you have a place
086that you would recommend putting do you want another where as paragraph? >> I think after section one maybe put a section two in there that says something about um you know advocating for fair funding if we want to put something in there about you know increasing the the cost of education per student because that's been frozen at what five years ago or some some number Mr. Buren. >> Yes. It's from >> 23. >> But maybe, you know, >> but maybe that should be a whereas statement, but maybe Mr. Bal, you don't mind if it's section one or section two or whereas, but maybe ask Erin or ask our legal counsel like where it should go. >> Yeah. And I would just say, you know, that the board >> it might be aware of statement, but
087>> continues to advocate at the state level for um >> Fair and equitable funding >> public school >> across all public schools. Mhm. >> And I think it fits under section one, but I would agree to ask um our attorney for best placement. >> So, we can just what we'll do is we'll just add a paragraph in section one. That way, it keeps it clean. Okay. >> Yep. That works for me. >> Mr. Sc, uh I guess we'll look to vote on that to to approve that our next meeting. >> Great. We seem to seem to have a >> you seem to have a trend here today. >> All right. >> But we'll make it quick. But we'll make it quick. We'll make it quicker. Yes. >> Good discussion. >> And it's good discussion. Okay.
088Um now we're moving forward with the uh superintendent's agenda and we're going to have a discussion um about our advanced math pathways presentation. Austin, Mrs. Tomkins. Good evening. We've move moved from one math conversation to another. Um, I'm going to actually uh kick us off with some stories from our math classrooms. I'm really proud to share some of the work that our teachers are doing that you may not get to see on a daily basis um necessarily. our teachers meet quite frequently to meet the needs of our students and um because of their levels of collaboration. It's not just one teacher's brain sometimes that's actually working on a class of students. It's many teams of teachers together. And so I just thought I'd give you a little inside look into some of their hard work
089because it is such a profound honor to support um our talented educators here in Sycamore. So here's one quote for you. Sorry, this is a little bit text dense, but I want to make sure I'm a good steward of these stories. I'm really impressed with the entire math department and how they've come together to support one another. From covering maternity leaves to collaborating on analyzing data and making real-time decisions about curriculum mapping, there's a clear openness to new ideas and a willingness to try different instructional strategies. And that came from one of our instructional coaches this year. The next slide. Overall, each PLC, I know we have a lot of acronyms in education, that's a professional learning community, so a team of teachers, has collaborated effectively this year to enhance the student learning experience. We
090appreciate the junior high administration team for enabling the math department to collaborate on a near daily basis. Just a fun inside look, like you might not know that the math team is collaborating on a near daily basis. Um, here's another one from high our high school principal. There was a student that was falling behind in geometry accelerated in a typical classroom setting. After the first three units, he was sitting at a D. He didn't quite realize the importance and complexity of the vocabulary in the beginning of the course. He always just got math, so he thought geometry would be the same. The simple answer was to move him to a lower level of geometry. However, that didn't match his ability. He needed a restart. Mr. Dr. Yuland in the innovation lab agreed to take him
091and allow him to start over. The student is now thriving. He earned an A in the first semester and credits the flexibility of Mr. Uland in this innovation lab with his success. This shows that learning is more important than timelines. This is from one of our elementary subject leaders. I want to recognize the strong work our team is already doing. Our use of reflect data and daily upload in our spreadsheets. Our consistency across classrooms and the way we are creating meaningful learning opportunities for students to think deeply and demonstrate their understanding. That foundation puts us in a great position to refine this next step. Our goal for PLC this week is to begin strengthening the connection between the reflect data we have in alignment with learning goals and make decisions about grading that's cohesive as
092well as agreeing upon the same level of scaffolds we choose to provide. Over time, our long-term goal is to naturally engage in this process of backward planning, intentionally form groups, and confidently answer, "What do we do when our students have mastered it? And what do we do when they haven't?" This will help us ensure our re-engaged time is targeted, purposeful, and responsive. This says, "I recently saw students taking multiple approaches to solve a math problem in a math classroom at Green School. It was fun to see them explore strategies and share their learning. And that came from one of our teaching and learning coordinators. So, I just wanted to give you an inside look into some of the collaboration that happens on a weekly basis. Um that you don't always get to see all the
093ins and outs that go um into our our work. I could not tell you just how proud I am to work in a community that values educators at the level that we do. We rever them, we respect them, and we work um closely with them to support their hard work um and to honor their professional expertise. And it is a true honor to be a part of this community. It really is. Um this conversation around advanced math has led to a really important conversation about ensuring that we meet the needs of our gifted and advanced learners. Um, and in the gifted intervention specialist community, um, I myself being one who's a gifted endorsed educator, I, uh, tend to look to our, um, National Association for Gifted Children. And so, I just wanted to, uh, draw
094your attention to a few things that they, uh, mention in a lot of their position papers as of late. The National Association for Gifted Children believes it's essential to define giftedness in a way that reflects both best thinking in the field and moves beyond a focus of identification criteria to a deeper understanding of the complex nature of giftedness and the multiaceted approach to services required to appropriately serve students with gifts and talents. NAGC supports the following definition which includes five key elements. educators in all settings must address to ensure equitable identification and comprehensive services. And so you can see that we've um snipped this from their position paper. And one thing that I want to point out that I think is really important and that I've really appreciated about our dialogue with families um as
095of late is the need to support and guide and develop the social and emotional students socially and emotionally as well as in their areas of talent. Um, so this focus on a multiaceted approach is really important. Um, and you're going to hear us talk a little bit more about that tonight. In fact, according to NAGC, there are many strategies for meeting the needs of gifted and advanced learners that are supported by research. They do not take the position that one methodology is better or more appropriate than the other. um which is why it's really important that we've had some really good dialogue um about meeting what this community believes as far as how to meet the needs of learners. And I think you're going to see um that some of those dialogues have allowed us
096to improve our implementation plan um moving forward. So we want to thank you for this opportunity to listen past, present, and future. And I'm going to take you through a very quick um sort of history of how we got to this point. So I want to start with the past. Um, even prior to my time here, there was a 2021 curriculum audit that was led by a third party at Elements that pointed out there were um areas in our curriculum and in our services um that required a closer look. And that curriculum audit um inspired along with community feedback um much of what you will see in our strategic plan um which was also coincided with some excellent feedback that we received from our community. And in one specific area of that strategic plan, you
097can see that we have an objective to ensure alignment of current and future academic programming to meet the needs of all students um and in the community. So, I want to highlight a couple things here that's fall under our action steps for this particular objective. One being the need to ensure that we're professionally um developing all of our staff to support the needs of all students in the district. Um and Mrs. Tommpkins is going to speak to that a bit further and and actually speak to some of the refinements that we've made to our plan to ensure that we um are truly meeting the needs of all of our learners. Another thing that um came up was just ensuring that we've evaluated all of our resources and programming and that we've considered the expansion of
098services to meet the diverse needs of all of our students. And that expansion of services is something that we're going to spotlight um quite a bit tonight in our conversation around advanced math pathways. And then finally, ensure that we are supporting our students in their college and career readiness as we work to attain really high expectations for all of our really talented learners in the school district. Good evening everyone. Thank you for this opportunity to share information about advanced math expanding opportunities for children and how your feedback has been instrumental in shaping our path forward. So, a question that I've gotten um is for whom is the advanced math pathway built? Well, the advanced math pathway blends foundational depth, abstract and conceptual thinking in accelerated content. So, this course is designed for high achieving math
099students. Student data profiles ensure that students are ready for the rigorous pace, challenges, enrichment that will help every student in that class reach their full mathematical potential. The data profile for whom this course is designed are students identified as gifted in the specific academic ability of math, students who have high quantitative scores on their Kogat and students who have demonstrated a combination of well above average scores above multiple across multiple data points indicating that they're ready for an advanced math class at the depth, pace, and challenge that the course is designed. The Excel advanced math pathway uses a compacted curriculum to create a bridge to accelerated math content. Now, it's important to distinguish compacting curriculum by with skipping curriculum within that accelerated pathway. By compacting the curriculum and compacting the standards, we're able to ensure
100that students achieve the same level of acceleration as the current accelerated math pathway without missing any of the foundational essential math content. So, we protect the integrity of the math sequence and allow students to move at a pace that matches their high readiness levels. Now I want to take a moment and just clear provide some clarity around double acceleration because I know there have been questions. The path to double advanced math remains fully accessible with the entry point now being more intentionally moved to fifth grade. Students on the double advanced math pathway will still reach geometry by 8th grade, which is the same milestone reached in the current double accelerated math, but they'll do so without skipping two entire grade levels of foundational math. Students in the double advanced math way pathway complete six years
101of math in four years, ensuring that they still reach that two-year acceleration, but they arrive there with a more robust understanding of the math they'll need in their high school math courses. Now, I want to take a moment and recognize and say a sincere thank you to all of our Sycamore families. Over the past few months, you've shared your perspectives, your questions, your concerns, and your affir affirmations through emails, through meetings, and through phone calls. Your input has been essential and has shaped the implementation of advanced math. Over the course of the next several slides, I'd like to share how your input has shaped the implementation and support of advanced math pathways. The first way family feedback has shaped our pathway is through defining success metrics. So defining success in year one will be through
102both participation benchmarks and student growth and achievement. Particip excuse me, participation benchmarks focus on ensuring that every student who demonstrates readiness for a challenging math curriculum is given access. An important data metric will be access to advanced math for students identified as gifted in math or whose quantitative Kogat score indicates exceptional potential in math reasoning. MAP are measures for academic progress data will be used to monitor student cohorts from the beginning of next school year through the end of next school year. So by following student data, we aim to ensure students consistently maintain or exceed their growth and achievement percentiles. Additional data validation will come through our Ohio State testing where we're looking for accomplished and advanced proficiency levels of students within advanced math. Since a compacted curriculum is designed as a two-year program, we'll
103also measure success by how well our students thrive throughout the program. We want to ensure that students who begin in the program feel supported enough to remain in the pathway for the full two years. We'll also monitor growth of students from the beginning of the pathway in year 1 to the culmination of the curriculum at the end of year two. The goal is for students to maintain or exceed their high percentile rates even as the work becomes more and more complex. The goal is to ensure that as students move from advanced content to true acceleration, they're sustaining the same high levels of growth, achievement, and math confidence. Looking to year three and beyond, we're seeking an upward trend in enrollment in higher level math courses beyond algebra 2. The goal is to see more students
104feel confident and prepared to enroll in our highest level math courses. We are going to focus on sustained student growth and achievement in mathematics. And we'll continue to monitor growth data and ensure that every student entering and continuing in the advanced math pathways maintain or exceed their achievement levels throughout their entire academic career in the district. I just want to share some exciting news and some progress regarding our success matrix. In the past, there's been an access gap with many students who are identified as gifted in math not making it into an accelerated math class. As you can see on this slide, we have significantly closed that gap for our incoming third grade. Nearly every student who is identified as gifted in mathematics will now have access to the advanced math pathway. We're also seeing
105major increases in in the participation among students with a nine staining and Kogat, the highest level of that quantitative reasoning. This ensures that our students who are identified now have a pathway that lead directly to the opportunity that they need to achieve their highest potential. Another way that family feedback has informed the implementation of advanced math is through the student experience, which is at the heart of any student experience, especially our advanced math pathway. Family feedback has made it very clear that at its best, a rigorous math content must be paired with highquality student experiences that ensure that students feel supported, engaged, and confident. For the upcoming school year, we will have a Hamilton County Educational Services Center math consultant who will support the implementation of the advanced math pathway. This math coach, the instructional
106partner, has been embedded in Sycamore for two years. She knows our teachers well, our students well, and the math curriculum well. In addition to being a math consultant, Laura is also a gifted intervention specialist. So, she understands the unique neurodeiversity and cognitive needs of gifted and advanced students. We know that the effective components of learning are just as important as academics. So, our math consultant, who is also a gifted intervention specialist, will support both the curricular implementation of advanced math curriculum and will provide professional learning that is specifically designed to address the unique characteristics of gifted and advanced learners within the math classroom. We'll focus on professional learning like perfectionism, growth mindset in students who are gifted or um high achieving students and the needs of our twice exceptional students. So this isn't just math
107training. This is a collaboration that will help us as a whole help teachers in the building understand how gifted and advanced learners feel and think throughout their entire school day. Finally, families have shared with us how much you value those small moments of enrichment and fun in the classroom. We completely agree advanced math will be providing both and opportunities, both rigorous instruction and engaging high quality extensions. Through using assessment data, we'll be able to find areas for further compaction of the curriculum, creating space for the kind of enriching hands-on problem solving that sparks a genuine love of learning. As we continue to implement the math pathway, we want to continue to listen to your your feedback formally and informally, which has so been so helpful in in shaping the implementation. We want to continuously improve
108and provide refinements in our math pathway. This ongoing engagement with our community, with our stakeholders, will ensure that the advanced math pathway remains responsive to student needs and continues to deliver the highlevel challenge and depth of understanding that's essential for these learners success. remaining dedicated to refining instructional practices and curricular alignment. Now, I'd like to take a minute and talk a little bit about what Mrs. Lawson um spoke of earlier, which is multiaceted services around gifted and advanced learners and how that impacts us in planning in Sycamore. So, on the earlier slide, Mrs. Lawson referred to the multiaceted gifted services because students gifts are diverse. Services have to be as well. Gifted and advanced learners have unique needs that vary depending on their specific area of identification. Gifted services have not been peeled back. Instead,
109services in reading, math, and cognitively gifted students are now being intentionally aligned with students area of gifted identification. So the questions that we ask are what is the best service setting that best meets the needs of a gifted identification in math, in reading, and in cognitive giftedness. So let's talk a little bit about gifted reading. When a student is identified as gifted or advanced in reading, that is the ability to process, comprehend, and analyze complex texts. So, we ask ourselves, in what setting and with what instructor do we best meet the needs of these students? Our general ed classroom teachers are content specialists who have engaged in extensive professional learning, meet as a team regularly to plan and collaboratively review data and utilize a rigorous high-quality resource. Witten wisdom witten wisdom moves away from isolated
110reading strategies and instead focuses on building a deep body of knowledge. So for a gifted learner who may already understand abstract metaphors, this curriculum allows them to dive deeply into Socratic seminars and complex texts that offer in intellectual depth over simple breadth. Now I want to share some data that drives this decision. In the 2324 school year, that was the last cohort of students who participated in advanced language arts in third and fourth grade. was the first co cohort of students who in third and fourth grade received gifted services and participated in a fully integrated ELA course receiving those services in the gened classroom. You look at the data, there is significant evidence that the integrated model of English language arts with our classroom teachers providing gifted services resulted in higher outcomes for our gifted
111students than in older models. In fact, this data shows that if we were to return to our previous model, the pullout model, we could expect gifted students in particular would lose about five percentage points worth of growth. To put that into perspective, that would be the difference between performing at the 94th percentile of growth to performing at the 89th percentile worth of growth. When we look at superior cognitive and gifted math learners, we also ask ourselves the same question. In what service setting and with what instructor will we best meet students needs? In mathematics, a service setting where students are with a math content expert again who has received extensive professional learning who meets with grade level teams to analyze data and collaboratively plan. Those teachers are and receive ongoing um uh specialized report, excuse
112me, support and also offer a rigorous concept conceptual curriculum that challenges high level learners. Our GIS's, our gifted intervention specialists provide a different equally vital kind of expertise. Their focus is on superior cognitive experience. We want them to capitalize on student curiosity, enhance divergent thinking, and provide a specialized space where gifted students can truly be themselves without the constraints of specific content standards. In the past, what we've done is we've asked our GIS's to do it all. Provide that specialized cognitive support while also being responsible for teaching every required grade level math standard. By forcing these two distinct goals into one block, we've inadvertently diluted the impact of both. The math instruction couldn't have been as hyperfocused on content expertise and the cognitive support was often sidelined, but the needs of getting through the math
113curriculum. By separating these roles, we allow our math experts to focus on the content and the gifted intervention specialists to focus on children's cognitive development. Looking forward to next year, we will continue to explore ways and enhance opportunities for our cognitively gifted students, whether through buildingwide professional learning for teachers or by increasing dedicated time with these that these students spend with the the GIS to focus on those higher level thinking skills. Advanced math has implications beyond students school settings. As a matter of fact, this advanced math pathway is designed not only for the here and now, but designed with longevity and impact in mind. According to a 20-year trend study by ACT, there is a direct and undeniable correlation between the rigor of a student's math sequences and their final college entrance scores. The data
114shows that students who reach calculus, a milestone that's made possible by early acceleration that we're implementing, score an average of five to seven points higher on the ACT math section than those who stop at algebra 2. Now, this isn't about being ahead. It's about exposure. The final 25% of the ACT math section covers higher level logic and complex problem solving that many students on a typical track simply haven't been taught by the spring of their junior year. Research from the US Department of Ed confirms that students who complete algebra 1 in 8th grade are significantly more likely to take advanced courses in high school. By providing the pathway now, we're ensuring our students encounter rigorous content before they need to sit for those high stakes exams. In a paper um called challenging gifted and advanced
115learners through differentiated curriculum and instructional strategies, NAGC in this paper position paper was just put out in January. NAGC lists strategies that should be used to meet the needs of gifted and advanced learners. As we move into our stages of implementation, it's important to ground ourselves in these differentiation strategies. NAGC recommends several key strategies that we have integrated into our advanced math pathway. These include curricular compacting and contentbased acceleration, both that are maintained within the advanced math pathway. They uh also emphasize that students shouldn't be receiving extra work on top of a a normal school day, but rather tasks that are more challenging than those um that a student might encounter and that they help students enhance and enrich their learning. Most importantly, NAGC recommends that districts create a continuum of services. That means we
116aren't just offering one class with one model. but a systemwide structure that includes pathways for both enrichment and acceleration. This aligns perfectly with our multiaceted approach, ensuring that every student finds what NAGC has called the just right learning pathway. As I bring us to a close, I just wanted to pause to say that identifying gifted and advanced students is essential because it draws our attention to their unique needs and our care and response to the unique needs of every learner is what makes Sycamore a special learning community. It's who we are. And I want to just root us in our mission and our vision. Uh our mission is to create a culture of academic excellence through inclusive and innovative learning opportunities for the whole child. which is why we really wanted to emphasize the multiaceted
117approach in tonight's presentation. And if our vision is to empower all learners to reach their full potential in a globally competitive world, having strong dialogue with varying perspectives is really important to refine our plan and ensure that we are giving our students every opportunity to reach that full potential. And we understand that you're trusting us with your whole world when you send your students into our schools every day. What a profound honor it is for us to do this kind of work. What a profound honor and that we continue to have dialogue about what's working, whether it's working, how can we continue to refine the plan, it makes me so proud to be a part of the Sycamore community. And while we might not always agree exactly on our methodologies or our strategies, I know
118that we're united by our care, our mission, our vision, and our commitment in this district to continuous improvement. And we'd like to thank you for your time this evening. >> Do you have any questions or comments? I don't have any questions, but I would just like I would just like to say thank you. Uh thank you for the amount of information, the amount of time and energy that you have put into this presentation, but as long as I have been on this board, um Mrs. Humpkins has been talking with us about it when I first got on this board talking about an audit of our curriculum to understand where our students were at that time. The concern was that not enough students who were gifted were being identified and not enough ser and if they
119were identified they weren't being served. That was the issue when I first got here which was only four years ago. and our administration um tasked by the board at the time and every single board, every single group every two years that I've been on and has requested through our strategic plan that we close these gaps. That was that was a request based on information that was received by the audit, based on community input, um, and just based on the best practices and education and our mission and vision and seeing the information. I know that it's still early, but seeing the data and being able to show with data that it's progressing in a positive direction is really, really helpful. And I know that that's what was requested. And so I thank you for that. I
120thank you for every year at every academic achievement um or excuse me, every academic um work group that we've had at multiple board meetings coming back to us. I know that this is really challenging because every parent, you know, kids are growing up constantly. So we have new, you know, first graders, second graders, third graders coming in and it's you have to repeat this over and over and over again. But I just want you to know that you're doing a really good job with this and I appreciate your feedback. I appreciate you listening to the community and then taking the feedback and then making adjustments based on that. So, you're doing a great job. Thank you. Um, I support what you're doing. I know that change is really hard. Um, as a board, it's our
121job to look at the entire organization and the entire system. And I have over the years had many families reach out and say, you know, there's this that the child needs access to being able to be challenged more and they don't feel like they can do that. And I've heard that, believe it or not, more than I thought I would. So, I'm just glad that you're addressing that. So, thank you. And I know it could go the other way. Um, and it could be that, you know, making sure that kids are appropriately together with kids that have the same talents or the same strengths. That's also seems to be in here, too, which is very helpful. And monitoring that through MAP testing is great. Um, and I will say if the ultimate goal is to
122get kids to do advanced math and get to calculus in high school, then that takes years of planning. and you have clearly demonstrated that that's what you're doing. So, thank you for doing that. It's really important. So, thank you. >> I want to um say how much I appreciate your work as well. Um, every time I hear the presentation, I hear something else that really helps me to understand change is always difficult. And I think when you can explain why we're making a change, listening to feedback and, you know, modeling some things that indicate or um, show that you've heard the concerns. Um the fact that even providing that visual pathway is very helpful for those who are more visual than just auditory learners. Um and that you are kind of back to the strategic
123plan. Really appreciate the hard work. I know it has been very difficult. Um but I commend you for that and I'm looking forward to hearing what the data shows uh in the years to come. I like the fact that you are talking about your one, two, three. Um, very helpful. Thank you very much. >> Thank you very much. >> All right. Our next item on our agenda is um discussion of policy, a first read of policies. I know the board has had a chance to look those over before. Are there any particular questions on any of those policies? B. >> Oh, we're on B. You guys ever keep changing chin on me. All right. B. Healthier start times. Sycamore. And essence of time will be as brief as possible because and we've had a lot
124of heavy stuff to talk about and it's all important and I hope you understand end of the year is really tough cuz that it's culmination of a lot of different activities. So, um, last night we had a great opportunity to meet with some community members, uh, that showed an interest in healthier start times. And I'll say there were 30ish plus people, I'll say 35 people in the room, maybe closer to 40 that, you know, were very interested in giving their feedback and sharing perspective on basically the options. So, I wanted to share those with you as well. um because certainly as you guys are informed community members, people might approach you about okay, what are some of the things that you're talking about? So, if you could just pull it up, we're going to quickly
125I'll say go through it. Um next slide, please. And you can see some of the research. I don't think any of this is going to shock you. 8 to 10 hours of sleep is what teenagers should be getting. Next slide. 81% of students are not getting that kind of sleep. and 1,900 students from Sycamore are in that group um or would qualify because they're teenagers. So, next slide. Um exclusive company is not, you know, usually something we like, but this is not exclusive company we want to be in. But 8.9% of US public high schools start before 7:30, and we're in that exclusive group. Uh that's not where we want to be. Well, >> this this was the one that kind of blew me away when we looked at um numbers and data. We were
126one of 25, you know, in the top 25 of public high schools. We were at the the bottom of basically the earliest start time. Um and we're one of three in our league that start before 7:30. Um and in a minute you'll see we're one of four in this area that start before 7:30. So, um, you can see that on that slide. You can see the average start time is around 8:00 and, uh, currently we're well away from that. So, we knew we have some work to do. Um, we've got a lot of community feedback. I'm very proud that over 600 plus, um, I'll say adults responded to our survey. Um, and continue on, keep moving. um are and they I think our parents are well aware that students are not getting enough sleep. You
127can see the one that was really hit me was the blue less than 6 hours. Um and I can confirm that because when I wake up in the morning and see likes on my Instagram posts and what time they came through, a lot of our kids are up at midnight liking things and doing things. So, uh parents use those functions of shutting phones off. I do it to my kids. they get mad, but it goes off at 10:15 and they have no access. So, um you can see how many people were in favor of having a later start time from the people that responded over 80% um with a four or five. That tells us a lot. Uh continue on to our our students. um very similar, but you can see our parents didn't think
128as many people got less than 6 hours sleep and our students are saying a lot more of us are getting less than 6 hours sleep. Um and you can see our students were a little more varied but still a very high percentage in favor of adjusting that high school start time to a later start time. So we we gave the uh group that we met with yesterday some options. We wanted them to react to our options. Option one has a bunch of X's through it because as you remember you told us no high school busing was not an option. But our community needs to understand that many of the high schools that start at 8 or later have no high school busing. If we didn't have high school busing, I can move the start time
129wherever you want. But when we have to bus all of our students, it does uh make a difference where we put our um our tiers of busing. So, um, we put X's through it because we told our community, although we had to, um, put it as an option, it's not a realistic option. So, we're moving on to option two, which is also not a realistic option because everybody says, "Well, it's easy. Just flip the tears around. Move the elementary kids to the front. They get up early." I don't know about you, but I don't feel very comfortable putting a kindergartener on the bus or waiting for a bus at 6:30 in the morning. Um, and that's what our current our our current high schoolers, mine in particular, his bus stop would be 6:31 and he
130gets dropped off by the high school at 6:50. Our our high school doesn't start till 7:20. So, in order to make the other tiers work, that's the times that have to be there along with non-publix and vocational schools. So, we're not going to flip tiers just to make that happen. So, that got exed pretty quick. Option three through six are what I would consider realistic options, but not without challenges. Uh option three reduces our tiers of busing from three to two. Um this cannot happen without lots of additional buses and drivers. Um we already use every asset we have at each of our tiers. So if we smash those tiers together, it's going to require a lot more assets and a lot more drivers. So again, it's a realistic option with the times that are
131on the screen. And just to ground you, our high school starts currently at 7:20. Um, our junior high in green are around 8:00ish. I'll say 8:00ish because I think green's like 7:50. Junior high is like 8:0 something or it might be 8:10 or something. Um, and then our elementaryaries are 910. So just to ground you in that work. And then also you heard me mention our high school drop off is 650 um for a 720 start. So that is an area we can impact. Challenges at the bottom for every slide. We we have to still bus our vocational students. We have to bus our non-public students. There's a lot of legislators that are trying to make sure that we can't even uh opt out of doing that, that we have to bus everybody all the
132time. And I don't know where they think we're going to find drivers and buses to do that. Um, field trips and athletics are certainly a challenge because we have so many people going so many different places with great activities after school. Um, even though we only have 17 square miles, it's very dense with lots of different things going on within our 17 square miles. Um, and then our ride time is something that we deeply care about because I know a lot of people do not want their kids on the buses for 45, 50, 60 minutes. That's that could be a realistic ride time with some of the edges of our district. So, um, quickly I'll move through option four through six and you'll just see the times change a little bit and things will shift.
133Um, option four was moving basically the junior high in green to the front at a 7:45 and 8:00 start, the high school at an 8:30 and then the elementary at a 9:10. where we run into problems is not necessarily in the morning busing our students, it's in the afternoon. Um, we typically need at least 35 to 45 minutes to turn around a route to the next route. And you can see if we released our junior high at 3:05, there is no way we're going to be ready for the release at the high school at 3:30. Um, and there might be some things that we have to do differently. And one of the things that you see at the bottom there is, you know, to be able to pick up our high schoolers and drop them
134off quicker, we may have to go to what's called u shuttle stops. We are not required to go down every street in every neighborhood. So using Tanninger Woods as an example, it's near me. There might only be two or three bus stops through the whole neighborhood. Everybody has to walk out to Tanninger Woods Drive and get one of those two or three bus stops. um it would definitely help us speed up our ability to pick up students and get them to school and then get them back home um in a quicker manner. And I will say when we talked about that last night, there was not one community member was like, "That's terrible." Everybody's like, "Yeah, our high schoolers run all over the place, mine included. He can ride his bike around the 17 square
135miles. He can certainly walk out to a street if he needed to catch that bus." >> And I just want to make sure everyone knows we're talking about high school students, not elementary students. And also if your child has a disability and they clearly are unable to go to that, there would be rules around that. But we're talking about high school kids that already walk. Yep. >> And can walk. >> And then the other thing is registering kids for buses. If they don't ride for 5 days, then they would be removed from the route because we spend a lot of time stopping or at least going by places that people have registered for an emergency and they never ride. So, um, those are just things that we would move on or move to potentially as
136ability to get us more efficient and effective while we're making these changes. Option five is um an 8:00 start, 8:30, 8:45 at junior high and green and then a 9:30 start at the elementaryaries. This one got a lot of groans from our elementary parents like, "No, we don't want our kids getting off the bus at and that just releasing at 4:15. That means they're probably not getting off the bus till 5. Nobody wants that." So, that was not a real popular option. Option six, um, option six is like, I'll just say it's can we get something that's better than we have right now? And I will say so far, if I told you that which option got the most universal votes, it was this one. There are some people that love option four cuz they're
137like, "If we're really going to go, let's really go and make it 8:30." Um, our athletes and our workers would not agree with you. Um, students that work after school, athletes that have activities and extracurriculars that are getting home late at night because of their extracurriculars would not agree. Um >> with number four they the number six is and I will tell you number six when you look at it you're like well you're moving from 720 to 750. Yeah it's 30 minutes of start time but look at that drop off. We move from 650 to 7:35. That's a 45minut difference in dropping our kids off at the high school. And then you look at it and you'll notice that the release time crept up 10 minutes. Um we have some work to do. Mr. Potabomb
138feels really strongly that there might be some ways within the schedule and that's his world. That's not our world to dip into. We help him with it and we are certainly thought partners, but it's not our job to go in and tell the high school staff and the high school administration how to do and run their building. But the reason it crept up 10 minutes is he was like, "Right now, we have five minutes between bells. We'll cut that down to four." That's seven quick minutes right there. Um, there's also time that we probably can shave out of what they call AES bell. It originally started as a reading bell. I remember when it was put in and that was an absolute disaster cuz no kid was sitting there with their book and sitting quietly.
139And I remember quickly it changed to more of like an advisory bell. But what our scheduling consultant that we talked to said is it's a waste of instructional time. So I think Mr. Potam believes in maybe not every day but maybe some semblance of there is a power a power in it but maybe not 5 days a week power. So it is something we're going to take a look at and just a reminder all these things we're talking about is for the 2728 school year. So what are our next steps? We're going to get back with our workg group. We got a lot of great feedback um from our community members that were uh invested. I do think that we still should do or try to figure out a way to do a virtual option
140um to allow people to just get an opportunity to weigh in because we we solicited and I think in the survey we asked people do you want to have a follow-up and I think over a hundred people said yes. Then when we reached out to those hundred people to come to the meeting, the attendance dropped quickly. Um, but I want to just say a special thank you to our um, Sycamore Advisory Commission group and multiple people that have followed this project along the way. I told the people last night, you have made history because this has been talked about for years and years and years, but we've never made any progress. So, we have some really, you know, fire starters in our group that are pushing us and continuing to push us. I see some
141of them here tonight. Wave your hands, please. Sack members. Thank you for for doing that. Um, but they um they have pushed us to continue to find ways to again care. This is about the health of our students. This is important. This is important work. So, um, they have my commitment that I I will be prepared to make a recommendation to the board very very soon about changing this start time for the 2728 school year. The biggest question I got from people is why can't you just go ahead and do it now? It takes a lot of work to reroute the entire district, which is what Mr. Miller will have to do for the 2728 school year, and there is no way that we have enough time to do that. our principles don't have enough
142time to reschedu every single student and that's what would have to happen if we change the bell times for and you can see it's probably going to impact all the buildings um just a little bit. We're going to try to minimize that disruption but it is going to have a small impact on every building is just because we've got to be able to make it from place to place to place um and transporting our students. So just wanted to give you that quick update. I know I went through it fast, but um more to come and uh soon there will be a recommendation. And what I told the community members last night is we might just have to get, you know, I always look at things good, better, best. We're not, you saw on that
143screen, our start time is not good right now. You know, it's not in a place that I think it should be in. 750 might represent the first iteration. We might go a year and say, you know what, we can get it to 757. And then next year, the next year after that could be, oh, you know what, we found a way to get it to eight. I don't know. But our team's got a lot of work to do on the internal schedules, the bell schedules. Um, really, and we told people this is a tenative like we think we can make these work, but we still have to get in and do the actual work to do it. So um it may be that we come to you and say for the 2728 school year at
144worst we are going to start the high school at 750 and adjust the other schools accordingly and then come back to you with during the 2627 school year with the actual schedule for you to approve because it is something the board does have to approve uh when we change bell schedule. So Mr. If you just uh for just a second, can you talk just a minute about like what the lift would be to go from this three tier to two tier? >> Oh, well, number one, it would be um if and think about number of students, right? So, right now we have high school, 1700 students. Junior high in green is about 2,000 students. Um the elementary is about 2,000 students, give or take. It's it's not exact, but give or take. if you went
145to a two-tier system, you're moving from, you know, those breakdowns to you're smashing some of those together. So, with the high school, you're putting almost 3,700 student, well, I'm sorry, 2,700 students on buses that we normally only had room for, you know, one of the schools like the high school. So, from an asset standpoint, it's going to take really tight scheduling, really efficient scheduling, and we really will have to know, especially our high schoolers, who's riding and who's not because, you know, in some of those lower grades, we schedule everybody um for a bus. So, it will be an asset nightmare if that's the choice we make. I will tell you the work group is leaning far away from that option. >> Yeah. >> But we wanted to throw it out there because we wanted
146people to feel what do we have to work through to get there and it'll there will be some pain points. It's not going to be perfect. But if we think that this is really important, which I can tell you the research says it's really important and so does I mean you saw the data the community feels it's important then we're going to live through the pain points to get to where we want to be. This is some awesome work. Um, thank you very much. Will private schools be impacted by a change as well? >> They could be. Um, certainly we communicate with them on when their buses will be available like um we we are required to try to get them as close to um their start times as possible. So, but their ride times
147can be impacted. And when I say that, like I'll use uh let me use St. X as an example. So if we have a a bus that runs to St. X right now, the way they're busted is they ride in on our high school buses, then they ride a shuttle from the high school to Saint X. So there could be an impact that they might ride longer, they could be shuttled quicker that there's so many logistics, but yeah, it could have an impact on some of our community members that utilize our assets. >> No, I think this is great work. Thank you. And I just go back to what you said. I mean, the data is is is overwhelming that you you know, it is this needs to be done. We've been talking about it
148since I've been on the board. So, it's I'm glad to see we're making progress and and getting really close to the finish line. So, thank you to everybody who's been working on it. Your your your work is making a difference. >> Yeah. Thank you. Great work. It the time is we're ready. This is it. Let's do it. >> That's probably one of the funniest comments from last night. One of the attendees came up and said, "Just rip the band-aid off and do it." And I'm like, "Okay, we're ready. We will do it." So, I appreciate the support of the community because these are not easy decisions, but it's the right thing to do. All right, great discussion. Great work there. All right, now policy discussion, first read. Did any of the board members have any
149questions about those policies? I think Mr. Level did send all those out. This is a first read, so this is just an introduction to those. Any questions about those? No, I just I mean I guess this would go for all the policies. Thank you very much for providing us with just a general timeline um about when the policies will be um when they'll be up for approval, which will be in the summertime. >> Um maybe you could just talk about that at maybe not this section, but the next one it would be helpful. >> Sure. Just so we're talking about the schedule that you have, the general schedule that you have us for, not just first read, second reads, but actual approval because I just want every single time we have a meeting, we are
150not approving these >> board board policies right now. We're going through a first read and a second read. And even then, we're not approving them. We're approving them in the summer. We're just going through the process as a board and asking questions and and looking at each policy. we can still follow up with even more questions in the summertime and the community can follow up with questions and ask too. So, we're just letting you know through to be transparent that this is a process that we have been taking all year. Um, and if you could weigh in on that, that would be helpful. >> Sure. And it might be helpful as well at the next meeting. I can actually put that chart on the board agenda so that folks can kind of see where we're
151going and where we have been. Um what I did was I provided with the board just an overview of where have the first reads been in regards to Neola transition, where have the second reads been, and then how are we going to get to the actual policy manual adoption. And I believe based on the work we've done over the course of the year, that second meeting in June, um we'll bring forward a resolution for you to adopt the Inola policies and at the same time resend the OSBA policies. Um, we finished up all of the work this past week on all of the policy manual with the exception of some outlying policies that we're going to address in the next coming weeks and really start diving into the administrative guidelines. But we still have three
152books that we haven't brought to you for a first read yet. So that document that I provided will outline kind of how that looks and how that goes. But to Miss Bidder's point, I just want the community to know that we are happy to have conversations. Policy committee is still continuing. Um, so if there are policies or anything like that have come up, even even if it's been a first read or second read that we need to do a deeper dive into, that's not going to stop the progress we're making, but we have every ability to stop and have those conversations that need to occur. And then I would also like to say that we are we have two board members that are attending the meetings the policy meetings right as representatives and those meetings
153are open to the public and I I do rely on you know as a board member I these are extremely dense long policies and we have adopted um we we already did a complete and review and refresh of our policies in 2022 or 23. So, this is the second time since I've been on the board that we're doing this. So, I just want our fellow board policy members to know that you letting us know specifically, especially when we get to the I mean the board one, the board ones which are the zeros. I think all of us clearly need to read those very thoroughly and we need to come with questions. But many of the policies are a lot longer and more dense than our current policies and um they have never been amended because
154they're they're brand new and um they're often um mandated like we don't really get a choice. We're told this is what the state legislature says you have to do or this is a federal law and you must adopt this policy. So, um I guess I would just appreciate if at some point when again I might I will have question I will have more questions. I just feel like they're extremely dense and I unless I literally take a side by side and see the difference I'm not going to I'm not going to be able I won't be able to do it. There's just too many of them. So I do appreciate your updates on this is required. this is a a requirement through the law that we have to do this and then this is where
155you have some wiggle room. I appreciate that you're bringing in all of the experts of administrators for each section >> um and then weighing in. So, thank you. Absolutely. But it would be helpful just to continue to highlight that information for us. >> Yes. In this past update that I sent to the board and just a a quick acknowledgement of um Dr. James and Mr. Oznell, we we spent an entire day together. I think it was almost seven hours doing our bylaw work and um I appreciate their attention. They they were they were on it the entire time. So well done. Uh but I did make mention when I sent the update to the board that I was not going to mark in the bylaws if whether it was legislatively driven or not because I
156really wanted each board member to focus and read through each of those because that really is how you operate and how we operate with you as a board. And so I think it's important that you all acknowledge those and take a look and then give feedback that you might have. Um and really honestly that feedback should be directed to Dr. James and Mr. Gznell since it's it's the board's policies. Um but I appreciate that because it is um a lot of work, a lot of people engage with it. They are very dense. Um but a lot of good stuff, a lot of great conversations over the past 63 hours of this work. >> It was counting. So for the bylaw section then um could we all lot a little bit of more time then for
157that not that we don't have time now but all lot some time for that section so that we can because other we can't talk with the our fellow board members unless we're in a board meeting. Um so can we just all lot a little bit more time for that section? >> I'm happy to do whatever the board would >> Okay Mr. Harris >> I think it's really Mr. Harris and Dr. >> Dr. James, can you please all lot more a lot more time um for that because it's those are really important board policies and if we're supposed to bring that to you then we'd have to do it during >> and I think those work the work sessions we have planned are a great time to do that when we have >> so we'll do
158it at a work session. Perfect. >> Yes, we'll do that. >> Sounds like a good summer work session. >> There you go. All right. Uh we have a couple of second reads up there. The 8000s and what was the other one? the uh a few on technology questions about those. Okay. And then we have the second read and approval of an AI policy. >> Correct. And just a reminder that this was the winter update and this policy has been uh of I don't know a labor of love for Mr. Long and his team in regards to taking the state model policy and really working with his AI development team that he has within the district to ensure that um what the model policy said and what Neola recommended were all aligned. And so this needs
159to actually be approved because this one um is required by legislator to get up and going. So once this gets approved like we've done with all the other NEOLA policies that have been approved ahead of the um actual manual approval, they'll live on the board website. So if any of our community wants to go to the website and they select on they select on board policy they're actually listed there and you can request them at any point in time. >> Perfect. Okay. So we do need a motion and a second for the approve approval of this. >> Mr. Balant with a motion and Dr. J with a second. All right. And Mr. Porsch. >> We have we have questions. >> Oh, you have a question. Okay. Okay. Go. >> Uh so just two things real
160quick. Um, when I first read it, I completely misread it. I read workshop, not work group shall be established. Um, but I think maybe workshop might be a fun way of doing training as well, but that's not here or there. Um, what I did want to lean back into is that very last section. I wanted to bring that back up again, the NCI, how there is a a model policy that's been created by the Center for Democracy and Technology. Um, I know this has kind of hit closer to home in some of the news stories. So, I I I would rather be proactive and maybe get get this language in place. Um, just my two cents on on that. >> Yeah. And I have that actually on the list in regards to the policy committee.
161Um, we're going to go ahead and get this one through and then I've got that added to have deeper discussion. Perfect. Perfect. All right, Mr. Person, could you please call the role? >> Mr. Balant, >> I. >> Dr. James, >> I. >> Mrs. Bidder, >> I. >> Mr. Gosdom, >> I. >> Mr. Harris, >> I. All right, we have uh next on the agenda, we have some contracts up. There are five of them if I'm not mistaken. Um, in interest of time, um, I'd like to make a motion to unless we have a question about each particular contract, can we go ahead and pass those in mass? Any questions or concerns about those? >> The only question I I had just a random I I was wondering why Warren County ESC instead of Hamilton County.
162I was that a specialty or >> it's a particular service for students with disabilities. >> You're you're welcome to come up and >> I think we have a new board member, so I think that would be helpful if he if he would be informed of that. >> Thank you. >> Service. Um the reason for um Warren County services, that's a um an agreement to support summer services for a student who's placed at a Warren County ESC program. So it's just a continuation of their extended school year services with that the same staff um that are supporting that student now. >> Perfect. Thank you. I I just I mean I understand that you want to do that in the in the sake of time, but I do think it would be helpful if you just like
163read them. >> I I can do that. >> Okay. We have a uh a bus purchase. Uh obviously our approval of agreement with Warren County Educational Service. Um we have a uh item. It's not H showing there. It's >> Sorry, you can read them off the screen. >> Yeah. um contract with comprehensive uh concepts in speech and hearing. Uh approval of a agreement with Warren County Educational Center, a bus purchase, approval of a new bus purchase, a contract with Perry Weather, and a approval of a contract with Raptor Technologies. >> And I have a general question about Raptor Technologies. And that's is that you Mr. Long? >> Uh maybe. >> Can you tell? Sorry. Sorry, Mr. Level. Can you just give us a gen a brief update on that? >> Yeah, so we leverage Raptor
164for a lot of safety and security um in the district. I can speak high level about some of it. I don't want to get into the weeds if that's okay. Great. >> Raptor does a lot of our background checking um at our schools both for our volunteers that come into the front office. Um that's kind of the interface. It also does volunteers as well, but we also leverage Raptor for some of our integrated um safety and security features within our buildings. um each year. So, kind of talking in vague. I don't want to get into too many details, but um it's a lot of our safety security features that we have. >> Thank you. >> Yep. >> So, you still need a motion and a second for Yes. >> items G through K? >> Yes.
165So, do we have a motion for approval of items G through K? So, moved. Thank you. Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Balant, for your motion. Thank you, uh Mr. GZnell for your second. person. Could you please read the role? >> Mr. Balot, >> I. >> Mr. Gno, >> I. >> Mrs. Bther, >> I. >> Dr. James, >> I. >> Mr. Harris, >> I. All right. >> Overnight. >> Yeah. And we have a few overnight field trips. Again, I'm offering my services as chaperone for anybody who's interested there. But do we have a motion to approve the over um the overnight field trips? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you, Dr. James, for your motion. Thank you, Mr. Ballot. For your second, Mr. Buren, >> Dr. James, >> I. >> Mr. Balot, >> I. >>
166Mrs. Bither. >> Hi, >> Mr. Gosnell. >> Hi, >> Mr. Harris. >> I All right. Uh, do we have anything else on the superintendent's agenda? >> I'm just going to give you some quick other because I would be I would feel uh very guilty if I didn't read some of these great things that are going on. Um, I attended a legislative breakfast on Monday. Um, I will say a shout out to our local legislators that are here in Southwest Ohio. They are fighting for us. Um, they are doing everything they can. They're not obviously leading some of the things that are happening or trying to happen. Um, but they are certainly fighting back. Um, so I do think if you are in listening in our community, reach out to your local legislator and thank them
167for their efforts on behalf of Sycamore and public schools because it goes a long way. They listen to voters. Um, next week, May 4th through May 8th, love Sycamore week, Sycamore appreciation, uh, for staff. Um, so, you know, take an opportunity to reach out to staff members, thank them. I had my one of my leadership groups write thank you cards to staff and I plan on going and personally handing them out. Those things are like gold to teachers especially this time of year um and any staff member. So um Altitude and Legacy Awards is part of that week. It's on May 7th. Uh it's a 6:30 start. Uh if you want to come at 5:30 that's the social hour. So um lots of cool things that'll happen on that night. not telling you any of
168the surprises. Um, Upstander Awards, we have two finalists in our district. Uh, unbeknownst to me, I nominated a student. I did not realize that the Upstander Awards uh for the uh through the Holocaust Center down in Cincinnati was mostly adults. I just kept getting the email. So, I was like, I'm nominating a student. So, Luca Moss is a senior at our high school. She was I nominated her and she was selected as one of the 21 finalists from hundreds of nominations which is super cool. And then our very own Leanne Burke of OGB was nominated by Janelle Shunk and she was selected as one of the 21 finalists. So how cool that we have two of the 21 finalists. So there is a breakfast on May 5th. I don't Does Leanne know that Maria? I
169would assume I would assume. Okay. All right. So, well, we'll make sure she knows cuz there's a breakfast on May 5th and then a summertime like awards banquet where they they find out on May 5th, I think if they're in the I don't know, they I think they take it from 21 to six or something like that. So, um, right before I walked into the meeting this today, we had 116 students at our high school that were recognized with community impact awards for service activity activity, global goals, and zero hunger and zero waste. So, we have 116 students at our high school that are being recognized. Super cool. Um, if you did not get a chance to see Greece this weekend, you missed out. Our students are talented. It was awesome. Uh, I told the
170kids today it was I say it every time I see a new show, but it was like absolutely one of the best shows I've seen in 14 years. It was amazing. >> Mr. Lewis, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I have to say that they also performed a sensory friendly version of that for students um, in grades I think it was grades 9 through 12 and it was phenomenal. It was one of the coolest things I've ever seen. So, I just want to thank whoever did that. It was incredible. So, we got a lot of kids who wouldn't normally be able to go to a play um got to see it, too. >> That's amazing. >> Great. >> Um if you're interested in any of our high school or junior high music, you can literally
171go to the high school junior high any day for the next month and you can see a show. Um so, I'm not going to read them all to you, but there's a gazillion shows in the next month from jazz to orchestra to choir to band and all the things in between. And then this weekend, Moana Jr. Sims players at the junior high. I'll be there on Sunday at two. So, looking forward to that. And that is all I have to keep us on track. >> All right. Thank you very much. All right. Uh uh is there a motion to approve the personnel consent agenda? >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mrs. Bidder for your motion. >> Thank you, Dr. James, for your second. >> Bson, could you please call the role there? >>
172Uh Mrs. Bidder, >> I. >> Dr. Mr. James. >> I, >> Mr. Balot. >> I, >> Mr. Gosnell. >> I, >> Mr. Harris. >> I All right. We have some donations that we need to approve. Uh, so we're going to make a motion to approve the donations. And as always, thank you to all the people in the community and every place else who made these donations to help our students out. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Thank you, Mr. Balot, for your motion. Thank you, Mrs. Bidder, for your second person. >> Mr. Balot, >> I. >> Mrs. Bidder, >> I. Mr. Gosn >> I. >> Dr. James. >> Hi. >> Mr. Harris. >> I. >> All right. And is there a motion and we're going to put that up there to approve our monthly financial
173report for the month ending March 31st, 2026? Um, you want to talk about that a little bit first? We have questions. >> You make the motion. >> Think we motion first. >> Make the motion. All right. Is there there's >> still moved. >> Second. >> All right. Thank you, Mrs. Bidder, for your motion. Thank you, Mr. Balant, for your second. >> All right. We'll ask Mr. Long if he will open that up, please. There we'll see our February forecast. This slide hasn't updated since we since the board has adopted the 5-year forecast from February. Um, if we want to go ahead and scroll to our revenue tab. Um, same items here to note. We we are still note noting the the state foundation increase. um which we called out specifically, you know, mostly related to
174the supplements that the state uh that it's new this this year. Um and again, that Hamilton County uh refund is something we can expect. I'm not sure of that dollar amount, but every six years during the reval, actually this year it's going it's the next time we'll see it again won't be till after the 2030 reval. Um as Hamilton County got pushed back a year. Um, that was a statewide push. So, any questions on the revenues right there? Uh, from the expenditure standpoint, uh, we always like to point out where we're at for our wages and benefits. um and our increase and our our variance over the uh this year to last year the 3.15 with our largest group that certified group which does um which is our teachers and uh most of our administrators
175is going to be a 2.1 8% increase from last year. So again, we always we still like to point out the responsible staffing that's done in there since the you know the the uh the certified is our largest group. Um there are two uh two areas. Um as you can see the the decrease from the from the materials and supplies when I've looked through April. Um we are um I take into account what we've spent and what the remaining incumbrances are, which our incumbrances are those purchase orders where we expect to pay on um or receive invoices for before the end of the fiscal year. Um, I believe we're going to come in more at around 3.7 to 3.8 million as opposed to the 4.3. Um, need to do a little bit of a deeper
176dive on why the budget was set up that way. And I think it may be in relation to maybe some curriculum not being pulled out that was purchased last year and maybe anticipated this year, but should not have been. um the purchase services um in working with um and Mrs. Spencer, we do we we did see an increased need or an investment for those students with special needs. Um it was specifically related to uh transportation. Uh the cost of private transportation is growing um and it's a growing need for our students. um as well as the utilities um fall into that bucket as well. And we did see in working with operations a unexpected increase for uh spec um specifically would be electric. So those are some increases, but we do want to note that
177those those variances. So if you if you take the the difference that we're expecting the materials and supplies and there's going to be a potential of u an increase for the purchase service line. Not sure where exactly we're going to land on that, but it would um I would be conservative in in stating that I would expect it to be um closer to the 12.8 eight mark um with looking at the remaining incumbrances and seeing where we're going to land on that. But again, there are some things that go unaccounted for in those purchase services um like I said with the with just meeting student needs that we you know in in those investments utilities. Yes. >> A question about that. I don't know if it's under materials and supplies but is the cap is
178the cost of gas or diesel impacting the district. So for that that is going to fall under uh not materials and supplies. It would fall underneath um the purchase services as kind of like a you kind of like a utility there but but yeah that's where that's going to fall and yeah um that's a great question. I can I can actually dive into that more with operations to see and Brad may be but I just have I'm just curious. I mean I think that potential >> three big ones we're watching. Obviously electricity costs have skyrocketed. We saw that a couple months ago. It really hit. Um fuel costs have started to rise. We know that. We're monitoring that. Um the other one too that we still haven't hit that's going to be a big one
179this year is our salt. Um and we get that through the city of Blue Ash. And so we'll get build for that, but we expect it to be a little a lot over what we had anticipated. >> Um and so again, we we see that bottom number there, Mr. R. I know that is above the cap. That's what we always try to pay attention to that, you know, we do foresee that going down come June when we make those transfers. Um it's going to be significantly less than what it was last year. Um in June, are there any any additional questions about the the expenditures? I would just like I I I just would like to point out the obvious that you know if the district is in if is is is having increased fuel
180you know cost clearly every employee every person that comes to work will have that too. So that would take out of you know just reminder like for everybody right people are driving their kids to school so they might say you know what I'm not going to drive my kids to school anymore I'm going to put them on the bus to save gas um but also our employees. So, I just I would just be interested to know what the what the trend is. And again, that's not anything right this minute, but I have an interest in that in general. >> Again, this slide is just a snapshot of where we're at on our on our cash balance on our, you know, spending surplus or deficit um for the year. Um again, we do, you know, we
181do anticipate that that surplus to decrease because we've we've received all of our tax dollars for the year. Um, is there is there any questions on on that? >> Thank you. >> All right. Uh, Mr. Buren, could you please read the role? >> Uh, Mrs. Bidder, >> I. >> Mr. Balot, >> I. >> Mr. Cosno, >> hi. >> Dr. James, >> hi. >> Mr. Harris, >> I. All right. And last but not least, other board business. Uh board committees. Do we have anything to report out there? >> Uh Mr. Harris, we attended a steering committee. It wasn't a steering committee member uh meeting for neighborhood bridges. Um and um Mr. Lewis was there too. I might there might have been other people. Mr. Bur may have been there too. But um just a general update
182that we received um from neighborhood bridges. They have been doing a lot of work to support um like students in the high school um doing a lot with graduation, helping kids with getting prom tickets, caps and gowns. There's a lot of need for um food assistance um housing assistance, electricity, um in the community. Um there's a a very large demand for um coat or yeah, coats. The coat drive actually started a little earlier this year, which is probably a good thing because after spring, people were cleaning their coats and getting rid of kids coats that don't fit anymore. So, they were able to collect quite a few. And then just weekly food bags for many kids in our elementary schools in all of our elementary schools. So, it was it's a great community partnership. Operation
183Give Back and um Sycamore Bridges are really work. I mean, in addition to all of our school partnerships that we have, our everyone in our community is just working so hard to help families in Sycamore. So, thank you to Sigcore Bridges. Thank you to Operation Give Back. Um, if you want to be part of that, you just go on on their website and you can sign up for emails. I we highly encourage you to follow them and support those two organizations because they are helping our teachers. They're helping our school counselors, our mental health professionals. Oh yeah, mental health was a huge one. A huge demand for mental health services for students. So just please stay involved in that and keep doing what you're doing. Thank you. >> And actually I think I just saw
184something today for people who are listening about uh graduations coming up, caps and gowns. Um I think they were $65 for caps and gowns. And so they were looking for people to help out and contribute with that. So if that's something that people are interested in doing and I think we had talked about trying to figure out something to do to help kids with that. So that's not a continual problem and different things like that. But uh Bridges um they do an absolutely incredible job of meeting the needs of our community and helping kids out with all variety of things. So great partnership with the Sycamore School District and some of the areas around here. So we really appreciate them. >> And it's Miss I'm sorry, Miss Lawson. It's Miss Lawson that actually really runs
185and organizes this steering committee. So, I left you out and I'm sorry, but you're the one who sends all the updates. So, thank you for all your work on that and for Operation Get Back, too. Thank you. >> I'll throw out a just a quick legislative update. We've talked enough about some of this stuff, but there are several bills floating around right now that would obviously affect things within the schools. There's House Bill 820, which uh would require radon testing in school facilities. So looking at safety, there's House Bill 799 which would create a model curriculum for world world history including ancient African civilizations and global influence. Uh and then one that I know is starting to gain some interest is House Bill 800 which is the preschool for all active sports gaming tax. Um
186it would require all day kindergarten and establish a universal preschool program. So, just things to look out for. Um, and I also think since we've talked a lot about property taxes and the potential elimination of property taxes, there is a new statewide coalition called the Ohioans to protect public services. Um, that has launched to ensure Ohioans have accurate information on the real world impact of eliminating property taxes. Um, it has had a lot of involvement by the Ohio School Board Association, the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, and the Ohio Association of School Business Officials. Um, so they do have a a website out there if you'd like to go learn their real world impact on on this proposal. So, >> thank you. Anything else? >> I just want to make one I'm glad Mr. GZnold
187rattled something in my brain that I just want to as we continue to have discussions uh about the the future of of levy choice, we also should be thinking about some of the things that we've discussed in the past. So at at our next agenda planning, I think we need to probably talk about for our work session, what what is in that um levy ask, you know, what are some of the things that >> we would include? We've talked about full day kindergarten for everyone without tuition, you know, and we know what that additional cost would be. We've talked about um potentially adding some security measures like an SRO that would float between all the Blue Ash buildings because we have them at, you know, our Montgomery buildings. But so just I think we need
188to think about those things and we need to be actively discussing them because we haven't in a in a while. So, I think that'd be a great work session topic. So, don't want to discuss it tonight, but I do think that would be important because people are going to start asking what does that mean? You know, what what am I getting? What's what's included? So, and I'm sure the state of Ohio will step in and pay for all the full day kindergarten for everybody. I know that's their intent by passing that law. All right. Uh we're now going to move to the board is going to move to executive session uh to consider the employment compensation of a public employee uh versus Ohio advice code 12122G1. Also for matters required to be kept confidential by
189federal law, federal rules or state statutes by division. See Ohio Vice Code 121.22G5 22G5 and conferences with an attorney for the public body concerning disputes involving the public body that are subject of pending or imminent court action. See Ohio Revised Code 121.22 G3. Do I have a motion to move to executive session? >> I move. Second. >> You pick. >> Thank you, Mr. Ballot, for your motion. Thank you, Dr. James, for your second. Mr. Buren, could you please read the role? >> Mr. Ballot. Dr. James. >> Hi, >> Mrs. Bither. >> Hi, >> Mr. Gos. Hi, >> Mr. Harris. >> Hi. The board will now be moving to executive session. We will not be reconvening into regular session. Thank you everybody for tonight and have a great