001order at 5 15 upon which the board immediately went into executive session please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice 14. and under the personnel consent agenda 1 c 2 b w x y z a a and 4 a and other board of education business 3 and 4. hello hi i need a motion for the approval of the a minute any comments or questions corrections all right mrs webber please call the role mr mccarrio mr ballen aye mr evans aye mrs weiss aye mr club aye all right virtual meeting protocol mrs weber thank you everyone for joining us this evening um we are um in a virtual setting this evening as we have been
002for the last year or so um welcome all of you who are joining us this evening virtually one of the things we have posted um and we had this up prior to the meeting is the area within the board of education website where you can access the agenda for this meeting and once minutes are approved from past meetings those are posted on that same page we have asked that those who would like to participate in public participation send their request to today's moderator chad lewis his email is shown on the screen louis c at sycamoreschools.org public participation is going to occur in about five or so minutes so um after we have a few other presentations so we ask that you get those requests to us soon um if those requests refer to an item
003that is on the board's agenda this evening we'll hold your request until we get to that item and we'll ask you to participate at that time once the board has had their discussion so um i think that is it when we get to that point mr lewis we will find out if you have any public participation requests i did not have any prior to the meeting as per the instructions that we have on the website but we still have an opportunity for those who might be out there to provide a request to participate thank you so much all right thank you mrs weber all right um this evening we have some representatives from our sycamore classified staff that would like a moment with the board so i'd like to welcome becky taylor and diane friedl
004hi my name is diane friel and i'm the current oc president dear value board members it is with our deepest gratitude that we are reaching out to you today to express our appreciation for your most recent generosity we can't thank you enough for the stipend that you're going to provide to us and to the entire staff especially the classified employees this coming august it was a very busy year for the classified staff who spent a lot of extra hours making sure students had meals computers virtual books and supplies daily communications and especially those who work tires tirelessly to get our buses and buildings ready to open during the most challenging time the classified staff are ready to start the school and greet each student with a happy face the reality that our schools could possibly
005close and go completely virtual was a very scary thought we knew our jobs were on the line and we were willing to face the challenges ahead to make sure schools would open safely for the benefit of our students we the most recent oc presidents can't remember one time all year long where the classified staff didn't step up to the plate every time a call or an email went out asking for help and assistance they were there they never left a situation shorthanded the frontline employees made a tremendous impact on the school's opening and they exceeded our expectations we couldn't be more proud of their efforts thanks again for your generosity since sincerely with gratitude the entire classified thank you [Applause] let's get emotional yeah thank you so much for having me and taking time out
006of here thank you thank you again your thanks and we would like to say thank you to you again for all of your efforts and all the classified staff efforts on this test here has really been challenging and we all pulled together so thank you so much yeah i would certainly like the echo on this license comments you know as we looked over the course of this year or other school districts across the nation just struggling to you know figure out how to stay remote versus actually being in school and being engaged um you know the classified staff was there from day one when we were in august figuring out what is it gonna take to you know change all the protocols within the buildings and then as you mentioned for the rest of the
007year just executing executing executing so i think it's a testament to the you know the fortitude and the culture and the type of people that are underneath your organizations just to do that really exemplary and different from what we saw on a number of other you know three other school districts across the nation you guys are really leading examples so thank you very much thank you for saying that yeah i would just like to add my thank you to the entire organization as well truly a team effort from top to bottom we couldn't have done it without you and your team members you played vital roles in every aspect of our students education um and just the fact that you shut up work every day and continue to work with us as a team to
008really get us all the way through the school year it was a remarkable feat something that i think our entire community is proud of the fact that we were able to keep our schools open and that is in part thanks to all the of your staff so thank you and i wish all of your staff a fantastic song thank you yeah and all that once the decision was made to come back to school we didn't hear any negative comments from the classified staff you guys were all there unanimously ready to serve our kids you are the backbone of what it is to have a school district if our kids can't get to school there's no school so i know you're the primary contacts for many parents from the district the people that you we as
009parents that we engage with so thanks for keeping our kids safe through this and thanks for coming to work we're happy to do so and have a great summer thank you you know we we i just want to pile on the thank yous but the the the theme i would have is every single person is valued right every single person we're all on the home team here at sycamore and i really think it's important that when you know when you character is revealed during adversity and i think um couldn't be prouder of the entire organization in sycamore for pulling together and delivering this year so thank you very much i will add that while we are here to convey our thank you and gratitude from the classified staff because that's who we represent we do
010know that the decisions from the board the administration the teachers willingness to come to work and everyone else involved is is a huge step in making sure that our school district open because we just feel like you know kids get that better education face to face they needed that social skills and all the pieces that go with it and we were happy happy to come to work every day and provide that service from our side so we know that the decisions weren't always tough on your end and you know there was a lot of black at the beginning and a lot of changes but we were happy to be here absolutely so thank you for all your efforts and all the craziness that you all went through to keep our year going thank you thank
011you for protecting us because you know your your work becky i know you had to keep things clean you had to keep things organized you had to do extra efforts the bus drivers on buses you know working with kids serving food and being directly connected to kids working with our most needy students and those students depend on those educational assistants the clerical staff you know missing their kids and not being able to be connected to kids it's just you know i i think about what it was like last summer and what it's like this summer i'm so thankful that we got through it together we're better together um and just so thankful that you know it's nice to be able to hug you all again and hug some of the people at the compounds and
012then the the buildings but it will be great to see everyone at the start of next school year and hopefully be able to you know be closer and be connected and that's that's one of the things that i know we all missed about the early part of this year so looking forward to reconnecting with you all but excited for you to get away this summer and get some rest well some of us have to work through the summer thing is i'm at a brand new school and i don't think i'm going to recognize anyone as soon as they take the mask i don't know what these people look like behind those masks i'm just like hey i recognize you from somewhere but we'll get there can't wait for him to come off rebecca diane i
013think you readily know how i feel about both of you and everything you've done and the people you represent hidden heroes long-term heroes attraction adjective to what you guys did so from the bottom of my heart thank you to you and everybody else that got this done this year very great thank you thank you thank you so much and you're welcome to stay for our entire board meeting if you'd like to leave and enjoy the sunshine i think we're going to head on out we'll leave you to it this is where you all excel it was it was a joint effort it made it from school to school i'm not really sure how it happened but we made a few calls and we tried to get it around with a week's notice thank you so
014much thanks all bye have a great evening all right um moving on public hearing for input on federal grant funds to support students with disabilities for 2021-2022 uh mrs weiss thank you um each year we are required by federal law to provide an opportunity for public comment on our funding source called idea funds that support our students with disabilities here in sycamore typically by the june evening meeting we are having this hearing because we are getting ready to submit our pub our application for the next year and typically by this point in time we know what our funding amount will be for them next year but this year we do not as of june june 16. so that amount is to be determined just for reference though and we anticipate that the funding amount will
015be similar uh next year as of what it is to this year it's about 1.3 million that the district utilizes um in sycamore for personnel to support our students primarily for educational assistance and then also psychology services for identifying and testing we also because we are a public school district and federal law requires that for religious based schools such as mueller high school that we provide oversight and guidance for their federal funds we also administer the funds that are allocated to mueller high school and for those of you who aren't aware mueller does have services that they provide for students with disabilities um and in fact they they have approximate they will get approximately of that 1.3 million just about 200 000 of that because of their student population i think they are currently serving
016around 80 students with disabilities at moeller high school so we work with them very closely and determining how those services will be purchased and provided so what i would ask is for those in the audience if they have um input that they would like to provide to the district on this item um we will be uh providing that application and we'll be presenting and that application within the next um couple of weeks if they could please just send me an email with their input or um and my email address is here on the screen weber be at sycamoreschools.org so that we can uh take that into consideration as we we write the grant um all indications at this point in time is that we would continue to utilize those funds in the same way that
017we have in past years which is to to provide those personnel supports which have been really effective for helping our kids um be able to access free and appropriate education which is what these federal grants are about okay are there any questions regarding regarding this okay mr lewis do we have any public participation at this point no no okay all right moving on to the super intense agenda is your first thoughtful yeah so the first item is the healthy age update i'm assuming that's what you're referencing um speaking of when ode has requirements um one of the requirements that um the ohio department of education through their federal guidelines that they have and we've discussed a little bit about a new grant called esser american rescue plan funds and for sycamore we are scheduled to
018receive about 3 million dollars to utilize to support continuity of services and return to in service our in-person instruction for the district which actually um this is one of those times when ode has the ohio department of education has sent down an edict which it was like this is perhaps the most easy response we have ever had because we're doing the things that they've asked we did him last year we are looking to be able to provide those things next year as well so one of the requirements of this grant is that you provide information on your website and we have been doing this all year about the continuity of services that we are providing to our students so what i just wanted to do is introduce and make sure that you are aware that
019we have met this requirement by posting our healthy aids plan our learning recovery and extended learning plan which is a recommendation by ohio governor dewine to be able to show what we are going to be doing to provide services for our students next year and return to to educa educating both in school and filling education gaps those are all addressed and then this also provides a way that we are going to continue to update our community our parents and our community about next year mr lewis mr forstoppel have said on a couple different occasions that there's still a lot that we have not determined for next year we are still going to be looking at some of the data to around health data or looking at some of our healthy protocols so those decisions aren't
020going to be made tonight however this is a place where our community can continue to go and get updates if they're not at a board meeting we'll continue to provide healthy aids updates at every board meeting and we'll continue to provide the communication that we have to our parents and families as we make those decisions so just really wanted to give you an update that this uh which is something we've really been doing all year perfectly matches what the ohio department of education and um the united states department of education has required uh from our district in order to show that we're meeting those components to to receive those funds so just wanted to give you an update that we are meeting the requirements and for those of you who are out in the audience
021this evening that this is one of those one of those places that you can go to continue to get information as those decisions are made so that's all i have for the healthy aids update mr lewis mr forstaffel i don't know if you have anything additional to add i think the biggest thing is just for our community to stay tuned we're going to certainly continue to look at the data and we're going to continue to react to the data and you know that's the mode we've been in all year and that's the mood we're going to continue to do we're going to be responsible in our reaction to that data so um hope everyone's enjoying their summer that's you know our hope for them right now and you know as information becomes available we'll continue
022with updates but as of right now i think i would i would communicate that the data looks really good right now comparative to last year at this time so um we hope that that continues and as we make our updates again we'll react to that data as it comes becomes clear to us so thank you for that opportunity to give you an update on on healthy aids we look forward to our community visiting that site all right thank you very much all right um master facility plan update mr lewis mrs webber we we have picks hey there we go so yeah go ahead and go to the next slide so we've got you know there's a lot going on right now it's a busy summer and kudos to our all of our staff members um
023at the schools they have done an amazing job of really getting in there uh getting in if you would have seen sims elementary at the beginning of this week it was completely empty there is not one other thing that exists in that building uh it was a complete clear out so that they can get all of the work done so um you know a lot of additions the the masonry is being done uh on the classroom edition uh roof installations sidewalks being done the drywall installation in the new edition is nearly complete which is exciting uh so that then we'll start sealing grid and things of that nature putting that that information in um the walls there's a temporary wall to divide the gym so that we can use part of the gym as our
024media center for the time being when school starts you can see temporary media center shelving in the gym um we had to move all of the building contents off site so that they can complete the summer work and really just you know some of the exterior work and some of the site work is is nearly complete and has been finished and so if you can go to the next slide this is weber you can see some of that work on the exterior uh the sight work in the stage edition uh i will tell you that when i went out there and noticed that like this area of the front here that was totally torn up it's just every time you see something new it just it always kind of shocks you when you when you
025pull in to see what changes have occurred next slide please um some additional that's the interior so it's really coming together um the the left is the new wing and then obviously the right is an existing hallway and you can see you know they're in the ceilings they're tearing things out and that was a big part of what they have to do is they want to get all the above ceiling stuff finished this summer so that's why the school had to be completely empty it doesn't mean every wing is going to be finished you know you'll see later in the agenda one of the change orders that we're approving is an acceleration item we accelerated one of the wings so that we could be accommodating to our student needs and not have to talk about
026redistricting or moving students to another building for the year and we felt like that would be a positive for our families to accelerate the movement and pay a little additional money instead of meeting students and then moving them back the following year so next slide please and then just some other strange photos and things that are going on uh at sims elementary school so again a lot of work being done i'll just say i always continue to say on budget and on schedule we never say we're ahead of schedule that's that's terrible when you're talking about construction topics so next slide we should be at uh an aerial photo so you can see that just the change every again every time that you look at it there's just more and more complete so you know
027we are on schedule for the new wing to open at the beginning of the school year for next school year i will tell you that there'll be a lot of stress at sims elementary because we will be working probably every day up until staff return and maybe even through staff return the staff members will probably have only a couple of days to get their rooms ready so um they'll be stressed and we'll get them through it and that'll be a tough time of the year but we we need every single day to get that work complete next slide moving on to eh green uh the lime stabilization you know for the building pad doing a lot of that soil stabilization stabilization is complete um working on the lower building pad and you know we feel
028confident that we're nearly at the end of all of our stabilization efforts the building footers have been started that is one of the concerns um that's really the only i would say soil issues that remain or concerning potential concern is just soil issues with any of the building footers but i have not heard anything as of yet uh that would be concerning but you know i feel confident that we've been underneath the change directive that we were able to approve and hopefully we're going to be well below it and you know save some money on those costs sanitary lines storm underground pipe parking areas and you know sharing up that information and then you'll see in a minute there's a shoring of a wall that needed to occur on the next slide or on a
029future slot so some of the exterior you'll see uh you can go ahead mrs weber so there's just some of the site work that's the soil stabilization with the uh lime and cement mix next slide it's nice to see starting to see some walls go up that's always an exciting thing when they're starting to come out of the ground next slide and then the aerial photos just to see how it's taking shape on the back end of the property and you know you'll notice that it was a shock to me um i'm sure it was a shocking mr four software looked at his window and their big back hoes and his backyard back here in the back of our building some of the you know water runoff and and drainage had to come back through
030and connect to the district office so they dug up a lot of things along the side of the building here so you know we we responded to questions from our community members around our facility and you know kept them up to date next slime sigmoid junior high again lots of similar things i won't go over the same things but lots of similar things in green they're in the same boat so we'll skip to the next slide you can see again looks kind of similar a lot of soil work a lot of things but you know again they're starting to come out of the ground i went to the meeting last week and saw the walls are starting to go open again exciting time to see when the foundation walls start next slide please just another
031view of that foundation work next slide and then the aerial photos so it's eventually within about two weeks it'll feel like there's almost a shell of the building there it'll be quick next slide the high school lots of demolition i was there this morning walking around lots of demo lots of clearing out um the commons if you've not been there if you've not seen some of the pictures on social media it is chock full of just teacher stuff and materials to try to save on some of the storage costs framing rough ends drywall installation i was again i never say i had a schedule but one of the areas that we started towards the end of the school year the high school team was able to clear it out a little early they are nearly
032complete with the installation of those classrooms in the back toward the back of the building it it'll be math classrooms it used to be i think global language but you know just seeing the bathrooms torn down completely to nothing and built back up the brick walls are all the cinder block walls are already there and the rough ends are already there so i will say i know this is a stupid thing to be excited about but knowing that the bathrooms for the original bathrooms i'm excited for our high school students to have new bathrooms and i know that's silly but it is important to high school students next slide so you can see some of those uh blocks block walls and the plumbing installs next slide there's the commons and all the storage so you
033know kudos to the high school custodial staff and our movers we worked with planes moving and storage did a phenomenal job they were in there they did all that in about a two day span sims was cleared out in about a two day span so just amazing coordination between a lot of people next slide please oh that's it that's not real exciting high school other than demo and a little bit of building back up but any questions i'd be happy to answer great progress yeah pretty exciting to start to see a lot of work you've done a long time planning and a lot of work by the community and a lot of community members get where we are today so it's exciting to see the work great from a budget perspective the dollars are starting
034to flow out the door contractors are getting paid so that's that's exciting it means a lot of things are getting done all right um so um the first one changing over at the our district roofing projects at the high school this year it's just a drain allowance and it's it's roof drains that need to be um really that water needs to be captured and kind of ushered away from the building so that we don't have water intrusion issues so that's the i will say as i i told mr evans and mrs weiss during our planning typically we capture these in an allowance in the project and it was an oversight in the roofing project that we did not have a normal allowance so normally you wouldn't solve this but in order to be compliant we
035need to bring forward a change order to capture this instead of putting it in an allowance so i appreciate your consideration all right question mrs weber please call the role mr evans aye mr bell aye mr macario all right mrs weiss aye mr conlifer aye medicine passes i need a motion for the change order for eh green intermediate construction project some move second change order one is self-explanatory uh we had to demo the aldine house for that construction access uh number two is uh we had to sure up that shore up that wall uh that you saw uh the cost total cost of that uh was sixty thousand eight oh six fifty nine we did have a shorting allowance already built in for twenty five thousand so the delta is the change order thirty five
036eight oh six fifty nine and it was just an unforeseen electric service we needed to make sure that the electric electric service would not be impacted by the wall and the location of the wall and making sure that that depth where the service is is protected by shoring up this wall so a lot of people worked on that but you know getting that to that point uh number three civil drawing revisions for it's a actually a credit of 4955 35 so some of it was just pricing changes due to scope changes grading changes uh project changes one of the major changes and what the biggest part of the credit was was we removed baseball field fencing we have much more requests for soccer lacrosse so we need green space we made that adjustment a baseball
037field at that location the level of baseball field they had at that location was pretty significant and we didn't have a need for that at that location so we removed that fencing and that was a huge uh savings and that that cost so that gives us the change delta of a reduction of four thousand nine five thirty five uh we had needed some temporary parking there was not enough parking once we grew up the construction drive through old house we lost a lot of our construction so this was adding construction or parking for staffs to make it through construction uh the retaining wall waterproofing self-explanatory we've talked about the soil stabilization in the past and this is the total of that so you gave us a change directive that we were authorized to go up
038to 300 000 for the cost to stabilize one portion of the building pad this is the cost to stabilize both portions of the building pack so we had a total of authorization of up to 440 000 we're going to stay under the first authorization of 300 000 as i mentioned in the report the only thing we're worried about is the building footers and so far so good so we'll leave that change directive open up 140 for now not to see just to see if there's any other unforeseen soil conditions or anything like that but we are also looking into mr mercuria's comments about you know do we need to look at any medic mitigation or any other strategies to kind of keep moisture out and mitigate it early and not have that issue pulling forward
039or pricing some of those things and we'll get back to you if that's to mr mccarro's point i think the last meeting we don't want to do that unless it makes sense so we'll we'll look at that and see if it makes sense to do those ahead of time and then change order number seven is just a door-sized change and i joke with mr evans i have no idea where 205 2k is but there is a door that size is being changed to just an additional increase in size [Music] mr evans and mr mercurio elementary school renovation project emp number one sorry i'm trying not to get confused there so it's just an undercut for the north detention pond five thousand two hundred thirty nine dollars it's just soil conditions okay mrs weber please call
040the roll mr mercuria all right mr comether aye mr ballen aye mr evans aye mrs weiss aye motion passes i need a motion for the approval of uh change orders for since elementary school renovation project cmp number three and you have updated numbers on the addendum [Music] one hundred twenty seven dollars it's removing an existing louver um brick matching um basically it's a it was an hvac issue that their that the engineers decided they needed to address so a small amount to make sure that that change was addressed change order number 10 b j electric was to accelerate that wing that i talked about 30 651 uh change order 11 is supervision for that acceleration 45 000 701 um they basically brought an additional person on to supervise the additional work that needed to happen
041change order number 12 is just some additional power to be able to put some refrigerators and microwave power and some were basically in each of the wings to accommodate staff and students change order number 13 if you've worked in an elementary school you understand the need for tax strips and hanging up student work so 22 2182 change order number 14 is just some changes to a couple of areas in the building six thousand four hundred fifty four dollars and then you know fifteen thousand one eight thirty eight our custodians they they have to ban i'm not sure who designed this but it's not somebody that works in custodial or in schools to be able to get things loaded into the custodial area you need a double door it was only a single door so we
042had to put in so that's the gentleman out there his name is gordon chang i keep holding this door over him but i guess if you approve this i can no longer hold it over call it the gordon door now so any questions or comments report mrs weber please mr evans aye mr valine aye mr cumifer aye mr mercurio and mrs weiss aye motion passes i need a motion for this renovation project tmp number two absolutely very exciting toilet solvent revisions so self-explanatory they just had to make some changes mr mercurio mr ballen aye mr comether always like to talk about trash right trash removal and recycling so this is just our service agreement it was up i needed to be renewed um really rumpke is mostly the only game in town there's some smaller
043outfits i've priced them in the past and they've not been competitive so i got an initial offer from rumpke it was not where we wanted it to be i thought the price increases were too much pushed back and got a much more amenable offer we have a frozen price for two the first two years of the agreement and a minimal increase for year three so more in line with what we wanted one of the key pieces that i think is critical for our agreement that other people have in their agreement especially with the rising gas prices we are not charged a fuel surcharge so that is huge right now i'm glad they did not make it reappear the other key piece of note is rumpke provides a 500 scholarship each year or agreement to high
044school students at our high school so it's it's a good i always say corporate uh citizenship is good and you know they've been a great partner for a number of years doing that same thing no just thank you thank you mrs webber please call the roll mr mercurial and mr ballet aye mr conifer aye mr evans hi and mrs weiss aye motion passes i need a motion for the approval of the transportation so i'll give mr lewis a chance for us [Music] this is a request for the board to declare transportation is practical for a number of students listed in work packets primarily from one school based on the following and six criteria listed in the board packet once approved uh each family will be offered mr mercurio and mrs weiss aye motion passes i
045need a motion for the approval of the contract with links for learning okay this is uh agreement replacement for student disability curve students iep um mr evans aye mrs weiss aye mr bellen aye and mr conorcard aye motion passes okay item number 11 announcement of graduation date for class of 2022. this will be mr lewis's first commencement graduation superintendent always exciting um announcing the next date for graduation sunday may 29th so mark calendar is 11am and our high school staff always you know does a great job our students do a great job at centos center and really the staff at cintas center take really good care of us so you know no hesitation announcing it and always continuing to recommend this tradition at favorite university all right uh moving on i need a motion for
046the approval of the chamber for sycamore junior heart protection project second involved all right so uh pretty simple structural steering steel revision just explain it to where there are some structure changes that hadn't been made to adjust um 1900 change order number seven tech closet there were some revisions for a tech closet it was determined there's an additional tech closet located in the gym those items were weren't addressed prior to demo so they needed to address that as part of the change change order number eight uh auditorium power feed there were two panels um they both were scheduled to remain in use and they currently both currently fed an electrical room in the auditorium that is scheduled to be demolished so there was an additional cost there to remain in use um and avoid them
047and part of the demo and then you know who know that we had to pay to locate relocate a tornado siren that's on our property near the stadium so it was relocated by hamilton county and approved by the contractors this is how we were responsible for hamilton county made it clear that it's our responsibility to if we're making changes that we have to cover the cost so there's our good citizenship for the community taking care of the tornado the things you incur as part of construction you're just always interesting all right any questions or comments from the board mrs webber please call the role mr evans aye mr ballen aye mrs weiss aye mr cumber mr mercurio all right motion passes i need a motion for the construct construction change directive for the supermarket your
048high construction project so move paul seconded and thank you for entertaining this i know this was very late and just a quick explanation obviously our bus compound and our our back parking lot of the junior high has been affected by construction that's where we park all of our buses and load and unload students for the junior high in order to be able to have school and not really upset every citizen that drives on cooper road for the next couple of years we needed to have a place for parking the buses and unloading and loading of students so that large grassy area in the front of the building we had planned for a parking of some kind there it just was what they planned for was not large enough so we needed to uh expand it
049in the front of the school and this is a not to exceed change directive of 48.53 so it's realizing us to go up to that amount any questions from the board mrs webber please call the roll mr ballen aye mr mercurio aye mr comether aye mr evans all right and mrs weiss aye mrs [Music] moving on to the treasurer's consent agenda um consent agenda is really short this evening because the typical budget changes that we have um we have an overall appropriation later on in the agenda so the the primary things that we're asking for your approval are the transfers that we made from our general fund to pay our energy conservation debt our certificates of participation here for the district office and then as also funds that are utilized to cover our summer projects
050for including roofing and some paving and things like that for the permanent improvement fund mr mercurial mr evans aye mr comicon all right mrs weiss and mr ballard excuse me motion passes i need a motion for the approval of financial reports um just a few items to point out on the financial report one is that we have updated the five-year forecast report to show the forecast that was utilized or that was approved back in may so while it looks like everything is super accurate it's really easy when you um are able to do that just a month before but overall very good um uh performance in terms of our revenue coming in as we have projected even at the beginning of the year actually above where we where we had thought we would be um
051and our expenses still continue to be under the parameter that we had within our our forecast so and we anticipate at the end of june which occurs in our fiscal year in june which occurs in just a couple of weeks we will also be under our projected expenses for the fiscal year any questions this is where we talk to the investment crews since i let the change in the investment the investment earnings as basically because most of our funds have come in within the last year it's in our reserves basically we can only invest in areas that are government secured bonds cds some commercial paper but we're using that opportunity for our um bond retirement monies there's just very little return that can be had for any investments that we we can um invest in
052right now many some of the investments that we had prior to the pandemic occurring um were callable and so often they were have been called and we just did not have any kind of new reinvestment opportunities that we can capture much income from that so um it's horrible when you look at the funds that we have to see how little opportunity there is for us to um be able to capture much investment return so i i wish i had better news on that front but there just aren't area set like investing in the stock market or in equities that's just something that the school district is not allowed to do so that's that's my question my question is more the year-over-year number right right and even a year ago we felt like we weren't getting
053very good return but um now it looks like it was great but that's that's basically the reason why there's just not much earnings to be captured i know um mr evans also asked if there were any opportunities potentially because of the low borrowing rate for us to look at any of our outstanding debt um as a potential for uh refunding or if anything was any of our debt for the district is callable um we do have one issue that we could look at as a district it's one of our energy conservation bonds that was issued back in 2010 that if we wanted to either utilize our reserve to call that issue or um and just pay it off or if we wanted to look at refunding it that would be an option as well i
054have not done much more than just see what opportunities we have but if that's something that the board would like me to follow up on um i'm more than happy to do that to see if there's an opportunity to get rid of some of that or some of that you know what's the arbitrage if you're not earning any money in interest at a four percent rate or seven percent rate on some of these bonds just to go through a cash position and see if we're better off especially in the short term if we're going to pay this off to the next two or three years anyway so we'll look into that and just determine what our options might be uh that that issue i believe um is through 2015 so given kind of what we're
055seeing from the feds and and potential increases in rates that's probably something that we're not going to see much at least at night now who knows what the economy will bear but it looks like it might be an opportunity for us let me ask in the um long-term forecast do we forecast out um investment returns in our uh five year forecast or is that flat um i i do not only because you know we've been keeping things so short because rates have been filled and it's just really hard to predict at this point in time i think with our bond issue funds they do have a projection for those because when we started that process we provided our cash straw potential schedule to red tree investments who works with us um in in investing those
056proceeds so they would have more of that in terms of the drop draw schedule potential return okay mrs weber please call the role mr ballen aye mr evans aye mr mercurio aye mrs weiss aye and mr comfort hi and i did want to just say thank you for uh the reason for variance that you included on that and thanks for that description i appreciate that very much thank you very much agenda i need a motion for the fiscal year 21 appropriation measure okay up next we have our two appropriation measures which basically serves as a spending authority for the district for fiscal year 21 that's just basically a culmination of all of the different the initial budget of the district that we approved back in september of last year and all of those appropriation changes
057that we've presented in throughout the school year and then finally just some cleanup work that we did as a district to make sure we were in compliance with audit standards um as determined by the auditor of state um the 21 general fund appropriation is aligned with the five-year forecast amount um the big areas that you can see within our overall budget is that are on you know unusual that we don't typically we haven't had them in the past is we have nearly 100 million dollars in this year's budget for our construction funds we have the esser grants that are included in our budget this year we do not have the new grant that the three million dollar grant because that has not been approved yet um one of the things that you'd also see with
058the grant on the essa grant that was about 1.3 million dollars is the full approva amount is not appropriated yet because we are holding about 5 million or 500 000 of those grant dollars to pay for all of those july and august accrued wages for the new staff and took that approach because what it does is is it makes it so that i don't have to continue to look at is the general fund funding any of this we can finish out the year for those students or those staff members by using those federal grant dollars so that will not impact the overall general general fund and having to continue to track that variance over time so um overall you know 212 million dollars which is unusual for us but the bulk of that is because
059of the construction dollars for all the bond issue projects any questions okay i need a motion for the approval of the fiscal year 22 temporary appropriation measure okay the 22 is appropriation measure is for the 21 22 school year this is a temporary measure and that will bring back a revised appropriation in september which will include our new federal grant dollars it'll be the culmination of our staffing finalization for that will occur this summer we will also at that point in time have additional information on the remaining budget for all of our construction funds we hope we are we currently have those funds appropriated in construction for our contingency dollars for the four main projects the sims the junior high green and the high school we'll be looking at finalizing the stadium budget as well
060as hopefully the transportation budget in this next couple of months so that we can add those dollars as well the general fund budget aligns with the five-year forecast but we'll be looking at how that might need to be reallocated based on our staffing finalization one thing that that has been helpful for us is that by having both of our association contracts finalized we were able to show the impact of any kind of uh wage considerations within the appropriation are there any questions mr mercurio mr evans aye mrs weiss aye mr balance aye and mr comfort all right this is an agreement that we've had for several years with learn 21 in that we provide fiscal agent services as well as provide staffing for the learn21 consortium we are fully reimbursed for the cost of all
061personnel that we we provide and then we are also provided a fiscal agent fee in in return for that so i recommend that we continue that relationship with learn 21 for the next um the next fiscal year mr ballen mr evans aye mr mercurial all right mrs weiss aye aye mr cumberford all right question passes i need a motion for the approval for the ohio school prompt workers compensation group retrospective program secondly this is a continuation of a program that we've been working with uh through the um cop management is the name of the company but it's a partnership of ohio school boards association and olasbo providing a group um rating program where we combine for our workers comp um to be able to bring our rates down and then we are also rewarded for
062good performance um if we have lower than anticipated claims and we have had that for the last several years being within this group the other thing about being within the group continuing within the group rating process is as the state has provided these dividends and refunds we are still eligible for that even though we are within this group rating so for example last year we got a million dollars back from workers comp in in dividend refunds so um this has worked out well for us in terms of providing those savings we are working with cop management which mr lewis in his soon-to-be former position has appreciated working with them in terms of working with us on claims management and helping with our safety programs as well so i recommend us continuing on with the ohio
063workers comp program as explained questions mrs weber mr evans aye mr mccarrio aye mrs weiss aye mr ballen aye aye mr comicborg all right i need a motion for the approval of the personnel consensus and then this is a reminder this includes addendum items 1 c 2 d w x y z a a and 4 a hello secondary mr ballot aye mr mccarrio aye mr cummingford all right mr evans and mrs weiss aye motion passes moving on to other board of education business legislative liaison report mr material yeah i have a couple of hot um issues with two bills that i would like to bring up but first i want to turn it over to mrs i think she's going to tell us thank you mr mccarrio we are continuing to monitor the progress of
064the state budget bill it has currently been passed out of the senate um and has moved into conference committee so that the senate and the house can reconcile the differences between the two bills for school funding these are probably the two most diverse versions of the bill that they have ever had in that one the house version includes this fair school funding plan and the senate has basically taken what is the current plan and they have tweaked it with some additional funding amounts and with additions of many type of additional funding for school vouchers so the conference committee convenes tomorrow and will try to get that work done to be so that they will have a state budget we think by june 30th and looking at how they combine or compare between the house version
065and the senate version um you know we still remain a school district that does not receive a lot of per pupil funding we're not seeing a lot of additional funds really from either of the two versions perhaps a bit more with the senate version and one of the things that is contained in the senate version is a preliminary look toward providing additional funds for districts like sycamore that receive less than um the what parochial schools or the private schools receive so they've done that through a tweet to part of the formula um so that that is a potential plus of the senate version that uh maybe only kind of a short term plus would been compared to the fair school funding plan which tends to be better for schools in the long run so um
066we'll continue to monitor the process and keep you informed one thing that i did hear today that we will have to keep an eye on and we'll hope that this is does not occur is when we talked about transportation and practical as a per pupil amount that we have to pay to those families that forego our transportation could potentially double um under the new senate version of the bill so um that is something that if the house version continues forward it won't be an issue if the senate version moves forward that will be an additional cost that we will have to approach so um you know just a very busy time at the state house in terms of the state budget and we will we will stay tuned and keep you informed but either future
067forum is probably not a lot of good for single moms which is pretty typical thank you mr glover mr my career and the first bill i want to talk about is house bill 322 which is uh regarding the teaching of certain current events race and sex bill was recently introduced by don jones from district 95 and 26 other co-sponsors that's a lot of correspondence for the bill on may 25th on june 10th it was referred to the state and local government committee in the house according to the primary sponsor and i'm going to send this out to everybody in the synopsis of the intent of the bill um the words these are the words of the primary sponsors that house bill 322 seeks to ban indoctrination with a lot of non-controversial ideas i'll say i'm
068not going to read those 11 to you but i will send it out to the group um but specifically the bill does not ban the teaching of the concept of crt or critical race theory specifically it says in there it's the policy of the state that teachers who choose to discuss current events are widely debated and currently controversial issues of public policy and social affairs to the best of their abilities shall strive to explore such issues from diverse and contending perspectives um goes on to say we shouldn't be telling students what to think we should be teaching them how to think um house bill 322 and his words is about protecting the integrity of our education system and ensuring our students are learning real facts and not being told to feel or think a certain
069way it's early stages he's issued this there's not going to be witness testimony of proponents and opponents so i will keep you updated this one's kind of fresh out of the hopper the second bill is house bill 248 um this is a bill that is to prohibit mandatory vaccinations vaccination status disclosures um and certain other actions regarding vaccinations and the nameless act the vaccine choice and anti-discrimination act this bill was introduced by jennifer gross from district 52 along with 15 of their co-sponsors on april 6. on april 14th it was referred to the health committee in the house yesterday it entered the bill's fourth hearing with witness testimony from more than 500 proponents and over a hundred opponents to this point and it's important to point out that this bill is written to cover all
070vaccinations it does not specifically pertain to the coven 19 vaccination in fact that's not even listed in the bill we already have some vaccinations that we do require um so it's interesting to watch how this one plays out and i'll continue to update everyone on the progress so the only other thing and not on either of these two goals but just add i know mr mercurial you've been tracking the local report card legislation there have been a couple different bills addressing that my understanding is that the sponsors of the two bills are trying to work together to come to a promised local report card bill which will likely end up in the state budget bill so more to come on that but it does look like after 10 years of district providing information to legislators
071a lot of work by the alliance which we work with that there may be some changes upcoming to the local report well mr mccarran mrs weber thank you for the update i do have a follow-up question from last month the personal finance um bill or work on that is there any update on that i think there was some thought that that might end up in the budget bill also but i'm not sure if that was pulled into the senate version or not there was a confidence that it was overwhelmingly supported so i don't know if it was going to go in or not but i'll be sure to follow up i know our attack committee would be very interested so i would like to relay that back to them and if it couldn't end up
072in the budget though it's still understandable that you know may end up moving forward on its own so trying to go back mr mercuria to house bill 248 on the prohibiting mandatory vaccinations so um if this if this does go through and actually passes then that would affect potentially what we would what we could require our students to have proof of vaccination to enter school is that correct that's how my interpretations okay so i think one of the questions that i think our board should consider is whether we want to submit a letter um to whoever that would be or contact our representatives to see what their position is on this miss sweater uh you met with the our alliance group today did this topic come up this bill did you meet with our alliance
073group today um i did hear the alliance has been tracking this legislation it's really fairly new um and what i'm hearing at this point is there is starting to get more opponent testimony from the health care industry from public health this i don't believe that this one is in the house education this is in it because it's not really just an education bill um even though it impacts us so they're starting to be more opponent testimony as well but i would i would suggest if you feel and i would i would think that our school nurses would also want us to at least address those vaccinations that are already in place not necessarily the cloven vaccine but the ones that have been are you know mandatory vaccine for generations because of the public positive public
074health impact of having those um you know already there is opportunity for our families to get waivers from vaccines if they want them so there is an opportunity if you choose not to be vaccinated that you can get a waiver from from that requirement but to make it so but i can see that there would be concerns that the vaccinations just aren't even mandatory and we can't ask for that information particularly for our incoming students right so do we know the time frame in terms of you said they're having public hearings or hearings about it when do they expect to take a vote that is always kind of among you know i can say that the first three hearings were just loaded with proponent testimony and this fourth period is the one where they finally
075so i would expect that to continue with another hearing or two before he got to that point i can talk with the alliance to see if they have an idea of when that might occur i would say there's still opportunity for input that's where your question is coming from yes so if there is i think that's something that we as a board should discuss and i think uh you know coordinating with other groups because sometimes there's power in numbers um to make sure this is yeah and that's on the other house bill um there's some elements within that that worry i get worried about the cultural respective practices that we have within the district um because there's some elements in here that say you know the district's not allowed to teach about cultural practices or
076you know the racial sensitivities that's the way they put it i'm not sure how that aligns with um cultural respective practices or um dni initiatives within the district so that would be one too i think just maybe it's a clarification for how that [Music] and i'm not sure to i think it's you know how they point out sort of question regardless of what we think it means yeah if they think it means something else it's going to impact us we should just understand that and be able to respond i think we're gonna be watching these for the next month or two all right thank you mrs webber mr material of course all right moving on i need a motion for the approval of the 2021 compensation for our superintendent second i need a motion for
077the approval of the code of stipends for superintendent and treasurer mrs webber please call the role mr barron aye mr mercurio anything else you did not talk about board meeting format which oh we'll get to that in one second i think mr um as you know um mr lewis has been named to be our next superintendent and he will start his role in august first and he's been doing a lot of responsibilities of his current job as well as preparing for taking on his new job and i like to propose that we look at his per diem rate delta between his current job and his future job and um increase provide him that increase from the day that he was selected or named thank you vice named to that role until the working days um
078i believe mr lewis has been working extremely hard and his director of operations role is still not filled and i think this would be an appropriate gesture from this board to provide him that delta in compensation um for the time when he's been effectively leaning forward to his new role while he's doing his current role so if you move on aye mr alex hi okay moving sorry moving back i skipped our future board meeting format mrs weber did you want to yeah um you know one of the things with our healthy aids plan is we have always talked about being nimble flexible looking at when we might look at what to change anything regarding our operation so one of the things that um just like to bring up for discussion is whether we want to
079look at anything different with our board meeting format and maybe just a little bit of history and a little bit about the legislation would be helpful in talking about that um first the law really doesn't address necessarily whether our participants are virtual what it allowed was our board members to participate virtually and we have done that we did that a lot in the beginning because we weren't able to convene but really since i believe it was last june or july the board except for special meetings um have typically met in person you've been in the same room we've had a few instances where maybe one board member participated in a virtual format but for the most part the board has been meeting in in person what the question is is whether we are getting to
080a point while everything else is starting to open up if we will want to start opening up to our audience and having our audience back participating in our board members in person as well as virtually the challenge is that if you recall when we first started to go back to our in-person board meetings we tried having them at green and we did that because we wanted to make sure we could physically distance so that people could be spread out at green our biggest issue was our technology was just not working very well in that setting we were having issues with audio we were having some issues maybe not so much with video but just pulling all of that together in that space did not allow for a great virtual format so we were having some
081issues with that so to be able to go back to green like we had prior to the pandemic occurring does provide some challenges in continuing what i think has been one of those great lessons learned from the pandemic is being able to have the virtual participation we've never had better attendance at board meetings than what we do right now or our opportunity for our community to get engaged so i would hate to give that up um by moving to green that being said you know i've had some discussions with with mr fritz to see if there might be another option he and i have not yet found a better space yet to be able to engage in different technology or better technology or use the technology that we have right now as you can see
082for this evening we thought we might have an audience and we do have about 10 chairs set up in this room we've gone back to kind of a different style of sitting here so we can probably have some limited audience participation in this room but i think we if we're going to go back to that we need to have a little bit better space so that for those who want to be in attendance can do so um if you look back to pre-pandemic we have always had our our summer board meetings in this room just because we don't have a lot of attendance um so i i think that we can also decide when we want to provide or when we want to expand our space for our next meeting a typical morning meeting would
083be here anyway uh so i think if we can continue having our board meeting here on july 7th because it's you know close to a holiday i don't anticipate we'll have a lot of audience members if we find out differently we can do something different but in the meantime i think one of the things that i'm i'm trying to address with some of the information that we're sending out either with our board meeting notice or posting on the website we really try to clarify the public participation process so that if we do have members of the public who want to participate they have a better idea of how to do that in the virtual format as well so that's just kind of an overview of where we've been you know again i feel like the
084format using the virtual option has really opened up an opportunity for many more people to view our meetings it's helped us be able to record the meeting so that people can go back and watch them if they weren't able to do so before we just have to figure out that component for those people who really would like to participate live in person if they want to um we've heard a lot about this the board or the virtual option going away june 30th that's really not necessarily correct but what what that doesn't mean we can't continue to do what we're doing what it means is starting on july 1 board members will have to be in person and for the most part we've been doing that doing that anyway one thing that has been nice is
085some of these very quick special meetings we've been able to just call it virtual media which has been really nice that will go away effective july 1. so i guess any thoughts that you may have um yeah i you know i've been on the board for some time and i just really appreciate this past year that there's been a lot of community participation and i think the virtual format has provided that anybody that wanted to show in person has the opportunity to do that and so if you can make it work with the technology but being able to accommodate all the space this has been a really good year for public participation and more people in the community attending our board meetings and learning more when when we had some of those initial meetings where
086we were talking about the following year we had 1500 people at a board meeting we've never had that and a way for them to be informed so um i do yeah i agree with mr mccurry um completely i think it's great that our public and our community is being involved i i really want to go back to a larger facility maybe even starting at the end of july to give people the opportunity to come back we have to figure out the technology unless unless there's some big cost to doing that but there's some prohibited cost of doing that i really would like to see us go back and have the opportunity people can either come in person or join us virtually that's my thing you know i understand the technology piece but this is the
087other question i know we've got certain uh procedures going on in the building right now i think with still kind of wearing masks and stuff like that that extends throughout the summer just to be consistent with what what our policy has been mr porsche we can check in on this is we kept the masking because of continuation of the school year in the summer school so i would assume that that would be something that we would want to continue until we make those decisions for what we're looking at for next year unless we think something differently but we basically have looked at our policy here in the office is we send it in through summer school so we're extending it with wearing common areas and gallery here so i would assume that we're going to
088keep that for right now all right mrs webber i want to thank you for such a comprehensive you know analysis of our history of this year because it kind of um kind of hard to remember back to when we were all completely virtual and trying to figure all of that out but i do think that it has like mr mercury so it has increased participation because our community can just log on they don't have to kind of make a plan to get maybe a babysitter to come in person and i think the other thing that we have done throughout this whole year is continue to have public participation in our meetings and that's very important to our board i know and i think we would continue that so if we can figure out the technology
089part of it that would be great to go to because i think as we move closer to the school year as we get closer to making some decisions about some of the things we're going to do in terms of social distancing and masking and all of those things we know that our community is going to want to um be a part of that and here we hear the decisions that we're making so so mr fritz and i will try to work through some options to find a different space one of our challenges for this year is that many of our buildings are under construction so some of those better spaces may not be readily available but i think we might be able to look at mapledale as an option um maybe blue out maybe elementary
090so no is there anything is there any places so well that may be something that we're fighting for besides being under construction are in constant use so mapledale is a site for summer school so you know for um pre-k six summer school and then 7 12 is at the junior high so it's just you know we trying to find space to do it what about the um room in our kenwood road facility i'd have to look and see if we have removed i know that mr mainer took some of the we had a lot of cubicles set up there and we actually ended up those were things that were donated and i was paid an install fee but you know we moved some of them to the high school so if the rest were made
091we could probably have them removed and that would be a good option so that we could definitely look at that there's outfit parking there and i'm gonna say one thing is you know we do that where we are now until it's built up sure yeah when it comes out but don't worry about plan b or something okay well let's keep this on the agenda we'll probably talk about it in our next meeting the part that i had really appreciated in the first few months was having the student participation yeah and the performances and i think in a room like this that would be hard to maintain so that may not be a july or august issue but when we get to september i think we need to have the bigger room option so we can
092have the students and their families participate uh in front of the board anything thank you everyone for participating have a nice evening you