001to 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 as we start our meeting i want to remind everyone that as a board all five of us are elected to represent the entire community which consists of approximately five thousand six hundred seventy five students 835 staff members and a community of thirty five thousand two hundred and seventy six we use our mission and vision to guide us in our decision making so i'd like to start with tonight's to let's start tonight's meeting by revisiting these our mission is to cultivate a culture of academic excellence through inclusion and innovative learning opportunities for the whole child in our vision is to empower all learners to reach their full potential
002in a globally competitive world as we conduct our public business tonight ask the board administration and community to do so in a respectful manner discussions are healthy and while we may not always agree i can assure you that each and every one of us wants to do what is best for all of our students staff and for our community i'll ask for approval of the agenda which includes addendum superintendent superintendents agenda items number six and seven personnel consent agenda addendum 1d 3a and 4a and the removal of superintendents agenda item number four submit second mrs weber please call the roll mrs weiss aye dr steger aye mrs bitter aye mr comiford aye aye mr ballen aye agenda's approved um i need a motion for the approval of the minutes so moved second any comments or
003questions from the board mrs webber please call the roll mrs weiss aye dr steger aye mr cumberford aye mr ballen aye aye mrs bitter aye minutes are approved as we have done in the past um we'll ask mrs weber to provide a quick overview of the protocol for tonight's meeting thank you mr ballen and thank thank you to all of you who are attending here with us tonight i see some very exciting special guests that we have over here on on this side of the room so we thank you for coming we also thank all of you who are attending our meeting virtually this evening for those of you who are in our virtual audience just want to make you aware that if you need a copy of the agenda as well as the addendum
004for this evening's meeting it's available on our board of education website the minutes that we approved for this meeting will also be available on the website by sometime tomorrow this evening our moderator and i thought that i had updated this but our moderator is actually mr fritz this evening as opposed to mr ray if you have public participation requests in our virtual audience we ask that you please email either mr fritz or me beth weber at weber b sycamoreschools.org mr fritz email address is fritzw sycamoreschools.org so we would ask that you email those requests to us we do have several members of our audience tonight who have addressed the board to have requested to address the board on two specific issues one being the redistricting and elementary boundary proposal so we will get to your
005public participation when we get to that point in the meeting and we also have a group who have asked to address the board on the athletic facilities as part of our master facility plan update so the process for that is we have those agenda items on already on our agenda we do ask that you address the board after the administration has made their presentation and then the board has opportunity for for discussion so once we get through both of those things we'll ask you mr ballen i believe has everyone's name who's going to be participating and we will ask you to address the board at that time just please keep in mind that comments are limited to three minutes in length and 15 minutes total for the entire topic and i think based on the
006number of people that we have wanting to address the board on either one of those we should be able to do that within those time frames so i think with that we are ready to go to the first item on the agenda thank you very much mrs weber uh mr lewis i will turn it over to you thank you mr bellant and i'm going to ask mrs spencer to join me and as she makes her way up we thought it was important to bring some special people tonight to the board meeting and we've had so many people that helped us get through the last two years but this special group of individuals spend spent an inordinate amount of time working through contact tracing dealing with sick children dealing with sick staff members really advising us
007on all aspects of covet and pandemic response and we felt it was important to bring them forward to you tonight and recognize their i'll call it super heroic efforts because without them we could not have navigated the last two school years and we certainly wouldn't have made it um in session and being able to keep kids educated and in in school as much as we did so i am going to be mrs spencer's assistant tonight and i will let mrs spencer take it away thank you we have this wonderful group of school nurses here this evening and we also have two of our contact tracers who weren't able to come in person but are attending virtually so we'll recognize them as well but this group of nurses and we'll have an opportunity to have you
008guys come up here in just a moment to be recognized specifically but i just wanted to say a few words this group of nurses um you know again a few attending virtually have gone above and beyond the call of duty during the pandemic over the past two years these nurses have committed um to supporting the health and safety of all of our students our staff and our families the role of the school nurse aside from the pandemic is not an easily understood role i think there's some perceptions about what a school nurse is and it is definitely more than just medication and first aid um they um this role encompasses both health and education goals and uh the primary goal each and every day they they live this breathe this every single day is to
009make sure that students are healthy so they can remain in their classes performing to their ability to the greatest extent possible and just to give you a little snapshot i'd like to share with you an example of one school building's end of the school year statistics okay so it's just it was the end of last year this is the statistics a few from this one building in this one building there were 5 347 visits to the clinic that year that was actually a decline from the year previous and if you remember the year previous we were out in march through the end of the school year we also had a third of our students attending virtually so pretty still pretty high number percent of those students seen in the school nurse's office returned to class
010five percent were sent home because of illness uh 880 student health related contacts were made which included letters phone and personal contacts 556 hearing and vision screenings were conducted not many people know but the nurse is involved in all initial evaluation team reports for special education students they have a component of that in this particular building there were 12 of those done that year 3235 doses of medication were administered 626 treatments were administered or supervised instructed by the school nurse 21 emergency action or health care plans were conducted and 183 total staff visits to the clinic were also documented in that school year 59 students had asthma in this building 52 students with food allergies one student with diabetes 13 students with a documented seizure disorder so pretty significant statistics on top of some of
011the other duties that they have in terms of immunization management being the building um uh on the building mert team the emergency response team um so these responsibilities on top of the coveted response were pretty overwhelming so um in understanding kind of what that role really encompassed during the pandemic i would like to just call out them individually just briefly make a statement and recognize them so as i call you ladies if you wouldn't mind stepping forward and mr lewis will assist me here so julie ferran nurse farren [Applause] nurse ferran who served sims elementary school assisted directly in the covid response planning as the nurse coordinator during the 2021 school year she spent countless hours after school on the weekends over holiday breaks supporting the contact tracing process she did this while also supporting
012the needs of parents of her own parents outside of school supporting the other school nurses with their needs and their buildings and contributed a great deal to our dart team so we could not have managed through the pandemic without her support and continued support in that role dianna weirich nurse wyrick can always be counted on to advocate for the health safety of student staff and families as well as for the ethical practices in nursing services she is always the one to help support that process which we appreciate she supported blue ash elementary administrators with contact tracing implementing protocol and proactively planning for or responding to changes the ever changing landscape of covid and protocols through through the past two years um she um nurse weirich also shared with me that once she felt a sense
013of guilt for not being able to do more prevention with kovid but understanding that it was a pandemic that was something that we really couldn't control but that sense of guilt kind of rests with her as a health care provider and that resonated with me so thank you nurse weirich carolyn eddy nurse adis supports mabledale elementary with covert response while serving students with some fairly complex medical needs this is a role that she does not take lightly and continued to work daily with the heightened awareness of the role that she served to support students staff and families at one point she expressed to me that she felt like her clinic served as a testing site for staff who were coming in early before school started to take a covet taste covered test just in case
014because maybe they had a symptom so they were really trying to be protective of the students that they were supporting and so she helped support them by providing some continuing education on whether or not they needed to test so frequently nurse linton susan linton nurse lin linton supports montgomery elementary with components of contact tracing while supporting the health needs of students she persevered through the challenging the changing protocols and advocated for the needs of not only her clinic but for the other district nurses as well and she continued that advocacy um even through this school year which was greatly appreciated nurse linton uh laurie dobrowski nurse deborah wallski also known as nurse d maintained her passion for serving um as a school nurse through the pandemic over the past two years she supported creative problem
015solving consulted with building administrators regarding covert protocols conducted contact tracing in her building both during and after school hours and also maintained a welcoming clinic at eh green intermediate nurse d communicated to me that at one point during the pandemic that this is what we're called to do to serve others during a community health crisis and that she did amy bonham nurse bonham supported the junior high with covid response while also serving students with with again some fairly complex medical needs as an example in order to maintain a healthy environment for one single student with complex medical needs she assisted me in researching best practices for a required procedure for this student which was kind of compromising not only of the environment but other people around this student because of the nature of that treatment
016her willingness to persevere through this challenge is only one example of how she supported ensuring that that student was able to continue to come to school so thank you nurse bonham uh jenny ferris nurse ferris led the school nurse uh the clinic at the high school during the pandemic and continues to do so she problem solved collaborated um and supported the creation of practices and procedures related to contact tracing that supported a smooth process for as much as possible at the high school in turn this created additional tasks that she and her staff managed to ensure communication to administration and teaching staff regarding covet cases the absence dates the return dates etc so thank you for for your support in that allison connors nurse connors supported nurse ferris at the high school in ways that
017simply can't accurately be conveyed she identified gaps in procedures and processes that supported filling those gaps and continued to advocate for not only what was best for students and staff but for the process of contact tracing that made sense nurse connors is detail-oriented and this perspective was needed as for protocols practices and procedures that were being implemented the next two nurses i'm going to recognize are attending virtually but they served as our district contact tracers to give you some perspective of their commitment and effort let me share with you just one statistic from august 23rd 2021 through april 3rd of 2022 they supported 1554 hours of contact tracing and communication that is the equivalent of 39 40-hour weeks that's a lot of time and let me tell you it wasn't an 8-5 job it was
018a lot of time it was weekends it was holidays it was you know 24 7 really i won't say we there weren't people up at 2 a.m because nurse murphy was up at 2 a.m a couple times communicating some things so i'll recognize susan murphy first nurse murphy served as a contact tracer for our district but she also served our district for many years as a school nurse before her retirement i cannot adequately express the commitment she gave during this process literally days nights the wee hours of the morning weekends even when she went on vacation this is when she supported the contact tracing process she also supported the reporting of our covid the district coveted data to the ohio department of health weekly which took one of the report reporting components off of my
019plate which i greatly appreciated alex mcmanus is another one of our contact trade tracers nurse mcmanus first supported sims elementary during the 2021 school year so nurse farren could serve as the lead nurse for covet response after having a new baby in the summer of 2021 she stepped up to the plate to serve as a contact tracer this school year we literally could not have survived the coveted surge during the school year without her assistance she also worked day night weekends too while having three small children at home so all in all ladies thank you so much for everything that you have contributed words cannot adequately express our gratitude how grateful we are for your sacrifice the extra effort the frustration the fatigue that you all experienced as you are helping respond to the increased
020demands of kovid but then of your roles as well you have and continue to rise to the challenge masking up and serving our district students staff and families you gracefully adapted to the changing protocols and and solve problems with creativity and perseverance and i sincerely am grateful for everything that you did so thank you and if you wouldn't mind staying put for just another moment we'd like our board to come and shake your hand and we also have a nice gift for you summer spring and summer is coming and who can't use a nice cooler right so we'll we'll get those tea and if you wouldn't mind staying for a picture yes mr lovell thank you very much and if the board would indulge me for just one more minute um we would be remiss
021and i know the nurses feel the same way our district team our building leaders really everyone within the district feels the same way and i'll pay for this tomorrow but mrs spencer deserves a special recognition and as much as mrs spencer touted all the hours and all the time all the things that she you know she touted about everyone else she was right there walking the walk with them mrs spencer is one of the the best leaders that i have ever worked with she is selfless she works tirelessly she works long hours every single day to make sure that our students and our staff feel supported and they also have what they their needs met to be able to do what they need to do and between the numerous phone calls the numerous contacts on
022weekends again holidays weekends evenings she probably was up at 2 a.m working out and getting ready for the day but we could not have survived this time without her and we certainly couldn't have survived uh the work without her so she continued to do all of that plus her normal job which probably was basically two full-time jobs so thank you mrs spencer for all your efforts [Applause] and on behalf of the board thank you to everyone as well and you know we really need to keep in mind that we kept our schools open during all of this and it is due to the amazing teamwork of the nurses that we have here also our entire administration so thank you for everything you've done for our students and keeping them in the classroom where they belong
023and for keeping our education of our students and community thank you [Applause] mr lewis sorry i was feeling up mr fritz next slide please so we are extremely excited to complete our high school team um you know mr mater and his team have actually spent this school year down an assistant principal and you know really felt strongly about finding the right fit uh for their team and so we are we are pleased to welcome uh janelle schunk to our team and i'll give you a little background about mrs schunk and certainly so that you can get a feel for the experience that we're bringing to the high school team her educational background she went to drexel university with a bs in photography got her masters in art education at the university of toledo and then
024her master's in school leadership and also her superintendent leadership program i don't know if you're finished with it or not but you're in in her at miami university she has worked 14 years in public education serving as an adult education serving as art teacher in milford and then most recently spending the last three years as an assistant principal at oak hills high school what i know about janelle is that she is a true leader of kids and people she wants to do the best job that she can for the students and the staff and and strongly believes in making sure that she builds those relationships to make that happen um in both areas she supported new teachers at oak hills she did work as a family support liaison on that team and supervised and they
025work a little differently at oak hills they do letter grades and so she serves students grades 9 through 12 so she comes to us very experienced with all grade levels and that's not typically how we run at sycamore high school but who knows mr mater may make a shift you never know her content areas as an art teacher she supervised the art area she supervised social studies ap programs obviously through the work of an assistant principal discipline master scheduling staff evaluations things of that nature so and then probably uh through the pandemic probably a duty she didn't ask for but she was the virtual academy principal uh for nine through 12 for the 2021 school year so um when i made the call to oak hills that and and this is something that i believe
026that superintendents do and should do with each other is to be honest and let let them know that they're looking at one of their people and the superintendent oak hills said you're you're looking at my best one of my best assistant principals across the district and they don't we don't typically say those things lightly to each other so um luckily i have gotten to meet uh janelle before that and i believe you know we're getting a great fit for our administrative team and we're excited uh to welcome her to being a sycamore aviator and being part of the sycamore family so janelle thank you very much and thank you for being here tonight so welcome to the district [Applause] [Music] thank you very much mr lewis mr fritz and mrs weber i have no public
027participation other than agenda items i have not received any additional emails okay we will move forward with the superintendent's agenda um i need a motion for the approval of redistricting plan kindergarten grade two grade four attendance boundary changes so moved second mr lewis so just to give you a little background obviously this is uh the third time that we're coming forward with some information about redistricting and i just want to reiterate not only for our people here from our community but also the community members online you know this is not a discussion that we enjoy it's certainly not part of the work that we enjoy we enjoy uh the part of the work that you know helps our students learn and grow and achieve at the highest levels but redistricting discussions because you know it's
028emotional you know you're impacting students and families and you know difficult decisions have to be made so i just want to refresh you know there are two goals that we went into this really looking at which is balancing our elementary schools we knew as part of the master facility plan that we needed to look at balancing out our elementary schools and and that happens when you again build additional capacity into one of your elementary schools you know that you need to look at your balance so being able to alleviate some of the facility capacity concerns was a part of that balancing of elementary schools the other thing is a major component was our expansion and relocation of our preschool program so we're excited to be able to offer that we're moving it from mapledale where
029we're having some capacity challenges and moving it to sims elementary so that'll free up two classrooms here within the building and it's much needed just due to a number of the i'll say auxiliary spaces that are now being utilized uh for different purposes that were not intended for those purposes the last thing that i just wanted to say before i'll rerun you know through the information that you have seen before is you know we we heard strong feelings from our community about the redistricting plan at our last meeting and certainly i totally understand it i totally get it and i understand where people are having a student that had to leave his home elementary school not because of redistricting but you know because of our family situation and having him spend his fourth grade year
030in sycamore it was it was a challenge for our family and it was something we had to work through and and help my son through um so i believe me it hits at my heart and i i know uh how that hurts and how that how that hits emotionally so uh listening to that and knowing that uh you know one of the the adjustments that we are making to our recommendation uh to the school board is that and we did this very similarly in 2014 is that we made inter-district open enrollment an option uh for any families that would like to stay in their home elementary for the duration of their time in elementary school so again you know being able to hear the concerns and making sure that we we listen to the concerns
031and making that option available i think will hopefully alleviate some of those concerns uh next slide please mr fritz and so you can see you know these the these numbers uh were the same numbers that we shared at the last meeting of our current elementary enrollment what our projected enrollment would be again with the preschools moving this the square footages of the building just to refresh your memory sims elementary used to be around 62 000 square feet so the additional 20 000 square feet of capacity was a part of the situation and then you know just some notes on the side there of different things that are unique to each elementary school next slide please mr fritz and then so our redistricting suggestion again you know different areas that we have listed before montgomery town
032uh moving from sims to montgomery and you can see the distance and just to refresh your memory montgomery town sits right next to old montgomery old montgomery does attend montgomery elementary and again the distance uh and being able to move and make some make some decisions to assist sims elementary with a little bit of the capacity concerns but also you know with the move of preschool again just trying to adjust those elementary schools to be a little more evenly balanced and then you can see the rest creeks of montgomery orchard club mayfair shaker dale and hopewell road are all in the maple dale attendance area moving to the montgomery and they're they're all along montgomery road uh similar to that stretch uh leading between um old montgomery montgomery town all the way to phifer across
033from the hospital and then a small change at the bottom just regarding the approach uh it actually currently is at blue ash and it sits in the maple dale attendance area so again looking at that distance next slide please thank you mr fritz and then you can just see the overall impact again of what are the numbers what are the current number of students in those areas and how that would be impacted so next slide please mr fritz so our recommendations would be to request the approval of the redistricting plan again a relocation and expansion of the preschool from mapledale to sims allowing students and families enrolled in the 21 22 school year and the reason we said students and families let's say that a family has a current second grader but they also have
034a student that hasn't enrolled in school we we would be willing to extend the option for inter-district open enrollment for that family because again they've been at that same elementary school so again so that way they don't feel like well it's only locked off after we get let's say the older one gets in fourth grade and that kindergartner starts we want to make sure that that it's understood that that kindergartener has that same option um so we understood that that might be an impact for some of our families so again they would have that option to remain at that school of attendance through their exit of fourth grade uh through the interdistrict enrollment application process which you know we've done a good job of honing that process in and not you know allowing boundary to
035boundary movement because it was impacting our balance of our elementary schools and then just in parentheses there you know i wanted to be understood that if you accept the inner district enrollment process like any other inter-district enrollment process we do not provide transportation because we don't drive across attendance boundaries so that would be the only caveat there so happy to answer any questions or entertain any comments from the board i i would like to thank all the community members that have taken the time to come speak to us over the last couple meetings as well as provide emails to us we value your input and we do listen to you and i think that that's evident by what mr lewis is presenting today versus what it looked like you know two meetings ago so we
036as board members always uh encourage the community to reach out um and let your voice be heard and let us know you know parents see things sometimes that we don't see and it's you know we listen to those uh we listen to the input so thank you to everybody who's reached out to us may i make a comment now i'm not sure if you can hear me on the zoom not yet nope any additional comments or questions from the board can i just add miss christian i do have you on the list to address the board when we get to that portion of the meeting so thank you for making your making your attendance known thank you any comments or questions from the board i would just say uh thank you for all of the
037reconsideration i know it was a lot of work for everyone the families the administration so thank you for reevaluating everything so we'll now open it up to public participation um i know we have two here in attendance um ms spitz and mr monk that will speak uh we will have them address the board first and then we will go to the people that are virtual uh mr monk if you would like to come up good evening i apologize for my casual address i just came from a lacrosse practice where i was with 98 uh sycamore girls um i appreciate the time today i've seen the proposal the amended proposal i want to be really clear that while this is an emotional issue i approach this from an academic and operational perspective and not an emotional
038perspective while this proposal is a right a step in the right direction still a little bit confusing [Music] at the april 9th meeting it was presented this was presented as a transportation issue and a capacity issue but the slide that was up a few minutes ago was the same one that we saw last time and the two goals stated were balancing the elementary school facility capacity concerns and relocating the preschool transportation is not actually one of the top key goals in the communication i sent to the board after the last meeting i expressed dismay over the fact that in past redistricting it was made very clear the data to support the decisions and we still have not seen that and in this proposal i'm grateful that truly grateful that my daughter and others can stay
039at mapledale if we so choose but it makes no sense that with transportation not a goal why transportation transportation is still a key issue that holds this proposal up i'd love to see the data i'd love to understand the routes i'd love to understand the financials because actually old montgomery our child her bus number 51 turns around in old montgomery to get to our street so the routes do in fact cross district so this just doesn't make any sense i think that the district owes it to the community to show the data that supports these decisions i think that you need to go back to the drawing board one more time thank you very much thank you mr monk miss spitzer i do want to thank you very much for giving us the time to
040talk um and that you answered emails and we're just really appreciative that you've given us this opportunity to share our now i'm the emotional appeal um i brought this last week but again i just want you to see the faces these are our children of our orchard club drive who are being affected by this redistricting these are my two i'm very happy that you made the option now because my son now is in kindergarten and my daughter will be in in kindergarten two years so the thought that they would have to be separated um for elementary school just breaks our heart and this has been a very very stressful a few months now when we were when we first received this email i mean dealing with coba this last two years has affected this entire
041country this community and we are grateful for the nurses we are grateful for the teachers for the administration for what you've been through and what you've done for our children and given them the safety net of coming to school my son now he loves mapledale i'm a part of the pto this elementary school is everything to us to our children on our street i know that sycamore i grew up i'm in the sycamore alumni i went to junior high went to high school so we are all sycamore families here um and i know that montgomery elementary is is going to be just as good however our child you know he's kindergarten he's just becoming him who he is he's learning his identity and the thought of having to rip him and that really would be
042ripping him from his friends his soccer his baseball spanish he loves spin she's counting in spanish every day now going up the stairs i know he won't get that at montgomery so i am again asking you as brian said to think about again with the transportation it's a part of it you know we have we all have jobs if we have to you so i'm just asking you just to think about all the issues that affect all of us um but again we're grateful that you've made these other uh concessions um and that you won't be taking our child away from what he's known from his teachers from his friends from his community so thank you very much one last thing this other mother she's another child these are her children on our street so
043she doesn't want to speak but she is here representing her children as well so thank you again thank you thank you and mrs weber from our virtual audience we have we have rebecca christian and i believe miss christian you have um unmuted yourself we can see you and i think we are ready for you to speak yes thank you i also want to express my gratitude for everyone i've been really impressed with how the school district has handled covid overall i would like to start with a question if i could i understand there were about 50 students that were listed as being impacted altogether i'm curious if that list included students who have two different households that they live in i don't think my son was included in that list because he's not on the
044list to switch schools but right now both my house and his father's house are on the same bus route and that is really enabling for him to go to school and come home and for us to have that transportation to both houses so i'm curious how many students are impacted in a split family kind of situation that may not be in your numbers already perhaps that's something that's been looked at or not um we don't typically respond to questions from the community and public participation um i'll be happy to respond via email to you thank you okay that'd be very helpful thank you and given that it is if it's as if it's a large number of students i would encourage you to consider that in the plans and if it's just a handful of
045students i'm if my son is in going to be in fourth grade next year if there's any way to have sort of a one-year extension of transportation to his current both of his current homes that would be a really wonderful option thank you very much thank you any additional public participation on redistricting mr ballen the only other uh email that i had received uh but i'm not sure if this resident is in is in attendance is justin smith so i don't know mr smith if you are in the audience this evening or if you are in our virtual audience okay and he did not specifically request to speak he did ask for the guidelines but i did not hear back from him okay thank you very much any additional comments or questions from the board
046mrs weber please um take the vote mr comifer aye mrs weiss aye dr steger aye mr mallett aye and mrs bitter aye motion passes i need um uh moving on next item is the 20 23 24 school calendar discussion louis and i will turn this over to mrs wegner as she leads uh this for our uh district thank you good evening um i'd first like to thank both the board and um the sca for their feedback on the first drafty draft of the calendar that was presented um i will i want to extend a special thank you to um miss grace for her collaboration with me she reached out to the teaching staff and brought that back together and provided some feedback so what you will notice on this updated one is that we we
047took in again some of the suggestions from both the board but also from sca um the the main highlights are the um two professional learning days that we had at the end of the year those were sprinkled in and then also um spring break um per the board's feedback was bumped back a week so we didn't have that wonky kind of four days um and then a a spring break uh spring holiday i should say and so that then gave us the opportunity to gain a um an extra day for instruction as well as a bonus there and then one of the other pieces of feedback from sea that we took into consideration as well was extending that winter break and by moving our spring break back and gaining that extra student day we were
048able to make that move and still keep our number of student days um pretty consistent with what we've had in the past um so those are the the main the main changes and i thank the board for their feedback i think sca for their feedback and welcome any questions any questions from the board i would like to echo the the thanks both to the administration also the sea and all the teachers and community members that gave input to the calendar um i think reflective over the last two times we've done calendar now we have heard input in the community that makes sense we've had the opportunity to make those changes and come back and present an even better school calendar so we always welcome public participation and comments um so that was miscommons mr ballon
049just one other additional comment from our team i just want to highlight the reason that and we've we've kind of spaced this out over the three evening meetings and you know obviously there's no huge rush on the 23-24 school calendar but we're also wanting to space it out a little bit because mr lovell as he always does gets updates on construction and obviously we know that our three our last three calendars have been impacted by uh our construction schedule so uh the reason we're waiting until may 18th not only to get good feedback from our community and our our constituents the stakeholders in our district but we also want to get good feedback and good information the most updated information to be able to provide the board and our team before we make that final
050recommendation of our calendar on may 18th so we're hoping to have some updated construction information because we were told that likely in early may we would have some updates and and it may have an impact on the calendar so more to come on that so just thank you for your patience thank you for allowing us to space it out a little bit i know that's atypical of our process but as you stated we want to deliver the best calendar that we can that doesn't get adjusted after we approve it so thank you for your patience and time and it'll be very nice to get past construction where we're not trying to fit our school calendar around construction schedules so it'll be nice to find uh be beyond that on the next school calendar year i
051also like yeah i just have one thing to say about i'm glad to see that we have eight professional learning days spread throughout the year and not just kind of jammed up in the front and a little bit at the end so thank you for that so then the plan would be to have the board approval um at the next evening meeting which is hard to believe is may 18th all right real quick um just a quick question the conference exchange day is that after the professional development for groups to get together to share ideas just out of in november the conference exchange day um staff will not report that's a day that they get because they stay for two evening conferences you're welcome okay if there's no additional questions we'll move on to the
052next item master facility plan update mr level good evening mr president members of the board uh i love this i hope we all find enjoyment when we get to talk about all the amazing things happening across the district when it comes to construction i just want to give a shout out to our community who attended our lunch and learn for athletics update the other day it was a great time to be able to share the progress which i will be sharing here a little bit with you as a board but what i want to do is i want to start out just a few slides kind of talking overall what's happening across the district as it relates to the master facility plan i've changed up the format just a little bit and so what i
053do now is i'm going to be putting up kind of this this overview slide that shows all the projects that are happening across the district and then i'm going to focus on just one specific building and kind of celebrate some of the work that's going on again i'm not going to talk through all these things but i just think it's really important for us to recognize the scope of the work that is happening at the moment and so you can see some of the projects that we have um up there the one up here though i do want to point out um if we want to move to the next slide there is um eh green so as i've spoken to you all as a board in the community this is our next project that
054will be coming fully online and so a couple things i want to celebrate here number one is you will see carpeting is going in with some of the academic areas this is huge this is a great opportunity for us to start seeing kind of the finished product and if you look at that large picture up there you'll see not only the carpet but you'll see that they're starting to install the ceiling grids and then in the upper right hand corner you can see that all of our cabinetry case work is starting to be delivered with our countertops and so these areas are starting to look more and more complete and finished i will say though the academic areas look like this but as you progress through the building and you start to travel into like
055the cafeteria the kitchen the administrative office we still have some significant work to do there the reason for that is we wanted to maintain our focus at the beginning of the project on the academic spaces and we waited to the administrative areas towards the end of the project project because those come along much quicker and so our projects overall remain on time and on budget very excited about this um what i want to do now if it's okay with you i want to roll into our athletics update i mean like i've mentioned previously we had a phenomenal lunch and learn many people attended that and it gave us an opportunity to really highlight and give an overview of the scope of work that's happening with our our athletics and when i say athletics facilities i'm
056talking both our interior athletics facilities but also our exterior athletic facilities which include the natatorium as well the presentation that i'm going to kind of run through with you this evening though may not be as in-depth as that presentation and it's going to have a few more components that i think that you all might want to consider miss weber is going to help kind of tag team this a little bit with me as we kind of navigate some of the financials with it so the first thing that i want to really kind of talk about with you all and you live this for the most part these are what we call our project pathways and so when we were approaching our athletics kind of mat we'll just say master facility plan for athletics um there
057were really four different pathways that were considered the first one was really utilizing the funds district funds to build the projects out and then privately reimburse those projects another pathway was let's delay the project right with the scope of them to really take a step back to see what do we truly what can we truly raise and then build based on that the third option or the pathway that was considered was how do we build this in phases how do we look at the funds that are available through the master facilities plan the bond dollars the two and a half million and then how do we privately fund to then build these things out or these components out in phases and then the last one is how do we might value engineer or decrease the
058scope to reduce costs to get what we would say is a minimally viable product as we look at what's happening now you can obviously see that the direction was to say no let's get moving on these and let's look at this in a phased approach so that we can ensure that we've got elite facilities but we're doing it in a systematic way to ensure that we're being financially responsible with not only the tax dollars that were given but also the privately raised funds as well okay next slide thank you so what i want to do is i want to kind of celebrate the journey i always like to start at 30 000 feet and then um kind of land the plane if you would right that's a great analogy here in sycamore um just so
059we can kind of see the bigger perspective of what's going on and then what does that mean right now so just as a reminder in 2019 um our community graciously approved 127.5 million dollar bond issue that was the focus of not only the mainly the academic spaces but it also dedicated two and a half million towards our multi-use stadium in 2020 with the development of the always an aviator campaign came to life and that was our kind of pathway to be able to raise private funds to be able to complete the vision that we had for these elite athletic facilities obviously in 2020 pandemic postponement of the campaign happened due to the global pandemic which also at this moment presented unknown challenges of funding post pandemic so i'm going to pass this to miss weber
060let her talk a little bit about what that means i think as we look back at that time period and looking at the combination of funds that we were going to be utilizing to move forward particularly with the multi-use stadium project the concerns that we had at the time just to put it back in context where where a couple won we just weren't really sure number one whether our private donors were going to be able to provide funding for to move forward with the stadium i think the second issue that and that was part of why we put the aviator always an aviator campaign on hold that would be one just whether people would have funds available for that use but also just not having the ability to meet in person and run the kind
061of campaign that we had hoped to run but the other piece beyond that was in thinking about how we might be able to proceed if we looked at funds that might not have been from the bond issue but if we would have looked at district funds are that would have initially been approved by our taxpayers for for operations and for some capital improvements whether we wanted to potentially use those for making these projects move forward we also put that on pause because we were at a level of uncertainty and not knowing how our tax base might be impacted uh you know whether even if our tax base in terms of values of property wasn't impacted but also thinking about our our businesses our residents ability to pay because we weren't really sure what um jobs
062were going to be available what's uh you know what whether we would continue to see utilization of our office areas which drives a lot of the property values within our district whether our corporations were going to be able to actually be able to operate such that they could make actually pay their their tax bills so lots of things going on back in in 2020 when we would have when we had full intention of really kicking off a lot of things that would have moved these projects forward so at that point in time um it was it was very difficult for us to look forward at starting those projects particularly the multi-use stadium not knowing if the funds were going to be available for from our bond are from our operating budget and capital improvement budgets
063to make those things work great thank you for that and then as we look forward to 2021 um we relaunched the always navy air campaign i'd like to say that we're on the back end of the pandemic but we were still in the midst of the pandemic but to mrs weber's point there was a lot more predictability in the economy that we had saw at that time and so we relaunched the always an aviator campaign and through that we're able to raise the 3.5 million in private funding towards what we now call phase one of the multi-use stadium and we'll talk a little bit more about that in the presentation we also through our capital improvements uh capital improvement funds we're able to do able to do updates to the gregory center um refreshing locker
064rooms paint and some other opportunities there to increase that space or at least enhance that space is probably a better word we also made updates to our current soccer and lacrosse stadium which i'll talk about here in a second and we began the design phase for our multi-use stadium complex so rolling in the 2022 where we are right now you're going to see the groundbreaking on that multi-use stadium if you've driven by the high school you see dirt being moved and you see preparation for the field to be installed we're also in the midst of the interior athletics renovation which is slated to begin here very soon also we are upgrading our tennis courts through our ongoing maintenance program if you've been on our tennis courts lately you can see there's some sizable cracks going
065through those courts and so we want to spend some time and energy making sure that those spaces are suitable for our players and our community as well electrical updates to junior high stadium just a reminder we still have a stadium at the junior high and it does get used um but as you know during the construction phase we had to make we had to cut the power we had to tear down the home stands and so now what we need to do is get those back to working order and then um we are in the process of ongoing design destruct ongoing design discussion for the natatorium yeah i would just add to mr lovell i think but going back to we have had the groundbreaking for the multi-use stadium but i think probably key to
066that facility being available for use to get our student athletes out on the field this fall we have been able to get our contracts in place for the turf field we have been able to get our contracts in place for the bleachers grandstands and as well as authorizing our contracts to move forward with the concession areas the restroom areas and are moving forward with our scoreboard so the key pieces of that stadium we've done the work that will allow us to keep on a critical path to be ready to open that stadium this fall and that and that's been a big concern because a lot of those things are being hit with supply issue supply chain issue items so being able we have been able to get out in front of um and get those
067within the time needed so right now we're just kind of laying the foundation for everything but all of those other things to to my knowledge are still on time to be ready to have have football games and other activities on that um on the edmond stadium this fall absolutely so if you head to the next slide i can dig a little bit into each of those projects so the community can kind of see where we're at so what i want to do is i want to divide this kind of conversation to three different buckets the completed projects the current projects and the upcoming projects and so let's start with the completed projects on the next slide we can talk a little bit about the soccer and lacrosse stadium and so as a reminder through our
068capital improvement funds what we wanted to do here is we wanted to be able to create an environment where we could host our home football games understanding that we weren't able to use our home field at the at the junior high and so um we replaced the scoreboard we upgraded the locker rooms as i mentioned in the gregory center we did a bleacher expansion for increased capacity and we did a press box renovation and so again as we as we know from this past season um this was a great opportunity to bring our students back over to the high school in our community to the high school for the first time not back over but for the first time to be able to celebrate our teams on campus and so um one of the things
069that we did on that field if you remember is we also did the bleachers at the end zone for our 8k of our student section which was a huge hit and we'll talk about how we've incorporated that into our multi-use stadium as well um here you'll see an overview of just the site plan for the exterior athletics i just like to show this so everybody can kind of see an overall overall picture of how things are going to be laid out what i want to mention on here very briefly is that you can see at the top there the softball and baseball fields these are the fields that will be renovated and what we identified as phase two and i'll talk a little bit about the phases here shortly and how that's kind of working
070you also see the parking expansion for the campus that um we are moving forward with thanks to the board's approval there but then when you look at the stadium you'll see a few things on there not only do you see the the field there in the middle um but you see in blue to the upper upper left-hand corner is the concession restroom that mrs weber was talking about and then in yellow what you see are the future or i'm sorry um then you see at the top which is the blue and the bottom which are the future field houses and then in yellow are the stands and pointing out to you that we did incorporate that student section into this um into this plan because we heard overwhelmingly that that was what made bringing the
071sports to the campus um special and um just the high energy all right so let's talk about the stadium funded phase one and um just to hit on this a little bit i know miss weber kind of talked about some of this stuff but what i want to do is i want to just make sure that we all clearly understand what phase one is um and i just want to have the caveat and i said this when i did the lunch and learn as well i hesitate using the the phrases phase one two and three because i think sometimes it puts us in the buckets really what we're talking about here is what collective projects can we get done now because of what funds we have and then as we get more funds then what
072projects are we able to start i think mentally we can just kind of say this is the phase one then phase two and so when i talk about like the baseball and softball and i say well that's in phase two again that's that's when we hit those fundraising goals we can start to move forward with those projects but let's focus here on the multi-use stadium again um what are we doing right now um we're doing significant site development um we have contracts for our turf for our lights for our grandstands we've got contracts underway for our concession and our restroom areas the estimated completion for this project is this fall our hope is to have that first game on this field as anybody has heard me say at any of these meetings my conservative approach
073is labor day weekend again we are going to push as much as we can but if anybody um has witnessed this spring it's been wet and so um we have our commitment from our general contractors to put push this the best they can and again just as a funding reminder um 2.5 million for the multi for phase one came from our bond issue um we had 3.4 million in private funding for the total cost they're of 5.9 million dollars all right talk briefly about the tennis courts don't need to spend a lot of time on this but i do think it's really important that we point out that there are three buckets of funds that we leverage um for our athletic facilities the first is the two and a half million dollars that came from
074the bond which i talked about um the use of that um also included in that two and a half million is five hundred thousand dollars for our natatorium um then in addition to that we have another bucket which is our capital improvements and if you were at a recent board meeting whenever that was we approved our capital expenditures for the upcoming year and really that is how are we leveraging our operational dollars how are we leveraging those dollars to maintain and enhance our environments that exist within our district and so we look at that through the lens each year of what are priorities and what are the things that we can tackle across all of our buildings and all of our environments and then that last bucket that we identify as the privately funded dollars
075that we get from our community and our significant donors all right so let's talk a little bit about interior athletics this is funded through our our sycamore high school renovation so again part of the bond dollars there you'll see a picture there that we have of the rendering of our new gymnasium what you'll see in our gymnasium is it's getting a facelift and so that's going to look like new paint new color schemes you'll notice that in the current gym if you were to sit in that gym you would see a lot of conduit that has been run against those walls over the many decades of use we decided to add an electrical outlet here a speaker here and so over time it's just cluttered those walls and so one of the projects will be
076to clean all that up we're going to be opening the ceiling up so there's a drop ceiling in there at the moment we want to clear that up open that up give it more of a open kind of feel new score boards we're going to be refinishing the hardwood you can actually see the design that's been approved there on the floor that's the actual floor we're going to be putting in refinishing it's not a new floor be refinished and re-striped and re-decaled and then we're going to be getting new seating so all new bleachers in the gymnasium additional interior athletics um the process is started right now for our locker rooms and i will say that we um i didn't know what words to use right here new renovated um it's the same space but
077we are completely taking out all the block walls and rebuilding from the ground up so what we want to do is we want to create environments that actually work for today's students in today's sports and so we're redesigning those spaces to make sure that they actually make sense for what we're doing so new locker rooms new athletic office and new team rooms the estimated completion of the total interior athletics project is the summer of 2023 and again this is coming fully funded by the bond issue through the sycamore high school renovations if i could just add a few items to that mr fritz if you go back to that that slide we are looking at a couple things in terms of the time frame for this uh one is that we are getting ready in
078shp our architect as well as htc the the construction manager company um working on this we're getting ready and you'll be seeing this in the next i don't know if it's next meeting but in may i believe the next evening the next guaranteed maximum price amendment to our contract with hgc and what that will include will be a lot of work that's going to occur this summer primarily around those locker rooms athletic offices and team rooms so those will probably be the first things that are going to be completed and maybe you could just talk a little bit about the schedule so and we're planning on those to be available for next next school year but then just maybe if you could add a little bit about the approach that we're taking with the gymnasium
079because of some supply chain issues the fact that we are using capital dollars to replace the roof over the top of that facility so on and so forth yeah thanks for that i appreciate i i completely kind of brushed over that but i think the important thing that we need to understand and recognize is that um and i said this i think in a couple meetings but there is a very busy summer at the high school all approximately 50 of the total projects of the high school are going to be happening between march and september or march and october and so as we looked at that scope and we looked at the challenges that faced us what we wanted to make sure we were doing is not over taxing and working um the labor that
080we have through hgc on that site and also making sure that we can actually still use those spaces the best that we can so the next point i think that is important to note is that um when we originally set out to do the interior athletics and kind of the plan of attack with that originally we hadn't we had talked about doing the gymnasium of summer of 2023. when we changed the scope of the gymnasium we realized that it decreased kind of the overall scope and we could probably fit it into the summer of 2022. so we had made that decision at that time to kind of move it up to this summer just because if we're doing all these projects we might as well get the gym done and be done with it as
081we've kind of progressed through this process we have been hit with many many many across all of our projects supply chain issues we're managing them um however there are some that just have they're just taking time one in particular is our bleachers um so as we face kind of this dilemma of this summer what does that look like we knew that we could get the floor the paint and the ceiling done in there but we wouldn't be able to secure our bleachers until next spring in addition to that we have roof work that continues at the high school that's outside of kind of the bigger scope of the project and as we started to bring all the folks into the room the stakeholders what we started to realize is that okay we're going to have
082a newly finished floor and they're going to be ripping the ceiling off and trying to protect that new floor and so as we all started to talk about this and realizing that we originally had said we'd do the gym in summer 2023 we took this to the high school administration athletic department said hey does it just make sense to move forward with the locker rooms now the team rooms all of those components get those done for the start of the 22-23 school year but let's delay the actual work in the gym until the summer of 2023 that gives us the ability to still leverage that gym um this year knowing that we wouldn't then finish the floor finish the walls finish the ceiling and then have to go and rip out the bleachers on top
083of the new floors so i tell you all this because there was a lot of consideration at that point a lot of stakeholders involved and we just think it's in the best interest of everybody um and all parties involved to delay the actual work within that gym for another summer so that we don't damage any of the work that we've already done and like i said earlier when we talked to htc about this you could see that it was just yes that sounds amazing they're struggling with labor they can do it but it would almost the it would be a distraction from the academic areas that need to get done and it would be a distraction from the cafeteria that we know we have to get done by the first day of school and so
084that's kind of what we're doing in the interior athletic scope but to mrs weber's point i think it is important to point out that our goal is to have the locker rooms athletic office and team rooms done um by this coming by fall of this coming school year um if you're going to ask me brad will these be done the first day of school i am not willing to stand here and tell you um that that will be the case um i can tell you that we have a lot going on this summer and our goal is to have theirs ready for the fall okay thanks for that miss weber um i want to talk a little bit here about our current challenges and and i just want to be very clear i don't want
085this to come across to anybody in the community or to the board that these are brad's list of excuses why things aren't going the way they should be going in some aspects these are the reality of what we're experiencing right now and so i just want to run through these really quick and just give give the community and you all on the board an update about this and number one is inflation i think that we all recognize this is a real thing but there's a number under this inflation that we just received from the state of ohio so we are not our projects are not funded through the state our taxpayers stepped up to the plate to fund these projects but the state does fund projects through the ofcc and different capacities around the state
086and what they do is they issue percentages and numbers that they are now targeting for projects and they just released and said that um they have indicated there's a 17 increase just this year on all projects moving forward and so again that's just this year remember we bid a lot of these projects out pre pandemic so i think it's important for us to recognize the scope of increase that we're up against when it comes to just inflationary costs again our bond was locked in so we're very fortunate about that but many of these athletic projects the interior athletics exterior athletics we are in a very very challenging time not only with inflation but also the next box's supply chain issues we've been able to mitigate and manage this to the best that we can we
087are very fortunate to be able to work with multiple general contractors um the benefit of doing that is that they all have different areas that they have supply chain issues and so we're able to kind of dance around some of that a little bit um but this is a real thing and i mentioned that a little bit when it came to our bleachers metal things like that so we're really working against a lot of tight time frames and i know you all as a board have to deal with me sometimes when i'm shoving something on the agenda really quick because they tell me that in 24 hours the price is going up 10 percent we need to get approval we need to move on this so in that respect i just want to thank our
088partners hgc shp monarch and graybach because they're phenomenal partners to work with and they tell it to us real and tell us when we need to get moving on things i've spoken about this throughout the presentation the labor shortages i think we're all very aware of this we're all fighting for labor and so there's a there's a cost and a risk associated with that when we're trying to open up open up our buildings and do our work luckily again i think we've done a pretty good job navigating those but we just need to be aware that that's still still a thing there are crews that show up that don't have all a full crew that delays the project and then how do we move forward with a different scope um and then the last thing
089there and this is probably the one that makes it sound like i'm just making an excuse for me maybe a little bit it's capacity right there's only so much capacity that we have to be able to lead i could go back to that very first slide to show the 127.5 million dollars worth of projects that are going on across the district um i i don't want to say that exterior athletics interior athletics aren't a priority but i'm going to be very completely honest with you opening up eh green in july for our students to attend is a priority um and that takes a lot of energy that takes a lot of effort we have an incredible team behind me it's not just me and i'm thankful for them to be able to step up and
090manage all these projects and everything that's going on and again i could talk about our partners and all those different companies that we work with but i just want to make sure that we're very extremely clear that there is a capacity issue to continue to take on more and more projects and my concern about that isn't us being able to do it it's that our goal all along with all these projects is to be um fiscal stewards of the taxpayer dollars and our privately funded dollars we want to ensure that the dollars that the community has given us are going as far as they possibly can and we're making smart decisions for long term for this district and not rational decisions that we're just making because we've got so much going on so every decision
091we make we try to be extremely intentional about and those privately funded dollars are hard dollars to get as well and we want to make sure that we're making the deepest impact with those dollars and so i just put that up there to lay that out to say as we take on these projects we want to make sure that we're doing everything we can to be as intentional as possible to be able to respect and honor the dollars that have been given to us from our community and from our private donors okay so let's let's move in i say all that but i want to move into these unfunded and i say phase two um as ms weber had stated and i appreciate her clarifying this is all the work that we're doing on the
092multi-use stadium right now um also has components of being able to expand that stadium in the future or that comp i'll say that complex in the stu the future right um our goal all along hasn't been to just think in a pigeonhole and say this is what we're doing now we'll spend the dollars later to make this happen as we look at the site development cost as we look at the money that we're putting towards the stadium we're actually saying okay when we're doing the site development how do we prepare this site for the future of x y or z um that way it's not incurring more costs in the future again making deep impact with the dollars that we have okay so future plans we want to move towards our home and visitor field
093houses and our grand plaza entry and ticketing again estimate completion i have a two beats determined up there because that relies on our private funding that we need to complete those projects what i want to say though and make very clear and i think i said this on our lunch and learn is that there is no way possible for us to have a field house um by the start of next season it's just not possible um and so what we what we want to do is we want to take a step back and we want to use this opportunity to pause take a breath and really put the energy into saying what do we really need and desire again being intentional about the conversations knowing that we have every ability to open up these spaces
094for the following season that gives us a year to really think through what we can do there be intentional about our fundraising but make sure that the dollars are being impactful we have an estimated cost here of about 1.5 million i do not want people to be stuck on that number because again i think that because we have an opportunity to take a step back and breathe i think we can really think about what do we desire across all of our athletes because remember this is a multi-use stadium and that 1.5 would represent a home field house and a wayfield house and possibly that grand plaza entry and ticketing area mr lobo i was just going to say but it's important to point out you know until we finish the design and bid that out
095it's just an estimate you don't we don't know that that's the firm cost for that but those are some of the estimates and we do have to do that design to be able to figure out what that is and we typically do the design and bid it out when we have the funding and i think that's where the the difficulty is in this process so uh appreciate your clarification on that yeah and and i again i think everybody can appreciate the fact getting any type of estimate in this environment is extremely difficult and so those are those are i know i use the term a lot with mr lewis you know those are the tensions that we that we face and we just have to try to work around those at this moment uh next
096up is our baseball and softball fields um we're so thankful for the fundraising that's gone forward for the dan hinke baseball field what we want to do there obviously depends on the funds that we're able to raise but at a minimum what we want to make sure is we're upgrading those fields as you all know we need to do some site development out there we need to really look at the leveling that field off and making some upgrades whether that's an infield turf outfield turf whatever that may be we know we need to upgrade the fields we need to design and build a new press box new bleachers and new fencing that surrounds that those fields and that that would go for the baseball and the softball as well we do have money raised towards
097this project and again i hesitate to say phase one phase two phase three because i think it's all about when we're ready um to really start that process and saying okay this is enough money this is what we desire out of that field um and so that you can see some renderings up there i believe that outfield is a turf outfield and again i know discussions haven't necessarily been had around that but i just wanted to kind of give an overview for baseball and softball as well and the last conversation i think we should have is here on our natatorium um i know there's a lot of uh buzz in the um a lot of buzz in the community around well they drain the pool what's going on you know we know there's been a
098donation and so i just want to take a step back and just um thank the seeger family the secret family has stepped up and they had said they have said we are committed to creating an elite facility when it comes to our natatorium um and so what we've done is we have started that process through renderings but we're right now in the design phase we are actually as mr lewis uh had mentioned you get estimates and then you start to design and then you start the discovery process about the scope of the project and where we're at right now with that is really trying to understand the complexity in that environment of adding two additional lanes and seating for 400 in the space that we have and so as we kind of work through that
099and the complications with that and i think i had actually told a group recently when we were doing a tour and i've said this actually all along is that this is the most complex project that we have across the district it may not seem that way but it is extremely complex you're talking about digging down um 12 feet you're talking about being up close to um the building where you know you have pylons supporting the building and you know that you have construction that's occurring and happening adjacent to the new entrance of the building and so what we want to do is we want to make sure that we get this right we have drained the pool at the high school because we have every intention of starting this project but right now we are
100in a pause situation to better understand the complexity of the project but i just want to make sure that we all understand that we are committed um to an elite facility when it comes our natatorium and looking what we're able to do in partnership with the seeger family at this point and i know the board will be at some future meetings soon we'll be getting an update specifically on this project um but for now i just kind of want to give a high level overview because i know some people have been asking or mentioning about this and i also want to say um as related to this project and all of the athletic projects that um we are working so closely um with our high school i'm looking mr mater over there with our high
101school administration but also athletic department to ensure that all of our athletes have facilities to practice and to compete and so while we would love for that to be on site during all this construction it may not be the case and so specifically speaking to the natatorium we have worked partnerships with water in the area for both of our teams our swimming and our water polo team to be able to compete during this time and so i just want to make sure the community understands that it's a priority for us to ensure that these seasons go forward even if they don't have home turf or home water or whatever that may be um in this in this um in the natatorium in this project sorry okay um that slide shouldn't be on there there we
102go cool all right so um i just wanted to that's a lot it's a lot to digest um we have again we have a lot going on in the district but i hope that um what i wanted to get across is really to the board and to our community there are a lot of phenomenal things happening the board is committed to a lot of significant progress not only in the academics but also in our facilities athletically and so i i just wanted to take a step back take a look at 30 000 foot view over that but also give you some details to open it up for discussion and questions that you may have thank you mr lovell um you know i'll start um i want to take a step back even further than what
103you showed um when we first went to the community for a master facility planning levy um it was primarily prime primarily and prioritized around academics which has always been the attention of this board and every administrator and of the community the number one pushback that we continued to get from the community was over athletic facilities and that's when the board made a commitment of two and a half million dollars so that we could ensure that this levy passed so that we could build our new buildings and have new academic space having an elite athletic facility is very important um but academics are the most important and we certainly didn't want the community to lose support of our school district and of our master facility plan over athletic facilities it has never been the intention of
104the board not to have field houses at the at the stadium complex but we also want to move forward with the project to the point where we can our our student athletes and our band and the community can have a multi-use stadium now they can have it this fall instead of waiting until we can have the funding for the entire project so i i i commend you for what you've done for what the administration has done and i think it's very important to remember that you know we as the board is the fiscal stewards of the taxpayers money and we need to make sure that we're using the taxpayers money intelligently and we need to keep the support that we have of our community for future levies so you know to take a step back
105on a very small portion of the multi-use stadium and really look at it from a design phase of what do we need what you know what does that look like and what does that cost i think is the right direction and i fully support that um and you know i certainly me being one board member can't commit to moving forward on a project of that scope without a better understanding of what that really is so i'm really excited that we have the facility that's going to open this fall and that our athletes and that our band and that our students and that the community will be able to come to to support our athletes and to support our our students so thank you mr lavell first i want to thank you and commend you that
106was just an outstanding presentation very informative very professional and i think it's something our whole community appreciates i i listened to the lunch and learned unfortunately i couldn't do it live during lunch yesterday but i watched it last night and it and i thought very similar type of presentation very well done so thank you this this is definitely something i think everyone can agree that we want the best possible athletic facilities for our students to be able to compete in so that part i think we're aligned i share mr uh balance um thoughts on making sure this fiscal stewardship of the district has to be front and center we're going to have an operating levy that comes up for vote in a couple of years and so we made a promise on the the funding
107and then i think you have laid out a path forward here that allows us to achieve that elite athletic facilities in a way that's consistent with the commitment that we've made to the taxpayers and so for that i'm very excited because one thing i know is this district is full of people who are extremely generous and if they understand the need i firmly believe they will step up and um we see that already with with some of the donors who have given sizable amounts and look the the multi the um the field house the home field the home field house and the wayfield house if we have to wait for that for one year to have the right design and the right bids and the right build sure i'd love to have it this year
108i would have but i honestly wanna we wanna make sure we do it the right way so i actually commend you and the team for the approach i think you're really thinking about this in the right way so thank you thank you any additional board comments before we open it up to public participation i'll add something sure being a new board member i just want to say thank you for being so transparent and so honest with us and explaining some hard news um it's some of the stuff you know i was i was hoping that some of the things would be done sooner but i also understand the reality and i just want to thank you for for being you know so honest with us and explaining it um so well and i do appreciate
109the lunch and learns too i watch those as well i can't attend in person but i are you know online at the exact same time but i appreciate that so thank you my pleasure and and we're all in this together i think that we all have this uh mindset of it's not one person leading this it's it is it truly is a team effort and i know we all put our heads together and try to figure this out and so we just appreciate the grace by the board and by the community and i truly believe and we've said this before and i know you all believe this is that when we're through this construction we will have the most elite facilities both academically and athletically in the region if not the state of ohio we'll
110have three synthetic turf fields that is that is phenomenal for a size district of ours and so there's a lot of pain in the in the immediate that we have to work through but i really appreciate your all support and i we feel that and so we're just thankful that we have that support on your side as well um and to our community who is living through is living through this as much as we are so thank you to all that we have many amazing booster groups for booster organizations for many of our student groups um tonight we do have three members of the athletic boosters that would like to address the board mrs walker mr monk and mr reinhardt um so i would welcome you mrs walker to come up to the board come
111mr monk's gonna go first okay mr monk if you could come up good evening again i didn't change hats although i'm wearing a different hat i changed shirts instead um brian monk uh just in terms of context i serve on the gssa board i'm the president of the sycamore lacrosse association the youth lacrosse program um which by the way has made 100 participation commitment to always navigator you get here i'm the vice president of uh boys youth programs for southern ohio lacrosse the scheduler for all of southern southwest ohio i serve as a referee for wrestling soccer and lacrosse at the youth and high school level i share that to to just lay the groundwork that i've seen a lot of facilities uh over over the years um professionally when i moved to cincinnati 12
112years ago i served as the director of operations for the jewish community center in amberly and then the chief operating officer a facility that's 140 000 square feet has a fitness center aquatic center gymnasium and academic facilities i currently serve as the chief operating officer of a national nonprofit i understand the value of the dollar for our taxpayers and above all i agree with mr marlin that the most important thing is the academic setup for our kids i have three three students three student athletes um my son is a freshman he played jv lacrosse jv soccer in the fall he's a wrestler for the high school in the winter and he's on the varsity lacrosse team um the my my daughters both play soccer and lacrosse as well i see lots of facilities i was
113just up in middletown for a tour wrestling tournament a couple weeks ago that's an elite facility the boys played lacrosse up in mason last week that is an elite facility my concern is somebody who's managed over 10 million dollars of construction projects are that this far into a project like this we're talking about discovery discovery should happen in the beginning we're talking about changing scope and value engineering i think that it's really important that as this project goes forward that the administration considers what is the expertise in managing the construction project do we have a client agent who can help translate between the this academic institution and the contractors because if we don't have that expertise we're going to continue down a path where we're spending too much money unnecessarily and where we're value engineering
114and changing scope we're talking about gravel pathways instead of safe concrete pathways i think that there is a capacity in this room and in the community with expertise professional expertise whether that's in regard to construction management or fundraising they could be very helpful we're all here tonight and there are others that could help volunteer to help manage this project forward so that we're not spending money unnecessarily and achieving the goals of having an elite academic facility and an elite athletic facility every time we value engineer and every time we change scope we're actually wasting a great deal of money and not getting the results that we're looking for so i would ask that as the project continues forward you consider the value of the expertise in this room and in this community when i started
115at the jcc uh and walked into a three and a half million dollar construction project having never worked a construction project before uh two board members who are construction professionals volunteered their time to to teach me because i didn't know what i was doing at the time and that's not to say that that mr lewis or mr lavelle don't know what they're doing i'm not applying that at all but the job here is to build an academic institution and as we're talking about facilities and construction at this level perhaps it's time to bring in partnership to help with the project management the fundraising so that we're not continuously chasing our tales thank you mr monk mr reinhardt hello i'm todd reinhart um thanks for having us tonight and that was a great presentation and uh
116really enjoyed the update on the progress um i'm a father of four sycamore kids so we have a sophomore now at ohio state go bucs i'm required to say that um we have a senior at sycamore high school we have a freshman at sycamore high school and we have a seventh grader and i wanted to say that i voted yes for the bond issue um for the facility upgrades and my wife worked very diligently to canvas voters in support of this and both for the academics and the athletics um because we felt and we still feel this way we are one of the greatest uh school districts in the state of ohio there's no doubt about it uh but i don't believe our facilities currently reflect that we're making progress towards that um tonight i
117was hoping to talk to you a little bit about it from a taxpayer's perspective and specifically around my concerns on the athletic facilities and the the moving parts that we have and i think a lot of the issues have been have been touched on already um so you know the pandemic has created a situation of vast uncertainty um there's uncertainty with labor costs supply costs et cetera but i do believe that now is the time to move towards more certainty in that aspect and and the one thing that i would like to clearly conveyed to the board is first and foremost i really feel we need to have clear ownership or one throat to choke on the athletics facilities um it's unclear to us in terms of who's actually making these decisions how the decisions
118are being made and how they're moving forward and so the result of that is we're in the proverbial chicken and egg and this has been addressed for any future phase we need to have funding well we don't know the funding we need we have to lock in contracts to have the funding but we can't lock in contracts for the funding until we have it and so we're just in this endless cycle that from a taxpayer's position um this beautiful elite facility vision has been painted and yet we are going to have what is probably bare minimum at this point which is a field stands a concessions area and restroom we're going to have football players under tents or walking across parking lots to get there and so that's not to say we're doing a great
119job with what we have and the situation that is that we're under right now but i do believe as brian has said there's a lot of capacity um to to go fundraise to get the the facilities that we need and what we need to do is start locking in on these things and being clear on this is the goal give us the goal line i think there are people who would would commit to it and i really believe that our community our students the taxpayers the whole group we deserve and we the kids deserve this our community deserves this and we need to lock in and go forward on that so um i would ask the school board to take action to get someone assigned to this and very clearly let's lay the plan and
120let's go forward and and let's lock some things in otherwise this is never going to end thank you mrs walker so i'm kate walker and i'm the president of the sycamore athletic boosters um our organization is composed of leaders in our community who are parents of sycamore athletes we have 325 members and 40 governors for those of you that don't know that meet monthly to volunteer their fun their time to fundraise run concessions lead special projects and step up to problem solve when athletic issues arise our organization donates generously our time and money to support 743 high school student athletes that's 46 percent of the population 444 junior high athletes that's 49 of the population 128 high school coaches and 50 junior high coaches that's a lot of our community the sycamore athletic boosters is
121also one of your top five donors for the always an aviator campaign committing 250 thousand 000 to this project in addition booster members have also personally committed several large donations we and the other donors have leaned forward generously against the promise of building athletic facilities that match our highly rated district to date we are very frustrated in spite of all this wonderful powerpoint presentation that we have seen very little progress dirt has moved since november i have personally sat on the fundraising committee for always an aviator led by mark hardin our athletic director mark and a very small group of helpers have done a phenomenal job raising all of the money that has been asked of him to raise on time what i have seen sitting through these meetings as the biggest issue is a
122lack of direction and ownership of the overall project of our athletic facilities who owns the strategy the timeline the deliverables do they have that capacity to do this who is deciding these phases who is single accountability point person for delivering this athletic project every day this stalls further erodes the value of money you have collected from us in taxes and in donation and robs more of our children from having the opportunity to benefit from these promised upgrades we are recommending the school board form a special committee for this project management consisting of a school board member project leader a community business person and two to three booster members to move the athletic facilities along with accountability clear communication and the rigor needed to complete our athletic facilities on time and on budget giving them the
123same priority as our other commitments that were made during the promises campaigning for the levy we are ready to get involved to get this project on track we urge you to really take a deep dive into understanding this need for oversight we are at that point we need you to quickly make a decision phase two is this field house it is important putting football players under tents at halftime or walking them across the parking lot is not acceptable that's embarrassing it's embarrassing for our team it's embarrassing for our coaches it's embarrassing for us as parents that is not sycamore that's not why i voted yes we said yes to sycamore but we also said yes to athletic upgrades and it is your job to see through that there is help that needs to happen and
124we are willing to provide that thank you very much to everyone who spoke next item on the agenda is i need a motion for the agreement with the impact group for the strategic plan implementation services so moved second thank you mr balant uh members of the board i just want to give you a brief update on what this agreement is um and and what why we're asking for it to be approved and um you know what's moving forward it you may recall at our november retreat uh we talked about the need to uh bring some clarity to the objectives of our strategic plan um and really and truly we believe in the mission we believe in the vision we believe in the values and the goals of the strategic plan but the the objectives of
125the strategic plans you know i think from an educational standpoint uh they lacked some of the clarity that they brought that that we need uh to be able to move forward with some of the projects that we know uh need to be completed as part of the strategic plan and you may recall during that discussion i think the board's direction to me was then if you feel that strongly about it then bring us back a plan to look at the objectives but still maintain the goals that we we spent two plus years uh really writing those goals and making sure that they were relevant to the district so that is what this proposal is is to allow us to go back and do a revision uh of the objectives and really if you think about
126all the things we've talked about tonight and i won't just for the essence of time i won't revisit every single thing but we've been through a lot over the last two years we started the strategic plan pre-pandemic so not only do we have new team members in our leadership team but it is a good time to just revisit our objectives make sure that they're revised that they're relevant that they're uh allowing us to create the necessary action steps uh for our uh leadership team and and move forward with achieving those goals uh that we have set forth in the strategic plan so you can see the total cost of the contract it is for not only for engagement sessions focus groups revision of our objectives action plan or action steps and then just a delivery
127of the revised objectives but probably it's taking all the previous information utilizing it and then again just revising those objectives to bring an opera operationalized strategic plan back to the school board so our total investment is 27 000 which you know again is all of those things i mentioned plus some quarterly meetings and one in-person meeting that would happen at the end of the year next school year so that is the recommendation before you and happy to answer any questions that you might have mr lewis i just want to be clear i think you've addressed this but i just want to be clear that the goals that have said been set forth by the board in the strategic plan are not changing is that correct that is correct those will remain the same just the
128it's kind of the um we know what the goals are we want to rewrite the path to get there and i i think you would agree that that's the work of the administrative team and in collaboration with the board but we need to walk that path together but we're excited to bring that revision back to you and show you how we think we'll better walk that path with you but thank you for the question thank you just a quick question for clarification have has the administration attempted to operationalize the strategic plan without the input from consulting i'm not really clear on what just have we tried have you tried to revise it yourselves is this going to be a revision of revisions you've already done no it's it's definitely not revisions of revisions we've already
129completed what i will say is we completed the year one uh we've we're one i'll say one goal away or one objective away from accomplishing the year one goals which um you know we're focused on the curriculum review um looking at um and i totally drew a blank when i was talking about that but we the last one of the last things we need to do is do a cultural assessment so that's the one that we've we're still waiting on we were originally embedded that into this plan and decided to take it out because we have not had experience working with this group so it was kind of let's have the group prove to us that they're going to be a good partner and and i believe that they will be they are educators by
130trade but they also do this for a living they do strategic planning for a living so i think we believe strongly that their partnership will allow us to bring the proper revisions to the strategic plan in collaboration with us but they also hold us accountable and keep us moving in the right direction so when you say have we operationalized the strategic plan to the best of our abilities yes currently and we've worked through the year one goals but and the other goal was about data analytics so i was looking down at mrs webber thinking mrs webber's involved in one of those goals so um but to get to that path it takes not only an accountability but it takes a capacity issue and you know you've heard some of the things that are going on
131and i think that's something that you know is not lost on me and it's something that i've had to learn this year is that you can't do everything and you can't make all the changes that you want to make in the first eight months in a job um and so i've given myself a little bit of grace and and my team a little bit of grace of saying you know what we've done some really great things this year in the midst of i heard it from a principal today it's it was more horrific of a year to navigate through then covet than the beginning of it this year was harder it started um harder you know it started if if you remember some of the board meetings that we sat through in july and august
132it was harder so i'm going to give myself some grace with some of the things that we've done but i believe that their partnership will help kind of bring us to where we want to go and also their checkpoint meetings regardless of the additional meetings we have internally it'll allow us to kind of keep a scorecard of are we on track are we off track where are we and how are we going to stay on track because really this is going to be a great roadmap for you not that i'm telling on myself but it'll be a great road map for you to evaluate me because you're going to be able to see if we're on track or off track and if i'm constantly off track to be quite honest with you you don't need
133me as superintendent of this district you need to move on so this will tell a great path and a great story of where we need to be as a district in in regards to our strategic plan so thank you for the question miss dr steger i have a follow-up question please as well so i i was looking at this group um for this preparation for this and i i also share your enthusiasm for this group as well and i was i was wondering if if we feel like it's a group that does positive work on this issue that we're talking about today is it something that maybe they might be able to help us with on some of the other communications you know we have this has been a hard year right it's been a
134hard couple of years and i think we're all you know as a community we have to do we have to talk to our community and we have to communicate with our community and it's it's challenging because there's so many changes happening so quickly and i just saw that that was a possibility that they do that kind of work as well so i'm just throwing it out there that i'm hoping that this goes well i think that it will i i think what you have here is something very positive that could really give us a road map that i think might objectively bring us all you know together as a team and i think it's something we need to consider for the future as well that maybe they could help us with some of the other
135issues that we're encountering along the way um so i just want to thank you for bringing this to our attention and just let you know that i think that's a possibility as well mrs bitter that's a great point and uh i do know that uh i i do know that mr herman is on virtually um they you know he was actually just recently a superintendent at hudson city schools and now is working directly there's mr herman so he is working with the impact group as one of the principals of of the company and we have talked about that very thing i don't know if his colleague miss sandel is on as well but we've been talking about that potential partnership but they they both appreciate direct conversation and myself and mrs wegner and mr lovell
136have had those direct conversations with them of saying you know we're going to hold you accountable at each step to show us that and prove to us that hey you're a great partner for us and they're up for the challenge so i think they they not only enjoy this work but are excited to partner with sycamore community schools and i do believe there might be other opportunities to assist us in the future but we will start with them proving themselves that strategic planning and earning their way to cultural assessments and you know other things that we might partner with them on but thank you for uh stating that that's appreciated all good comments any other questions or comments from the board mrs webber please call the roll mr comfort aye mrs weiss aye mr ballen
137aye mrs bitter aye dr steger aye motion passes i need a motion for the approval of the job description new so moved second and i'm gonna let mrs wagner address this for you because she has been heavily involved in the work and certainly uh will invite mrs spencer and mrs tompkins up if they have other additional comments thank you mr lewis so just briefly i'd like just to provide some context um for this um job description as a district team which includes curriculum oss esol gifted we've been digging into our our data um as always to see how we could better serve all students and we know from our air data that we've got some gap closing pieces that we can do a better job with we're not quite satisfied with with where we are
138with students with disabilities and our african-american subgroups specifically from our air data um looking at our discipline data and also the response to intervention um implementation rubric rubric what we're finding is that we just do not have a consistent system for multi-tiered systems of supports and so when you think about that consistency piece we're lacking some common language and some common processes we also have new legislation from the state on the dyslexia initiative that also requires a consistent multi-tier system of support framework now this is not to say that our buildings are not doing great work because they absolutely are um every single building is working on both the academic and the behavioral side of the multi-tier systems of support but much like what we have found with our curriculum review where where we were
139lacking some of that vertical alignment so again pockets of greatness that we're having happening we're seeing that same thing with this multi-tier systems of support um pockets of greatness great work but we're lacking that consistency piece um and so what we're looking for with this role is to be a temporary piece it's a capacity building model whereas this role will run points on providing support and implementation of a consistent framework this role will be a conduit between district office and buildings and also provide direct support to our buildings to get the framework up and running um we will monitor the progress um and the success of our implementation using the multi-tier systems of support fidelity of implementation rubric um and we will also look at our state in our district assessment scores as well um
140another little piece in terms of the funding we're required by the state to utilize 15 of our idea funds for early intervention services so this fits into that as well and i'd asked mrs spencer and mrs tompkins to come up as well just to answer any potential questions you might have because i wanted to visually also show that this has been a collaborative effort between the different divisions or departments in district office but also with our buildings our buildings have been asking for more consistency and more support to implement that so happy to answer any questions as are my two colleagues i'll start um i mention i i think this is great um i'm interested to know um about i don't know how to phrase this correctly you will i'm sure but how this person
141will be able to help the district from that early intervention throughout the lifespan so throughout all the way through 12th grade or maybe even into transition age depending on the child or we'll become an adult at that point but just threading that you know that that thread all the way through how would they do that or is that part of what this person would be doing as well when you talk about systems yes ma'am that's exactly right yes so this person would be um the leading that whole process of creating that consistent system from kindergarten up through grades 12 or even beyond there this person would be part of a district-wide mtss team that involved that includes district office also building representations this would be you know completely a collaborative model but that person um
142or persons could be would be that that conduit to that consistency physically being in those buildings supporting um our teachers and our administrators but also putting that framework together and building the capacity of the people in our district to then take it on for themselves i think that would be very helpful i think that just understanding you know if teachers younger for younger children understand what's needed when you're in high school or beyond just that just having some line of communication and having a point a person that actually sees that and can communicate that and work and to develop that would be excellent so i appreciate that just a quick question for clarification um would this position have anybody reporting to him or her to help get this up and running because it seems like
143an awfully big job this position wouldn't have any supervisory role or administrative oversight they would really be the individual who specializes in understanding what that framework needs to look like and will provide that direct support to the building teams so each building has an rti a child focus it's called something a little bit different in each building that's why we're looking at that consistency that's needed but they will be instrumental in supporting those teams so although they won't have that supervisory um or you know staff working for them they will actually be the boots on the ground that are helping support those teams build the capacity in order to have this framework in place and i'm sorry and to add on to that this person would be a would be part of the collaborative team
144with both curriculum instruction and also oss so there would be that oversight if you will from a district office perspective so they're not just out there floating around on their own does that make sense yeah um a couple questions how is this being funded and is this a long-term position or is this just for a number of years so this is intended to be short-term no more than two years because we're required to reallocate 15 of our idea grant funds for early intervening services and when you hear early intervening you might think elementary but it's really early intervening when there's an area that's found to be a deficit for a student whether that's behavior academic social emotional um so this is that framework that's going to support it so that's why we want to capitalize
145on you know making sure we're utilizing those funds to really be intentional that's why it's you know all hands on deck misty bell from lisa zelvey emily williams um kelly myself and becky have been collaborating on kind of developing this this thought process in terms of being able to address this issue of you know the framework that we need so it is intended to be a capacity building position and the intent and the communication will be to all of our stakeholders and our teams two years and step out so we know that there's a lot of work that needs to go into this and these this position is going to be critical in supporting that but we also need know that we need to be mindful and very clear about the fact that this person
146will be stepping out of this role in two years thank you framework should be able to be sustained um when they do great thank you any additional questions from the board mrs webber please call the roll mr comifer aye mrs weiss aye mr ballen aye mr mrs bitter i and dr steger aye motion passes mr lewis briefly other very briefly junior high musical august 28th through the 30th uh willy wonka hall of fame banquet may 7th at montgomery inn can't believe we're saying prom and after prom on may 14th and graduation is may 29th at centos center mark your calendars the last thing i have because i could not not highlight this we have again been selected as among the best communities in the nation for music education uh as selected by the national association
147of music merchants foundation members there were 738 school districts that were selected nationwide there were only 47 in ohio and only eight in southwest ohio and we are a repeat winner so congratulations to the entire music department all the teachers all the people all the volunteers everyone that goes into making our music department special thank you very much mr lewis um i need a motion for the approval of the treasurer's consent agenda that moved second mrs weber um in the interest of time i will just point out i think as usual we have a nice list of donations that have been provided for our students including funding for some scholarships that will be coming up for upcoming graduates and then a very generous donation from montgomery pto to support some of their student needs at
148the at montgomery elementary i think all those were utilized through teacher grants um that they were able to use for classroom supplies library and says library it really means just being able to have kind of their library of books within their classrooms so very grateful for those contributions great thank you very much mrs weber please call the roll this is weiss dr steger hi this is bitter hi mr cometford aye mr ballant aye motion passes uh mrs weber an update on the third quarter financials yeah mr fritz would you go on to the next slide and the next slide okay um for just an outline of four items on tonight's agenda uh one is just kind of an update on a status of a few issues on or items within our general fund operating budget
149both revenues and expenses an update a quick update on our master facility plan now we've been monitoring child nutrition because of some of the issues that had impacted them the last couple of years with the pandemic and their financial status and concerns at the time about them being able to continue to be a self-funded operation we have really good news to share there and then uh what's coming up next in the final three months of the fiscal year just to give you some ideas of things going on um that we're working on in the treasures department as well as items that we're going to be working with on the board as well okay so mr fritz's next slide third quarter so that would be the time frame between january 1 and march 30 31st we
150did receive our final allotment of real estate taxes from hamilton county auditor and treasurer's office it's a little bit early than we typically see that final settlement which is great that they are getting those dollars to us as quickly as they can i do want to make you aware though that in looking at where we ended we are seeing um that our real estate taxes fell short of what we had projected for the fiscal year by about 700 000 so about one percent below what we had anticipated um we're still kind of combing through the reasons for that but one of them i believe is that and we've talked about this quite a bit is that there were many companies that had filed board of revision complaints this year so this part of this issue
151is kind of a one-time thing because through their complaints it went back to 2020 on some of these complaints and so many of them actually receive refunds of past taxes that they had paid at the time that they were billed but because of the re-evaluation they actually did receive funds back so comp just in an initial review comparing what was uh refunded uh this past settlement versus a year ago it increased substantially so while that's not a long-term issue in terms of collections it's a it's an offset that we're realizing in this year so our next step is going to be to see whether we think that's going to be an ongoing issue with some of our outstanding complaints that are still there and then also looking at whether any of that is going to
152cause any long-term change in how we are projecting our tax revenues for the next through the term of our five year forecast okay so um i'm not i'm it's not sounding an alarm it's just one of those things that we're going to have to look at a little bit more in depth to see if it's how long term that the issue may be still one percent uh below what we had initially projected given um everything that's going on in our economy and some in some ways the delays in which the border revision process works i think um we're we're in okay shape um and a few of the other items in under revenue it's just a state budget update um as you can see if you look on the the five-year forecast analysis that we
153provide as part of the financial report we had anticipated and you know basically that five year forecast was the plan for the entire year that we approved back in november uh we had anticipated under the new funding formula that our revenue would be about 3.3 million dollars for the entire fiscal year we're already at about 3.6 million with um with some time yet to go within within the fiscal year so um i think that that um in in going through some recent training and continuing to talk with ode um we've actually seen some some additional revenue within the transportation categorical funding in in the foundation formula so i think that that's going to hold we have had situations in the past where the state provided us too much funding we had to pay them back
154i'm not seeing that that's going to happen with this in this particular situation so that much like be looking at our five year forecast the impact of the real estate issues going on with real estate collections we'll also revisit what we think we're going to be getting in our state funding moving forward and i think that's going to have a positive effect on our five-year forecast the final thing is on tiff payment so our payments from our municipalities of payment in lieu of taxes for some of our tax incentive agreements those are all under the other all other revenue item within the five-year forecast analysis and you see as of the end of march we have almost received all of our funding in the in that category that's also because you know a few other
155items in the tuition area but i think the big thing is just that those tif revenues have come in um a little bit higher than what we had anticipated for for this year um we've already received the tip payment from blue ash which is our big big uh tip payment but we do still have montgomery's to receive so again um i think that that's going to be an area where we're going to see potentially a positive impact on our five year forecast as we see that those other all other revenues are coming in greater than greater than anticipated so i think um one area of cons more concern two areas where i think we are actually going to perform better than what we had initially um anticipated i did have a question from one board
156member about the rollback an exemption and the tpp reimbursement that area is where we track our homestead and rollback which is a credit that our residential taxpayers receive on their tax bills and when tax settlement occurs the state actually pays us for um for um that that reimbursement so that's part of it but the thing that's actually causing some changes from where we were last year is that this is the final year of the tpp reimbursement for the changes in our tangible tax policy back that's many many years ago um this year is that i will receive our final payment initially it was 12 million dollars this is the last year that we'll get a million dollars which is a million less than last year so you're seeing that reduction in overall tpp payments from
157from the state but that was planned or not planned it wasn't appreciated but it was um something that we knew about and we took into account as we put this all together um in terms of expenses we're in line with projection for this point in the fiscal year um i'm not anticipating any major surprises as we move forward we have received some questions about like what are what are gas prices doing uh to our supply budget um you know it it's a smaller amount maybe than what you'd think of our overall budget so while we are seeing some some impact i think we had put enough money in contingency and fuel costs to be able to that's not going to have any over impact overall on the on the budget so um utility costs are
158also going up a bit part of that is because we right now at the green green and the junior high we're paying utilities on both buildings because we're we have lighting in the new buildings we have some some heat in the new new building so um we are seeing some additional costs and utilities for for having all of those things going on um in both the the new and the building that the old building and the current building and the building under construction so working with ms thorson and and mr level's office to make sure we're we keep on top of that okay so mr fritz next slide on to our master facility plan we have 87 percent of the budget obligated the big things that are coming up right now are going to be
159the g next gmp on the high school which is for the interior athletes and i believe also to address purchases of a lot of equipment that's going to be coming in here and i think probably being utilized for for next school year you know doing a lot on the cafeteria those kinds of things were already that we've approved those gmps already but now these are to furnish those areas and so on and so forth okay next slide child nutrition we've been monitoring this on a quarter by quarter basis for the last couple of quarters you'd see that the third quarter was one that really helped us build on our balance for in our child nutrition department as you may recall the federal government is basically providing free lunch at the base lunch for all of
160our students within our schools and kids are taking advantage of it and that's really great um so we've been able to to add almost 800 thousand dollars to our our balance in the child nutrition department which is probably a good thing because next year that program is going away um even though we hope that the carryover will be kids have tried lunch they're going to continue to continue eating in our cafeterias um it will also help with things such as and you probably received the communication about this but because the construction the high school which is our biggest profit center really or in within our whole child nutrition department is going to have lunch available in the month of may but it's going to be in a different model with an outside vendor so we're
161not quite sure how that's going to impact the overall profitability of that of that part of our operation so um i think it'll still be fine but it just does give us a little bit of cushion that helps us uh through that situation so good news for the child nutrition department i think this is the highest the cash balance has ever been in that department so um that the federal support has been much much appreciated help us build back after the pandemic okay mr fritz next slide okay so what's next fourth quarter probably the biggest thing is that we are going to be looking at a new and this is really about the board's work we will have an update to our five-year forecast at the may evening meeting what we'll be looking at are
162some of those changes and revenue streams not only for the current fiscal year to seeing where we are currently but also trying to project that for the the next four years um as we move forward to see you know financial planning thinking about when we might next next need to go out to the community we are busy working on the fiscal year 23 budget process so that's happening right now within my department getting everything ready to go on that and we'll be working with the buildings and departments here in the next few weeks to get that process moving forward we met today soon we will be looking at the federal grant application process for next school year so that's something that we're working on right now getting ready to put the plan together refining the
163plan that's already in place for how we use those federal dollars for intervention services for our students with disabilities and then for primarily professional development and then also for our esol students and then probably the thing that's creating the most turmoil and maybe that turmoil is not the right word but the most stress in within the walls of the treasurer's office department is that we are working to have a migration from what is probably 30-year software over to a new uh software program for both all of our accounts payable and all of our payroll is happening this weekend so um we're we're a little stressed about that we've been doing a lot of training um recently with our people who do who support us in the building so that they're aware of how the requisition
164process works how they can access reports and things like that but we're keeping our fingers crossed we're glad everybody got paid today and we're thinking that everything after running a couple practice payrolls on the new system that will be good for our may 5th payroll but but keep us in our in your thoughts um as we get through this weekend hopefully everything will go well um i i do want to send out a big thank you to to the staff in in my department because it's a lot of stress for them um trying to make sure that they've thought ahead of all the things that we need to have in place cleaning things up in the old system so that we're not carrying things over into the new system that that are unnecessary um and
165the new assistant treasurer amy moore has just jumped in and taken this project um by you know full on and has really done a great job so i want to thank her for all of her extra time and um taking on a lot of a lot of work um to be able to get us to to move forward so that's going to be our our big headache again this weekend um we will let you know if any if we have any issues with that but i fully anticipate that at all that it'll go okay all right so with that are there any questions thank you mrs weber i need a motion for the approval of the financial reports march 2022 so moved second okay one moment please my laptop timed out okay and so that
166was mr comerford and who seconded that motion please this is bitter was dr steeger oh doctor should get me to it thank you okay all right mr comeford aye dr steger hi mrs weiss aye mr ballen hi and this is bitter aye promotion passes i need a motion for the approval of the personnel consent agenda which includes uh addendum 1d 3a and 4a so moved second ever please call a rope dr steger aye mrs weiss aye mr ballen aye mrs vitter aye mr cumberford aye motion motion passes moving on to other board of education business mrs weiss legislative liaison thank you everyone um okay the ohio supreme court ruled 4-3 that the house and senate state legislative maps approve of the ohio redistricting commission are unconstitutional again again the ohio redistricting commission has until may
1676 to approve new maps keep your fingers crossed state board of education they're currently interviewing candidates for the state superintendent position the state board will in the near future advance at least three candidates to a second round interview um h house bill 126 uh just to refresh your memory this regards the process for local governments to contest property value through the existing board of revision system both houses approved the bill with an amendment along party lines and have sent it to governor dewine for approval house bill 95 the bill appropriates 338 million dollars in fiscal year 2022 to the federal school lunch program the bill also allows a municipal corporation to concurrently exempt improvements to the same parcel through both an incentive district tax increment financing known as a tiff arrangement and a subsequent individual
168parcel tiff or urban redevelopment tif if the ordinance is authorizing the concurrent exemptions were adopted before march of 2022 this has also been sent to governor dewine for approval senate bill 135 this bill would require school districts to include career division policies information on career fields with associate degrees and certificates and the reserve officer training corps the bill would also require the state to develop a statewide apprenticeship program for high school students including training in careers related to wind and solar energy this has been sent to governor dewine for approval as well house bill 327 this is regarding the teaching of certain current events race and sex is still in committee hearings let me see what else here [Music] house bill 583 this has to do with the state board of education issuing temporary short-term
169substitute teaching licenses to approved applicants um this the committee is continuing to hear testimony uh testimony as you recall has been provided by osba basa oe oeasa oassa and the alliance for higher quality education of which we are a member uh we've also been busy mr lewis miss weber and myself meeting with um on march 31st we met with representative miranda we briefly discussed the redistricting of congressional districts for ohio district 28 the one she represents has been consistent in the last three map drawings so she's not terribly worried about that we discussed h bill 327 which she called the divisive concepts bill it is currently moving through committee in a number with a number of hearings the origins of this bill were with national groups not by really senators or representatives in ohio we
170discussed h bill 583 which passed in committee on 330 2022 to allow school districts to hire substitute teachers with lesser requirements we discussed this as providing flexibility uh for post pandemic recovery we addressed the challenges with bus driver shortages mr lewis proposed a possible solution to improve the training options and consolidating the training to a weekend opposed to over a few weeks mrs weber shared the progress on our new buildings and extended an invitation to representative miranda to attend our building openings in the future representative miranda offered to obtain commendations for those ceremonies on april 1st we met with representative brinkman we discussed the challenges with the primary election due to the congressional maps being redrawn and not yet approved representative brinkman shared that there is a concern for incumbents that anyone could jump in
171the race in addition he believes that there would be extremely low voter turnout representative brinkman is term limited and he will be running for hamilton county auditor in november we discussed the fair funding legislation that passed mrs weber stated that sycamore saw an increase in sycamore's transportation funding representative brinkman recalled the passing of the substitute teacher bill as well as his support for the financial literacy bill representative brinkman excuse me took an interest in understanding how many languages are spoken in our schools mr lewis shared the strong esol program we have in sycamore and the supports that we offer to both students and families and mrs weber shared the ambassador program that's in sycamore and lastly on april 14th we had a meeting with senator blessing we discussed h bill 126 which was the property
172evaluation bill mrs weber explained that while sycamore did not support the bill we believe that it will be workable because of how hamilton county operates hamilton county operates related to property assessments and how current they are on them um hbill 616 which is also the divisive concept bill i'm not sure about that number actually senator blessing discussed this briefly in terms of local control versus statewide mandate we also discussed transportation challenges and had a robust conversation of the challenges that school districts face to attract hire and reach and retain qualified drivers private companies are stiff competition as well as the number of hours a school bus driver works every day and the number of months per year we briefly discuss school funding and discuss the formula for support for public school students versus private schools
173there still is not parity private schools do not have the same requirements as public schools and they receive more dollars per pupil than public schools mrs weber explained how sycamore will use esser dollars for learning loss from the pandemic and senator blessing briefly discussed the virtual public meeting language in h house bill 51 that was signed into law by governor dewine it was a very pleasant conversation with senator blessing um mrs weber or mr lewis anything else to add from that did i capture that all right nothing this evening that was a very thorough review of our meetings that's all i've got i've got like 20 pages of stuff here but that's all i got thank you very much mrs weiss dr stegers you have sycamore advisory commission report i do have that um so
174we had a group presentation about non-monetary recognition of faculty and staff i know that that was a great issue to have especially this time of year as we're coming into saying thank you to our faculty and staff for the school year coming to a close they had two big ideas one was called aids acknowledgements where you can it's the idea is to have some way of sending in an email to the district where say i think they were using someone who worked in child nutrition to say thank you to someone working you know in child nutrition at the say the green cafeteria you wanted to say thank you then that would go to the principal and the supervisor there and then the person could get an email recognition a handwritten letter just different ideas of
175ways to recognize that person and know that they're being making an impact every day for someone whether it's a child or an adult in the building just to reach out and make that statement to them but it could go for anyone bus drivers child nutrition nurses teachers principals anyone in the district office okay just the whole idea is anyone who works in the district you want to recognize them the second idea which was fantastic i thought um was the idea of getting pinned so you're being hired by the district you get your wings like a pin welcome to the district along with a packet this is very much an administrative issue that's not really a board issue and then for a certain number of years of recognition you would get um what would brad would
176you or mr humberford what they were talking about other pins for five years ten years or kind of bars like to recognize you and getting a lanyard to put these on so people knew how long you'd been there and can i reach out to you as a mentor mr coverford they had different designs yes dr seger most of them were ranked around years of service so that you would earn at five and 10 and 15 in 20 years you're like something that you could wear either on a lanyard or on a lapel uh on this nature so kind of a service emblem right i think mr lewis also enjoyed the idea and i think he's ready to run with it i love the idea and i can't wait to get those things started because they
177were such good ideas they didn't require a lot of money or effort in the impact is huge so um there were so many good ideas but it doesn't re the nice thing is it doesn't require you to do anything school board so other than participate right so it's exciting so let's let everybody run with this and i'm sure mr lewis and the team are going to be ready to reach out and find out more design ideas that they had because they shared their top ones that they received back with the presentation they but i uh unfortunately i emailed the presentation that they sent um right before our executive session i apologize for that delay thank you very much mr lewis business advisory council update just in the essence of time i'll just say really briefly
178the last meeting we got really focused in on our why and the group set goals and kind of develop that long-term vision and they came up with really a couple of statements that focused on what they will do and they will serve as ambassadors and communicators for the district's strategic plan they will maintain a strong partnership between the business community local government and the district and assist the district and remaining focused on its goals so um really felt like uh we we had a good meeting to just define what we are going to do and how they're going to help the other thing that they're really passionate about is finding ways to support students not only being employable but being successful beyond their time here at sycamore and then just this week we were we
179moved forward with a goal that that has been on this team for a number of years which is talking about internships and career exploration so uh we had an opportunity to meet with mrs dowenhauer who has been engaged with us she's on the team she really is passionate about internships career exploration giving our students really uh accessible accessibility to that what might interest them beyond high school so mr mater agreed to kind of start that process by doing an inventory of what we have going on at the high school and kind of report back to mrs dowenhauer so we can get you know even if we start small and grow that's better than you know jumping in kind of almost too fast so and she agreed so we're gonna complete that inventory in the next
180couple of weeks and then get back together to kind of take that next step of what might that look like going into the 22-23 school year so we're excited about the work and uh we have one more meeting scheduled for this year and then wrap up this school year going into next year so thank you mr ballen did i capture everything from that meeting okay yes absolutely um mrs weber policy quick policy project update yes thank you mr ballant just a reminder we have a special session um that we tentatively scheduled for tuesday may 3rd to meet with kenneth haycox who is our consultant from the ohio school boards association who's helping us with our policy update and the goal of that meeting is we've set aside about 20 policies that we need a bit
181more input from the board of education to be able to move forward with their next draft of the policy um so i do want to make you aware that a request for me is that when you're a baseball mom you find out that things get rescheduled all the time so we are having baseball senior night that night so we're gonna i'm gonna be able to go be recognized if we can start the policy meeting at 5 30 all that i will miss will be the game and believe me i've seen plenty of games so that is all fine and then if we have two hours to do that um that gives us a time frame to get that work done i can make it back in time for dinner so may 3rd yeah i just
182did i missed that did the did i miss that day was it on the 27th of april at one point it was and it ended up being rescheduled to may 3rd i think we talked about that at our last so may 3rd tuesday may 3rd at 5 30 5 30. got it thank you thank you mrs webber the board will make a firm commitment to stop so that you can attend which is very important as a mother for all you do for our district um so you can attend you can be your you can have your mother responsibilities and attend your son's baseball senior night right so to assist with that prior to this weekend you will receive your homework assignment to start reviewing those those 20 policies and it's going to be convenient in
183that there's a website set up you'll get a username and password um and there will be a specific file for the for with all of these policies contained in that and a summary of those things that we want you to consider moving forward so may 3rd 5 30 to 7 30. um i apologize because we'll meet and we'll be coming back for a meeting the following morning but it might be easier to since we're all going to be in town anyway um and you'll get your homework this weekend to start working through all that excitement of looking at board policy so thank you for for working through that with me i'm sure a great time will be had by y'all we are looking forward to it it'll be exciting i know you are i think
184mr ballen is buying us all dinner that night too perfect any additional comments from the board with that we will join the meeting thank you everybody thank you to those of you who stayed here for the whole time