Sycamore Schools Board of Education Meeting April 8, 2025

001If you can find a seat, please take a seat or I was going to say that. Okay, everyone, please rise. Well, some people are already standing for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. At the beginning of our board meetings, we like to start with our district's mission and vision. Our mission is to create a culture of academic excellence through inclusive and innovative learning opportunities for the whole child. And our vision is to empower all learners to reach their full potential in a globally competitive world. Can I please get a motion and a second for the approval of the agenda? So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. James,

002for your motion. Thank you, Mr. Harris, for your second. Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Dr. James, I. Mr. Harris, I. Dr. Seager, I. Mrs. Bidder, I. Can I please get a motion in a second for the approval of the minutes? So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. James, for your motion. Thank you, Mr. Harris, for your second. There any edits, amendments, anything? Logan, please call the role. Dr. Jane, hi. Mr. Dr. Harris I Dr. Seager abstain Mrs. consider I the next item on our on our agenda this evening our presentations so there's plural so we are very very excited to have all of you here this is the best part of our board meeting every time and we will start this evening with the eh green students redwing titanic project take control we don't need

003to waste time with death. Sir, Samantha, Jacob, Elanor, Brennan, and Rya. Good evening. We are fifth graders from the red team here to present our Titanic replica from Mr. T's class. After reading our class novel, Titanic Voices from the Disaster, our class project was to collaborate with a team of 25 peers and build a realistic model of the ship of June. We were all given different jobs such as historians, construction engineers, project managers, and architects to replicate real world scenarios working together on teams. We even brought in a real life architect to talk about how those jobs worked together. All in all, the red team built five replicas and the green school community voted on their favorite design. The top two got to be part of the Titanic exhibit that is located downtown right now

004and ours earned the chance to present tonight. Our replica is 1/100th of each dimension of the real Titanic that sank in the Atlantic Ocean. We were charged with using math equations that involve proportional relationships. The proportions are true to every single piece you see on the ship. These numbers were based on hours and hours of research to make our ship as realistic as possible. For instance, did you know the Titanic was so long that it was equivalent to three football fields laid down lengthwise? Our arch architects worked with our construction engineers closely to make sure our math would work on the real designs. In some cases, we learned that math can be difficult. In others, we learned that measuring accurately based on the numbers you are given is especially hard. As you can imagine, the

005true size of this ship is our model times 1 million in volume. We were charged when we built our Titanic to add details like those on the real ship. One of our many details was our wires. We had to have a lot of wires. Wires were connected everywhere on the ship from mass to mass. They helped the famous Maronei room operators to communicate with other ships using morse code. The wires were also helping the funnels and the masks stand up. Another one of the many details that we had to add were our funnels. You may have been wondering, but our fourth funnel doesn't have any smoke. The reason for this is it was just there for the ventilation and for the looks of the funn. Believe it or not, our team worked tirelessly to create

006a specific color that to match as accurately as possible like the white Starling did when they created the real Titanic. One of the last of many details that I am going to mention were the windows. Our windows are all researched and mathematically proven to be correct and they are all different shapes and sizes. We also came to learn that Titanic had a lot of windows. The queen of the ocean had so many details that we wanted to capture. We could have spent the rest of the year trying and we would have. The Titanic was one of the fastest ocean miners of its time. One of the reasons for the speed is the propellers. There were a total of three propellers on the Titanic, but there were two types. Uh there um the process the inner

007and outer propellers the process for building the propellers involves a lot of math and research to get the sizes. Uh did you know the middle propellers smaller than the outer ones? We also worked hard to get the out colors as accurate as uh possible with lots of trial and error with getting them to stay with adhesives. My team also suggested that we glow together to make them stronger which we did. One of the special features of Mr. T's uh ship with the movable rack. The rudder is on the very back of the ship. Behind the middle propeller to help the ship turn. Only in Mr. T's Titanic is the rudder connected to a steering wheel. When you turn the re, the rider turns with you. Just like the real Titanic, a lot of problem solving

008and engineering skills to figure out how to make that work. Through this process, we learn. Reading our class novels, researching, and collaborating with our team knowledge of the mothers. But away from that it's also very very challenging. We have to collaborate. We have to see all the part but we also made so many friends through it. After all the hard work and stress it's also a very fun experience. Some of the parts were um collaborative while other parts of the project were um a bit more challenging but April is a very great experience. We are so proud of our thank you so much. Thank you so much for allowing us to share it with you. We hope our replicas are a great reminder of the importance of history and the lessons it teaches us. We

009took the unsinkable and did the unthinkable. What what was your favorite part of the project? Like and each of you can answer, but what was your favorite part? like the building process of like stacking them on top of each other and getting the accurate colors. I also enjoyed that part because whenever we got it right, like it was really challenging, so whenever we got it right, it was like a new accomplishment. I enjoyed personally making the railings. Um, uh, we had to stick each toothpick in and then spin the wire for it. I liked putting the separate parts onto the Titanic from when we built them, putting them all together to make the whole shape. Um, I like making the windows like a different color. Um, I thought um it was like fun to just

010I like the because each one of them has a different sides and we have it's like a puzzle. You have to put them together. Now, when I came to visit you, the whole wing was a mess. How many boxes do you think you went through to make five ships? Any guesses? [Music] I was gonna say I hear your teacher saying hundreds. So there was a lot of boxes over there, right? So um can you guys tell us the teachers that helped you with these this project so we can make sure we recognize them? Um we have Mr. We had Miss Dunn, Miss Becker, um and then we had Miss Walt. So teacher, yes, I just want to say thank you to all of you because you took something that could have just been a story

011you read and you turned it into a real life project for them and you can just see them the way they talk about it, the way they're lit up about it. They're proud of what they've done. I know you crammed it all into like a few days and it was amazing to see their progress just in a couple of short days from day one where they had nothing to like day four or five when it was like oh my gosh it's actually a ship now right so then when I came to see the final product I'm like whoa you guys did a lot of detail work so congratulations to you and I want you to do one more thing for me okay I want you to recognize your parents can you ask them to stand

012up and so we can recognize them or wave if they're already standing up. Good job, guys. Great job. Thank you. Great job. Thank you very much. Thank you. That was a wonderful um presentation. and we were able to go in and see some of the the beginning parts and to see it all the way to the end. It's it's really incredible. So, thank you. Okay, now we have Sycamore High School group recognition. Lot to be proud of at the high school. Lot to be proud of in this high school. Mr. Porter, do you want to take us the the first one on the list is state of Ohio seal of biiteracy? We got a handful of awards we want to just shine a light on this evening. So, thank you Mr. Lewis. Thank you to

013our school board for giving us a few minutes of your time. Uh there are quite a few things we could be celebrating, but we're going to start with and I've got Miss Chapman and Miss Blackmore nearby. We want you guys to come up as well. The skill of by literacy is really um an important life skill and it's also something that the state of Ohio recognizes through assessment that I think is very very uh special. We deserve to have a light shine on it. Um and so if you two don't mind seeing it from here but there's more insight. So so um in 2018 the state of Ohio um passed a law that would uh create a new seal for Ohio uh high school students called the seal of biiteracy. In order to get the

014seal of biiteracy you need to be um biiterate meaning you have two languages um a a world language and then English. English has to be one of the two languages in order to get the sale by literacy. So, how do we decide whether or not you are you have that proficiency? There's a number of different tests that the um state of Ohio uh allows and and keep in mind that every state now has a seal of biiteracy. Um one of them is one that we give in the fall. You need to be within 15 months of graduation in order to get this seal. We give the first chance in the fall of senior year and this is at the beginning of their sixth year of study. And so the uh students test in the fall,

015listening, speaking, reading, writing, they have to get an intermediate high to advanced low on all of the sections of that test. And that is not easy. That um takes a lot of of hard work, dedication in the language. Um so we do very very well every year. In fact, I did ask the um uh Department of Education. and I uh I'm friendly with some of the people who work in the world language office there. I asked how does Sycamore do on the seal of bi literacy and I got an email back and it said that in um we have been in the top five in the state of Ohio since its inception. In 2018 we were tied for fifth with 26 seals. That was the first year. 2019 we were fourth with 59 seals. 2020

016we were third with 16 seals. It was 20. 2021 we did very well. We're seventh state with 68 seals. 2022 we were second as well with 52 seals. 2023 fifth with 44 seals. And we don't have the data yet for 2024 um or five but that will be coming. They have a second chance if they don't get it the f in the beginning of senior year. they can still get it with their AP exam if they get a five or a four on the AP exam. So what is this good for? It's good for any kind of work that they do in the future instead of just saying, "Oh yeah, I can speak Spanish." This is proof. They can say that they have the seal of bi literacy from the state of Ohio in whatever

017the language is that they have gotten it in. So Ryan also added, "Sycamore success on the seal of I literacy is truly amazing and I hope you will convey my admiration and congratulations to all of the students to your entire world language team for this amazing accomplishment. So I would like to um introduce to you our seal uh of biiteracy um candidates. Uh first we're going to do the seal of biiteracy in Korean. I don't know if Juno Lee is here tonight." Well, good for you, Jin. So, wherever you are, filled by literacy in Russian, we have two. Malikica Yedrosova and Dias Manpov, are you here? Come on up. We have one in Chinese right now. There will be more uh with the AP exam and that is Emily Xiao. Now I will read my

018Frenchies. Still by letter in French. Katherine Christensen. Hello, Jennifer. lamb. Hey and Alia Shington Russian in the French. So, one more round of applause. You can sit down. All right. Good evening. I'm Meredith Blackmore. Spanish here. So, I will um read through the names and if we want to hold our applause. There's quite a few of them. So, we'll get them all up here and then you guys can um show them your admiration. We have Hannah, Alex, Eva Alexander, Andres Anis, Colin Batson, Hannah Bolt, Noah Borman, Annie Carter, Jaden Chamberlain, Nina Freriedman, Sio Garcia, Patrick Gary, Emory Hines, William Horreniac, David Sue, Jacob Sue, Simon Huth, Christine Koig, Christopher Kong, Ketcha Cathari, Red Kramer, Nahal, Sheragara, Orit Leerman, Olivia Leslie, Ana Metha, Marggo Newman, Rohan Periq, Evan Rice, Jordana Ronovven, Ana Sani, Nicholas Nelly, Kristen

019Shetty, Sydney Southerntherland, Jonah, William Weeks and G. So these are some of our Spanish students. See how good you are. I mean, didn't really well in these tests. We're gonna see how well we follow directions, right? Because we want to get all the high school students together in one because there's a lot of people here. They'd like get a picture of you. So the tall people in the back the French and the fresh all everybody all the high schoolers come back and you gota each each other. Lovely. Now, everybody has to be looking. Look at that camera or look back in that direction. You don't have to look that high. Look that direction. Keep looking that direction. Be happy. Keep looking that direction. You got to go like hang it on for dear life. No

020big smile. And I'll give her a countdown of five, four, three, two, one. No more pictures. Congratulations. Hey, if you want to stay for the rest of the meeting, it's fine. You can stay, but you understand that you don't. Aren't there more? So, All right, ladies and gentlemen, got several more to acknowledge. Grab your attention for a moment. Got four things you want to honor. We're gonna ask Parker and Mr. Han if you guys want to slide over this way. We have a lot of, like I said, a lot of really wonderful things happening at the high school. Um, but what we're going to talk about next is really a great example of how to let the student follow their passion, follow their dreams, and really bring a project to life. Uh, Parker's been able

021to collaborate with peers, friends, other students at the high school, and do something really, really special. You'll have an opportunity this weekend to come out and see it in action. 9:00 to 1:00 on Saturday, and it's called Coffee and Cars. And there's been probably six to eight months worth of work that's gone into this incredible idea that also has a phil philanthropic arm to it to support the Dragonfly Foundation as well. So I want to honor Mr. Han. I'll let you guys share a little bit more about the program for this weekend. Hi. I'm Mr. Han. I teach Matthew Han. I teach engineering at the high school. I don't know if those fifth graders still here, but I can't wait to have them hard work they did. Yes, exactly. I can't wait. Um, Parker approached

022me several months ago, asked if I would be the sponsor for this new program, new new uh fundraiser that he had in mind, and I've warned him very quickly that I know nothing about cars, that I'm happy to help him well that I can. Uh, the stuff that I designed in my previous career was not supposed to move. Um, and as an engineer, so I I was kind of a silent observer and kind of helped him out. But the stuff that Parker has done over the past six, eight months is truly amazing. I'm just honored to be part of it. I can't wait to see it all come to fruition here on Saturday and and thank you for being part of it. But this is your presentation, man. I'm going to let you take over

023here. Thank you. So, most of you might not know what a cars and coffee event is, but my vision for this was to create a cars and coffee style event, which is sort of a informal car event in the morning, hence the coffee, and put one of those together hosted at the high school to bring together a group of students outside of athletics and fine arts to benefit a cause. So, I do dragon with fashion for the career, most of you know of that, and Dragonfly Foundation. I knew that was very instilled in our school already and through some friends I also had some connections to access that very easily and I thought that would be a great candidate to put together this car event for a cause. I think it was I'm a part

024of Mr. Lewis's AES advisory council and after our November meeting, I hung around after and asked him about this idea I had to host this event at the high school. And he said, "That sounds amazing. Let's talk again." So, I went more in depth and had a meeting with him later that month and we got together and he pretty much approved it. said he thought it would be great and I went on and picked a date for this event that I thought would be good and worked with athletics for it. And so far we have worked with 17 different businesses in the area of a lot of them are showcasing their uh showcasing their businesses this weekend on Saturday at our cars and coffee. We have worked with multiple different car clubs to gain together.

025Our goal is 150 plus cars at this event and raise $5,000 for the Dragonfly Foundation through Fashion the Cure. And so far right now, we are sitting at $3,850 just from sponsorships. We're currently selling t-shirts and selling donuts, coffee at the actual event, asking for donations, and overall just trying to bring together the community through this car event and create something that really hasn't been done before. There's a lot done through athletics or fine arts, but me, I grew up around cars. I am third generation into cars. My grandpa, my dad, we that's what we enjoy. That's what we love doing. That's our hobby. And I thought, why not bring it together and bring together the car community, which I know is huge. There have been multiple events in Cincinnati. And there's been growing youth

026involvement. And I thought I could just create a amazing huge event, and that is this Saturday from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the high school. And it should be great. It's my home. And trust me, trust me when I say that this young man is underelling his skills. He came with a business proposal. He had a whole presentation for me. I sat down not knowing what am I getting into. And he turns his computer around. He starts going through slides and I'm like, he's really put a lot of thought into this. And this wasn't just a hobby for him. It wasn't he didn't do it for a grade. It wasn't a project. It was to shine a light on our beautiful facilities in our school to bring people on campus that maybe wouldn't normally

027come onto campus. And he had a bigger vision u for what he wanted to do. And he he also organized students which sometimes is not easy to do. Um, but he talked about this event at one of our leadership meetings and the next thing you know he was surrounded by because everybody needs worker bees, right? He's leading the vision, but he needed people to help him carry out the vision and within minutes and I just saw two of them wearing shirts for the event the other day and I thought, boy, this has really come a long way here from an idea of just like let's get some people on site and have some cars to it's really become a big event to showcase not only the our talented young people but um our beautiful facilities

028at Sycamore. So, it will be in the parking lot next to the stadium. Uh, it will be blocked off and really just an area for cars. So, park far away, get your steps in, come visit the get a coffee, walk around, check out cars, and have good conversations with um great businesses and community members. I think one of my favorite things that has happened is as I've talked about Parker and talked about his vision and talked about his project. I was at a meeting with the Blue Ash Business Association and with as soon as I finished talking about it, two guys came up and handed me their cards and said, "Get our cards to Parker." Not to me. They didn't want to talk to me. They wanted to talk to Parker and get in his

029um circle so that they could bring help to uh to his project. So, um, Parker, I'm deeply in insanely proud of you for everything that you've done, the vision that you had, um, just making this happen, and really, I mean, beyond getting approval, he's asked for zero help. I don't know if he's hitting you up, Mr. Han, but not much. Very little help. So, and then he brought me a t-shirt the other day. So, who doesn't love a t-shirt? So, but congratulations. Thank you. Sure. Parker's even had a couple of preview shows. One of them I think was maybe at your family garage. You want to say a little bit more about that and then just acknowledge your parents have them wave to the crowd here as well. I hosted like well there's I got

030together with my group of people uh they're anyone from I have a couple people who had know nothing about cars but they just interested in the event. I have people who are dieh hard car people and we got together and we put up it was one of the first nice Tuesdays in March and we put together a pop-up event just word of mouth and we had I say probably 45 cars that show up just through word of mouth and it was amazing and even the month before we even had a little photo shoot at the school. I think you saw the tail end of it, but we've just been trying to promote it as much as we can inside and outside the community and it's come a long way. So happy to see what it

031turns out like this Saturday. [Music] United is first. Hello. You want to work? So, I'm gonna have Suani share a little bit. This is something I think we just have again so much to celebrate at Sycamore High Schools. Suani did I believe a passion project alongside your cousin who's probably in six. you guys were able to come together for technology projects um that made its way to the United Nations. And so I think that's the kind of work that you maybe do behind closed doors working long hours to really bring your passion to life. But we want to just spend some time to honor you and acknowledge the work that you put in to earn such recognition. Would you like to share more? Uh yeah. So um just to start, I know that in our

032culture we have sports really ingrained in everything we do. I mean just from time where we're little kids you're playing ball in the park with your family or getting to organize sports with everyone else but if you think about people in India especially people affected by disabilities there's just so many vast resources for those type of people and they don't get to experience those types of benefits we have social benefits cognitive benefits and obviously the physical benefits of playing a sport and especially for these type of people which don't have the resources in their schools and in their communities to experience sports they just don't get that type of um opportunity. ities. So my cousin and I we were thinking about how we can approach this problem in a unique and also safe way. And

033so we turned to if you might know the Nintendo Wii which is like an old game we used to play and the Nintendo Wii Sports game. So we started implementing that program into schools in India. So especially with kids with intellectual disabilities, they usually have a school in which they go every day and they have physical therapy and also just education there. So we implemented it at a school called JVAL in India which is the oldest school for intellectual disabilities and we started that program and we started to do a few correlational studies just to see if it was actually having an impact and we found that there was cognitive um cognitive motor and just overall well-being increase and benefits for that program and so we started to expand right now we're in about six

034schools in India so impacting about 750 children who are using our program and through those correlational studies we gathered that data and we were invited to speak at the UN about its impact. And so that was a really incredible one once in a lifetime experience where we just got to share what we've been doing on a global stage and get some really good feedback with professionals. So yeah, that was really exciting. And our work is definitely not done. We're just getting started. So this coming June, we're holding a training for 15 more schools in India and we're going to see how we can grow from there. So that's what we've been doing. Here's your chance to ask if anyone has an old Wii. Yes, has old console in any condition. We would love to accept

035it. I can share any information with you. We have email, we have Instagram, and also we are accepting monetary donations because it's not just the Wii console. These schools don't even have like the TV or any kind of online portal to use the Wii. So that's why we're funding fundraising for that too to implement those TVs. So if anyone is interested or willing to donate, please reach out to me. Really excited. Yeah, that's what I congratulations. Thank you so much. Mom, Dad, you guys want to just wave so we can all Okay, we only have I think 11 more awards here for the high schools to think about. Okay, last but not least, Mr. High, you want to work your way over here? Um, we have an outstanding we have many, many outstanding teachers. Mr.

036Hay is in his first year with us at Sycamore High School and is just making an impact right out of the gate. um he's leading our computer science program and he's been able to spearhead a program that has allowed our students to be recognized for the congressional app award. Is that right? That's correct. Okay. Please share more and talk about So the Congressional App Challenge started 13 14 years ago from Congress as a way to encourage young people to consider the field of STEM. Most all congressional districts participate. This year, Trey and Arman were selected to represent Ohio District 1. So, Congressman Lansman had a committee, looked at more than 40 different submissions, and they this year are representing our district. Can you guys explain what you developed? So, we developed an app for special

037education learning to be put into classrooms because we feel like there's a better solution for special education kids to learn. So, ours is for the alphabet. So there's A through Z on a board and these special education students on their iPads or computers or phones can click on a letter and it gives them a symbol like an apple and A is for Apple. So these students can also help correlate with these letters and a picture also shows up correlating with that image. So if you click on A, it says A is for apple. Then a picture of an apple will also show up. And pretty much the code is the same for all the letters except for I. We have a unique code for I where when you click on I it says I is

038for invisible and then the background goes invisible and the eye disappears also. Nice. So as part of the submission process this was something to replicate what these classes be doing later this month for their AP class where they have to submit a digital portfolio. Uh there's a panel that selects and I think what Trey and Arman did especially well was communicate how this solved the need need connected with a panel of judges and were selected from amongst many very good submissions. Good job guys. And then another set of students um outside of the classroom got together to compete in this year's tech Olympics showcase event. And I invited a subset of them, Rohan, Eli, and Ratchet to explain what they have done this year. Okay. So, as Mr. H said, we uh represented our group

039at the Tech Olympics. Tech Tempo Tech Olympics is the largest studentrun uh tech conference in the nation. It's ran at PNG headquarters down in Cincinnati. And we went and showed off our idea. So our idea was Scholar Seek AI. It's an AI chatbot that helps students find relevant scholarships. As a rising junior or sorry, as a rising senior at Sycamore High School, I've been searching for scholarship opportunities that apply to me, looking through long PDF pages and ending up finding scholarships that either passed their deadline or didn't have full information. So, we knew there's definitely a better way to find these scholarships. So, what we worked on is an application that we called Scholar Seek AI. Essentially, the way it works, it's a way to automate the scholarship search and completion process with AI. So,

040essentially, if you're a student who's interested in sports, like hockey for example, our application allows you to upload information about yourself. For example, you're interested in hockey and it'll recommend the most relevant local scholarships to you. And some of the benefits of a tool like this as comp as opposed to something like chacht is that this is updating 247 whereas chacht often supplies outdated information. And also we have a built-in email update feature. So if you have two scholarship deadlines due in an upcoming weekend, our application will automatically email you in a few days checking in and seeing how much progress you've made so that students can just stay on top of their work because we all know that with honors classes, sports, homework, things like that, it can get a little bit hard to

041keep track of everything. So, we just wanted to find a way to use AI and kind of automate that process to help out. Mentioned getting a couple cars for the businesses. Eli actually presented this when the Montgomery Leadership Academy came and visited the school a month ago on a Thursday and similar type of interest. And so some of these students who worked on this project are continuing now to explore what kind of an AI solution we might be able to do for a local business. Good things lead to others. Thank you. Great work. Thank you. So much success, so many just incredible talent in this district. Thank you so much for everyone who came and presented to us today. That was amazing. Shift. Can we move D above C? Sure. We're gonna we're gonna go

042Okay. Sure. Absolutely. All right. We're going to do a little bit of a change around on our timing. Just a little shift. Yep. Um, we're going to shift here and we are going to introduce um our new Edwin H. Green intermediate assistant principal, Mrs. Jordan Lamping. And welcome to Sycamore. Good to see you again. Nice to see you. I'm [Music] nice to meet you. So, while Mrs. glamping is shaking hands. Um she is coming to us from Clinton Massie um elementary school. She's currently an assistant principal there. Very focused on student relationships, building good relationships. Um had responsibilities for MTSS, PBIS, um state testing coordinator, which is always uh one of the most important jobs of an assistant principal, taking uh control of that. Um doing some data analysis so that they could build um

043good outcomes for students. So, um I remember um I only got to see Mrs. Lamping interview at the end because Mr. Cole was really leading that charge um along with some of our district leaders. And I remember the one thing that struck me when u Mrs. Lamping walked in was um just the confidence and you could tell she could instantly build connections with people in the room. And u Mr. Cole after I shared that with him, my perspective, he's like that's exactly what she did with the students. Um, and he was so impressed because one of the things that we've embedded in our interview processes is we want our students to meet candidates. Um, and when that happens, you can truly see is there a connection between the students and the staff member or not?

044And our students raved about Mrs. Lamping once she uh left the interview process. You didn't know that, did you? We shared that with you. So, Mr. Cole, any other words? Yeah, Mrs. Lamping um through all three rounds um just absolutely shined above the rest. And uh the students, one of the comments they had is that uh their job was to give her a tour of the building, right? See our beautiful facility. And then they had some questions they asked her that were more similar to a regular interview. And for them, the most important part was the tour of the building because they said that instantly she was trying to build a connection. She was asking them about their favorite music, their hobbies, and so that um they instantly felt that this was somebody that uh

045they felt they could connect with. And again, for us, we're in the in the people business. And she's coming into Sycamore at a great time. when you see kids who can build Titanics to AI. Yeah. So, we're just we're just excited to have Miss Lightning. Well, thank you all very very much. I am truly very excited. Could not be more honored to have the opportunity to join the Green School. Like Mr. Cole said, obviously they're doing amazing things and I think that goes, you know, with everything that we got to witness tonight. your students are doing amazing things. And don't get me wrong, I love getting to meet the grown-ups, but the kids were truly unbelievable. And that is something I I told Mr. Full as soon as I left there is, you know, I

046could not be more honored or more excited to have this opportunity. And just to even play a small part, you know, in their fifth and sixth grade year is something that I would never take for granted. So, I'm very excited. Thank you. Okay. We also have an introduction. Um, go ahead. No, don't do No, we're not doing any others. Got it. Never mind. Okay. We're going to go to our update on kindergarten enrollment and planning for 2025 2026 school year, please. Okay. Well, thank you. Um, we just as a bit of a background for anybody that might be here or is watching that hasn't kind of tracked through the conversation of kindergarten and sycamore. Um, if you flash back to last year, um, we started the initial conversations about what do we do with halfday

047kindergarten? And when I say that halfday kindergarten is required by the state, but each year our enrollment continues to decrease within that program. Um and our full day program continues to increase but our full day program is tuition based um and so that also puts some limitations and some um concerns that we have there. So, um, I came to the board back in some time, um, I want to say maybe it was January and said, "I need to get to the board on April 8th because we need to get, um, a decision made by the 8th of April in regards to what are we going to do in regards to our halfday kindergarten and where those sections going to be located this year?" Because again, um, to kind of recap where we're at last year

048is that we didn't necessarily have enough kindergarteners in the half-day program to have two full sections, one full employee at each building, but then how are we going to manage um the fluctuation within that program? And so the board last year very clearly said, we want to get ahead of this for next year. So, please bring data back to us as early as possible. Kindergarten enrollment opened in January. um it doesn't actually close but the height of all the enrollments kind of dies down and now April 1st we started full enrollment for the 2526 school year with the rest of the grades and so uh Mr. Long is going to put up a document that I put together here. Um my goal today and the reason that we're bringing forward today and why I really

049need to get some direction is because we want to get ahead um of our registrations for our families so that they can attend the open houses um coming up in May. If you remember last year, we were falling behind on that and that really got us into a sticky point because um we were have to recommunicate with families and let them know that their placement had changed in regards to the building that they'd be going to. And so our goal was communication, communication, communication with our families up front. And as I mentioned at my previous presentation to you, one of the things that we did do different this year that I feel like has helped us out tremendously is we were able to put a mechanism in the registration this year that helped indicate whether

050or not the family was choosing half-day program. If you remember back to last year, we didn't have that ability. And so then we had to reservey the parents after they registered to figure out what their desire was. So, I give you that context and overview because it helps kind of lay the groundwork for why we got to where we are this year. Um, couple things. So, our registration through April 8th today, it shows kind of the breakdown in our total registered kindergarteners. I put both full day on here and half day, and you'll see registered and pending. What's important to note here is that we consider the pending actually enrolled. What that basically means is that within final forms there are two documents that are submitted. We have a lot of folks that will get

051in final for start final forms start clicking around for whatever reason and it never actually comes to being an actual registration. So we've determined that those pending with two forms gives a pretty sure indication that they're going to move into a registered student. So you can see that we have 106 total students at Blue Ash, 95 at Maple, 78 at Montgomery, and 85 at SIMS. Um these numbers um do somewhat match our enrollment study. Um when I say match, they're not dead on, but the trends of enrollment match. So we might be off here or there, but remember, we're still going to be registering from today through the beginning of the school year. I can look at historical data and I can tell you that we don't have significant swings in registrations. Um, but at

052the same rate, we also I'm not going to stand here and tell you that I can predict the total number of kids that are going to walk in the door on the first day of school. So that's the hard thing about kindergarten. Every other grade very predictable. Um, so anyways, I want to though focus here on half day. What you're seeing here is that we currently have 23 students registered at Blue Ash, nine at Maple, 13 at Montgomery, and 12 at SIMS. Now, as a reminder, when we look at halfday, we look at them at half day sections. I know that sounds pretty basic, but when you're talking about a full-time equivalent teacher, you're breaking that into two different sections. So, a 0.5 and a.5. So, if you were to look at that and say,

053how might we allocate half day sections here? you would notice that, well, I can't really allocate a half day section of Maple if there's only nine kids. One of the things that we determined last year as a board is we committed to saying there needed to be 15 students in that class to be a viable option to move that forward. Um, that was what we believed would be fiscally responsible at that moment. And last year, that was really only Maple that we were really kind of um wrestling with. How do we do this? What are we going to do? and we did end up getting up to 18 in that class, but the numbers were higher last year at this point. Um, and so anyways, I bring that forward because one, when we look at

054these numbers and even if we project that we would have growth, we still get into the same position that we had last year of what do we do, right? How do we allocate staffing? How do we allocate our sections to meet the needs of our students or our families who still desire half day kindergarten? Um, and so just putting those numbers out there. The second chart here, um, is where I'm kind of getting into my recommendations. So I want to go to the other side of this chart here to really talk about the challenges and just to lay those out. Um, obviously there's budget constraints, right? Um, one of the things that we always want to do is we want to be fiscally responsible when we look at our staffing. We want to be as

055efficient as we possibly can, but also maintain our programs and meet the needs of all of our families. Um, and as you can imagine, um, it's much easier to hire a full-time teacher than a part-time teacher. And so that's always a challenge when we talk about adding a half-time section to any specific school. Um, unless we can leverage that teacher in another capacity on the second half of their day. Um, space and staffing limitations. Um if you look up at Blue Ash um Blue Ash and in enrollment study it predicted this that is our even Steven building meaning we are at capacity at that building and there is no fluctuation in the up and the down whereas if you look at Sims McGomery Maple they all have declining enrollment um and so we are seeing

056that to be true um we are at capacity at Blue Ash and have no rooms left to use. So just keep that in the back of your head for the moment and as I go through my recommendation that will kind of anchor in a little bit more. Um when I talk about staffing limitations um the limitations I'm talking about staffing is our ability to leverage the staff. Meaning um okay it might make sense to offer a half day kindergarten at Maple and a half day kindergarten at McGomery and that teacher just travels. that doesn't actually work with our master schedules that we have for our elementary and our master schedules are built in the context of um intervention time things like that. So, it's a very tight schedule. We've aligned them across the four buildings

057for that. Plus, through our collective bargaining agreement, we also have to be concerned about teacher travel time as well. And so, that all goes into that component to being able to share or not being able to share a teacher. Um, and then the last one is the enrollment disparities. And that just goes back to if you look at half day and looking at those numbers and where the enrollment is um there's just inconsistency in regards to those students that are engaging um in a half day program. The other thing that I will bring up too because I think it's um really important to to um articulate out loud to the community, but I know the board knows this, but just to say it again, there continues to be disparities that exist within our half-day program

058and in our kindergarten program in general. So, our full day kindergarten program is tuitionbased. Um there are opportunities for scholarships for students that qualify for free and reduced lunch. Um the half-day program is our standard program offered by the district free of charge. There is a population of students that don't qualify for scholarship but need to be in that full-day program that then land in the half-day program. And so we struggle with that each year, which is why at the financial retreat on Saturday, there will be a topic of conversation around the funding of the full day program as a district. Um, and again that's that's a cost. So that's why we want to really tackle that at the retreat to talk through programmatic um cost and associated but that does that's not really what

059I'm tackling today in this um but it is a nugget that I think we all just need to be very aware of. So what's my recommendation um right now looking at these numbers and more specifically looking at the building capacity um my recommendation is that we house our halfday program at two buildings Maple and Sims Elementary. So, what that would mean is that our M our Montgomery families would be going to the half-day program at Sims and our Blue Ash families would be going to our half-day program at Maple. So, why? Um because if you look up here and you're going to look at the numbers, you're going to say, Brad, that doesn't make much sense. If we've got 23 kindergarters registered for half day kindergarten at Blue Ash, that's one full section, and you

060only have nine at Maple. Why would you bust the majority of the kids over to Maple? I hear you. The problem is we're out of space over at Blue Ash and I have space at Maple. What that allows me to do by doing that shift and moving those students over, it frees up space um so we can continue to expand our intervention program at Blue Ash, which we have a halftime increase in intervention and potentially special education as well. Um and so that that is a hard thing to wrestle with. However, what I believe that we need to do as a district and we need to have keep having conversations is really think about what makes sense long term for half day kindergarten. I personally believe that consolidating them to two sites because SIMS is

061so far out that that's what makes most sense because when you consolidate it to two sites, it gives us the greater flexibility to meet the needs of the students through any type of support. um it allows us flexibility in regards to busing and most importantly it also allows us the flexibility in regards to staffing as well. So um that would be my recommendation. The other recommendation that I have up here too is not related to half day kindergarten. It's related to full day kindergarten. Um we have currently um the way it works is that we adjust our staffing numbers and our sections based on what we believe to be true. So registration starts to come in and then we look at the total numbers and then we start saying okay this is the number of

062sections we're going to allocate to each building. We are now nearing capacity for our full day program. Um we still have I I I would have to look at the numbers but I want to say we have like eight or nine total spots across all of them. Um now we there are grade levels that we typically go over what we consider our target. So, we have a target in K1 of 22 and a target in 2nd through 4th of 25. That's not official class sizes or anything like that. It's just a target that we try to meet for each of our environments. Many of our grade levels, we sometimes go over that target and we're comfortable with that because of the supports within that building or that grade level. Full day kindergarten, we try to

063maintain that target because we have tuition paying students, if that makes sense. Um, and so I tell you that because McGomery Elementary, one of my recommendations is that by the pure numbers of enrollment, we should go down from four sections of full day to three sections. However, one of the concerns or risks that I have is that if we continue to need capacity in full day program and we have people that are willing, families that are willing to pay tuition, I would like to keep that at four sections, which is what they are last year. The risk associated with that is that the numbers don't come through and then the overall class sizes at McGomery and full day are going to be less. However, I do believe by doing that we would give parents the

064option of Sims, Maple, and Blue Ash that if they reach capacity in their full day because remember I don't have another room to add another full day section. What I could do is give them the option of going to Montgomery Elementary um to that full day program if that's something that they desired. Um, so all in all, if I were to um kind of summarize this for you, I know I know I talked a lot. I apologize. I did provide you an executive summary um over the weekend if you've been able to look at that or not. Um, but it goes into way more depth about this. My recommendations are that we um move our Blue Ash halfday to Maple, our Montgomery half-day up to Sims, and we go ahead with a fourth section of

065full day, understanding the risks of that, but allowing the potential capacity for more families that might choose that full day program. A lot. And we'll take that information. We will crystallize it into a communication so that families are aware because not everybody I know not everybody watches board meetings and not everybody comes to board meetings but it's important enough that they do need to be aware of some of the decisions that are considered so that we can hear from them. But um I I think Mr. level has worked through a logical process of how do we best utilize our staff and I know no one will enjoy being moved for a year but when you look at those numbers of 57 for half day it just doesn't make sense to have and we don't have

066the space um we are on a downward trend um I think space will be less of an issue in the future years but um you know it's just something we have to keep an eye on but this is the best way that we can utilize our staff and utilize our facilities to best serve the needs of all of our students. So what I'm hearing is that this isn't this is a not necessarily a permanent structure at this point and I know we're going to talk about full day kindergarten at the financial retreat but I think right potentially as if numbers do go down then that this may change but at this time because of the staffing challenges the space challenges at Blue Ash um this is what you're proposing. Yes. It seems very logical to

067me what you're saying. I I do know that like last year we had multiple family members show up and talk with us obviously about wanting their children to be able to go to the school where they live for kindergarten so that they could be ready to go into the first grade and that's a very important um transition for them and understandable. So that's pro probably going to happen again I would think. Right. I think you're right. What I heard last year as well from our families was that um they just want to know. And I think last year, I will admit that it was late and the communication was not great. And so what we tried to do is get ahead of this this year. Um so those families know what their options are so

068that if they want to choose a different option, they can do that. Um whether that's they want to invest in full day or they want to do a private kindergarten. And so you're absolutely right in the fact that I'm not I can't stand here and definitively say next year it's going to be at Maple and Sims. Again, until we truly get a handle on what we desire out of our kindergarten program moving forward and how legislative requirements are wrapped around this, we're just going to continue to be in somewhat of a flux as we start to look each year about how those enrollment numbers are coming in. And kindergarten's a hard group to find out there in the wilderness to figure out what they desire to do, you know. And one more follow-up question. If

069so, let's say if we were just foreshadowing, if we were to go to full day like some school districts have done, do we still offer a half day? Yeah, by law we still have to offer a half day option. How that looks can be different. Um but there are many districts out there that again what you end up doing is once full day kindergarten's free what we see in the research that we've done is this shrinks significantly even more and then you do get to the position where the districts mainly will say half day kindergarten is at this building. So then in that case if that did happen then people would be traveling to school or children would go to schools that were not their homes correct for one year. Correct. So Mr. level. Thank

070you number one for the for the work that you've done and um for getting out early enough to inform parents of um their child's school for next year. Um my question is um when you for instance are moving kindergarten kindergarteners who would attend Blue Ash who are now going to attend Maple Elementary. Are we providing that transportation? Yep. So, we would absolutely provide the transportation for the half-day program. Um, in regards to our full day program at Montgomery, if we were to have that as an overflow and parents were choosing that section, that is not something we would historically provide transportation to. We would let the parents know that if they desire full day, it's full at their building. They can choose half day and we would transport. But if they chose the full day

071program at McGomery, they would have to transport their child to that unless there was a desire um for us to transport um that is just a challenge when you're running buses all over the district to pick up a child up from Sims or Blue Ash and bringing them to a centralized location. That's part of the reason as well logistically that we chose Maple and Sims because the transportation routes are somewhat grouped in those areas. And a quick question for you about the enrollment. Are you going to try to keep the Sims kids in one section and the um that's my other question. Are parents going to get anxious um about possibly obviously you have to split that blue ash group up. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, there was a request by our building administrators, and I'll

072be very transparent. I I didn't, um, we haven't had a lot of deep conversations about this, but there was a request by our building administrators that the kids be mixed within the building and not have one building in one room. Um, and so, um, but again, we haven't had deep conversations. I just know that that was a topic that they had brought up to want to discuss about this. Thank you. Y, but you don't make that decision. The the building administrators make that decision. So, I think that we would create a collective standard across both Sims and Maple about how we're approaching that. Um, I I I would land more on what do we philosophically believe there and then say this is what we're doing rather than letting a building make that decision. You know,

073obviously when if you look at right now to be true, Blue Ash and Maple, I mean there if we kept to our target, we would have one kid going into the other section. So it makes sense now that you would just divide them up. Yeah. So when do you need Can you remind us and maybe you said this at the beginning? When do when what's the timing on this? What decision? What do you need from us timing wise and decision- wise? All I really needed from you. I do not need a decision from you. No, this is something that we can manage. I just wanted to come to you and if I was hearing deep hesitation, I think we would have to push back some of our work, but to be very honest with you,

074um, we are ready for the next step from a community communication standpoint. Um, I will also let you know that we have held out on elementary staffing until this point because it's a domino effect, right? So, I've got to know the kindergarten to understand where teachers are moving to then start looking at who's moving where. And so I have a tentative meeting with our elementary principles to secure staffing so we can start posting positions if we need them next week. We don't want to lose off out on top candidates. So it it is um as you all know it is such a a ball. everything's so interconnected and so decisions like this are just so but if I'm not hearing concerns um and we will if the community gives us feedback absolutely we'll listen um

075it just it just gets tough I think also to remind the kindergarten parents out there we had this discussion last year also about the same thing so that they were had this possibly coming their way a year ago yep so I just want to remind everybody that it has been out there for a And as a reminder, we will be changing the uh kindergarten date too. That's out there. Yes. Yes. And that that's right. Eligible eligible eligibility timeline. Yep. Y yes. Because we know that parents are making these decisions when their children are born sometimes four or five years in advance on when their children will go to kindergarten. So we are letting we have let everyone know over two years now. Yes. Um that in advance. Okay. Well, thank you for being so thorough

076in explaining all the details because this is this is very helpful for our community and for the board to be able to understand this and let's just hope there's not a mass enrollment of into one building. We're I can only predict what I can predict, but I think we feel good about it. Okay, perfect. All right, so our next item on the agenda is public participation. Do we I want to just um remind everyone here if there's anyone here for public participation that we have if you are speaking today on an agenda item then you would wait until that time of the agenda and then speak. If you're here speak on a non-aggenda item then you would speak now. That makes sense. Wish to speak on two. How you want to handle it? Well, actually

077you would you would wait until you would wait. So you would you if you want to speak during the non-aggend during this part, I would I would just like for you to wait until everyone has had a chance to speak. So your second time speaking would come at the end. Okay. All right. So um All right. So, do we have any um do we have any non-aggenda item public participation this evening? I do. I've only um been contacted by one person for an agenda item and it's related to the second read of the board policy. Um all others have stated non-aggenda items. So, Okay, I can go ahead and start and I'm just going to I'm going to read this. I've been reading we read this uh before public participation and I'm going to read

078it again. Um this is uh um our public participation. These are our guidelines. Okay. So, good evening. Before we welcome our first speaking speaker this evening, I would like to take a moment to review the guidelines for public participation. Public participation is an important part of our meetings and we value the input of our community. To ensure efficient and effective meeting, we have allocated a maximum of 30 minutes for public participation. Individuals addressing the board must be stakeholders of the district, meaning they reside in the district or have a connection to it as defined in our policy. Each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak. Please state your name, your address, and any relevant group affiliation before beginning. If multiple individuals wish to speak, no one may speak a second time until all

079who desire to do so have had an opportunity. All comments should be directed to me as a presiding officer. Individual board members will not be addressed directly. Board members are not expected to respond directly to p public comments during this portion of the meeting. We ask that all speakers maintain decorum and remain respectful. Personal attacks, profanity or disruptive behavior will not be prohibited. The board reserves the right to interrupt or end comments that are repetitive, obscene, threatening or personally directed at individuals. Presiding officer reserves the right to enforce to quorum and if necessary take appropriate action to maintain order. Additionally, please note that the board does not hear compliments or complaints about Sycamore School District employees during public comment. We will we welcome feedback through email or website or direct conversations. We appreciate your cooperation

080in following these guidelines and your commitment to constructive dialogue. Public comment is a valuable part of our process and while we may not respond immediately, please know that we are listening and we take your input seriously. Thank you and we will now begin public comment and Mr. Harris will take will be the timer. So the first person um that I have on the list and it was through an email is Alana or Elena. Elana uh Nadal Nadal Nadell, sorry. My name is Elana Gildenell. I live at 9532 Cooper Lane. I'm a Sycamore alumni and in the next two months, my husband and I must decide where our son will attend 7th grade. While education is important, the safety of our students, staff, and community is paramount, and I have directly witnessed areas that can be

081improved. I come to you not just as a potential parent, but an expert in the field of safety and security. I'm a violent intruder instructor and tourniquet instructor, the author of an early childhood safety book and curriculum, and an emergency preparedness consultant. The following are several examples I have witnessed and are not critiques to cast judgment, rather opportunities to enact positive change. Most events that take place on school property do not have any security presence and no training or instruction is provided for those staffing doors and concessions. My younger child participates in Sycamore youth cheerleading. I have witnessed parents from Sycamore and the visitors carrying guns into games. While youth leagues are not part of the district, should an incident occur, the public would perceive the two as the same. I also attended a basketball

082game at the junior high this year. The entire school was open, hallways and doors to classrooms included. This means someone wanting to do harm would simply need to pay the entry fee and could set a device that could detonate during school hours. For the second year in a row that I attended the annual pancake day at the high school, it had multiple doors open with no security present. When I asked about this last year, I was told the security form was missed. This year's event again did not have security. The presence of an officer not only deters criminals, but ensures there is an on-site first responder. Not all incidents are violent. There's always the potential for disagreements or parent-to-pent confrontations. Switching to preparedness, I've repeatedly inquired about the procedures in place regarding drills and received

083the response of, "We do drills." When asking current Sycamore Elementary students about their drills, they responded, "We hide in a corner in case someone bad comes into our school." This outdated and insufficient practice does not adhere to state requirements, nor does it empower the staff and students to make the best decisions for themselves with exiting immediately being the top priority. Additionally, these drills should be monitored by law enforcement, allowing timely feedback for improvement. The presence of law enforcement is also an opportunity for students and staff to understand everyone's role in the event of an emergency. Sycamore promotes the four Bs. Be responsible, be respectful, be safe, and be a problem solver. We must continue 30 seconds. We must continually improve and model these practices. In the first 90 days of this calendar year, there were

08482 mass shootings in the United States. The Sycamore School District has an opportunity to improve safety, security, and emergency preparedness to become more proactive instead of assist statistic. I again offer to add continue to offer my assistance to the school district in education grant procurement and other emergency preparedness. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, the next person I have on the list is Kelly Bruns. Hello, Kelly Bruns. I live at 8965 Old Legend Court and I'm just going to start out with this. Um, there are multiple laws and regulations in place to promote ethical behavior. For example, in healthcare, my area of expertise, the Stark law, aims to prevent conflicts of interest and overutilization of services. For example, a physician cannot refer their patients to a diagnostic imaging center that they own. Um the

085anti statute also proh prohibits offering anything of value to influence referrals or business involving federal health care programs Medicare Medicaid. Additionally, at my organization, we are required to complete and submit annual disclosures listing all potential conflicts of interest for legal review and we must uh recuse ourselves accordingly or face consequences. Similarly, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act prohibits giving gifts to foreign officials to gain business advantage. Together, these types of laws support transparency, prevent corruption, and help ensure decisions are made in the public's best interest. So, why am I bringing this up? I have serious ethical concerns about Sycamore School Board, and I'm wondering what happened to our ethical guard rails. Upon review of camp campaign contributions, which we discussed at the last meeting, I was flabbergasted to discover that the teacher in question contributed nearly

086onethird of the total campaign donations to one of the board members. After hearing that person's defense of that teacher's indefensible behavior at a previous meeting, I do not have confidence that that board member can provide an unbiased viewpoint or impartially assess situations invol involving this single largest campaign donor. And um another board member has also contributed to a sitting board member also contributed to another a new board member's campaign. Not illegal. However, how does that affect decision-making? Well, both of those board members united and offered no comment at the last meeting when asked if they would vote to terminate the teacher in question, if that's any indicator. Yet of another concern, for the first time since the 1990s, personnel suspensions and employee disciplinary actions were omitted from meeting minutes. The optics play out as cover

087up to protect a friend of board and mitigate public response. The ethical standards of this board are muddy. My trust has been breached. As there appears to be something rotten in the state of Denmark. You, the board, have successfully garnered my attention and inspired a call to action from our community. We are watching. I have three minutes. I had to pick one ethical issue to discuss and that's what I chose. But it is not the end of my concern. Thank you. Thank you. Next I have Dr. Dan Pasha. Good evening. My name is Dr. Dishan Pasha. I'm a resident of Luesh and proud parent of one Sycamore graduate and one current junior at high school. I have had the privilege of living in this district over a decade. Before I share my comments, I want

088to take a moment to thank each and every one of you here tonight for your continued support of public education. This includes our dedicated teachers, staff, bus drivers, and all the families who are part of the Sycamore School District. Your commitment is truly appreciated those who are here or those who are online. I want to address some recent developments within our district that have left many in the community feeling shattered, heartbroken and uncertain. There's a growing sense of distrust in the air and understandably so. In addition, there is the that uncertaintity that's seen from the news regarding potential federal budget cuts and state funding issues which may have an impact on the funding of our school districts and activities that support our students to meet the district goals and the mission. In light of these

089developments, I respectfully ask the board to take proactive steps to engage with the community. Specifically, I request that you consider holding a town hall meeting to openly discuss what these budget changes may mean for public education here in Sikamore, how they could affect our students, families, staff, and administrators. This would be an opportunity for the board to share what actions are being taken to mitigate any risk or if necessary explain what may or may not be possible moving forward. Such an event would provide the community with clarity and the opportunity to understand the gaps and support the district need to fulfill its mission, vision, and values. Thank you for your time and consideration and I look forward to your responses. Great. Thank you. Next I have uh D Jackson. Uh my name is D. Jackson

090and I'm from Montgomery. Um I'm a proud parent of a Sycamore grad and I'm also the former president of the Sycamore Athletic Boosters and uh basically a longtime resident of this community. I'm here tonight because I'm concerned. I'm uh concerned about what I've learned over the past month regarding the actions or more accurately the inaction of the school board. Um I read in the Cincinnati Anquire early in March um about a troubling incident involving our high school teacher. Um that person was also serving as the leader of the teachers union. Behavior described was not just inappropriate, it was reprehensible. But what's even more disturbing is how the board responded or rather how you did not respond. Two words kept echoing in my mind. Leadership and accountability. And I have to ask where is the leadership

091and where is the accountability? Just last week, seven former school board members, people who sat in those seats right there, took the unusual step of writing you a letter. They reminded you of your responsibilities as community leaders and they identified four specific board policies that were viol violated by this teacher. So, I wanted to ask you directly, stand in front of you tonight, are you aware of these policies? And if so, why hasn't that teacher been held accountable to that high integrity level? More importantly, I'm concerned about what this said about the leadership on this board. Mrs. Bidder, last week you told the media the board never voted on whether to terminate Miss Grace. Given what had happened at that September 18th meeting, clearly a set of behaviors that have been widely condemned by our

092community, why as the president of the board did you not call for a vote for termination? If a student, if a teacher, if an administrator had exhibited this behavior, would they have been given such a pass? Or would action have been swiftly and decisively taken? This isn't just about one person's actions. This is about the absence of leadership in a moment when it was needed most. What message are we sending our kids, our students, our teachers, and our overall community? Leadership means making hard decisions even when no one is watching. Means doing the right thing even when it's not easy and even when it's not popular. Right now, this board is falling short. You elected to serve the community, to uphold its values, to lead with integrity. And if you choose not to do that,

093then you are not just undermining the board's credibility. You're doing a disservice to everyone in the Sycamore community. That's your time. We deserve better, and we are asking for better starting now. Thank you. Next I have Ken Richtor. Can I just reverse that? I want you want Yes. Because I have Mr. Cmerford next. So you want him to go before you? Yes. Brad Cmerford. I'm live at 8460 Calette Way. When I was elected to the school board in 2019, I reached out to Jean Stalbach for her wisdom and advice. Gan served on the Sycamore Board of Education for 20 years from 1998 to 2017. I still remember her words of wisdom. She shared the two most important things for a school board member to have were integrity and common sense. In fact, these two things

094are required to handle almost every situation that the board faces. And sadly, it seems that both have been lacking have you as you have been handling the incident involving Mrs. Grace. From where I sit, the strategy from this board of education appears to be three-fold. Number one, sweep it under the rug. Number two, hide behind and/or blame the superintendent. And number three, weather the storm. All three are failed strategies. All three are indications of board mismanagement. We are currently somewhere between number two and number three where you seem to be hiding behind andor blaming our superintendent and hoping to weather the storm. I'd like to take a moment to review each of these strategies. Number one, sweep it under the rug. This is the first time I can remember going back to the 1990s that

095a staff suspension was not included in the personnel consent agenda and meeting minutes. This has always been the practice of Sycamore. Why did it change for this one case? Why is it that the community, this is why the community is so upset about lack of transparency? We should not have to find this information for the first time in the Sunday inquirer. It seems like you were intentionally hiding something and that does not sit well. Strategy two, hide behind and or blame the superintendent. Having served on the board, I have the benefit that most in this community do not have. I know how the process works in this type of situation. The superintendent will reach out to the board members individually to discuss the situation and conduct a straw poll. Apparently, he learned what we all

096learned on April 1st. Only two board members supported termination. Please stop hiding behind and blaming the superintendent. You are all leaders of this district. Blaming the superintendent is disingenuous. Strategy three, weather the storm. I'm not sure you fully realize how upset many in the community are. You heard some voices on April 1st. You can see people here tonight. The community feels strongly about anti-bullying and anti-racism policies being upheld. Making exceptions for friends is wrong. You have used the word zero tolerance, but your actions are speaking louder than your words. You still have the power to resolve this as a board. Do you have the will to solve this or are you hoping to weather the storm? In closing, please take Mrs. Stalach's sage advice to heart. Please work together to solve this. Please use integrity

097and common sense. The longer this goes on, the worse it gets for all involved. Director much 1044 Stableham Drive. I can't add much more what Brad has said. I would propose a solution. I think that's what we need. And I think three of you or the four of you and the fifth of you could make that so much easier in this whole district. You know what happened. You saw what happened. We all know what happened. It's an embarrassment. I think if you gathered your thoughts, there's obviously a 32 a break here, but go to this teacher and propose a retirement or some type to not allow her to fester or for this issue to continue. To me, it's a solution. I think it's an embarrassment. These wonderful people to our district, but you must take

098some action and not bury it. That's and that's to me a solution that works. It's obviously a relationship that you have with this individual. I think it's better for her and for this great community. Thank you very much. That's the last person that I have for non-aggenda items. So, if anyone else reached out to me and I have missed it in my inbox, I apologize. And a lot and most all of those things were related to our agenda item. So, it's okay if you want to speak twice now. Yeah. And I have do that. That's Amy Shaman. Shaman. I'm on Acrewood Drive in Montgomery. And I appreciate the chance to address the agenda item in a moment. Um, so I want to also talk about the issue that has come to light in our district

099about who we say belongs, who we say is valued, and who we protect. Words matter. Our actions matter. Just like we don't accept bullying by our students, we must not accept it from the adults in our buildings and in our administrative spaces and here on the school board. I appreciate the work that began during the special meeting held last week and I urge you all to continue both as a board and as an administration to continue to take these situations seriously, to be transparent, to be clear. set a model for the difficult conversations, community growth, and celebration of cultures in our schools that need to take place by the students, by the staff, faculty, and administration and the board. Allow people to be who they are every day. My family, like many in Sycamore, made

100a move for our child. We researched the educational options throughout the regions that we wanted to move to so that our child would receive an excellent education and very importantly to us feel included would learn from others who were different than them and experience the benefits of being part of a community that truly embraces difference with actions and with words. This is what we were told that Sycamore values. And for those reasons, we choose we chose to purchase a home in this district. Even though that had its own challenges, you the elected board administrative leaders of this district now need to show us that you do value difference. Show us that you value those who do not look like you, those who do not celebrate the same holidays as you, those from other countries, communities,

101and cultures. And the list of course goes on. Not just once a year on the culture night at a particular building, not just when it's convenient and we have many students to celebrate, but every single day even and most especially when it's hard. Thank you, Logan. Do we have any I do not have anyone else who's reached out and no other um forms were filled out. Okay. Um next item is board business. Can I please get a motion and a second to adopt a resolution to approve certain actions to address community concerns? Second. Thank you Dr. James for your motion. Thank you Mr. Harris for your second. Would anyone like to say anything? I was just wondering in light of um recent I guess executive orders, should we perhaps consider adding something also about using

102universal design as a way to address some of our concerns. Very interesting. like universal design as in we can create a district that meets the needs of all people that we have all abilities, races, cultural backgrounds, national heritage. Is it possible that um well, you know, during our meeting last week um we u recommended um and we will we will adopt if we pass this um to um work on getting um more re reaffirmation of board's commitment to anti-discrimination and that would fall within that because Yeah. because that was going to be the superintendent was going to conduct a review and then he was going to look at our policies and recommendations to ensure the policy complies with the law but also to provide updates regarding that. Is it possible that it could fall within

103that? It can. Yes. or and or is it possible that it could be something that we continue to discuss in other areas of our I think we're going to have a long conversation. We are going to be having a long conversation about that. Yeah. So, is that possible that it could be covered under that? That does work. Thank you. Mr. Harris, do you have anything you would like to change? Add no anything. Dr. James. Okay. Not at this time, but I do think that this should be a fluid um constantly visiting resolution, adding, deleting, modifying. Uh it should be something that we are reviewing actively and constantly. Do you think that it would be helpful if we did that during other board business as many often as possible under every regular meeting so we could

104I mean there'll be times where maybe we've worked on something and it's not relevant but like we're doing with our board goals perhaps we could discuss and give updates and we could talk with um Mr. Lewis about these items. That sounds okay. I do have one suggestion if you'll indulge me. Um just I'll pass you this information. This is something that um the team and I have been using uh this year. I know you all have participated in a piece of it. Um we have been partnering with um a a community member actually who she calls herself a ret a recovering corporate uh person and she said that again today doing our training and um her work is focused on uh developing us as individual leaders but also us as team and so I had

105you know just mentioned this to Mrs. bitter um earlier this week that I think it's something that the board should consider adding to the plan. Um, and it really is about um transforming our leadership team and getting to know our own leadership styles better, but also how can we work better as a group because I think one of the things that we have heard um from our community is that we need to be less divided um as a as a board and as an administrative team. So um you can see some of the things that and this is straight from Katie, this is not mine. um the things that she's suggesting that we focus on and essentially she's utilizing what we're dealing with right now as a situation of um and and you'll see it

106on the pyramid that I handed you. Um a lot of people always want to start with results and try to work their way backward. And that's when we fail. You can't jump straight to results because you can't get results if you don't have the other layers in place um on this pyramid. And if you look at the base of the pyramid, the number one thing to be able to um be a high performing team is trust. And right now, we've heard from our community, the trust is fractured. Um whether it's in you or in me um or in our team or in our district. And that's something that I take seriously and sacred and I know you do as well. It it's not fun to hear that from people. And that's work that we have

107to do. We've spent a lot of time in our meetings talking about, you know, the external factors of things we have to address. We also have to address ourselves um and really work on ourselves and show the community that we're we're willing to admit that, hey, we hear you and trust is fractured. Okay, let's earn it back. Let's work on ourselves and figure that out. The second tier is conflict. Healthy conflict is good. Organized conflict is good. I would say when when people fear conflict, then we're not able to have honest conversations. Um, communication and commitment, uh, those are pretty self-explanatory. Um, accountability, and then we get to the results. So, um, I just share that with you as just something that again we've used internally. Um, I propose it to the board. I don't

108have a cost right now, so I'm not going to ask you to to absolutely stick it in. I think what I would ask you to do is consider it. let me get you some more information, uh, send it to you, and then let's make some decisions. Um, and I don't, you know, I don't know if it's imperative that you vote on this tonight versus, do we have all the right steps in here? And I think this would be a great additional step to add. Um, it just kind of came to me over the weekend while I was thinking through things and I have what I consider critical thought partners over the weekend that reach out. Sometimes I wish they wouldn't because you would like to have a weekend. But on on the same note, when

109you're going through a crisis, um I think there are good critical friends that reach out to you and give you ideas or spark ideas in your head that could be valuable. And I think uh allowing Katie to do this work with us. It's six sessions, one hour each. We could always combine some and do them on a Saturday. We could, you know, it's really up to the board of how you want to handle it. But I believe in Katie. She's done great work for us. Um, she's a community member. She has kids in our district and she cares deeply about seeing us be successful as a district and as leaders and, you know, I'll say repairing that fracture from our community. So, just something to consider. Um, you know, just an idea that I would,

110um, love for you to give some consideration to before we, uh, vote on this. We've we've, uh, participated in a session with Katie um previously and I appreciate you bringing this forward. I I don't think that we have to wait on voting on this before we add this. In other words, I propose that we will probably continue and should continue to add to this list and this may be one that we add to the list. So, I would propose that we vote on this proposal that we um items that we have now with the understanding that there will probably be additional things that we want to add at a later date, but I I appreciate you bringing this. Um it was very interesting and enjoyable uh the session that we did attend. Dr. Steager, do

111you how do you feel? I agree with Dr. James. I think right now we can definitely vote on this and I just obviously we just haven't had enough time to digest all of this. So Mr. Harris, yeah, this is fine. I agree. I think we should adopt vote on the resolution and then I agree with you, Mr. Lewis. I think that this is this is this was a great presentation that we wor it wasn't a presentation. We actually worked in this during a um um one of our retreats with all of the high school administrators and the board and it was an excellent it was a really excellent training and I completely agree with everything you just said just that being able to work on on this would be I think a really great benefit

112for our team. I think we're we are always trying to find ways to work well and handle really challenging situations together. And I think anything that we can do to improve on that is absolutely what we should be doing. So I think we'll do is we'll go ahead and um we'll have you call the role for this and then this can be something we add on to it. Um if it's needed, we can we can do that. So I I did get an email from Mr. Valent who is unable to be here tonight, but he did want me to go ahead and and read this statement. To the Sycamore community, unfortunately, I I am unable to be present at tonight's meeting. I am out of the country on a work trip, which was planned more

113than six months ago during what normally is not a board meeting week. I have had the opportunity to review the resolution before the board and although I am unable to vote due to my absence, I support the resolution and feel that it is a starting point to improve transparency and rebuild trust with the community. My personal opinion continues to be that this incident was a terminable offense. Short of that, these steps are a starting point to guide and improve future actions of this board. The the other thing that I might just suggest um because I know transparency has been a big piece of our conversations is Christian, I know we've got this resolution in front in front of everybody, but could you kind of scroll through so they can kind of see like what number

114one is? These were the items that we we had a special board meeting last week and we actually came up with these during the meeting last week and we have a link to that. You can watch that full meeting um as well if you would like to see it and we'll add this to board docs um as well so that the um approved resolution will be there for for everybody to see. But yeah, just keep scrolling through. I'm I'm sorry. I just wanted to make sure that Logan, can you please call the role? Dr. James, hi. Mr. Harris, hi. Dr. Seager, hi. Mrs. Bidder, hi. The next sub area of the agenda tonight is superintendent agenda. So our first item is a discussion of policy first read, Mr. and we'll do our best based on

115time to Yeah, we have a be brief as possible. We have a lot. Yeah. The the only thing really that needs to be said in regards to the first read on these policies is as a reminder to the board, you know, we um over spring break, the administrators were kind of in in meeting. There were so many of them that we felt like many of them were just legal shifts and changes that we couldn't customize. That's what's represented here. We do have multiple policies, five of them, that are going back to the next committee meeting for the committee to wrestle with that we felt needed some type of customization or a discussion with our district leader or district um committee. So, these are just all policies coming out of um the legislation um back in

116March um that we're bringing forward for first read. Do we Okay. So I just for the sake of of making sure that we are being transparent. We have a policy committee which means it is noticed and their meetings are minutes are taken in. We have two board members that are on that committee. Um we actually have three board committees and this is one of them. And so you have reviewed all of the policies as board members to give input and now you're bringing these to us. So, just to clarify, these policies right here did not go to the policy committee. These were reviewed internally by an administrative team that included a principal. Uh, Miss Logan was there, I was there, um, we had a few others. We went through all of the policies that came

117to us, which was a lot of them, and we filtered out the ones that were just um, clerical in nature, meaning there weren't any massive changes or needing a customization. We took out five or six that we're taking to the district policy committee, okay, for review before we bring those the first read. These policies don't have to be technically adopted until July. And so just for everyone watching, that means that we receive updates regularly from the Ohio School Board Association um giving us updates of what areas of law have changed and the impacts that it will make on our board policies. we have to make changes so we don't have a choice. So those are the types of things. So that's what you're saying. Okay. All right. Does anyone have any questions on any of

118these u for a first read? These were after looking at them. They're 100% clerical in nature. There's nothing other than nothing changes. Okay. Other than a few words here or there just having to be changed by the requirements. Not in this round. Next round would be fun. Next week policy meeting. Yeah. All right. So then we can go ahead and move to the next item, which is can I please get a motion for a second read and approval of policy? So move a sec. Sorry. A motion and a second for the second read. Excuse me. So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. Steer, for your motion. Thank you, Dr. James, for your second. All right. So, um, poly policy IKF was, um, a policy that we've kind of had for a while. That was really somewhat

119clerical in nature. We just wanted to make sure the requirements were updated with what we actually require in Sycamore. So, that's that's pretty simple. Um, the JFEB policy, the release time for religious instruction. Um, this policy itself is one that came out of House Bill 8, the parent bill of rights. Um this one was somewhat of a challenge for us because um it has to be approved by tomorrow and we didn't get it until beginning of March if you remember we had or mid beginning of mid-Marchch which we have required two readings. So we had at the April the last board the special board meeting when was that? I don't remember now but we April 1st we had the first read. We didn't receive any community feedback in between that and tonight. I do recognize

120though this is a what I would consider a heavy hitter um because it is somewhat political in nature in regards to conversations that we've heard around the state around House Bill 8. Um this this uh there there were there were a few things that when this was discussed in policy that the board voice around was ensuring. And so when we got this policy, we felt really good because it included those things specifically speaking. One, number one is is that um we're able to define core instructional time um which we can by this and so our core instructional time is everything but lunch. Um the other thing was ensuring that um the transportation was not the district was not responsible for transportation and it's not the program is specifically required to transport not just um a

121just not a subsection of students all students even with students with disabilities. Um the other thing was background checks. Um ensuring that um the individuals that would be um with these students as they're released from the building have a thorough background check and we've made sure that that was in place as well. And they have to demonstrate and prove to us that those background checks have been completed um as well. And so we were um we were we feel as if that this captured all of those things. What I will say is that we have to have this approved tonight. Um we're at that legal space. That doesn't mean that if there's concerns by the community or concerns by the board that this can't return back to policy committee and we bring it for another

122first read and second read and another approval. We can absolutely do that. So, I just wanted the board to hear that this feels like it's somewhat of a quick approval process. It is. Um we didn't have much of an option in this one. Um, and so I just wanted the community to understand too that we are very happy to bring this back to committee if there is feedback that is shared tonight. Um, obviously any feedback that's shared, we go to committee. It has to be approved by legal as well. So we just need to make sure that we're all on the line with that. Dr. James, do you have any questions changes? Harris did wrestle with this a lot in the policy committee. There was a lot of discussion on this one. All right, Mrs.

123Logan, can you please We do have um public comment from Amy Shaman on this topic. Thank you. As I said before, my name is Amy Shaman. I reside on Echowood Drive in Montgomery. Um, I have a student at eh green who was with me earlier today um because he wanted to learn and see what goes on. Um, so I'm here tonight as a parent, a community member, and someone who cares deeply about the well-being of the students, staff, faculty, administration, and board of this school district. As we have just heard, the item on which I wish to speak is this release time for religious instruction. And obviously, the draft policy indicates that this is something we are mandated by the state to do. And I respectfully request that additional language be considered before you take

124a vote tonight. Put in a phrase which very clearly specifies that core curriculum does not just mean what other people might understand as core subjects like English and math and history but that it does indeed mean everything other than lunch. This is specific recommendation based on things that have happened in other districts where when they said core they said well you just mean reading, writing, arithmetic, etc. Um this is and I specifically ask like uh Mr. Level said that it includes all the courses that happen during the day in our buildings. Sorry. Um all those courses and everything that we teach that that our teachers teach in the classroom contribute to learning, education, well-being and growth of our students. We don't want them our students nor the people who may come and ask for religious

125programming to happen with our students to consider certain things skippable and times when they can be removed from the school. In addition, the policy as mentioned indicates that instructors and volunteers are required to have thorough background checks as appropriate for student safety. I likewise suggest that transportation providers for RTRI be added to the list of those required to have background checks and that there is verification that they have applicable driving credentials. Another district in the state of Ohio had an unfortunate situation with the transportation provider and there were injuries to the students. Our state legislation requires this policy. I appreciate you complying with the requirement with the best interests of our students in mind and protecting all of our students and the community. Thank you. Thank you. Well, I guess what I would like to

126say is uh we we need to we do need to put this up for a vote. This is really important so that we can comply with this. Um I would like to Mr. Lewis to I was just going to say I think we can take the feedback in and we have to have it approved because of the deadline but we can also take the feedback in and propose some changes and I appreciate you coming forward as a concerned community member and sharing experiences. I had not heard those things but um we definitely want to make sure that we're insulated and protected so that we don't have any issues like other communities have had. So also I was I was just gonna add that you have um Mrs. Logan, Mr. Levelville, Dr. Deans and myself are

127all on the policy committee and we meet next week. So this will be very fresh in our minds. So just know that we're able to discuss it next week. So thank you. And if you would like to send an email with some of the verbiage that you to discuss, feel free to do that as well. Okay, Mrs. Logan, call the role. Dr. Seager, hi. Dr. James. Hi, Mr. Harris. Hi, Sitter. Hi. Can I please Is this a motion? Let's see. Um, yes. Can I please get a motion and a second for the 2025 2026 student meal pricing? So, so moved. Second. Thank you, Mr. Harris, for your motion. Thank you, Dr. Steager, for your second. All right. So um just bringing this forward um as a point of just clarity around this um we approve

128the meal prices not specifically for this year. So your approval will be moving forward and then we would bring back again at another point if we needed any type of adjustment to the meal prices. The last time we've had a meal price here in Sycamore was in the 2020 2021 school year which was a 5 cent increase. Um so as you can imagine since the school year of 2021 um we have seen some inflation happen in a lot of different areas and that is no different to our food service and so um we have rising costs in food labor benefits um and they make the current pricing unsustainable. If you remember when Miss Helbright came in she kind of gave us some indication that we were struggling specifically in the breakfast area but now with

129the lunches as well. Um I also again think it's important to note to our community and those that are listening that our child nutrition department is self- sustainable within the district. So um the child nutrition department doesn't take any funds from the general operating fund and so it's really important that that continues and so part of these adjustments um are related to that. The breakfast and lunch pricing currently does not fully cover the cost. So, we're losing money on every student lunch and breakfast at this point. And the goal is to provide menus with quality, fresh, and clean ingredients. And I sure we can all agree after hearing Miss Helbright talk and any of us that have been in our cafeterias, we are so fortunate in this district with the quality of food that's offered

130to our students. We hear it all the time, especially at the high school um with the options there. So essentially um what we're looking at is a 25 c increase in breakfast and a 20 cent increase in lunch costs. There are some other um information that I previously sent to the board in regards to this um that talks about different tiered structures that she's going to be offering. That's kind of um that that's just an opportunity to provide more options for our students. But if you look at the baseline, it's a quarter for breakfast and 20 cents for lunch. Um obviously this is going to help us maintain and improve our meal quality, continue ping that providing those nutritious meals align with our sycamore standard. Um addressing the gap between meal cost, labor cost and

131the pricing. Um and then also ensure that we are able to staff our kitchens with the most highly qualified people um to promote our positive culture that we see every day in our school cafeterias. So, um, that's the recommendation before you. Thank you. You're welcome. Yeah. Board members have any questions related to that? I would just like to say thank you to everyone who works in child nutrition for all the hard work that they've been doing. Yes, it is a very hard job. A lot of people coming through the line every day to get their food. It may be helpful to the public if Mr. Long if you could hit on the link or go down to the page that actually shows the pricing. Thank you. Yeah. Um so those are our current prices that

132you're looking at right there. And so you can see um there's different tiers at the high school, different options, but overall you can see kind of the basic meal price um for breakfast 155 and the current price is 280. I think what's important is to look at that second column, the food cost and what it actually cost us to produce that meal. You can see that um for the elementary that we were um ahead. Um, but as we start to really look at the shifts and the demand that we have and the surge pricing that we're having on food, it's just so unpredictable right now with our food costs. Um, so if you scroll down um you can see what those new pricing um what that new price is and you can see that they've

133added a tier three pricing for 712. And all we're talking about is tiers is the um the options of breakfast, right? The higher the tier, the more cost, the more fancy. Miss Hel, I would not be happy if I use that term fancy. I'm trying to find the right word, but um you know that type of premium options. Premium options. I like that. The more premium the options. You look at the junior high and high school lunch. You see the new tier four over there at 505. That's when we are bringing in like for example um Bippy Bop. when we bring them into the cafeteria and giving those options for the students, something outside of the regular um cafeteria meals. So, um those are the prices that you can see with the increase. And that's

134one of the things that I I think we should celebrate about our child nutrition department. They're always looking to do different things in our cafeterias to spur involvement. And that's what it's all about is to get as many kids as we can receiving meals um in our cafeterias. We want to drive engagement um so that um there are great options. Thank you. You're very welcome, Mr. Mrs. Logan. Please call the RO. Mr. Harris, hi. Dr. Seager, hi. Dr. James, hi. Mrs. Bitter, I can I please get a motion and a second for student and adult meal charge guidelines? So move. Second. All right, Dr. James for your motion. Thank you, Mr. Harris, for your second. Sorry, my apologies. Um, so these guidelines are not anything that the board would necessarily approve, but they are driven

135by policy. We have two policies um around student fees, fines, and charges and food service management, free and reduced, that requires that we have guidelines that um help um the community and our our um families understand how we handle um both adult and student meal charges. And what you really need to know here is that there is never going to be a chance that a student comes into our cafeteria that can't afford a lunch that will be denied a lunch. And we're not talking a cheese sandwich or whatever. They will get a hot meal. What these guidelines really articulate is that we have the ability to not allow them to get all cart items or whatever that may be. It also lays out um how we will recoup those funds as well. But I think

136what's most important and sometimes this is um um gets confused in the community. We do not have alternate meal choices. They will get a hot lunch if they can't afford a lunch. So um those are what those guidelines and then the adult meal. Our teachers and our staff will often buy meals. They have to pay for those meals. Um and so we will not let them get meals if they don't pay for those meals. So um we just want to make sure we have those guidelines in place. So we don't need to approve anything. So I didn't do that. No, these will be posted on our website under the child nutrition, they need to be visible to the community so the community can see them. Um and we always take feedback as well. So if

137there are things that the um community wants to let us know or feels like we should be doing, obviously bring those forward. Um but these are just our guidelines that we put out there so that people understand and know. Um I believe that these are also in the handbooks as well. The guidelines. Thank you. or at least link to the website. All right. Can I please get a motion and a second for the approval of an agreement with Lisa Noi Bower, independent contractor? So moved. Second. Thank you. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Thanks for your motion. And thank you, Dr. Stiger, for your second. Sorry, we keep trying to jump in on you. Um, what I'm going to say is on this one and like the next nine items, they're just approvals. So unless you have

138a question, we can just roll right to Okay. All right. Uh, Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Dr. James, I. Dr. Seager, I. Mr. Harris, I. Mrs. Bidder, I. Can I please get a motion and a second for a change order seek family and auditorium project? Some move. Second. Thank you, Dr. James, for your motion. Thank you, Dr. Steer, for your second. This is money returned. So we can say that it's not a change order that we have to pay. We actually get money back. Uh Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Dr. James, hi. Dr. Stagger, Mr. Harris, I. Mrs. Fitter, I. Can I please get a motion a second for the approval of network attached storage device? So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. Steer, for your motion. Thank you, Mr. Harris, for your second.

139Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Mr. Harris, I. Dr. Steager, hi. Dr. James, hi. Mrs. Bidder, I can I please get a motion, a second for approval of an agreement with Neuro Neurode Divergent Psych Ed LLC. So move. Thank you, Mr. Harris, for your motion. Thank you, Dr. James, for your second. Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Mr. Harris, I. Dr. Jane, I. Dr. Stagger, I. Mrs. Consider I can I please get a motion a second for contract 2025 district paving projects. So moved second. Thank you Dr. James for your motion. Thank you Dr. Stiger for your second. Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Dr. James, hi. Dr. Stager, Dr. Harris, I. Mrs. Bidder, I can I please get a motion, a second for approval of field trips. So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. Stager,

140for your motion. Thank you, Mr. Harris for your second. Mrs. Logan, please call the RO. Dr. Stagger, I. Mr. Harris, I. Dr. James, hi. Mrs. Bidder, I. Can I please get a motion, a second for bid approval bus purchase? So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. James, for your motion. Thank you, Dr. Steer, for your second. Yeah, they're expensive. We talked about this a lot. It's just amazing. They are very expensive. They used to cost blesses have has risen just incredible. I got the good blessc and how little they give you when you trade it in. And when you trade it in, you only get $5,000. Okay. Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Dr. James, hi. Dr. Steer, hi. Mr. Harris, hi. Mrs. Bidder, I can I please get a motion, a second for OPCOU intermittent

141use of sick leave bank days. So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. Steer, for your motion. Thank you, Mr. Harris, for your second. Mrs. Please call the role. Dr. Seager, I. Mr. Harris, I. Dr. James, hi. Mrs. Bitter, hi. Can I please get a motion and a second for transportation impractical? So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. Stiger, for your motion. Thank you, Dr. James, for your second. Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Dr. Stager, hi. Dr. James, hi. Mr. Harris, hi. Mrs. Consider I Mr. Lewis. Yeah, just due to the late hour, a quick rundown. Altitude Awards, April 29th, 6 p.m. That's a staff awards show that we're trying out this year. So, we're excited about that. Susical the musical. Mrs. Anderson and her team did a great job. The EH Green students were phenomenal. They

142It was like a high school show. I can't believe how good they are. You heard about the cars and coffee event Saturday 9 to1. Uh there is an ask us anything secondary edition tomorrow uh with the secondary administrators starting at 7:30. I will moderate for them. Uh board financial retreat Saturday from 8:00 to noon. Safa hall of fame banquet Saturday from 5:30 to 9. And I just wanted to mention, I'm not going to go into the length of all the discussion, but I do believe that we are going to need a special board meeting to talk about um we were uh given um a notice, all the Ohio schools were given notice by the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce requiring superintendent to certify that their districts are in compliance with federal laws prohibiting discrimination.

143um and all the new federal mandates and it's mostly focused around title six. Um so the wording and the things that we are getting from legal counsel that we would have to change is significant to do between April 8th and April 18th. Um it would be wording and board policies and strategic plan and some other areas. So, I just think that we're going to have to consider even if it's a quick meeting, some kind of get together to be in compliance because I cannot certify it if we are not in compliance. Are you talking before the 18th? Before the 18th. Before the 18th. Next board meeting is the 23rd other than the financial retreat. And we did hear from our legal council that there are some pending legal actions against the federal government essentially is

144the way I took it. Um, so we'll see if it holds and that that's the enforcement date, but um, I certainly don't want to be sitting here as a superintendent not being able to certify that we're in compliance because we put our federal funding at risk. And you know, people are like, well, just don't take the federal funding. We get a lot of federal funding for our students with disabilities um, for our lunch program. We we cannot just bypass federal funding. So, um, that's not an option. We received 2.7 our allocation this year is 2.7 million for all the title funds of that like Mr. Lewis mentioned for our special needs ch children of that 2.7 1.8 is dedicated to our students with special needs. Um and then about another million dollars for a food

145services program. So and I just for transparency purposes I do think it's really important that the community know that title six is a civil rights act right so this is related to diversity equity and inclusion so this is the department US department of education letting us every school know K through 12 every single school um that we have to review our policies so I do think it's a it's a it's an exceptionally challenging um experience experience that we may have on this. And but I want to make sure to Dr. Seager's point from earlier today, I don't want our community thinking that we're just going to like completely do a 180 and stop doing all the things that are best for our community and our students and our um school district. So, um, we may

146not be able to use some of these words, but we are still going to make sure that every student, family, uh, community member feels comfortable, safe, welcome here in these doors, uh, to our schools. So, we are not going to change um, who we are at the core. Um but obviously we may have to reward some of our policies to be in compliance because um the po the the and I think people are over generalizing what we're being asked to do. It's essentially a lot of it is around hiring practices preferential treatment honestly say that's not going to change our practices because we don't do that. We're not currently doing that. We we are certainly interested in finding the best candidates school district that enhance the education of this district no matter what the person

147looks like. So, um there's just some things that we'll have to adjust from a wording standpoint, a policy standpoint, but um our our actual practice is not going to change. We're we're we're focused on and and I'll give you an example. One of the things that um you know is in here is that um we have a lot of clubs and activities at our high school um really in in celebrating all cultures and um they're not just so if I hear um the Muslim student union, it's not just for Muslim students, it's for everybody. Um they want to teach you about their culture. That's not in violation of this policy or this new um executive order. So, I just want our community to hear me say that that we're going to keep working tirelessly on

148behalf of all students, all people, um, all community members, and that's not going to change. I just jump in also, please. I just want everyone out in the audience here and out in the um virtual audience to know that we've heard everybody know over the past couple of months weeks that we want to continue celebrating everything about our culture and community in Sycamore. We hear everything. We want to continue to be us and it's important that we remain united in trying to celebrate our actual diversity even though we might not be allowed to technically use that anymore as a word um and things. And it's hard, I think, for everyone at this table and everyone out there to feel like things are being put on us and that it is virtually like seeding local control

149of your schools and having to reidentify yourselves using different words. So, it's hard, I think, on everybody. So, we're going to try our best to do that as a group for everyone. So we feel that with you. I do think it's important to understand that um it is going to be a process and we will be doing it at board meetings and you will be able to be part of it and we as we always do all of our decisions are made right here in front of all of you. So, um, we will continue to talk about this and as we have said in our resolution, but also what we said last week, um, we are re we are committed to diversity inclusion. We celebrate the diversity of this community. It's why we all moved

150here. It's why we're on the school board and we care very deeply about it. So we will work um with our administrators who will diligently look through everything and work with our legal counsel to understand what we have to do and don't have to do and we will keep you updated as a community. Um we will you will be in the loop as well and you just have to understand that this board all five of us we are absolutely committed to this celebrating the mission and vision of our district. There's no change in any of us. So I think I can very clearly speak on behalf of everyone to say that you want to say Dr. James. Well said. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Can I please get a motion and a second for the

151personnel consent agenda? So moved. Thank you Dr. Stager for your motion. Thank you Mr. Harris for your second. Mrs. Logan, please call the role. I. Dr. Seager. Hi, Dr. James. Hi, Mrs. Bitter. Hi. Can I please get a motion and a second for the approval of financial reports for the month end February 28, 2025? So moved. Second. Thank you, Dr. Stiger, for your motion. Thank you, Dr. James, for your second. We are going to talk a lot on Saturday about finances, so I am really not going to make any comments tonight. I'm going to hold them until Saturday. We're going to do a deep dive. The only thing I want to mention is it feels weird that we're approving February's financial report. Um, it feels late. It's because we always approve the last month's financial

152report at the second regular meeting. We didn't have a second regular meeting last month. So, that's why. Okay. Is everyone okay to wait into for our questions on Saturday? to remind you of the public Saturday we're having a financial we are having yes on Saturday we are having a financial retreat every year we have a financial retreat and we have an academic retreat so we public meetings um be here we'll have it at the board office and it starts at 8 a.m. Got it. Okay. So, we um we will be having that where we will be doing a very deep dive into the district's finances as we do regularly during our board meetings, but this one's going to be more robust. Okay. Mrs. Logan, please call the role. Dr. Seager, hi. Dr. James, hi. Mr.

153Harris, hi. Mrs. Bidder, I can I please get a motion and second to accept donations? Second. Thank you, Dr. Steer, for your motion. And thank you Dr. Mr. Harris for your second. Mrs. Logan, Dr. Seager, Mr. Harris, Dr. James, Mrs. Bidder. Hi. Next item is other board business. Do we have any in the other board business that anyone would like to bring up? Okay. The meeting is adjourned. Oh, wait. Did we have public participation? Go ahead. May I make a comment? Yes. Um, it's a point of information. When will the board decide when you're the special uh session that you're going to have and will it be accessible on the website so people know? Are you talking about the financial retreat? No, no, no. The federal mandate. Oh, that special meeting the community member arrived.

154want to know and want it to be accessible. It is sometimes difficult to find on the website. Thank you for that feedback. Thank you. And I I will also say to anyone in the community, if you would like to be added, I have a a distribution list of people who request to receive emails of any special meeting. Send me an an email. I will add you to that list and then you don't have to check the website. Okay? get an email of any special board meeting notice. Thank you. You're welcome. Because special board meetings can be decided in a shorter amount of time. Usually they're right. So they us I understand. And then they usually come out with a notice and sometimes it's like one or two days. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. The the

155thing is is that the deadline to respond to this federal b not this Friday but next Friday. The following Friday the 18th. I think it' be good if everybody can look at their calendars like Saturday. Yeah. And we'll make here. So we're all together anyway. The Saturday. Yeah. Yeah. But we don't really have much of a choice. The 18th is a Friday. that we need to figure out before then. And hey, I'm gonna be optimistic. Maybe by Friday this date will get pushed and we will have more time. There is a legal action against that. So potentially it could get delayed, but right now it's a very short. So do we want to come up with a date right now or not? Got it. Yep. Okay. Yep. All right. This drip.