001foreign thank you everybody the board started our meeting at 5 30 and went into executive session we'll now begin our the public portion of our meeting so if you will please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you very much uh thanks for joining us tonight as we get started I'd like to remind everyone of our mission and our vision and our mission is to create a culture of academic Excellence through inclusive and innovating learning opportunities for the whole child and our vision is to empower all Learners to reach their full potential in a globally competitive world I need a motion
002for the approval of the agenda which includes the addendum superintendent's agenda items number two five and six so moved second Mrs Weber please call the roll Mr Comfort aye Mrs Weiss aye Mrs bitter aye Dr Steiger aye and Mr ballant aye the agenda is approved and I need a motion for the approval of the minutes so moved second any questions or comments from the board Mrs Webber please call the roll Mrs wife aye Mr Comfort aye Dr Steger aye Mr Ballard aye and Mrs bitter hi minutes are approved uh Mrs Weber if you could give us a brief overview of the meeting protocol thank you Mr ballen welcome everyone who's here in our audience this evening um and also welcome to those of you who are on our virtual audience this evening for those of
003you who are attending virtually we ask that you access our Board of Education agenda for this evening on the board of education page at our website at sycamoreschools.org you will find there both the agenda as well as those minutes that were just approved um one of the opportunities that we do have both for those who are in our audience as well as those who are in our virtual audience is that if you wish to participate in public participation please send those requests to our moderator this evening Mr Christian long at long C at sycamoreschools.org that's particularly for those in our virtual audience I have received one request from a member of our live audience or in-person audience to address the board this evening and so we will take that one first because I do believe
004public participation is our first item on the agenda yes so moving into public participation um Mrs I'm going to get your name wrong okay hi my name is Jacqueline Pace I'm in 10th Grade I need to make the screen accessibility so I can get inside in dip independently my mom will take more thank you Jackson my name is Cheryl Pace I'm Jackson's mom um I thought it was important for him to participate a little bit so people would understand um who he's one of the individuals that it affects but he's not the only one um the I have four things that I wanted to to talk about one was the curb by the athletic Brown um when it was poured they they did not recreate the dip to access the athletic Ram so I realized
005that when construction is done that the entrance and exit's going to be up at the top however this still makes it difficult for someone to participate in all of the school activities whether it be coming to a basketball game a wrestling event um Pancake Day which is coming up in a few weeks and Jackson is a 10th grader here we'd like to come to all these events he'd like to come into the school independently he likes to participate and um when we park we can't get up that curb and it's not just us but it would be grandma and grandpa in the Jazzy um Mom with the stroller with the twins um the cater coming in with catering for senior breakfast or senior lunch things like that I mean you can't roll anything up onto
006that sidewalk um I did provide some pictures for you to share to give you an idea Jackson has to be dropped off in the morning by his van when he comes in for his late start Where the Sidewalk Ends which is past the building which with there's construction vehicles parked there there was garbage um uh you know that's where the garbage is there too so I mean my child who's disabled has to be dropped off from the furthest point of entrance for the athletic ramp where able-bodied people can just park right there and go directly too so it seems kind of opposite of what needs to happen I'm not saying able-bodied people should go down there but we just need a curb cut out there that's the first important thing um it is on the
007list that we brought up to when we emailed the concerns and I appreciate the really in-depth list that's to do that the construction people are working on with Mr Lowe but we really would like to see this curb item elevated and prioritized um this was back in October the email was sent and it's now February so we're still struggling to get in the second item is um the parking spaces for ramp Vans there is not the appropriate amount of space to safely deploy a ramp and for a wheelchair to get off and on the ramp so those need to be marked out appropriately I did provide some information in one of the packets about ADA compliance for ramp conversion vans for you to review with the contractors and the third thing is the speed bumps
008they have been removed which we had difficulty getting over last year when it was our freshman year um but when you go to put your speed bumps back in we do ask that you please be mindful that you follow what's recommended by the Department of Transportation because we can go over all the speed bumps in the city at all the other parking lots but school so because they're made so wide and so high that they scrape the entire bottom of our van which tears off our muffler system and I just got that repaired it's very expensive to fix and the fourth thing is Danita family bathrooms the new stadium doesn't have one so when we went to the opening of the football game and Jackson needed to use the bathroom or he's a teenager now
009he likes girls a lot so I had to take him to the bathroom in the girls bathroom past all the teenage girls so it wasn't very dignified for him to go into the bathroom with his mom so but it's not just a bathroom a family bathroom would help him but it would help dad who has the kids and he's got to change the diaper well where does Dad change the baby's diaper that would help that individual I know we are trying to be more politically positive and correct and and help with our individuals that are not identifying I believe that our Pan-American or I mean our pan students and our non non-gender identifying students we need to think it would help everybody so if you if you think of accommodating a wheelchair you're going to
010be able to help everybody because it also is going to help an able-bodied person maybe you just need to go to a bathroom privately and be in there by yourself so it's not a family bathroom's not just to serve Jackson just that's the other thing so it'd be nice to have one at the new stadium but then also it would be really great if there's something here at school near the uh um near the gym the gymnasium because Pancake Day homecoming he was here for homecoming I had to go find a bathroom I didn't want to take him to the girls bathroom and I had to go find someone to take me to the end of school to open up a private bathroom to take Jackson to the bathroom so we do need a family
011bathroom near the gymnasium too so I feel like it would help visiting families for any of our sporting events so those are the items that I kind of wanted to bring attention to the board thank you very much Jackson and Mrs Pate um I did ask Mr Lovell to um kind of address some of these topics um and talk about you know where we are and where we plan to be um normally we do not answer public um participation but I think because of the concerns that you raise I think it's appropriate that we do so I'd ask Mr Lovell too yeah thank you and I appreciate the fact that you came and shared with us and there are a couple things in there that I'm hearing for the first time so I'm happy to
012address those as well but what I thought it could do for the board is kind of give you an overview on some of the work and many of the points that you addressed and kind of talk about the time frame and where we are with those um Mr long if you wouldn't mind I put a slide in there it's a little bit fur there we go um so there are really seven points of interest that we're really addressing when it comes to what I'm calling um Ada enhancements one of the things that um I think it's important to note is that as we went through the permitting phases of these projects um we are in compliance when it comes to Ada accessibility what we need to do though is we need to make enhancements um
013to to the point of Mississippi State to make it easier for our students to get around and access certain points of the building right and so I want to walk through some of these with you also that you can kind of understand what we've done and where we're heading so if we look at number one here um the new bus lot on that far side one of the things that we recognized when that was put in um is there were not appropriate curb cuts and our buses were parking significantly further from the doors of the accessibility to be able to get in so what we've done there um you can see on number one is that we have done those curb Cuts there along that way and we've also are working towards creating accessibility on
014door 18. it currently does not have an opener on it we're working towards that the complexity about putting an opener on the the door isn't just getting the hardware to put it on it's getting our contractors to come out and make it and allow it to work with our security system as well and so we have that contract out we have that PR out to understand the complexity of that project and that actually ties into door number um sixes or number six up there as well which is the lower ramp entrance there's currently a button on that door for accessibility but there's issues with right now the reliability of the button now luckily we have our attendance folks down there that can help with that but what we've found is that the issues with that
015button again are around our security system so our scan badges getting into the door and things like that there's a fix and then that is in line with Door 18 as well um number three I wanted to point out there is that we did increase our accessible parking on that side of the property originally those spots all along there and number three were just designated as regular parking spots when we recognize that the North Loop wasn't going to have the accessibility that we needed because of the natatorium we wanted to make sure that we had enough spots there that gave access to the Old Entrance again that doesn't do much for us if it's during the day because the front entrance is the front the new front entrance but this does give us access to
016the theater entrance and Door 18 on that side on number four one of the things that we wanted to take into consideration and the feedback that we'd gotten is that the lift buses are parking significantly further away from the door and so while many of our students are able to move quickly to door 18. A lot of our students that might be in wheelchairs or have other equipment needs they have to wait for the buses maybe they're going out and waiting for the lift bus to pull up or whatever that would be the old front interns had an overhang where they could wait we don't have that on that side of the building and so what we did is in that old front entrance Circle we had a contractor come out and we cut out
017curb cut so now we're able to bring our lift buses up to that Circle and that our students can now wait in the vestibule of that old I call it the old front entrance but the the theater entrance there that project has been complete um I know I've spoken with the board a few times about the challenges around the North Loop and the South Loop is in regards to accessibility and the plans that were submitted for the full project our North Loop was where all the handicap accessibility was going to be for the front entrance so that included our van parking our lift parking our ramps to be able to get in with the delay of the natatorium construction that threw us through a loop a little bit we chose the route not to put
018that Loop in until after the construction of the natatorium to not only save cost but to save on the amount of movement that we had to do around the site in regards to the parking the student parking and everything the challenges that that presented moved us down to number seven which is that South Loop which was not designed to be our accessible area that was designed just for visitor parking um we did notice though in that which was brought up on multiple comments is that even with visitor parking we need to have an access ramp there as well that has been our biggest challenge right now and and to on this base point is that that was brought up in October um while it was brought up in October there's significant work that has to
019be done with our civil engineers to understand where exactly that ramp can go um in the master plan we also have to work on the striping of that area as well and then what we did was we ran in the winter so a lot of this work can't necessarily be done um specifically the striping and things like that when think limit weather that project is moving forward it's slated for spring break to be complete that includes creating a curb cut there at the South Loop going into the lower ramp entrance it also includes taking away the striping that exists there currently and working with our civil engineers to then put our handicap accessible parking the other complexities with changing that South Loop into just strictly handicap accessibility is that we still have to have visitor
020parking in that area and so we've been working with the building Administration to understand the impact of moving the visitor parking to that lower lot the student parking lot and what that means is if we have to take up let's just I don't know the exact number but let's say it's a five to ten spots for visitors um down that lot we have to shift our student parking back we have a solution for that it's the parking on the other side of the stadium the old quote unquote aves lot back there the challenges with that was that lot was somewhat um uh I don't want to use the word destroyed but not taking great care of during the construction of the stadium it wasn't part of the scope it was somewhat of a gravel kind
021of lot to begin with our construction company right now is cleaning that up and getting that done um our goal is to replicate 20 spots on that side but in order to do that we also had to have camera security out there because there's going to be students walking along that path so I say all that to say that I I the easy plan would just be either the curb cut change it out and move it in but there were layers to the to the steps that we had to take to ensure that we could make that South Loop happen but I am pleased to announce that over spring break and that's the best time to do it because if we did it we wouldn't have we have to do it when students aren't here
022to be able to make those shifts but after spring break break will have that accessibility on that South Loop through that South entrance for the next 18 months and then what will happen is when that North Loop opens we will reset that South Loop back to visitor parking and then open up the accessibility options in that North Loop yes quick question um she addressed the question about ramp accessibility are we realigning in number three and number seven so that her ramp can actually be utilized correctly in a parking spot to make sure that they have wider lanes for the ramp to be deployed from a vehicle so I will I will check on number three those spots up there I believe that those were in compliance for um a van with a lift but I
023will double check that if I don't know if you're if that was what you were speaking to or if you were speaking to number seven um uh uh Dr Steger was mentioning the ones next to the Gregory Center and then the ones yeah that we don't they don't currently exist in seven so those are the ones that we're working with our civil engineers to ensure that those are right the ones in three that we just created I believe do have um van accessible spots on the on the number three yes correct correct correct yeah so we're I think we're speaking the same thing so three next to the Gregory is all set number seven over there is the work that's going to be done during um spring break and that will be striped in accordance
024with our civil engineers who will have the appropriate distance for the van and all that um let's start out okay um okay okay a lot of the current cup I got you okay yeah we'll have our civil engineers look then if we need to make adjustments we can do that in that space as well absolutely thank you very much yep so I just I just have one clarification so those are where um Jackson is being dropped off down by the down where he's being dropped off currently will he be able to be dropped off at the at the door instead of down by the dumpster area so when when the work is done over spring break yes yes those current spots that number seven is over top of will be ADA Compliant and there'll be
025a ramp kind of right in front of number seven there on the curb um the only challenge will be which is a challenge that anybody is crossing the traffic in the morning to get from the spots to the school but that would be and there'll be and there'll be a um striped line as well and then one must follow up yes and maybe a subject for another day sure to me this is an architect who designed this work for us and I would like to know why it wasn't done this way to begin with yeah and so I can answer that a little bit and that question in regards to the natatorium project it was actually designed appropriate um it was designed for that North Loop to exist it wasn't until the natatorium project was
026delayed that we then had to have these discussions and realized it and that's why we on our hand are starting to go back and say how do we temporarily make that South Loop accessible um it's just the time frame in which it happened so the original plans didn't call for the expansion of the natatorium it called for the renovation of the natatorium which that Loop was going to naturally open which would have provided all the Ada accessibility that we're actually going to have in 18 months we just won't have at the moment if that helps everybody answers the question but I just don't find it acceptable but thank you for fixing it absolutely thank you okay thank you very much Mr long and the other public participation thank you very much moving on to the
027superintendent's agenda uh I need a motion for the approval of instructional programming steam grades cage report so moved second I'm just going to turn it over to Mrs Wagner and not actually make one comment that you know um this is per board policy and orc that the board does approve any changes to curriculum so that's why you're seeing it on an actual board agenda um so thank you thank you well thank you all um we are very excited to bring um this uh course proposal to you uh before I get into that though I would like to take just a small amount of time just to explain the curriculum steering process just so you have a solid understanding of of how a course gets proposed in the approval process before it comes to you um
028this is a process that was in place long before I got here um and I remember when I first started how impressed I was with the fact that we've got a curriculum steering committee if you will um and the and the role that it has um in the curriculum approval process um so I can't take credit for the process um but it it is it is a really robust process so the way it works is this if there is a a building or a department that wants to propose a new course they complete the document that is in the um agenda packet the curriculum steering template which intention really calls out a lot of the big buckets that we want someone to consider before the proposal even comes across the desk of anyone so looking
029at budgetary implications Staffing implications um what does this mean for other grade levels what's the impact this could have in other buildings certainly alignment to standards and then also ensuring if there are materials that would also be purchased as part of this plan to make sure that they are high quality vetted and again aligned to the standards and so the group who's doing the proposal they complete that document and then they present that to the curriculum steering committee now the curriculum steering committee is a committee made up of K-12 teachers and administrators from the building including curriculum um from district office and also myself what's great about that is that even though a proposal might be like in this one for example for K4 you've got other voices and other grade levels that are part
030of that committee that can bring up things that folks may not have thought of um so it's a really good diversity and thought group um and it also makes sure it also ensures that we just have a lot of stakeholders that have a vested interest in this process and so the group would present their proposal to the curriculum steering committee that committee serves as a as a feedback type of a a group so ask critical questions sometimes they'll ask the team to go back and make revisions and then present it again if they see some things that are problematic um but it's a it's a vetting kind of process so once the proposal is um vetted by that Committee of which again I'm on it as is Mrs Tompkins then I bring it to the
031superintendent to either recommend or not recommend and then I bring him up to speed on everything that happened at that committee meeting share with him the The Proposal um we also ensure alignment again to our mission vision and our strategic plan that's part of the work that Mrs Tompkins and I do as part of this process to ensure that we've got that alignment and then also a curricular component again in terms of that alignment piece um so that's the that's the process so with this particular um offering we are very excited with the opportunity to complete a mark K-12 steam programming um curriculum because right now we have in grades 5 through 12 some pretty robust offerings for students on a regular basis and at the elementary level we have steam programming happening in Pockets
032which is important and it's a part of some of our media center components it's also part of some of the science classes but we don't have anything that is a daily special for lack of a better term at the elementary level that really aligns vertically to what we've already got going on five through twelve so that's what this course would do the other thing that this course does is it takes off the plates of teachers keyboarding and also digital citizenship because right now our Elementary classroom teachers have to teach with those things along with their content and with the new requirements coming with the dyslexia legislation and the science of reading we want to take those pieces off of their plate to give them more time to teach their content so that is part of
033what will be rolled into this this curriculum so the steam curriculum would have within it as I said keyboarding it would have within it digital citizenship it would also have um how to use Google tools the Google Suite of tools for students and again age appropriate from kindergarten up to four um coding as well and then also Project Lead the Way curriculum project lead the way is a nationally recognized curriculum that we're already using in some of our other grade levels that is just a very in-depth student-centered interactive type of curriculum and so with that Edition that ties very nicely into our strategic plan the S component of the student-centered instruction very student-centered very empowering very engaging hits the competencies of the portrait of an aviator as well so this course just gives us a
034lot of opportunity for students to engage in these types of classes on a regular basis my my only jealousy is that my my young students my own students won't get to participate in this special but it does take the place of currently a fifth special of community connections so can you just talk about what you what you think we're losing by you know replacing Community connections with the steam program that you just described that's a great question thank you Mrs Weiss so the community Connections course was put in place as a temporary course if you will two years ago uh two reasons number one we are seeing that ours are the class sizes in our specials are art music and such we're just too big to manage and so we needed another special to kind
035of divvy out those students that was one reason but then the other reason for this particular offering was that we heard clearly from our parents and students of K4 students during the pandemic when we had the shutdown and we had virtual learning happening in the virtual space then also face to face that the students just didn't feel connected to their school because of that the type of learning that we had to have going on even though the boards did a great job supporting us you still had students learning in different environments they just didn't feel connected so having this class for two years to really just make the students Feel Again more part of their school Community more connected to each other that was the purpose of that so by having the steam come in
036and and take the place of that students are still going to have those opportunities to connect with one another because of the nature of the learning that's going to take place in there it'll just be more be more geared towards the steam standards but they would still be engaged in all those connections with their cut with their peers and and the collaboration and problem solving along with them okay a couple more questions of course you know I will have them um well I wanted to thank um Brad Williams and Jennifer green for bringing the proposal forward yes and then I just wanted to if you could describe how the implementation of this will work so Jennifer green and Brad Williams and I are working on the curriculum um and so we have already looked at
037projectly the way code.org and some other digital citizenship components and we've already started to build the curriculum map and so that process will be done within the next month or so the position will be posted we have shared with the elementary principles almost like a a dream list in terms of the the qualifications for the teacher like what would be the best teacher for this type of a course and so to help them when they're doing the interviews and choosing folks and so once those folks are chosen part of Jennifer green and Brad Williams role by the way Brad Williams is our steam coordinator for the district part of their role is going to be providing professional learning to those teachers especially with Project Lead the Way um prior to the start of the school
038year and then once the school year starts having Brad especially as part of his uh K-12 steamroll folding into those classes and really being a support for those folks to really help get that up and running off the ground so just to be clear every Elementary would start at the same time yes ma'am okay yes yeah and every and that's the other thing Mrs Weiss I'm glad you brought that up the other thing that I love about this is that every single Elementary student will now have the opportunity to engage in this type of learning great it's very exciting thank you very much thanks I have some questions too so I want to tell you first off that this when I read through this I was very I'm very impressed and I'm excited and I
039I really like what you have here I just the questions are gonna be different into this sure so what my concern is the community connections my understanding was that um that was sort of to help the mental health of our children and social emotional type of learning for them that was my understanding of why we had that just because you know we know you know youth are in crisis we have extremely high and very very young rates of youth suicide now I mean the rates have doubled in the last you know in the last 10 years it's just incredible and so I thought that that this was part of the of our attempt to connect with children have them learn about you know anti-bullying policies get you know get some of that better understanding of
040how to have positive behavior in school to get them ready for their future years so my my question is is that am I am I wrong about that about Community connections being that and I thought that it was a standard that we had to do that or is that changed no so so again that's that part of that getting kids connected to their Community to their school and part of that was that social emotional component but that also is a large part of our PBIS framework and our classroom teachers are doing a lot of that work through our PBIS framework with their students and so that is still going to be something that we will be intentional about with our students but it's through the PBIS framework the other component too when you think about
041the type of learning that's going to happen in this space there is natural if you will conversations about managing behavior and those types of things because we've got kids that are going to be working together and they're going to come up with conflicts and those things are going to happen and that's going to be embedded throughout that course okay I mean I guess I what I mean to say is I thought that that these courses were to try to promote a positive mental health and well-being for our students I thought like like Jim does for physical education that these classes were to sort of promote that but you're saying that's not what the community connections were about yes and I believe this force does does that as well yes yes but I think the other
042piece which I know you you hit on was that are are classroom teachers do that work as well it's not like because you're questioning your direct question was what are we losing we're not losing anything I think we're gaining uh some additional skills that we know are important for our students moving forward but I think the other thing we got to remind our community is from the time that Community connections was put into now we also added full-time counselors at the elementary school to support those needs with our students and they're doing our counselors I think want to do more of that work and I think we see the investment of this being a better investment in allowing our counselors to handle that that work well we have to then I noticed reading through this
043so we would have to we would potentially I mean it's a very specific skill set so we would potentially lose four teachers and then hire four new teachers is that how that would work the teachers that are currently teaching Community connections are on a limited one-year contract so that would have to be posted and renewed anyway so yeah so these positions would be posted yeah okay I have a lot of questions actually my first one is on a review of literature on pltw it looks like yes it does get people to want to enter and this is a very good perk that it wants kids want to enter technology careers who are interested in that and want to go into Healthcare Etc one of the criticisms on a review of literature and that's from I
044think they did 66 in one of these articles I read 66 different studies on this curriculum was that it doesn't actually work in helping to improve math and science test scores on state tests so that's one of the big criticisms and then there's one of the other ones in of this review of literature that I was reading was scheduling space issues and financial costs to the district um so those were some of my concerns going forward is that it does if it's not if it's just another added in science class you know if it's not going to actually raise the scores why are we going to do it I guess it's number one and number two um at the same time I know that we're looking at changing go math out of elementary schools and
045changing the elementary school language arts programs are we doing all of these at one time because that's a little bit too much to ask the teachers to get trained for at the same time doing all these changes you know for next school year potentially that's my first thoughts wait just on the teacher issue we're not having classroom teachers learn this whole new no no foreign sorry I turned it off thank you can you clarify that Mrs Wegner that if I understand this correctly that these classes are like a special that the elementary school so they go as a class yes okay thank you yes so they're they're done the same way art music PE and media are they are yes yes yes um and now take but Community connections which is also special goes away
046and this will be the new class that takes place right right and so the the question in terms of why would we do this if it's if why would we use Project Lead the Way if it's not shown to raise test scores um Project Lead the Way is designed to encourage if you will those essential skills communication collaboration those types of things that are in our strategic plan and aligned to the portrait of an aviator um and it's more the skill-based piece than a Content based piece um and so when you look at the whole child we want to look at more than just math just science even though it's under that umbrella of steam we're really trying to make sure that we're cultivating students who can collaborate with one another and who can communicate
047and who can problem solve together um and so that's a that's a component of that Project Lead the Way peace and again that's not the only piece that's being used um Jennifer green and Brad Williams have gone through that entire curriculum and have pulled out just a few of the modules that best align to the standards to be used just in two of the quarters so it's not it's not the entire uh curriculum if you will it's it's a component of it anything else well thank you guys so much I appreciate it thank you very much Mrs Weber Mr Comfort aye Mrs Weiss aye Dr Steiger no Mr Mallard aye and Mrs bitter motion passes uh moving on a master facility Plan update and Roots Mr Lowe good evening again um this evening um instead
048of discussing our construction and other happenings around that I wanted to take a moment and talk about the district um Roofing overview with you and so I'm going to take you through a few slides this evening and then any questions you may have afterwards we can tackle I wanted to put this up here though because sometimes a picture says a thousand words right just so we can start to get a little context around the amount of roofs that we maintain across the district into Mr long if you want to move to the next slide I can actually show you that we have about 879 000 square feet of roof which is totaling around 20 and a half acres of schools under roof with a value of 26 million and so just to put that in
049perspective that equates to about 15 football fields or the um the surface space of 3240 parking spots so if we just take a step back and recognize and realize how much roof we have in this district and how much we have to maintain I wanted to also point out on the slide too the replacement cost and valuation this chart has given us to us um through a vendor that we use called name Garland Garland works with us to help evaluate our roofs from a large perspective understanding um the repairs that need to be done the long-term maintenance that needs to happen on them but they also help us leverage the best contracts for roofers out there by assisting us with the bidding process as well um and so we meet with them periodically throughout the
050year to get a update on what's going on with our roofs to understand some of the complexities around our roofs but then also helps us put together a five-year budget so we understand where we need to go this is done in a collaborative effort which I'll talk about on the next slide here um there are a lot of decisions that go into how we maintain our roof so what I wanted to do here is I wanted to outline some of the thought process behind that and some of the things that we consider so first and foremost we have to recognize that I would put ourselves in somewhat of an unstable climate area in Ohio what I mean by that is we experience extreme temperatures in our state between the cold cold and the warm warm
051that has dramatic impacts on our roofs and the ability to maintain those roofs specifically during the winter time um specifically speaking this winter we had a deep deep freeze in December when that happens and we get ice on our roof specifically to flat roofs it creates cracking and the unfortunate part about that is is that it's not a thing that you can immediately fix you have to wait until things dry and thaw to be able to get on the roof and to start doing some of those temporary fixes to then mitigate the long-term fixes the other thing up there that I want to point out as well is the is availability of contractors one of the things that we have seen through the pandemic like many different companies the workforce is shrinking specifically in the
052roofing industry the amount of commercial contractors is shrinking and so the availability to bid jobs and get those folks on jobs in short notice um is somewhat of a challenge the other challenge that we face as a school district is our ability to be flexible in repairing our roofs unlike a company or corporate office or a building we have to be careful about when we're actually on the roof doing this repair work due to the noise the distraction whatever it may be with the type of grouper here that they're doing now it doesn't mean that we couldn't move forward with doing any type of work during the instructional time but what we try to do is minimize that to the summer months May June July and August not only is it the best climate to
053be able to do that that weather or to do the replacement and for the weather but it also gives us the most time to be able to bring cranes out on site store the roofing material and things like that that would naturally take up parking spots or bus lanes if it's an elementary things like that the next point bullet point is funding obviously if we were our next slide I can kind of show you the cost of doing some of our projects I know that this has been a topic of the board for many years Roofing is not cheap if you were to roof your house you would recognize that it's not a cheap a cheap fix and so what we try to do is we try to look at the money that's been allocated
054look at what is the most critical next steps for those projects which leads us well then the next point I kind of talked about this is the very types of roofing when you look at the types of roofing that we have across our district there are Roofing types that are much more easily maintained whether that be an asphalt shingle or a metal roof structure and then there's more difficult roofs to maintain which would be of your more flat roofs we have a varied roofs in our district that require different approaches and a different level of funds to fix those obviously our flat roofs gives us the most problems if you asked any company out there they would say those give you the most problems because of how water sits freezes expands but the last point
055is where I really want to touch on because this is how we make those priority decisions around Roofing projects in the district so how do we prioritize um well and I want to note that these four things are no specific order we don't have to do number one to get the number two it's just the four things we wrestle with number one is the severity of the damage and also the environment that it's impacting right and so that could be is this a full force leak that's coming in um is that something that it's creating environmental concerns or things like that layered with this is we routinely do Environmental Studies air quality studies within our buildings um we've done them um this year uh well we did one prior to Green closing we've done them
056at the junior high and we've done one at the high school already and we have another one that has been commissioned they all come back clean um but we it doesn't mean we stop doing those because what again what we want to know is what is the severity of the damage and how does that impact the environment the second thing that we touch on is the impact on teaching and learning um obviously there's some leaks that occur within buildings that are as a result from roof damage that might be in custodial areas mechanical areas those are less of a priority than if we have a leak directly over an educational environment um so we take that into consideration the third one is resources available um this is not just funding this is being able to
057go out the bid this is being able to get a contractor to come in this is everything from being able to secure supplies we were talking with GC recently and and the two may we a lot of supply chain is kind of cured up at this point um but the two things that we still face are um electrical components for schools and then the other thing is roofing materials as well um and so those are the resources that we have to keep wrestling with and then the last one that I put up here is other project impacts um again after we assess these kind of main three things one of the things that we look at is we say what other construction what other um projects are happening at that space at that time does
058it make sense again to bring a crane out during this time to get that done do we have another project for example if we were going to tackle one of the elementaries that we might be doing a flooring project does it make sense to be doing the flooring and Roofing at the same time and how do we start to wrestle with all these competing priorities that exist with all of our projects uh Mr long if you want to go to the next slide um so as we look at all of those different things um we bring to you a five-year kind of plan for roofing um one of the things that I've always said and I'm sure Mr Lewis said this when he was in this position as well as we can have a five-year
059plan but we probably don't look more than two years out and the reason for that is is that things happen right um and so we want to have a plan because we want to really try to project and see what we need to be tackling strategically based on those four priorities um and so after we did that these are the next two summers I felt comfortable giving you to talk to you about what we're doing um number one is Sycamore High School um this roof is the most complex roof and it's the largest roof that we have it's got multi-veried types of roofing on it and it's been done over many many phases one of the things that we had conversations with at the very beginning of our construction process with the high school is
060is how do we commit resources to get this High School short up one of the main reasons is because we have the most issues with this roof outside of our Blue Ash Elementary roof the other piece of it is we want to do our best to protect the investment that we've just made inside the building right it doesn't make sense to renovate your building have these wonderful spaces not commit to the roof the complexities again around that is the roof is so large you can't do it in one summer this is a multi-summer approach Mr level I just want to confirm that we as a board accelerated spend to do that very thing correct two years ago I mean we recognize that we don't want to do new construction in the high school with roofs
061that were um I just it was not short-sighted we we actually authorized additional funding uh two or three years ago yeah and thank you for that and to that point um every summer we've been doing roof projects at the high school so if you've been there uh you'll notice last summer we tackled the gym roof um the summer before that we were tackling I can't remember what letter it was up there um so again this summer um we are tackling M um which is in the lower right hand corner so that's going to be over our new um front offices it will also include the special education um classes in that corner and it actually extends over a little bit um and then it also includes n and O which are right off of the
062commons that's about all we can chew off in one summer um with the contractor being on site the cranes that we need to bring in the resources around it that was prioritized and that's been in the hopper to get done due to the issues that we've had in the front of the building on that lip and that edge and then you'll see in summer 2024 we extend to more towards Cornell Road and then we finish up with d e f g that will put us in a place where the entire High School will have been touched um with the roof and just enough for us to probably start back over with phase one at some point um but it but but just to that point um we have cycled through and we've made our fixes
063at that point you'll see the Blue Ash Elementary also begins in summer of 2024. if I were to identify a building probably has the most significant concerns with Roofing um outside of the high school in specific areas it's Blue Ash the age of Blue Ash Mr Blue she'll have to help me 25 years it's about 25 years um so it is at the end of its lifespan um the great the great thing the positive thing about blue ashes they're targeted areas that we can address um and so but that is on a cycle over the course of three years to be replaced starting in the summer of 2024 and the great thing about Blue Ash 2 unlike the high school where it's just kind of everywhere we can section that off they're actually designed design
064changes that we need to make at Blue Ash to how the water drains off that roof so that's significant in there so you can kind of see all that up there in that upper graph and how in that chart sorry um and how we've kind of laid that out and prioritized how we're tackling that work but that gives you a five-year kind of overview some of the stuff that we've done kind of where we're heading with roofs um challenges I'm open to any questions you may have yes I have questions go for it um I know that you're aware I know you just mentioned that the special education classrooms in this building in the high school have had a lot have had leaks and had some issues and I I truly appreciate you know this
065board and all of your efforts to get you know to prioritize that and get that fixed um but at the same time there's still you know dumpsters and trash cans in the rooms where students who have disabilities are spending their entire day and like liquids that are black that have foul smells to them and my question and I the reason that I brought this up and wanted to talk about this today is I want to know if there's something that as a board that we can do as to we realize we can't change getting a new roof we can't change that timing I mean there's nothing we can do yeah so is there something else that we can do to provide resources for the high school so that these students many of them probably have
066health conditions that these type of water and these types of you know things being in their space all day long might impact and I just want to know is there something that we as a board might be able to do are there other spaces that the students could go to I realize there might not be other classrooms but are there other areas because we're going to have a wet spring and even if there's like tiny leaks that can cause serious problems for people and who knows what's in the roof itself right if even if there's no leak there could be water and black mold could be growing and it's smelling so I think this is something that needs to be looked at can we can we just clear can we just clarify just because there
067are a lot of things said and they're kind of opposite of each other we have dumpsters in our classroom I don't think that's true we have dumpsters in our classroom collecting water that there's so much water coming off the roof so um we have we have trash cans that we put for leaks um some of them are the wheelie cans but the reason that the Willy cans is because if you have a drop here or a drop there it collects in a bigger um we we've been over multiple times um I do think it's important to note a couple things number one we do do the air quality testing so we want to ensure that there's no mold or anything like that in the environment that would adversely back to help his students that's priority
068number one number two we did have the roofing company come out after the winter freeze on a warm 50 degree day they did an uh immediate patch that they could do they were actually out um yesterday and today as well doing another patch and the ceiling tiles are going to go back up we had to take the ceiling tiles out because the drips were ruining the ceiling tiles but we feel confident enough that the fix has been done that we can put those up at this point and any type of trash can that was in there can can leave the space thank you Mr Lovell I and I I what I'm saying is not incorrect I don't know what you're saying is I mean but one second we're hearing that they're doing tests on the
069air and you're saying that there's dirty water coming down and it might be black mold and things that aren't proven and I don't want I don't want us to be alarmed and set a tone that we are not addressing the issue which we are clearly doing I am bringing this up because I do not feel we are addressing the issue Ms Weiss that's why I'm bringing this up I think that um you know one of the things that we are always trying to do is be proactive we have a plan to be proactive with the roofs it's just a challenge um one of the things that I talk with our leadership team our principles about as well is that if um if there's an immediate concern that you see you have the authority to move
070those spaces as needed um I haven't got had in conversations like that with the administration we've navigated some of these challenges with them the other thing I would mention too that that space specifically is a challenging space and I'm sure you can recognize that too Miss bitter there's refrigerators in there there's um sinks in that space there's handicap accessible restrooms that connect those aren't easily spaces replicated anywhere else in the building and so the challenge of moving a what I would say would be a general ed class of English to another space is way easier than moving a space as complex as this one and so I could work with Mr Porter and talk about what that might be but because we're still down spaces in the building there creates a challenge around how do
071we because we're still three four classrooms down from the current phase that we're doing with Administration on the accounting room and things like that to try to navigate that I'm a bit confused used then because I thought you said the ceiling tiles were going in and the trash cans were going out correct so is there still a need to move students we don't see a need for that um but if for whatever reason we do the patch something happens freezing happens again and there starts to be leaking again we can have those conversations if need be yeah having had a child child in the high school for over 10 years it's not surprising to me that we have leaks throughout the building I'm not sure there has ever been a year of those 10 where
072we didn't have this challenge I do really appreciate the team's efforts to go after this in a in the best possible way I have no doubt that the team is working hard against this because the student safety and well-being has always been a priority appreciate that I do appreciate everything you've done um very logical to me I go back to something you know that Mrs bitter said as well and it's the health and safety and you're touching on that as well we're doing additional air monitoring studies to ensure that we're not having mold in the air like conditions for our children so um you know I think you've done much you can do right now absolutely obviously if that doesn't work I'm sure they'll come back out and look at what that three is to
073do that for example but I do want to stress that that air monitoring is important and maybe back to Mrs bitter's question is there anything you need from this board at this point I mean you all have been extremely supportive in our roof projects um to your point that you made earlier we feel like we have the funding in place um it really comes down to time the time allocated to get it done um so at this point I don't have any specific request one more question are there any other classrooms are building where the students spend their entire day in one room beside that one if I'm equipped to answer that from an academic perspective I apologize okay I just wanna I just I mean I understand there's leaks in classrooms I understand that
074but there are very few students in this school that's been an entire almost their entire day in one room and those children are children with special Health Care needs and who are most probably many of them non-verbal so I think it's just something to consider they can't go home and tell their parents hey this is going on there's no way for them to communicate that most of the time I would say most of them couldn't so I just think it's important and I appreciate what all that you're doing I truly do so thank you absolutely I appreciate your comments any additional questions thank you very much uh moving on I need a motion for the approval of change orders for Sycamore High School renovation project GMP number two so moved yes sir don't go anywhere
075go back Global any questions and this is better any questions from the board Mrs Webber please call the roll Mrs Place aye Mrs bitter aye Mr Ballard aye Mr Comfort aye Dr speaker aye motion passes I need a motion for the approval to construction change director of the H green intermediate construction project so I moved second questions Mrs Weber Mrs Weiss hi this is bitter hi Mr ballot aye Mr Comfort aye doctor aye motion passes I need a motion for the approval the construction change directive transportation and maintenance bus depot project so moved second can I just add to this one because I think it's important this is a soil one yeah I saw the soil issues Mr lover right I know so done with those almost okay um almost done um so but I
076do want to I think it's important to understand is part of that Transportation contract we did have an allowance for soils and so that number is at the very high end and so it's actually going to come down based on the credit which I think might be in front of you at this point but what they're trying to do is they're trying to put the change directive out there now because we want to be first in line to start getting that Paving and everything done this spring um so when we can start to move that work we can do that in an effective way some semester level does not exceed 100 000 that's already in 50 000 within the contract I believe I believe that number is going to come down more to about 70
077000 when it's all said and done do have agency so that's correct where that would come this is no additional funding no it is national funding thank you for that would be within the contingency on the project yep any additional questions Mrs Webber please this is bitter aye Mr Comfort aye Dr Steger aye and Mr Ballard aye motion passes uh Mr Lewis moving on to others yeah just some quick uh other items uh aves Cabaret was this past weekend a great opportunity to see some of our singers especially uh soloists perform and a lot of them uh played instruments but it was a great atmosphere so a big thank you to Mr Holt Mr Swift Mr C free and also Mrs uh burklow uh for all the work that they put into that as well
078as the Sycamore vocal boosters um I know there was a lot of volunteerism to get the uh setting just right so if you've never been I encourage you to go it was a wonderful event uh high school fashion for the Cure is next Friday February 24th uh 7 PM doors open at six uh the benefiting the dragonfly foundation so uh kudos to those students and their advisors uh Mrs Blackmore Mrs Clem they're doing a great job uh getting that event ready and I didn't realize how many different fundraisers they do throughout the year to get to that event there's a number of events if you go on their website there's a number of just small fundraisers they do to reach their goal which is really impressive for students that are already busy uh the odd
079couple's dance makes its triumphant return to this year uh it's called Saddle Up and so uh March 11 2023 7 30 to 10 30 and I saw on the event that Mr Porter is riding a bull so that should that in and of itself is worth the price of admission just to see that and then a couple of our athletes got some really significant recognition and I thought it was good to point out um Ava bessaril and Caroline Thompson were both first team since I inquire All-Stars but they were also nominated for USA today's top golfers of the year which I thought that was pretty impressive so and that's all I have Mr Mountain thank you very much Mr Lewis I need a motion for the approval of treasurer's consent agenda so I moved second
080Mrs Weber any comments or any questions from the board just a quick item on quick comment on the Trader's concerned um the primary reason for adjustments this month are to add to our budget or carry over a Federal Grant allow us to utilize uh funds that we did not need or did not use in fiscal year 22 for expenses for this year any questions Mrs Weber Facebook Mrs White aye Mr aye Dr Steiger aye Mr ballant aye and Mrs bitter aye motion passes I need a motion for the approval of financial reports January 2023. I moved one comment on the general fund something to you that we are starting to see tax advances foreign but it does show that as those funds are received by the county treasurer's office they forward them to the use
081for the use of the Board of Education those funds which right now actually some healthy rates can come from the investment of those funds um I will note that this month I did not include a simply ran out of time to get that completed to this meeting is there any questions any questions Mrs Webber Mrs bitter hi Mr ballot aye Mr Comfort aye motion passes I need a motion for the adoption of the revised policy manual Simon second Mrs Webber uh Mrs bitter and I could probably not be much more excited about the question of anything um than a couple of year project I think back on to the boardwalk especially yes it's taken us a bit of time complete this thing all of you who have provided input Mrs Wagner spent a lot of
082time with us going through a lot of the instructional student I items within the policy manual um and Dr Davis with human resources and staff items so just want to thank everybody for their time um I will reach out to Kenna haycox from Ohio school boards Association to thank her for her facilitation of this process as well um there are two policies from our last meeting that I did want to give you just a brief update because they were kind of hanging out there um AC which is non-discrimination there were some questions about that process um we reached out to our legal counsel just to confirm in a review of Ohio school board's recommendation and they supported what the Ohio School Board Association had presented in terms of whether Boards of Education should be included
083in the appeal process so they recommended that you keep yourselves out of that process because we do have the superintendent involved it would just be adding layers that were unnecessary so um they they did support the way that was provided by the Ohio school boards Association the second policy is kja and I apologize for not getting um this to you prior prior to the meeting but this was in regards to distribution of materials at community events um something that the board has uh done for a long time is prohibited the distribution of campaign political materials including for you when you run office for office as well as for when the district has levies from being distributed at school events and so we did ask Ohio school boards if that could be included in the policy
084they did review it but again wanted to make sure that our legal counsel reviewed it just to make sure that there weren't any potential First Amendment right violations um by by not allowing that and it comes down to uniform policy for all and it is something that we can keep from happening at our school events so what I what we will do with the policy is we will the um wording that is in our campaign guidelines which talks about that other than one exception which is when the PTO has their campaign Forum or their board candidate forums so there's only one I one event that we have allowed in the past um and would simply take that language and insert it into the policy so those were the two that I wanted to um foreign
085policies that we just don't have quite finished yet one of the main areas is in cyber security and that's because Mr long is doing a really comprehensive review of that we have a consultant that's helping us it's just going to take a little bit more time and and again I you know this is going to be an organic document so we will continue to review quarterly updates that we get from the Ohio School Board they provide guidance on either things that need to be updated because of changes in state or federal law or regulations or the things that they see as you know Hot Topics in society that they think we might want to want to address moving forward so I'm really excited hope that we can get this approved this evening and thank you
086Miss bitter for all of your work in helping us through this journey I hope you learned a lot about the things that we've addressed as a board of education the important work that you do through the policy that you provide to the district so with that I guess are there any questions Mrs Weber I just want to thank you for following up on those two issues I did get the email from Kate Davis our legal counsel on that one particular issue so thank you and thank you to Mrs bitter for all your hard work on this project it was a long one but a very important one thank but thank you to all of you board members you all put a lot of work into this too and I appreciate you going through everything and
087reading all the policies and Mr Lewis and and and Mrs Weber um and Mrs Wagner all of the and there are other people that really worked on this this was a lot of work but it was a team effort so thank you very much is just uh it'll probably take a couple weeks for osba to get it loaded onto our website the community to have it be available uh Mr Lewis I don't know if you think that's something that might be worthy of us sending out just a a document or putting a notice or some kind of new you know release to our parents and staff and community that that's been that work has been completed I think that might be helpful um I know once that's done that we're going to need to do
088some uh communication and training with our staff to make sure they are well aware of those things that impact their their day-to-day work um and how that will impact them so that they are the right thing about the abscess the policies so much again I just wouldn't if I could just take a moment to thank um Mrs bitter and you for and you Mrs Wagner for the extra work I know it's really important work of the board that all the board have done but the three of you in my mind um did quite a bit extra on top so thank you yes I just want to also reiterate thank you Mrs Weber Wagner and everyone else who spent countless hours on Zoom meetings and trying to get this you know done so thank you so
089much I appreciate it okay thank you very much Mrs Weber please Mr ballot bye before you call for a vote I just noticed that on letter M it says Benjamin Williams it should be Benjamin Williamson that's our school psych at the high school so then whoever made the motion and seconded it as long as you're okay with that correction I'm fine with the correction I'm also okay with that correction okay thank you Mr aye hi um we have the legislative liaison report yes thank you all right good evening and I'm going to provide the legislative liaison update for the for this meeting um Mr Lewis Mrs Weber Mrs Weiss and I have two upcoming scheduled meetings with Senator blessing and representative Baker our plan topics are the state budget and Senate bills 1 and 11.
090um for the Governor's budget just another just a brief update because I know Mrs Weiss already talked about this at our last meeting and as we discussed the governor has submitted his budget and is currently it's working its way in the house it will it will start working his way through the legislative process right now we will learn more when we meet with our legislators in the next couple of weeks and we will update you next week on that meeting or next month on that meeting that will probably be Mrs Weiss updating you on that one um under in the Ohio Senate education committee um Senate bill one the Senate education committee has held their second and third hearings on Senate bill one which would put the policy making authority of the State Board of
091Education into the governor's cabinet rulemaking would be under the discretion of the governor and the Ohio Department of Education instead of the elected members of the State Board of Education this bill would be re this bill would also rename the Department of Education to the Department of Education and Workforce and it would create a position of Director of Education and Workforce the bill would also reform the functions and responsibility of the State Board of Education and the superintendent of Public Instruction the committee recently heard testimony from proponents of the bill some Career Tech and Traditional School Districts superintendents lent their support for this proposal urging the panel to elevate Career Technical education in Ohio and streamline the functions of the Ohio Department of Education and state board proponent testimony was provided by the superintendent of
092the Great Oaks career campuses for Senate Bill 11 this is the voucher Bill the Senate education committee also held sponsor testimony on Senate Bill 11 which would expand the eligibility for Ed short for the Ed Choice voucher program to all students seeking voucher scholarships beginning in the year 2023 2024. Senate Bill 11 would eliminate the income and geographical Geographic restrictions on who can get school vouchers it's very similar to last year's backpack Bill the amount of the voucher or scholarship money allowed for Elementary and high school students would remain the same which would be five thousand five hundred and fifty dollars and seven thousand five hundred dollars respect respectively no prior Public School attendance is required would be required to receive this voucher funding and that's it thank you thank you very much Mrs bitter
093uh Dr Steger Sycamore advisory Commission sorry my microphone's not cooperating this evening um so on the Sycamore advisory committee I'm sure Mr Lewis could voucher it was a pretty fast meeting this time it was you know done pretty quickly but we had an update on the um the team that was looking at the sac bylaws and they have essentially now moved it forwards the bylaws so there's suggestions for changes are going to the executive committee for them to look over and see what if they want to move those forward for a vote to approve or not approve um we did not get to see the red mining but we were promised if we want to see them like some of us like Mrs bitter and I like to read everything so we can actually see
094those if we want they'll get those to us the next one was the cultivating and inclusive culture group did a phenomenal um presentation about diversity equity and inclusion and they look to other districts and how they worked with tracking demographics Etc and what they said one of their suggestions to Mr Lewis was possibly to provide on the calendar you know days that were important for certain you know the big ones for certain cultures or um practices that people have so that teachers could be aware that maybe they got the day off but the next day they're not going to be ready for a test or handing in a paper so we need to just having like you know information for people rather than you know just giving the days off but like let's use it
095as a learning opportunity and then just giving suggestions about different districts and what they're doing like Mason has an entire office dedicated to diversity inclusion um and Equity so maybe just looking at that as an idea of how we can move forward way down to the Future um and then the one thing that they reiterated was um they wanted us to hopefully work with the Sycamore ambassadors program and making it more accessible to find it on our website um in the district because apparently it's really hard for some people to find um one thing that I think every everyone will appreciate I know I asked this question but um the Cooper Road Bridge you know the one right by the junior high that they're going to start mid-march apparently I thought it was going to
096be done in mid-may they said that you know they were Montgomery was informed that it might be mid-june so we all need to be aware of that as a school board with everything going on over at the junior high lot so that's those are the quick updates with a lot of stuff that the schools are going on cultural nights dances Heritage nights auctions and all of the performances that went on also with green machine you know math and science conventions Etc so just to give you those quick updates thank you business advisory Council uh my meeting was quicker than yours because it didn't happen due to weather um and it has been rescheduled for the beginning of March the 8th I believe um moving on um it is time for our annual PTO board um
097we do have six of the seven schedules I have not heard back from Sims I will reach back after them again um so I'm asking who's available for uh meetings you can email me um what meetings are available so that we can make sure we have coverage and then I'm looking for a volunteer to kind of put together a few talking points or bullets uh until we can all uh share the same information with ppos if someone is willing to do that that's also something that you need help from staff to help you put that agenda together just to give you support materials we can do that I'm happy to put the first draft together and everyone will have a chance to look at it yeah so the one uh the first ones that are
098coming up we do have um March the 1st at 7 pm at eh green um is there we're not going to meet again before that so we'll meet that morning that's a good way to go about this I like this okay good evening it's better for some board members than others so if there's board members that want to do an evening meeting yeah 7 P.M yep Mr Bowen is that not the day of our Retreat as well yes okay thank you yeah thank you um and then I will send out a reminder if you could if you could respond back to which dates you are available but we do have March the 8th at the um at the junior high which is a virtual meeting uh March the 10th at 9 A.M at the high
099school April 13th at 9 30 for Mapledale May 11th at 9 30 at Blue Ash and May 17th 9 30 at Montgomery we'll get them covered absolutely between all of us we will make it happen we will look forward to it we'll be there ready to go okay with that we will adjourn the meeting thank you everybody have a good evening