001Good evening. I'd like to call this June 9th, 2025 board of education meeting to order. Mr. Co, can you call the role? Miss Huffman here. Mrs. Cochland here. Mrs. Lavallet, here. Mr. Feller, here. Mr. Bowden, here. Thank you. Please join us in the pledge of allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [Music] Thank you. It looks like we have a presentation. We do. Good evening everyone. It is my um really complete joy to be doing this again. This is our I believe our third rendition to update our board of education and community with our internal and external stakeholders the status of our progress um in regards to our strategic plan. So
002we have a number of folks here from our cabinet, our administrative team that will be presenting on the various aspects or I should say components of our strategic plan, the progress we've made. Um some places actually where we might have even had to take a step to the side um and regroup or options for also where we are moving forward in a new direction looking forward to the coming year. So you're going to hear just an overview summary by category with where we are for our strategic plan. And again, this is something we have done annually and this is year three and we will continue to update our board of education, our community on our commitment to them in regards to where our focus is for continuous improvement and maintaining the tradition of excellence that
003we have here in Sennsylvania. So without further ado, I think we're already starting with our first slide here. pretty much snapshot of what I just said. Um, I do not have the clicker. Would you like it? Uh, not necessarily because they're gonna come up and stand. If you don't mind, I would appreciate your help there, Mr. Co. If we can go to the next slide. It's just an overview of our mission and vision which we have promulgated throughout our district. And of course our core beliefs, the whole child, authenticity, inclusivity, collaboration, and continuous improvement and community with a capital U. And so these are our five specific goals, areas, and strategic priorities. And we are going to kick off tonight's presentation, I do believe, with teaching, learning, and innovation with our team members. I think
004Melissa, are you kicking it off for the group? And oh, well, we have someone else stand back. Okay, got your team here. All right, super. Thank you. Well, thank you everyone. We are teaching learning and innovation. Listed here are the members who are part of our committee. Together as a committee, we devise four major core goals that we like to refer to as commitments to continuous improvement, highquality instruction, and student centered learning. Those goals are continuous improvement, innovative programming, multi-tered systems of support, equitable practices, and district alignment. All aligned to the overall strategic plan. With those goals, we also have strategic strategic strategies that we embedded to make sure these were actionable steps that we can take in order to make sure that we were holding oursel accountable and being innovative and continuous with our
005strategic plan efforts annually. We call them umbrella strategies because they allow us to basically put all of our specific action steps and tie them back to a specific sub goal. But the umbrella strategies could we could use multiple umbrella strategies to connect to one action step of the sub goal in our strategic plan. So when we look at things like datadriven learning, technology implementation, student centered learning, district consistency and MTSS implementation, those are the priorities that help guide the work that we have done and continue to do under teaching learning and innovation. So this is a brief overview of where what we have met, where are we going, and some of the goals that we had to revise for things that we couldn't meet, but we definitely had to pivot, reflect, and redefine what our
006next steps will be. So under those umbrellas, we first began with curriculum mapping. That was something district-wide we did for in under elementary and in our secondary, we created curriculum maps for all content areas. Next, we looked at our department chair meetings, and that allowed us a specific time in place to have that touch point and the check-in with the members who are acting as the leaders of each department to say, "What is the progress and what are you seeing? What are your needs with your specific department?" As we are implementing the action steps of our strategic plan, we reviewed and collected data to make sure that we were you making datadriven instruction um decisions for professional learning next steps with planning our MTSS goals and all of our umbrella strategies as well. Um we
007then looked at curriculum professional learning at our core instruction. Again, this was also an alignment to the science of reading initiatives. So, we did update our curriculum, excuse me, and supplemental uh instruction, including special education curriculum, and that also allowed us to tie in basically the datadriven decision-m as a priority, but that filtered into several other areas like Melissa said, that initial MTSS training know that is a specific and definite sub goal, and that is one that continues to evolve. We knew at the onset of this when we're implementing an MTSS framework that it's a multi-year process in order to do it right and continue to take in feedback about how things are going and where we're seeing pockets of need. We looked at future ready personalized instruction. That was our implementation with I Ready
008and EXL which fell under the umbrella of future ready and personalized instruction also including high dosage tutoring for our students. We also expanded our gifted services to um third grade this year, including bringing back the gifted fair, which was an excellent excellent fair this year with all of our fifth grade students districtwide. In the second column, we have several things that are in process. Um they continue to evolve and though some of those have started in the year prior, we reported on them last year, they are continuing to be met and they're ongoing. Yeah. Just real quick on the Parthe, that's just going to be a multi-year ongoing. I know we had a large batch. We purchased buy one get one free a couple years ago. We're through that batch. We're now working on new
009purchases. We're working through like 40 this summer. Um so I think we have probably about 300 classrooms still to go in the district. So it's just going to be a multi-day process with with And thank you for joining the team here. And I failed to kind of popped up. So, thanks for joining the team and sharing your thoughts and where you're going. That second bullet point, the MTSS, DLT, BLT, building structure and protocols. So, this past year or the year before when we looked at implementing and starting an MTSS mindset and framework and we really spent a lot of time talking about the philosophy and the pedigogy and making sure that all of our team members, regardless how they serve, were familiar with what we mean when we say MTSS. And this summer, um, our
010team here for the strategic plan, one thing we're looking at in particular is revisiting the idea of our teams and making sure that our teams across the district, we're using common language and we have a very solid understanding of what the role is within that MTSS framework. So that is an ongoing goal. This year we focused on STEM training to be crosscurricular, including our arts, uh, physical education and music. So our teachers in our specialist programs also had STEM training to embed those standards in their programs as well. We had a great pitch the STEM focus project at at Arbor Hills. So that was a great program that that was really a pilot program for our district this year because we want to model that for everyone. So kudos to Arbor Hills um and their
011work that they did this year. Uh the graduation planning report that's something we're working over the summer. Uh Andrea and I actually just met with the secondary uh assistant principles last week again on this. There's a lot of programming involved in the background, but it's essentially going to be a report not only for students and parents, but guidance counselors, principles to kind of in one snapshot kind of show where students stand in terms of graduation. Um it's our goal to have that ready for August. Um Sarah was even talking about having it available at the kickoff days. Um, so and the last one up there goes back to part of the sub goal and part of the strategy that we've been working on, which is the department mapping, curriculum alignment. We're focusing on reading and
012that trickle up effect of what we've done at the elementary level with the science of reading implementation, the curriculum decisions. We've spent some time, specifically this semester, working with sixth grade reading teachers to really redefine what reading instruction and support looks like at that grade level. setting the groundwork for the trickle up effect. So we know that will influence what happens at seventh grade the year after and then eighth grade the year after that. So we're devoting a lot of time and energy to that particular initiative. And in the last column we have sub goals that were that needed revision. We were unable to provide a STEM special. So then after some STEM uh conferences that we attended last year, we started thinking about how we could build STEM culture and mindset which was through
013our gifted programming um and design process. So we did training around that as well during our professional learning days. So again that was a reflection, a revision and we pivoted into how do we bring and embed STEM throughout our culture as a as a culture as a school as opposed to creating a STEM special. And then with common planning time again that was something that was a little challenging for us but then we started looking at how MTSS can support that and we were doing that work with structured TBT time. Now I want to definitely say that the goals here were not just goals but definitely commitments that as committee members we are committed to bringing innovative and continuous improvement to Sylvania schools. But the work here really embedded the work of all of our
014academic directors. Solar low with special education, Melissa McDonald student services, and Julie Stanford with um student data um and assessment. So, it's a lot of work, a lot of planning, but something that we're continuously working on, and we hope and we will be the leading school district in North in Ohio, not Northwestern. Thank you. May I add, and I I don't mean to um put Steve on the spot, but Steve, I need to put you on the spot. Could you give a little update or because this year we've met several times with Sylvania Township and where we're going with career education in regards to fire and um emergency medical response training for our students. Could you give the board like a twominut where we're at, where we're going, where we're at? Yeah. You know, um
015because I don't know how much they know. We dropped it into soup notes, but I also think it's important for those who may watch this video at a later time to also know what we're doing in partnership with some organizations in the community. Yeah. So, for career readiness, the goal is to continue to not have a wait list. We want to make sure that every student is able to get into a program that they want to. So, we need to offer the right ones and those that are very popular. How can we have more opportunities? So, two things we're doing right now is we're looking at adding fire EMT, which could be a branch off of MedTech. So, those that want to go the EMT paramedic route, that is one thing we can do. And
016Andre and I have also met with Mercy looking at surgical tech as an opportunity as well for the students. So, instead of pigeon holding them to saying those in medtech, they have to do PCT or STNA, looking at other options. Sylvania Township has been um very on top of it, very engaged in um meeting with us to make those opportunities for our students. By doing so, they're um building a new training facility which will have a classroom in it. And their hope is that we can have juniors and seniors there getting their fire one, fire 2, EMT, and then eventually after they graduate then get their paramedic through Lords. So, it's a great opportunity. It's going to open the doors for a lot of students, more students getting into medtech. Um, and we hopefully won't
017have the weight list like we do right now. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Any questions or comments from our board before we move on to our other category? Thank you. That was very intelligent. Great. I like that the what we haven't met was so short and you found a way to accommodate it. That's awesome. So, next we have social, emotional and mental well-being of our students. Yeah. [Music] So, Melissa and I uh lead this team. Can't say enough about them. I do want to start with that. I'm not going to read all their names, but when it comes to social, emotional, mental well-being of our district, and you'll see our sub goals here shortly. I mean, it's a really good group that we've been able to work with. I think one positive we
018have is we're able to meet consistently without providing release time or extra duty pay because all those individuals on that team have some flexibility in their schedules where they can get out and connect. So, we're able to meet during the day. Um, we continuously did that throughout the year as well as formed some subcommittees with it. But can't say enough about that team, meeting Josh, who we kind of added this year, which we'll talk about with some roles and responsibilities, um, as well as staff wellness. But just our five sub goals uh, that we focus on our curriculum roles and responsibilities, job descriptions, student wellness, staff wellness, and then something we added this year is a cell phone wellness piece. When I get to that, as you probably remember with Governor DeWine's House Bill 250
019that he established last year saying all districts needed to have policy in place by July 1 of this year, we have we do have current uh cell phone policy for all three of our levels. We did have a committee that decided to keep our current process in place uh specifically at the high school with allowing them to use phones in between classes, a month, etc. uh curriculum. I'll turn over to Melissa. I know she's led the subgroup subgroup with this course. Yeah. So, the curriculum we decided to add our own subgroup of individuals to we started off by researching what curriculums are out there and we all took on a couple or a handful of those to report out to the group. And after we looked into um several different available curriculums that were available
020K through 12 and then looking at what we we are currently using, we came to the decision to maintain using the second step curriculum for grades K through 5 next year. We currently use that curriculum in our elementary buildings with push in from our counselors to teach lessons. So we are going to keep that for next year. And then we are also going to use the next school year to take some time as a district and put a committee together and have our school counselors create our own curriculum which over time will save us money without having to purchase the second step curriculum every single year to have access to it. Um I know that we have several elementary counselors that have already started working on it. Even though it's not official, they're excited and
021they're they're running with that idea. We'll also make sure that we will continue to have access to some of the evidence-based lessons that we have to use for some of the required lessons from the state. And then we'll continue to explore some social emotional curriculum options for grades 7 through 12. But when we look at our data as a district, and we'll talk a little bit about this when we get to some of the mental health screeners we've been doing at the high school, our data is showing us that what we're currently doing is working. Um so we we're going to take that into consideration when we look at doing um additional curriculum at the higher levels. So right now we do not use an actual curriculum or teach a direct lesson that is from
022a company but we look at embedding the social emotional curriculum into the culture of our buildings. So the next piece is the roles, responsibilities and job descriptions. And I think everybody or most in this room probably know that our licensed professionals in this district don't have specific job descriptions. So we are trying in year three actually from year one with this group is to embed some some job descriptions with our counselors and school psychologists specifically and then hopefully that can follow through to teaching staff and the other professional staff. Um it does we we have done a few of those things up there. I put that first bullet point, we do have a chain of command process and I know this is getting better and just to compliment HR with it, but a couple years
023ago, you know, immediately following CO, we we we had a pretty significant substitute shortage in our district and we didn't always want to just take our our counselors and our school psychologists um and those other people who were free, as I said in that first slide throughout the day, to throw them in classrooms. So, that's improving, but we do have a chain of command process for how we how we fulfill those subs um that aren't filled throughout the school day. Uh, as far as the job descriptions go, we did set up some preliminary uh job descriptions for our counselors and school psychologists this year. We've worked collectively as a group to establish those. Those obviously would need to be um approved by upper administration and then there was conversation if those are actually approved by
024the board of education. I think more communication to come on that but and Josh was involved you know pretty significant with this as well but we have decided as a team to instead of moving forward at a faster pace to kind of hold off until negotiations next year to see do we include them in the contract do we include them in an appendices in the contract kind of like we do see even though there aren't job descriptions for our special areas in the elementary we have that appendix J that kind of talks about specifics things that they're responsible and then also limits things that they may not be responsible on. So Josh, I know you were involved with this committee. I don't know if you had anything else you wanted to add with it. No,
025that was said perfectly and uh it will be probably discussed in more detail um and in the leads when we get through negotiations. Next one is staff wellness. I'm going to turn this one over to Josh a little bit as well, but as you probably remember when we were with Paramount, um we did have some staff wellness initiatives. I think that included YMCA, uh, memberships. We handed out things like stocking hats, cooling towels, as well as other opportunities. Josh is working with the new insurance brokerage, even though we just did switch over to Sidecar January 1. That's a process that needs to take place on how we can how we can continue to offer opportunities for our staff. Yeah, perfect. We had um I always say we had paramount wellness money uh for the last
026three years and each year that they had given us the wellness money um year 1, year 2, year three, each one of those years um they became a lot more stringent and they wanted a lot more detail on why and how that money was going to be spent. But that is now gone because this is year three of three. And so obviously uh this year we were trying to promote um healthy movement in all four seasons. So we got stocking hats for movement when it's cold and we just gave out cooling towels for cooling towels um for movement when it's hot. And so again, we have we had very strict requirements how we're going to use that for medical money where we go in the future. And I I'll skip it over. where I'm going
027to get this to my slide when we talk when I come up and talk about it. But where we go in the future, I'm not really sure. Adam and I was with Adam in an insurance meeting last week with our brokers and I brought it up to them. Hey, over the next couple months, let's talk because we need to figure out the direction of our staff wellness and uh what we should can and are available to us in terms of options through them. So, so that'll be coming and it will evolve um with our new broker and our new insurance company next year. And then I know Melissa's going to dive more in this one, but and I've shared this with the board before, but student wellness, that's in my opinion, and I think everybody's
028opinion on our team, it's the most important sub goal in our group. Um, being fresh off of graduation, you know, we had moments of silence was there for for students who weren't there. And I know some of those were accidental, but some were not also. So, you know, diving into the student wellness piece, I know I've thought a lot about the last 5 years, have we done everything in our power as a district to try and to keep kids safe and have a place where they could go? And we continue to partner with Dr. Wood from the University of Toledo. He's a PhD in psychology there. He's been great. Um, we're meeting with him. I think next week we actually meet with him. He requests meetings more than we probably need, but he's on top
029of things. the the funding we use for that is through the Stronger Connections grant. So, it is no cost to our to our general fund. We do use grant funding to work with them. Um, and we just finished up year two of our screeners. And I know Melissa is going to talk about those a little bit more. But one of the things I mean both bicycles when we screen it's all hands on deck with administrators, counselors, school sites, our social social workers, but even those kids who just may not be wanting to hurt themselves who who reply in the screener that hey my parents were in a really really big argument last night about money and I just need somebody to talk to. And I know working with our counselors is it's added a more
030it's added a handful of more if not quite a few more just those individuals that they connect with on a weekly or monthly basis just to check in. Or we have those kids who are just high high high achievers and they're taking nine classes and they want to go to an Ivy League school and they want to score a 35 or 36 on the ACT and they're just stressed out and it just gives them the opportunity to to connect with with people within our district as well as outside sources. Um if it gets to a point where they're getting pretty high on that social emotional uh negativity piece. So I'll turn it over to you a little bit more. to piggyback a little bit on what Tim was saying is not only to help those
031individual students that we're able to identify that maybe just need a little more assistance or they need to be connected to an outside resource. It's also giving our high schools data to look at and to take into consideration when they look at doing any buildingwide initiatives. It's another data point when they can look at improving the overall culture in their building. And they can also look at this data point for the anxiety and depression screener and make correlations with what we use. It's called e-wims. It's an early warning signs that looks at students attendance, grades, and discipline record. So, it's another data point to put into for them to analyze when they're looking at students that may be in need of some extra support. So this past school year, we were able to do a
032freshman surveillance screener with both freshman classes at Northview and South View. The surveillance screener does not give identifiable information. So we do not know who the students are that are answering the questions in that screener unless they click on the button that says I am in need of immediate assistance. And then it does ask for their name and the response team is able to connect with those students within a 24-hour period. The response team is made up of myself, Tim, building administrators at the building, counselors, school psych, and the social workers are also available that day. We have had very low numbers at both of our high schools when we do that surveillance screener. We've been under 12 um consistently with that. So that is a good sign. The sophomore class this year at both
033high schools did a full screener. The full screener does give identifiable information. So even if that student doesn't say, "I'm in need of immediate need," it does give us a scale score of where the students fall on the depression and anxiety score. And it allows the response teams to have a tiered response. So if a student was an immediate need, they would meet with the kid that day. Um but then based on the scores of the anxiety and the depression, it is t it is drawn out to three or a fiveday response um based on the results from that screener. But someone is in contact with the student and the parent to kind of talk through what that might mean and what the next steps are for that child. Next quick question. So is there
034so they're ranked on a scale or whatever I guess. Is there a threshold where if they hit a certain threshold the parents are notified or how does that work? So the parents are it depend. So if there are thresholds yes so it will the kids that are that they would meet with sooner would be high for depression and anxiety and then it kind of gets scaled like high in depression, low anxiety, high anxiety, low depression and then the mild to moderate level and then we also rely on the professional discretion of our school counselor, school sites sites and social workers to notify the parents as well. Okay. So, it's not like an automatic thing necessarily. Yeah, that's a great question, Greg, because we had a specific student highf flyer um where it was taboo in
035their culture to have stress or anxiety. And actually working with our legal on that, the question came up, do we have to notify them if they're high on this chart? And we're in business with kids. the kid is going to come forward and say that they're going to be punished or it's going to be more of an issue on them. And it it was it was one situation we we decided on that case not to contact the parents, but generally those ones who are high who aren't saying um I'm going to be punished because of this. We we reach out to those families just let them know. Okay. I just I have a sophomore and I didn't hear anything. So like did I did he not need do I did I not need to be
036notified or was it just the parents? If you didn't have requested, if you didn't hear, you didn't need to be. Okay. My daughter took it, too, so she just told me about it, but I didn't get notified. Yeah. Okay. So the plan and working with both buildings and their response teams, our drafted plan for next year would be to continue to move forward doing that surveillance screener with the freshman because that also gives us data for our response teams on how to plan the following year because you're sampling. It's the same sample of students and then we would do the full screeners again next year with sophomores and juniors. The goal is eventually also to get down into our junior highs as well. Um we're still working on that process and how we get down
037there just in the earlier stages of adolescence when there are a lot of changes just going on in general in those students lives and how we can get them if needed. So shout out to our social workers. I know we talked about this a year ago or two years ago where going back to Greg your question where say what can we offer and we said well the least we could do is contact parents but they've done a really really good job creating a packet for parents just for outside resources for for things that we may may not be able to address as a school district whether that be harbor or outside sources they can connect with so our social workers did a really good job with that and the last one this we added this
038year this is cell phone wellness I briefly talked about this talked about house bill 250 50. We're we're in line with that. We determined to keep our established policies in place. I know we uh surveyed our high school families who like having their students to have the opportunity to have phones in school connect if they needed to. Our elementary and junior high, our policy for them are often out of sight. That did bring up though to and and I'll just bring up Ryan Creech. He had a really really big crusade on the issues with cell phones. is a part of our our cell phone wellness committee and it wasn't so much the phones that we talked about in that committee but what's on them the social media pieces. So, uh, digital citizenship team had was
039created through safety and security. Darren leads that along with Susie Fowler, the principal at McCord. Just establishing some process and procedures that we're going to eventually invite families involved or families to to just talk about the overall safety and the well-being and your digital footprint, etc. on on social media and how it can be used appropriately um, you know, by students in all districts. I know you're in charge of safety and security. I don't know if you got anything more to add on the digital assistantship piece. Yeah, I think that they they have a few months under their belt. They're still kind of planning and coming up with how the next steps of moving forward, but they've discussed trying to find time when we have parents or have an audience of parents in front of
040us to educate them on cell phone and social media use. And like you called it the digital footprint and why that's important. And it doesn't necessarily mean no cell phone, but educating parents on what's available. You can get your child a phone or a watch, but it doesn't have to be an Apple Watch or iPhone that has access to the internet and apps. There are things available that are just phone or just text and just helping navigate that world with parents based on our suggestions and recommendations. And the last thing I want to throw out there, not sure if anybody's familiar with it, I know Dr. model is and our our principles where we've talked since I think it was April 6, House Bill 158. Um I believe it's on the governor's desk. We had
041a we had a legal update last week and that is a complete ban of cell phones. Um it's in legislation right now. Governor DeWine is 100% behind it from what we've been told. So where that goes, how it changes, how it kind of goes against uh our parents or our families who had their perspective on on cell phones in schools. What does if this does go into place? I'm not going to jump too far ahead with what ifs, but how does that look for our district or any school district in Ohio? Are kids allowed to even bring them to school? Do they have to put them in a a certain place in school? But that is on the docket right now or it's on the agenda moving forward and we'll see where exactly it goes.
042But it could be another law with it seems like hundreds we've had to follow or put in place this I say that faciciously but it seems like quite a few we've had to put in place this year. How does that look for our district or district 158? And if I could add to that one of the things that some districts have looked at are you bags um and those bags are anywhere between I want to say looked at between 20 and 25 or it's 25 and $30 per bag for us to provide that for every student. We were thinking from sixth grade through 12th grade, it would cost our district about $100,000. So hence, House Bill 158 would be, if the governor signs, it would be another unfunded mandate um with what we could do.
043And if you have any experience with those, you can see them. If you visit the courthouse or you go to a concert, they'll give you your phone, you put it in a bag, and it closes with a magnet, and it cannot be opened unless it's placed on some type of device to unlock it. So the child still retains their phone. But that is something that is on the governor's desk and has been there for over a month. So, but then you have to have somebody to unlock it. It's before and after the end of school buses would all be late cuz all the kids are going to be sitting there waiting for somebody. Well, we police it enough now and for the most part it goes fairly well. Um, but I couldn't imagine trying to
044do this every kid not bring their cell phone rest. And I will say there are districts that are using it and we would learn from them of course, but it's it is something that would be a challenge. We would figure it out, but it would be a challenge. Hence, I I I believe that's why the D hasn't signed it so quickly because quite frankly, and this is me going out on a limb, if you were going to sign it, you would sign it in May in order to allow us to prep for this change by the school year. on the time. Has it passed both? It hasn't passed both. So, it's not on the governor's desk. No, it's not there yet. I think the House may have passed it. Okay. I think you're right cuz
045they said that it's it's on his way. They passed it, but if it does get to his desk that they will he will make that clear. Yes. So, we'll see. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Melissa. And thank you for chiming in also. um stand up because I have culture, climate, and communication. It is uh myself, Amy, and Dawn. And ours is a little unique in our priority area because it's um it's not so much uh students and desk and chairs learning priority wise. We're talking about, you know, organizational fixes and organizational processes. So, our goals have not changed. Those are what we originally planned with and we are continually working on there. Um, ours is a little unique in that Amy handles a lot of the communication uh portion of this and so she's going
046to talk about the communication and the efforts that we've done as a district to communicate out to all of our stakeholders. I'm more of the silent silent partner and that's with the culture and climate and working behind the scenes to work on streamlining processes, making sure we have equities across the district, across our 12 buildings. Um, and then a lot of the communication within our organization with the inside stakeholders, not so much of the community stakeholders. So Amy, I'm going to hand it over to you for the um communication piece. Yeah. On this slide, this is focus on continuous improvement. So you'll recognize what these are um areas where the superintendent is talking directly to stakeholders. Uh but we're improving. So Dr. Dr. Maui has gone to parent clubs um in the past, but this
047year she started going to all of them, scheduling ahead of time and making sure she hits every building. Um continuing to have the sessions with students at both high schools, uh the employee forum, getting great conversations out of that, continuing to to improve um with how we're leading those sessions. Dr. Mley goes to staff meetings and is our representative at Rotary is at the chamber. leader, chamber president and sacic. Uh the key communicator network is a great stakeholder network where we have the civic leaders in our community as well as um like area partners and organizations represented. So those are both inerson and email uh communications that those folks hear from us. And I will also note the employee forum was our teacher advisory group this year that we held in the fall and the
048spring. We met twice. Yeah. The staff directory is up there. We've had it for a while. Um, upgrade coming. We don't Great. We saw it before, though. Yeah. And Dr. M, I only give you your your flowers here, your kudos. You've been asking for this for the last three or four years and hasn't really gotten anywhere. And I'll give Darren another big pat on the back because it is actually super cool. You can come in, see everyone's pictures. We'll work in human capital when we onboard people to make sure we got some ideas, some pictures and things on there, but he did show a preview. I'm not sure if anybody saw the preview. Um, it is really cool. So, we're excited about the little things on this one. Yeah, it's not continuous improvement. It's a
049leap forward on that one. Um, we have wellness there. Josh is on the social emotional committee as well. We recognize that wellness is part of climate. So, we have that listed. Um, we continue to have a who to call list. have an internal document uh for our employees, the staff newsletter, our district digest. I don't know if you noticed this spring, but we made some changes to the aesthetic and kind of how we laid it out and the information we put out. Now, Adam has an entire page. So, we continue to improve that as well. Um, and the last one's really a theme, but it's a theme throughout all of these that is the collective pride in our district. And then our new communication this year is the digital digest. And so once a month
050a newsletter, an email newsletter is going out to our community from Dr. Mley. That is that goes to parents, staff or key communicators and community me community members who sign up. So at the bottom of every email, it says if this was forwarded to you, you can sign up for it. And every time we have more people sign up, we've also had high school students sign up. So that tells you that some of them are kind of interested in what's happening beyond their building. Thank you. If we talk about culture and climate, um we are just working again as I stated before about streamlining our processes, uh becoming more efficient with them, having more consistency across all the buildings. Um and what that does is it eliminates inequities and confusion. And what we found is
051with culture and climate um when people get rattled or ruffled when there's not consistent practices in place. So when something happens in one building and happens differently in a different building then we we have these issues that then end up servicing through MRC meetings and so forth and those types of things. Um one of the things that we will continue to do is now we've become a little more robust in onboarding our OC employees. Um where before we would just kind of onboard them uh send them do hire paperwork, get them an email, send them on their way. Um right now we've added a step in there to where once they actually receive their email, we bring them back in and we have a one-on-one onboarding session with our classified employees on how to utilize
052all the district tools that they may need, whether it's through Red Rover, punching in, punching out, all those types of things that we have. Um and so that's really helped out a lot. It also has created a bridge between my office and the employee. So now the employee has a connection and a bridge when they need a question answered. Now they're coming to us instead of asking their coworker. And what we found is when they start asking their co-workers, they're getting the kid truth, right? About 60% is true, 40% is made up, 10% are are not true at all. And so that's created a nice bridge there. And uh it's uh helped out some some culture and climate issues that we had. Uh Laura and I are still brainstorming and working how to provide training
053to our special education and support staff specifically some of our special ed parents. It's very very difficult job and they come and go all year long. So it's hard for us as like the new teacher orientation. We can't bring them all in as a group and go okay here's training for you because there's so much transient and not with their special ed pairs. We have been trying to work on training sessions that we offer during our professional learning days. So our professional learning days um are not work days for those employees. So if we can provide training and offer it to them again it wouldn't be mandatory. We could provide training offered to them and they could come and be better equipped that group of employees to work with some of those students and their
054needs. Um so again that was our 2425 goal. We wanted some vision training career professionals. Um we did that. Um we're going to continue to do that. We want to we want to continue to make that more robust. We we've touched on it this year, but Laura and I plan on sitting down and planning some more targeting stuff maybe for next year. And then we want to continue to improve the new teacher academy. Um it was difficult to do after school. Turnout was relatively low and we did it outside of the school day. This year we did integrate it into one of those professional learning days which was January 2025. That learning day we put it in there at a session that was wellreceived and well attended. Um I don't know what the hiring class
055looks like for uh this coming up fall, but that is something we would probably integrate into professional grade day. Again, um what you find is during your teacher orientation, it's a whirlwind and we're throwing 15 million things at them and they just want to get in their classrooms. And so by the time that that January date came along and made them think about doing it earlier, now they really have a lot more specific questions that we could answer and uh and really provide that for them as they travel through their first year here with SPA. We updated ROS responsibilities through job descriptions. Uh the administratively it's easy to do. Um we can do it specifically when someone vacates a position. That's the ideal time to do it. So we looked at think about the assistant
056transportation director, IT director, assistant IT director, um student data, those types of things. Um when a job is vacated, we can really dig in, look and start to divy up stuff. Is this relevant? Is it not relevant? Is it obsolete? Is it not obsolete? So most of our administrative roles um have been done. Still a work in progress. Like I said, we update as positions come open. For our classified staff, um same thing. We look at the job bids which actually have the job description on them that they sign. And so when those become open, we evaluate, is this what we want this to read? And then we post it out with that new that new verbiage. The bottom one is probably the most important one we've done, and that's actively and purposefully communicate with
057both unions our intent on district actions. And if you have been part of LMRC, uh I they they feel better this year than they have before. And I think that's because we're just communicating so often and so transparent with our union with both unions that um the consistency is there and there really isn't going to be surprises and I think that's where you get some ruffling of of culture and climate issues when people just don't know. They need to be informed and so we're working pretty pretty diligently on that and that will continue. Hey Josh, could we um go back to the last slide because one of the things about culture, climate, and communication we heard a couple years ago about really trying to uplift um our folks in OBC and that are a part
058of that part of our organization on that level. And I would like Don to speak a little bit about her program for kudos to or kudos for custodians which has actually gained national attention from her starting this program here in Sennsylvania. So, could you share a little bit of that? Just one or two minutes about what that looks like. Um, I've been in this for a little while and so, um, from my perspective, a lot of times folks are overlooked and that bothers me and I went to a conference and I heard some things that I brought back. Um, and I wanted to start this program just to kind of highlight what people do to make them know how valuable they are um, and that we need them. And so what we do is we
059have um forms online. Anybody can fill it out. A student, a teacher, a parent, um people working within the building to say, "Hey, this person just really went above and beyond." And I just want you to know that cuz I get I used to get calls all the time. So it's a perfect form to put it on there. We look at those forms every month and then we just recognize somebody for just doing extra and just making our buildings room. Um they get highlighted in my little newsletter. Um and they get a gift certificate and um got a little statue that they hold on to 240 month and it just makes them feel appreciated. And I think that's what most people want is just somebody to notice, hey, I'm working really hard. and you just
060say good job every now and then. So, um that's what the program is. I think that's awesome because it has I really think it has made a positive impact for our custodians to be recognized and that goes back to our culture and climate in the district that everything it takes everybody to make sure that teaching and learning happens. So, thank you for sharing that. And you're shorting yourself. You got national attention on this, right? I do get national. So, and it's going to appear in what publication. It's in um CMM magazine. Um and it is a worldwide magazine. This is why you talk about Oh jeez. It went the right way. That's pretty good stuff. Okay. So for um so this year we've done a lot in facilities. Uh it's been a very busy year
061for us. Uh we completed our master facilities plan process which I think is probably the most important thing we could do. Um before this year, before we completed this process, we really didn't know which way we wanted to go. You know, are we going to build some buildings? Are we going to add additions? Um are we going to upgrade what we currently have? And I think after completing this, we kind of know now that we're going to upgrade what we have. Um we're landlocked. We know that we're not going to be building new properties. So, with that said, um it's allowing us to drive forward. Um know where we need to add things, know where we don't um know where we want to put our money at, actually. So, uh this year we've we've upgraded
062our athletic facilities, which uh as everyone knows, uh North U was well needed. Um and at Northw we've done new bleachers, a new track, new concession stand. South View we put in a new track. um the baseball back stop, new baseball bleachers, um and we've updated our ticket booth there. So, uh it's been been really nice. We've heard a lot of positive things from the community. Uh they're very happy with it. They um love the look, love the new feel of our stadiums and how everything's going there. When we're looking around off of our master facility plan, we're kind of looking at things where where where can we save some money? um you know as Adam will get into our funds are tight and what are areas that we can save some money in and
063what we've looked at is our lighting situation is and energy in general is a huge cost for our district. So what we are doing right now is we are switching over to LEDs in some of our larger areas like our gyms. Um we have north view is completed in the main gym and the ax gym. South View. Um, well, as of tomorrow, we'll be completed with the main gym and the oxygen as well. It's brighter light. It looks better. It doesn't have the gray dingginess to it. And we have about a quarter of the lights in there than our previous uh fluorescent lighting. So, we're going to save a lot of money off that. It was actually cheaper for us to upgrade our lighting than to replace ballast and the old T8 uh fixtures that
064we had. So, um, as they died and light started to go out, we figured it's time to upgrade. We're also doing that in all of our buildings with our cam lighting. So, as our cam lighting goes down, we are converting over to LED in them as well. So, the plan is to do this over a few years. um get everything upgraded, our larger areas first and then start to move towards classrooms and so on and so forth. Um we are going to skip last year of of doing any parking lots. So this year we will be back to our our 10-year plan on fading sealing our parking lots. So this year Hill View and Highland will be done and we will be sealing and striking North View and South View. North View and South View
065are still in pretty decent shape. So, we really need to protect those assets that we have. Um, seal them, restrip them. That way, we can get a longer life out of out of our parking lots. So, in the next, well, let's see what eight more years, we should have all of our parking lots upgraded. This year, we've had uh we had some unforeseen expenses of some roofs. Um, as we all know, our our roofs are are older in the district, but we we've upgraded all of the roofing system at Harbor Hills. We went to a new uh roofing system that actually lays down. It's a thick insulated roofing system. So, it'll actually help us with our energy as well, any heat loss. So, um, also if an area were to get damaged, a tree would
066fall on any of our roof or anything like that, they could pull that section of the roofing up and just replace that section rather than needing to do a whole area of the building. So, um, that has happened at Arbor Hills and as well here at the admin building. We've also put a new section of roofing over the pool hall in North View this um, this year. So, one of the things we've been doing and had a heavy focus on is providing our team with more training. And I can give a lot of credit to Chris White on this. Chris White, if anybody doesn't know, is a licensed turning electrician. He's also licensed in HVAC. So, Chris has done a wonderful job of hooking our team up with the proper people as well as himself
067to train them in HVAC and electrical. So this year we have only used an HVAC company one time. Um my goal from last year was to cut it in half and we one time that's it. Everything else we've done in the house. But one time we had to use the company. It was because we needed their computer system to hook up to our HVAC unit. So we had to bring in an outside company for that one. But other than that, just once this year, uh all of our electric this year has been done in house. Um we have not brought in an electrician to do anything this year. We have upgraded quite a bit of our electricity. Um we put in some panels in a couple of the buildings. Uh expanded a lot of the
068electrical out and uh computer labs, art classes, so on and so forth. So um that was done. Uh we will continue to uh look and provide more training for our team as well to see what could be done in a house in the future. So the more we can train them, the the better it will be on a savings for us, which allows us to take that money from the savings of it and uh upgrade our older facilities to to newer, more modern things. We are also looking at our vendors currently um all vendors. We're looking where we can actually do that. We've switched a couple of our vendors going into next year um that that do things such as our alarm company that that monitors our alarms. Um our what else do we switch?
069Well, we'll leave it at that. The alarm company. So, but we have two or three that we're looking at and switching over for next year. Going to be a savings for us and um you know, should should be good. So, any questions? How many calls last year eachbody cut in half? How many did we have? Oh god, what do you think? A couple hundred. Okay. So, you're going to say like And we actually had our guys trained this year, too. So, um, next year I want to upgrade. I'm trying to upgrade a couple units a year. Buy new units and keep them rotating. So, our guys are now they can now install. They're licensed to install. So, uh, when we buy the new, we'll rent the crane ourselves, um, and install all ourselves as well.
070And I think I speak for everybody when I say that's incredible. Yeah. And and like I say, kudos to Chris. Um, his knowledge is is invaluable. Um, very good that I can stick him on something, I know what I want done, Chris, but I don't know how to get there. And he runs with it. So, awesome. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Ray. All yours, sir. All right. So, um, you know, I'd still like to consider myself the newbie of the group. Uh, and I continue to be just super impressed with everything on the teaching and learning side, operations, you know, everything that was to be discussed today. Um, you know, for the most part, you know, I'll kind of summarize, but at from from our desk or or the treasur's office, our goal is just
071to support everything that's being done uh on the teaching and learning side, the operations side, culture, climate, all that. So, how we want to do that uh is through transparency. Uh, and and the first is to enhance that stakeholder trust and and we're doing that in in multiple different ways. Uh last summer we uh issued a popular annual financial report uh that we released to the community uh and um our key community stakeholders through our website and whatnot. Really just gives an overview of our revenue and expenses and trends and and fund balances and things like that. Talks about our tax base and things like that. Uh we really want to issue a financial transparency dashboard. Uh it's something I'm working on for the website just to continue to get our message, continue to to
072support, you know, everything you've heard about today and really be able to show our community in charts and graphs and and really an a consolidated uh way to to show our our stakeholders and our parents uh exactly what we're doing. Uh goal is to have an annual financial town hall. Dr. Mley and I go out throughout the the year three or four times talking to Rotary and um you know other groups like that at the chamber key communicators, but um looking at having one kind of town hall uh and and see if it our community members have any questions or really just educate them on school funding and things like that. Um, you know, again, I think this is the biggest initiative for for our office, uh, is really just to support the district initiatives
073that you heard tonight and student achievement. So, we want to align the budget priorities. Uh we want to look at you know a lot of things that they talked like Ray talked about cost savings from an operational standpoint you know that's energy audits see where we can become more efficient so that we can drive dollars back into teaching and learning because that's that's our core right um we want to maintain or want to save as much money as possible operationally um to drive those dollars. Um and again strong fund balances, credit ratings. We got upgraded this year uh through our uh bond refinancing that we did. We did get upgraded uh and that's a testament of what we've been doing the last several years with our fund balance and and really taking care of the
074district uh dollars. And last but not least, we're just going to continue to explore additional funding sources, create a grant writing team. You know, Melissa with her uh group with safety and security, they've done a lot. Uh Don and I did a a couple last year with the BWC. We got about 80 grand uh kickback in in that regard. So uh we just want to really take the time, see what's out there from from get driving dollars that are not from our community and put them into our community at some schools. Um, so we'll we'll continue to work with the partners and and local businesses to see if we can get some uh additional dollars to support uh teaching and learning. That's all I got. So, I'm turn over to you, Dr. Molly. Yes, sir.
075Any questions, comments, concerns from our board? Very informal. Thank you. Well, I would like to say thank you to our administrative team, um, our educators and our support staff that all work together to make this an excellent district. All of them really continue to invest in our strategic plan. And not only invest, they've made a commitment to where we're going and the work we're doing. And as I've said before, the strategic plan continues to be our guiding light as we move forward. Um, as you all know, the plan impacts programs, teaching and learning, and ultimately this works toward our return on investment, our ROI for our students, family, and community. So, thank you to our team for presenting. Thank you for our educators and support staff who work with us to make it all come
076together. We appreciate what you do each other every day. So, with that, um, I guess we can move on to the rest of our agenda, Miss Hoffman. Okay. Thank you. Um, this is the first opportunity for public participation items on the agenda. I'm assuming you all feel you've talked to us. Okay. Nobody. Okay. Then this is with you, Dr. Thank you. Um, I'm going to do something a little different tonight. I would like to do the first two um items as recommendation and then items 4.3 through I want to say uh what is it? 4.13 will be under a consent agenda. I would first recommend item 4.1 which is an administrative recommendation for Julianne G. most of us know her as Julie G effect effective August 1st of 2025. I move approval. I'll second. Any
077comments or questions? It's resignation. Correct. Yes. Did I say you said recognition? Oh, resignation. I recognize it. that one more meaning. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that resignation. Adam, Julie, yes. Kim, yes. Tammy, yes. Greg, yes. Dan, yes. Thank you. I recommend item 4.2, which is a a couple of agreements that are listed on the agenda. Uh they areou agreements that will support the departure of Mr. Greenberg as he works to go to a state level position with the Ohio Education Association. We have an agreement with OEA between the district and OEA I should say. We also have an MOU for a TPO agreement as well as uh I believe a supplemental TPO as well for Mr. Greenberg. All three items are noted. I'll move approval. I'll second. Any comments or questions? have to do.
078I do not believe so. Adam, Julie, yes. Greg, yes. Dan, yes. Tammy, yes. Kim, yes. Thank you. On a consent agenda basis, I recommend the following items. Item 4.3, which is a University of Toledo agreement for an internship. This is an annual item. Item 4.4 is an I am boundless service agreement. as well as item 4.5 um is is a service agreement to support students with special needs. Item 4.6 is an annual item for elementary fees. Item 4.7 is an annual item for junior high fees. We have also have item 4.8 high school and career tech fees. And then we have item 4.9 which is the North View High School student handbook noted changes. Also, item 4.10, the South View High School Handbook with noted changes. Item 4.11, Arbor Hills Junior High's student handbook with
079noted changes. Item 4.12, Mccor Junior High student handbook with changes. And item 4.13, Timberstone Junior High's student handbook changes. Again, I recommend item 414 um as a consent agenda basis. I'll move for approval on a consent agenda basis. Items 4.3 to 4.13. Second. Any comments or questions? Greg, yes. Tammy, yes. Julie, yes. Kim, yes. Dan, yes. Thank you. Elementary handbook will be out at the next board meeting or in July. We're still waiting on just approved your resignation. We're the process of rehiring consultant. That change will be noted there. So, just want to share that. Thank you. Okay, Josh. We're with you. Thank you. I will recommend items 5.1 through 5.4 on a consent agenda basis. 5.1 our licensed new teachers. 5.2 licensed resignation. 5.3 our license reduction force. And 5.4 is license. I'll move
080for approval on consent agenda basis items 5.1 through 5.4. I'll second. Any comments or questions? Kim, yes. Greg, yes. Dan, yes. Tammy, yes. Julie, yes. Thank you. I recommend items 6.1 through 6.5 on a consent agenda basis. 6.1 are classified new hires. 6.2 classified resignations. 6.3 is classified summer work. 6.4 are classified additional hours and 6.5 are classified personnel changes. Approval on a consent agenda basis items 6.1 through 6.5. I'll second. Any comments or questions? Adam. Julie. Yes. Greg, yes. Kim, yes. Tammy, yes. Dam. Yes. Thank you. I will recommend items 7.1 through 7.4 on a consent agenda basis. 7.1 are licensed and supplemental positions for the 2526 school year. 7.2 are non-eing pupil activity contracts for 2526 school year. 7.3 are athletic volunteers for the 2526 school year. And 7.4 are changes and corrections
081to the supplements for the 2526 school year. I'll move for approval on a consent agenda basis. Items 7.1 through 7.4. A second. Any comments or questions? Tammy, yes. Greg, yes. Julie, yes. Kim, yes. Dan, yes. Thank you. Okay. This is a second opportunity for public participation for items not on the agenda. Seeing none, I move we go into executive session for the purpose of public. Second. Julie, yes. Uh, Greg, yes. Kim, yes. Tammy, yes. Dan, yes. And we will not be taking action after.