001thank you hey I'd like to call to order the business meeting of the Tallmadge Board of Education please stand for the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God Jeff please call the roll here two times or I'm sorry I need my glasses they may be here too yikes here this Justice Carter here here I'd like to welcome all our visitors today um at the end of the meeting we will give you each if you'd like to address the board we'll give you each three minutes to do so um because this is a business meeting the Forum format for this is you will be allowed to to talk to us but it will not be a back and
002forth conversation but I can guarantee you that whatever you say here our administrators do hear and we always follow up with them okay all right um recommendations of the Board of Education I have none let's go on to recommendations of the treasurer is recommended that the Board of Education adopt the financial reports for months of September 2022. Megan and Mark Jeff did you want to pull something out of there uh no I'll look on it because I have a five year forecast okay well here we have the five five year forecast it's recommended that the board adopt The Five-Year forecast and the accompanying notes as presented for the November 2022 fiscal year 23 reporting period motion so much second Jen and Megan all right Jeff you're on um we have two times a year we
003adopt a five-year forecast and uh it's due in May and now the new deadline for the uh the fall adoption is November but we don't have a ballot issue on in November so we're doing ours uh October so I will Kurt told me how to be really tricky and pull this up so there it is Department of Education that has a little different format but this will not is much simpler so this is what I I always present there's three years of History 2021-22 current is uh the current fiscal year 23 and then four years of projected uh started out of fiscal year with a 5.8 million and I'll go down through these really briefly I was going to spend a lot of time with the state funding formula and I thought that was probably
004not the best time to do that we can have a work session or you know you can stop in I will highlight some of the changes but I won't get into too much details but our first Revenue item is the real estate I've got a half a percent of increase built into the taxes each year calendar year 23 is actually an update year for Summit County but as you know because of Hospital 920 if we see some inflationary growth it'll just create a rollback of the effective millage so we're not going to generate much additional tax interest earned is another line we separate it used to be considerable amount now that interest has gone it you can see 21 and 22 is a little over five thousand dollars interest rates obviously are going up but
005our balance is going to decrease but you still show it separate other local mostly uh the number in there is uh the employee share of Health Care there's some what we call other tuition where we have uh students from other districts that are placed in our district get charged back tuition from the home District we have Medicare reimbursements and some other some other forms of Revenue in there the Foundation program is kind of misleading as you know they changed the uh the formula from 22 to 23 it actually looks like a decrease it's really not because what used to happen was we get funded and then they take it out for open enrollment kids and Community School members and those kinds of students were the bottom line deduction now the recalculation of the foundation every
006student is counted where they attend so if we have kids that live in Tallmadge go to other districts they're counted at whatever District they attend used to be they'd be counted here and then they'd pull out the six thousand dollars at the bottom but which was a total sham for those of us who lost students but they don't do that anymore uh one of the things and at the the changes that they made in the Foundation program it actually makes sense they it's all student driven now so the number of students in the district is is considerable number used to be there was guarantees and things in it sometimes counted sometimes didn't but now all of your your state Foundation is driven by the students how many students you have and there's a number of
007different calculations if you get on the State website and drill down to finance and funding you can pull up each calculation sheet and again I'd love to get into it but uh I don't think this would be uh this would be the time but it's driven by the students uh in in K3 now we have a K-5 building but K3 four through eight at high school and the state has all the uh the average salaries for teachers administrators you know they have all that calculated on an average and then based on your students and based on how many buildings generates how many teachers you need and then they take that times the average salary average benefits it's it's really an interesting calculation if you're into that kind of thing which there are only a few
008of us weirdos that are but uh I know Mark you're with me right I it's fascinating it is it really and what they've done with the reef funding uh makes sense it really does the problem uh I don't know if you remember me talking about it before but they they adopted a new funding formula good job but we're going to phase it in for six years Okay so uh this is the second year of the phase and the actual difference between what they say we should get and what they say the base funding is is 1.5 million dollars so we're being phased in 250 000 each year so this is the second year we still have a million dollar Gap between where the funding formula says we should be and where we are Okay so
009this year and then over the next four years that building a one percent I'm not sure what they're going to do uh they've got to increase its some in addition to fund or the the phase in so I built in a one percent plus the 250 000 dollars uh in each of the next four years and by the end of fiscal year 27 we should be fully funded any questions about that it's up a little okay it's up a little uh I don't have the exact numbers but it's uh maybe 20 or so a little bit more than that yeah close to 2500 students now we're about 2400 last year I think our ADM was 25 .90 . uh Homestead and rollback uh I've just got a constant number in there taxes on new levies
010don't generate Homestead and roll back so that's not going to change much rather than fiddle with it I just keep the constant number other state is the Career Tech and there's some Lottery Casino profits in there too not not a lot to worry about there uh drop down to the sound reasoning and wages under the expenditures uh we see last year's a fairly significant jump for this year we we added staff as you know and uh we had some retire but we we added more than we lost so that's an increase there's a two percent increased build across for salaries and wages uh two percent in the base salary there's also movement on the salary schedules that you have to account for retirement Insurance costs the retirement is just simply a factor of the salaries
011is 14 salaries so that's an easy easy number uh the the health care calculation is the other big part of that and we've built in two percent uh for those costs two percent is not a lot but we have as you know we're self-funded and so our self-funding program is working well and so right now we can we can control uh costs uh with roughly a two percent increase each year uh purchase Services excuse me that number uh in fiscal year 21 that's 5.7 million we used uh some Esser money that year to offset our transportation costs we didn't use any last year I put the Esser money down at the bottom and we'll get that to that in a minute the other excuse me large purchase service uh used to be the Open Enrollment
012and the kids that were leaving we had to to record those under the 400 purchase service costs so now those are no longer that was about a million dollars last year was about half of that because even though the new funding formula fiscal year 22 was the first year it didn't actually take effect until halfway through so those numbers moving forward uh a lot of the costs Transportation costs is in there special ed purchase Services a lot of the utilities building costs a lot of numbers make text and supplies uh pretty standard across the the years we've got a little bit more of in that area curriculum costs are in there our curriculum director is happy about that Capital outlay again fairly constant we've we've used some s or money for the one to one
013so those aren't going to change much other costs and transfers stay pretty constant those are fees on your treasure speeds for collection of taxes uh liability insurance things like that that don't change much from year to year so fiscal year 23 we would have if uh wasn't for Esser we would we would be in that dropping or you're in Balance uh year we have about 1.6 million dollars left of Esser funds and I didn't stick them into the the cost areas because they make change I just thought it would be cleaner and and you could see a more clear picture of where we're at if uh if I just put those at the bottom so 1.6 million dollars at the end of the day will actually decrease some of these costs but I just added
014it to the to the year-end balance uh creating a 6.2 million dollar figure to carry forward however as you can see we are in a declining balance uh situation and when that happens uh Treasures uh antenna go up and the hopes okay when is our next Levy going to be because when you're when you're in a deficit spending situation it's only a matter of time till until you need additional funds so I put an x uh we project on a fiscal year because that's what the school year is about it runs from July to June but we collect taxes on a calendar year makes things a little bit more complicated when you're trying to figure out the timing of things but in my mind we have to pass something no later than 25 to collect
015in 26. now ideally we might think about putting something on in 24 and again this is a projection some things can change but uh if we would wait till 26 we wouldn't start collecting until 27 and that would be too late so levies let's talk about levees for a moment that's the question before yeah yeah sure so and like fiscal year 21 the Esser money is just in yeah okay right it's most of it was purchase yeah materials and capital outlay why do we project those to be decreasing in the projections for future years because we tighten up things and we have usually leftover carry over uh but again a lot of that was was curriculum driven and once those things are in place uh you know you only renew curriculum every number of years
016so it's not an ever increasing number but we try it we try and squeeze let's squeeze the budget I appreciate that I just don't know why uh let's talk about levees uh I feel so powerful okay we have three levees that are not continuing okay we have some continuing once the levy is continuing you never have to visit it again and that is the way a couple of operating older operating levees are and that is the way the pi Levy is so we never have to worry about those again but we have three levees and they're all coming to do in the next couple years we have the 7.5 mil Levy that was first passed in 01 and was renewed in six for five years was renewed in 11 for five years and was renewed
017in 16 for 10 years we had the 6.9 Mill emergency Levy first passed in 09 renewed for five years and 14 and we also renewed that one for 10 years and then we have the latest one which we just passed back in 19 and and we haven't had to renew that yet but we will so what is the timing on all of these well you can see that these are the collection years over here over here the years it was passed it always starts collecting the year after it was passed uh first Levy which we'll call Levy two needs renewed beginning in November of no later than calendar year 26 you're going to collect in 26 but you can't I mean if you miss that window uh you're gonna you're gonna have a gap and
018you won't collect so this Levy needs uh starting in 25 and that's again further down and that may coincide with new money as well based on our forecast the other two are more recent they're they're coming to at the same time uh the last year of collection is 24. so we can we can put it on in November of 23 and again they're they're on the same track uh again the renewals renewals historically have done well take anything for granted for 11 . but we need to put it on no later than November 23. if it didn't pass in 23 we'd still have 24 to pass them yes can you put all three together even though the first one has two additional years just to get them all passed at once uh no you can't
019pass from that that early before two years before how long ago how early can you pass those you could put it on the year before it expires can we put so what can in 23 yeah uh the 6.9 mil that was originally passed back in 09. it would be hard you could stagger them you could run one in 23 and assuming because it's a renewal you would pass it and then you could pass one or put one on a 24. uh and then the other one in 25 but then again you have to keep in mind where our new money might have fall in there and you're definitely thinking we're going to need some new money eventually I mean we that's just the nature of schools yeah uh now unless the state funding if they
020come through this is the second year of a state budget uh next fiscal year starting uh in 23 so fiscal year 24 and 25 will be a two-year budget cycle the state's flush with cash right now they they have a lot of money in Columbus I don't know what they'll do they may speed up that phase in you know we've got four years left they may say let's let's take care of it and then two that would certainly help cash flow uh and it might push back the need for a year or two but once once your expenditures exceed your Revenue and we're Limited in Revenue because Ohio school 920 our local taxes don't increase when we when our property values new construction yes but but not like a reappraisal or a training Olympic but
021I I wanted to show you this uh because we've got you know we've 22 no we're not going to do anything in 22. obviously it's it's too late now anyway but we we might want to keep that in mind uh for November of 23. because if if that is the path we want to go those resolutions would have to be adopted and and submitted to the Board of Elections by August this is where things are these are all the levees that in the district has either passed or attempted to pass since back in 76. future movies oh well they're all gone oh it's over here but that's uh that's kind of where we're at you're not really adopting a any of this you're just adopting the forecast and there are some notes uh I won't
022go through those but that sort of the states everything that I just talked about thank you that's where we're at okay any questions for Jeff riveting okay go ahead Jeff call the roll please oh you have a question Oh I thought you raise your hands okay go ahead Jeff call the roll please there's Justice Carter hi hi four recommendations of the superintendent nothing okay all right can I have a motion to approve uh items 5.1 through 5.7 Jen and Megan do you want to pull any of those out yeah just to pull outs okay first one is 5.3 and new innovation intervention specialist Jessica Whitaker this is a very tough position to build that Phyllis was abrupt the resignation at the beginning of the school year at the elementary school one of our intervention Specialists
023and we're really blessed to find Jessica and really a great great excited to welcome her to the district I want to give a shout out to the gentleman named Tony Matos who's filled in as a substitute for the first couple amazing job very thankful of Tony for his his efforts and then I'll highlight also the the new tutor for English as a second language just a substantial increase of English Learners in the district and it was a substantial increase over the last few years so this is a movie we needed to build be able to serve those students and so I forget it's two days a week yes two days a week say we'll be helping us out that's all I have okay thank you any questions Jeff please call a roll this is Justice
024Carter aye bye Laurie hi hi okay central office reports I agree before I turn it over to Mr May so I'm very thankful to Mr Manion here at the middle school for and uh and uh he ordered a kind of state of the middle school report before I get to that is a couple things just want to highlight uh a lot a lot of good things happen in the district right now last month and heading into November particularly what I'm saying that so just just some things for the for the board first of all a large group of us went to a conference uh earlier this month around personalized Ohio it's really around personalized learning for our kids which is a big Push by the ode we've got significant grant funding to support our effort
025uh thankful to the ode and the personalized oh folks for making that happen and our folks here in the district so what you're going to see more and more of and challenges this term personalized learning so creating personalized opportunities for our kids where their interests and talents meet the resources of the district so that that and that it goes all the way from kindergarten a high school High School in particularly I'm excited about as we look for more opportunities for kids to get involved in trades and different skills skill move more and more away from Traditional High School so that was one highlight for the board secondly we had a professional development day earlier this week so this date is kind of give you an update on how that went okay so the feedback from
026our PD day on Monday has been extremely positive it was I would tell you a great day of professional learning for all of our staff so I'm talking about personalized learning we try to personalize that experience for our staff as well so our professional development committee completed A needs assessment to determine kind of the topics that were of interest to our staff and that really drove the schedule for the day our keynote who will be our keynote all three of our professional development days was Buddy Barry he's a superintendent from Kentucky who is really a dynamic speaker has done some really great things related to personalized learning in his own district and was just fun and a great way to start the day then we had a morning session and after that and staff could
027choose whatever session was of interest to them so we had sessions on personalized learning social and learning we had a math Workshop because as you know we did a lot of work around math last last school year we also had cultural competency um session as well so and then in the afternoon session we offered the same topics we had some of our own staff providing sessions on co-teaching because that's ongoing topic for professional growth at the elementary level specifically but also here at the middle school and at the end of the day they had a team debrief time so there that was time for their grade level and or department to get together and kind of share out what they gleaned from those sessions talk about the implications for their classroom how can they take
028those those pieces back to their classroom a lot of times professional development is kind of a one and done and you don't have that time to to talk with your team about what that could look like in the classrooms we wanted to be intentional about building that in and then also I can't forget lunch provided by Mr householder he cooked for 250 staff members which was awesome and during that lunch hour we also had a wellness fair for our staff so they could participate in yoga drum fit we had a partnership with the Chamber of Commerce and we had a lot of local businesses there sharing information we had massages so it was really a fantastic day so in February we'll have the similar very similar topics because the hope is that they'll build on
029each other each time as I said our keynote will be there again in February and um we'll continue to to build on those days and um I know the staff like I said the feedback has been really positive they appreciate that time together to be able to collaborate to learn with each other time well spent the business Community says thank you as well because they felt like awesome it was a really good opportunity to partner with the schools and then also in February we during that lunch hour we're going to do a CTE Career Tech Ed kind of showcase and have all of our different career programs set up in the gym to share you know different things that they're doing in those programs too because a lot of times our staff aren't able to
030see what comes out of those programs or even is aware of are aware of the programs that we offer so we'll have members of the sixth district part of that day too so thank you accordion and thanks to Courtney and the whole professional development team for putting uh Monday together just doing a great job of the new committee this year so other things for the board's calendar to be aware of so first of all next week is Red Ribbon Week so we're supposed to all wear red it's a really around um you know encourage our students to live a drug feed free lifestyle so we encourage you to to wear your red next week I looked at my wardrobe everything I have is blue I buy some red t-shirts or something and if you get
031a chance maybe maybe snap a little uh video of yourself encouraging kids to live drug free and send it to officer Quillen who's going to be assembling those videos during the week so we're excited about uh it's this annual tradition of Red Ribbon Week also tomorrow night there's an education the ESC the Education Service Center of Summit County is hosting an education celebration and tomorrow night Ashley Hill from Tallmadge Elementary School will receive a rookie of the year award Lauren Stone and Tammy habeshaw are a special ed teachers at Tallmadge High School are receiving educator of the Year Awards and Regina Lindemann who's retired a while ago but still is at our elementary school just about every day is getting a Lifetime Achievement Award so we're excited for them November 10th 11th and 12th is
032our fall play noise is off so to be I've never seen noises off I don't know what it's about but it's supposed to be very funny and our kids are working hard ready at the Tallmadge Auditorium and then Sports great great great fall Sports season is is coming to a close but it's not over yet there's soccer game tonight Hogan and Hogan or a playoff game tonight at Hoban so hopefully our our girls are doing well we have a volleyball is at Bay Village tomorrow night first round of the playoffs boys soccer is uh this Saturday I believe at Tallmadge Stadium here it's a home match is our football team plays as our last regular season game in orbiting this Friday if we win that game there's a most likely we will host a playoff
033game the following week there's there's a chance even if we we're not here we don't even mention the alternative and then golf tennis at Great Seasons Marley Queen one of our seniors is the all-time career tennis wins leader now for the district so congratulations to Marley and then our cross-country teams again our Juggernaut cross country teams continue to thrive and Talmage both here at the middle school a lot of great things happening here that the varsity level our team came in in the Suburban league and will compete in the districts this Saturday both both boys and girls teams will compete this Saturday at Glen Oak so lots of great things very proud of our athletes and doing great things on and off the field that's what I have tonight so I'll turn it over to
034Mr Maine for state of the Middle School staying back here at to make anything move around um so that she just has a little bit of basic information about the Middle School um in terms of where we're going just wanted to piggyback off of what Mr Woods said our Middle School cross country team had some outstanding athletes one of those student athletes donovanella won every single male race that that we had this this past season those student athletes will be competing it's in the Columbus area for the state meet this Saturday so we wish them the best of luck I think we're sending um I believe it's Center Eight from student athletes to that to that um so as I started to work through our PD uh day and reflect a little bit on my
035career this is my 21st year in our district um I have been in this District my entire career um actually started my first experience teaching at the building that's no longer standing there in kind of the bottom middle teaching French and Spanish if you believe that as a substitute I don't have the ability to speak either language but I was able to to get through the lessons and hold down before it while it was Becky tandemeyers at the time uh was out for for a month period of time so when I started um and and we've kind of moved through a lot of different places when it comes to the Middle School the bottom rate picture is a picture of the glass that was leaking at the middle slash was high school and and kind
036of just that's our past the top middle picture is certainly not fast but it kind of correlates to everything you see there on the screen so from there 20 years ago or somewhere in the middle we have now gotten to a place where we have next and in terms of our facilities we have world-class places for our kids to come and that is now K to 12. I spent time actually I'm somewhat unique and then I spent time in every single building that this district has operated from overdale to Dunbar to Monroe to the high school to the middle school I spent time teaching every single one of those buildings so I got a really good look into what makes this District what this District you know exemplifies so that that process in my time
037has has certainly evolved we can certainly assure you that where we are now is a great place specifically speaking I spend all my time here now and this place is is world class and and the people we have working here are world class in my time I've seen our seventh grade teaching staff adopt one to one before it became The Fad and before everyone uh in the nation went one to one we adopted that with Kurt's expertise and help they took it on and worked as hard as anyone I've ever seen in in developing a content and delivery system so that they could impact learning in the most impactful way possible they then went from that to them turning around and and being the teachers of how to to one to one if you will
038and taught other grade levels at the middle school how do you utilize those resources we have since I've been here at the middle school doubled our Advanced numbers and both math and language arts we graduated eighth graders with about a hundred high school credits which is not what many schools can say so we send students up to the high school with algebra and foreign language credits and they're walking out of here with with pretty close to 100 high school credits when their time is finished we have implemented team and co-teaching I use those two terms a little bit differently than some others but co-teaching with our inclusion model and team teaching with multiple classes is is really well done here and and our teachers deserve all the credit so the paper that I gave you
039just kind of highlights a little bit of what we are our numbers a little bit so you certainly can look at that I'm very proud of that information but one piece that I want to kind of highlight there is our vision and that's a district Vision that we are a collaborative community that empowers students every single day and that comes into play a little bit when we talk about personalized learning and kind of where that journey is taking us um our new staff we it was a long summer of hiring um and and I know we had some transition in the Middle with uh Shelley going to Springfield and Mike stepping in as our CEO and and so that process was uh certainly long and drawn out and we hit home runs in every uh
040single classroom that we put a new teacher in this year I'm very proud of that staff Chewie is not really new Chewie was here at the end of last year but Chewie has just been outstanding and is working up to a full five-day week pretty much most weeks here with us so we're very proud of them one thing I want to highlight is our our grade levels and how we structure so we structure things here at the middle school and team so this is an example but it is replicated in seventh and eighth grade just the people are different so we have three teams in each grade level um the bottom team there is just a two-person team so those people teach two contents and they they share the same 50 kids throughout the course
041of the day and they teach two contents each the top two groups are kind of what I call split teams they're really made up of four individuals but our science and social studies people work on two teams so the reason I bring this up is because this structure allows us to know our kids inside and out if you ask any one of these teachers about a student that is in their classroom they can tell you their family structure they can tell you whether the kid had a good or bad date yesterday they can tell you the world about every single student and that teaming aspect and making sure that we know who our students are just allows us to do so much more in the classroom motivate our students push our students and challenge them
042in ways that you just can't without that team structure so we're very happy with that structure and that certainly also falls in line with our block schedule so a couple of things that I also wanted to highlight is in this building we kind of place a premium on culture and what we do here we're constantly trying to build kids up and build a culture in our school this is our morning meeting Chris so the crew on the left was actually the very first morning meeting crew that we call them you can see the black and white TV that's mounted on the wall there this other picture is a more recent group so this group of students has certainly grown from we started our first year with eight kids and it's now grown to over 20
043kids what this basically is is these 8th graders prepare deliver content every single morning in our middle school and that content can arrange a very wide range it can be a little bit about you know Unity day and wearing orange today and have a lot of Courts and games that revolve around that concept um on slow days for example this week we had Mark Verona day so that group decided to completely develop that morning meeting about Mark Verona there was an interview with Mark Verona there was a kahoot about Mark Verona um so they they had the freedom to kind of develop those things make them fun and it's really just about building culture having kids laugh in the morning playing a game watching teachers Walk The Runway and we post everything on Twitter so
044if you wanted to laugh feel free to check those videos out so that morning meeting crew is really essential for building that culture in our building some of the other things we do we promote our students in the classroom on the weekly so every Tuesday we announce our student of the weeks we have been fortunate enough to buy the B spans which we kind of stole from Mr Shadow in the high school a little bit to really recognize our students in the classroom and also our athletes on the competition fields we also have character cards here at the middle school that we give our students so when we see things that are uh just you know they help a friend out they help pick something up they open a door for someone we issue character
045cards and we have issued 575 this year that positive reinforcement has just simply been a game changer in terms of changing behaviors and getting those desired things that you want to see in a given school day we then take any kid that got a card that month and we have a party for him and what that means is Mrs hustling and I take him to the gym and we play a game with them we play dodgeball or we let them shoot baskets each month a little different depending on the weather and we celebrate any student that got recognized for the character card do that last week we also had a Blue Devil time so we have an incentive program that's quarterly here at the middle school and we try to get kids to just do
046something academic so the first quarter was making sure that you have all of your work in it was nearing the end of the quarter and the goal was to just get everything turned in the biggest root cause for students struggling in middle school is they just don't turn things in so it's that organizational piece it's not that they don't understand materials that they just don't get it done so this provided us a way to motivate students to get those things in and then we just opened up outdoor things we we had them down at the track they were kicked on the baseball field they were playing chess and and all kinds of different things just to give them something fun to do at the end of the rainbow if they got their work in uh
047we also have done testing incentives we haven't done this one in a while I want to bring this back um this was a lot of fun we we got some blow-ups at the end of the testing rainbow um so we developed some criteria for our kids uh to work hard during our state testing and doing some map testing and at the end of that we provided some incentives we had changed those incentives through covid we're looking to get back to a little bit more you know our facility here this coming year we also are running intramural sports uh we're starting our first one this coming week we give a Gold Award here that is a student award that is very similar to character cards we found that students didn't have a voice in that process
048if they had a teacher that issued character cards they got lucky and maybe the other teacher that they had didn't give them as many so we allowed them to issue gold cards for very similar things so at any point a kid can go onto our website there's a link for a Google form and they can fill out that form and say you know Mr wood did this great thing and I'm really proud of his work that day and nominate that student at the end of the month we kind of do a principals Council which is student council comes in they read all the entries and they make a decision on who the grade level winners are for that month and then I'd buy them lunch so we you know give them a little bit of
049voice in that process we also have our field trips here at the middle school that have been going for uh as long as I've been here one other thing that we do is Service Learning here at the middle school and I am amazed whenever I start to think about what we do with our community I'm Blown Away by the sheer number of things that we do and as I start to kind of list them I quickly and just blown away so I I gave a few kind of uh some some time here not all of them obviously but our Builders Club has been doing amazing work they hardest working kids that you can find and again this all ties right back to that Vision like empowering our students working with our community and getting out
050there and doing things that that really focus them in on what they want to do with their lives this is coming back this year this is our life Book Project this is something we paired with Danbury and um I can't remember the second place but we worked with them we went to them we interviewed some of their residents and at the end of it our sixth graders produced a real world printed book that we were able to give to that Resident and the feedback for this program has just been unbelievable so we're changing gears a little bit because because of some of the coveted restrictions that are still hanging on so we are are really finalizing the details of what this will look like but at the end of this year we will have 56th
051graders that are uh you know published authors which is a pretty amazing thing um we also this week we're starting our Tes mentoring so we send 8th graders every single day to the elementary to work with this year we'll be we'll be pairing with our kindergarten teams uh and sending 10 students a day over to help those teachers um during the middle part of our day which is a pretty great program that that our eighth grade pairs with um by the way the left picture it was Adam Sandler day so that is why those high school students look the way they do we recently paired with our High School uh photography slash yearbook uh group and they came over we're kind of in the beginning stages of developing that program here at the middle school
052and so we brought in the pros and man Matos is a pro and a half but they developed a presentation for our students and showed us kind of the the thought behind how to make a good uh picture and it was really a lot more intense than I thought it would be and they did a fantastic job so those Partnerships with the high school are ongoing um consistently we also paired with the fire department in doing our First Responders day where our students ran the number of steps and a lot of schools do this now but we were able to have uh real gear and kids were able to kind of see what that actually felt like and really connect with that content because we now have middle schoolers that weren't alive during that day
053and so it's it's very unique in trying to get them to understand that material and this helps bring it to light today in fact we had adaptive Sports Ohio and the coach of the wheelchair Cavalier team came and worked with all of our PE classes and and many of our wheelchair members came to play uh in our PE classes today so we partnered with them in a fantastic day of wheelchair basketball and so all of that are just a microcosm of the things that go on at the middle school and then so what where are we going now so our focus is for this school year um obviously with a new math curriculum that is going to be a huge undertaking to try to figure out what we did that worked that we want to
054keep and what that new curriculum offers in terms of restructuring how we align our year and all those sorts of things so we're going to be doing a lot of work over the course of the year in math there's also going to be a lot of work being done in language arts and social studies with Miss Davis and and figuring out kind of what direction we want to go in those two contents um the other piece is kind of that personalized learning Journey that we're on so the group that's in the middle is kind of our district team the picture on the left is just a picture that I thought kind of encapsulated that so we had a football game a couple weeks ago um and and this young man who loves to talk uh
055was given the mic and an opportunity to announce the game and that can be very nerve-wracking and as an administrator I was very close to make sure I could quickly yank that mic from him um and what a pleasant surprise he did a fantastic job uh and just that allowing him the opportunity to do something a little different that maybe we've not done before to give them a chance to find out if that's a passion of theirs and so so we're going to continue down that road and really work hard to try to find some unique opportunities for our kids in the coming coming school year nice job thank you [Applause] I can't always see is it the building and there's always kind of cool stuff happening so so kids are progressing well academically there's
056a lot of great things happening here so next month just uh just a heads up so next month our Focus um be on school safety so our sros officer Quillen and officer dornac will be here to talk a little bit about our safety programs emergency response and then in December we'll we'll have it at the this the board meeting at Tallmadge Elementary School and Mr Booth will present kind of give you the state of the elementary school school now that's what I have tonight are they going to Chicago and Washington this year they're definitely yes okay yeah okay all right thank you guys lots of hard work Mr Manion I remember when you were just a teacher so it's all good long time ago yeah a long time ago for you but not for me
057obviously all right there are no there's no old business any new business all right I'm gonna go ahead and open the floor up to anybody who would like to address the board you will each have three minutes everybody can talk one time um like I said at the very beginning there will be no back and forth because that's not the format of this meeting but anything you say to us will be heard by obviously the whole board and administration and we always follow up with them to see what's going on if you need any private you know conversations with anyone you are more than welcome to go to Mr Wood's office he's uh he always has an open door policy as long as he's not in a meeting or anything okay who would like to
058go first when you stand um actually when you address this please stand say your name um and just the street you live on and then you can go ahead whoever wants to go first no time out why the street we live on oh I don't know that's something North Monroe right down the road yeah you know what I have two kids in the school I pay my taxes here no you know that's just the way it's always been if you're if you're more comfortable not saying it then please I'm just curious why yeah it's more of a resonance thing yes is everybody here live in the district okay Frank and Heather um little C drive thanks for having us um I want to thank the school district you've done a great job with our daughter
059and some learning anxieties and some some reading anxieties and she's really grown in her scores with her own um our goal here is tonight just to be heard real quick on an incident that took place in the girls bathroom that was real shocking I think as a parent our job is to raise our children with our beliefs whether it be biblical or whatever your beliefs are but part of that you know that parenting is being prepared to have conversations with your with your kid and um to respect that student I'm not here to talk about that but what happened to our daughter was that she was shocked what she witnessed and and it made her not want to be in the bathroom and as a taxpayer and as a parent you know I have a
060problem with that we have a problem with it um I don't believe that that communication was communicated properly if there was a policy change Mr talking to us hearing our concerns but I think it's bigger than him we have a news we have new schools if we're going to be inclusive and and have a diverse in a you know student um that you know student and tax base and maybe the schools need to be retrofitted um not just tell a child we'll just get you can go to another bathroom I don't think you want I mean how many I don't know how many kids are here and then you want 500 kids running on one bathroom there's so there's got to be a better way so we're just here with um a little bit of
061a you know a concern with the way that things were communicated and and if that is going to be what we're dealing with in the school district and as taxpayers maybe you need to ask us you to retrofit the school and make it more inclusive you know don't don't make kids feel uncomfortable because I can tell you at a birthday party that we held with a little over a dozen girls um they were very comfortable embarrassed um supportive you know of the student great kids but they were shocked and so I don't believe that that is what we should do to our kids we should have had a better plan in place and and if it is retrofitting the building then I believe that you should come you know to the taxpayers and ask for
062that thank you thank you anybody else like to talk um Jan Turnbull I live on Northwest Avenue my granddaughter goes to this school and she had walked into the bathroom and there was a boy in there not a boy that looked like a girl or just like a girl but a boy it's like I don't want to go into a woman's restroom at a restaurant and find a man in there so and I'm a little older than 12. no so I just think to tell to inconvenience all of the girls for the minority seems to me like craziness and I don't I don't understand why the .001 percent gets the upper hand here I don't get it I don't think that there's a law a federal law in place I think it's up to different
063judges to try and figure out that law so I don't know just seems a little ridiculous to me that that boys and girls restaurants hi I'm Melanie Watson I live on Heritage Drive I'm a taxpayer and definitely know your granddaughter and I'm concerned as a taxpayer my kids you know went to town and got an excellent education you know one's chemical engineer everyone's the snrn and a retired major in the Air Force but my point is they got a good education I love the Tallmadge schools this what is happening you know from a Biblical standpoint I mean I'm I'm sorry this is wrong it reads me that our tax dollars are going towards this and these are impressionable young girls 12 years old camera and stuff they are their bodies are changing now what it's
064going to say you know I mean boys can be ornery in uh have you considered the consequences if number one there's an assault number two if you know the boy goes hey you know go to him like you're a girl and then they bring in a cell phone or something and then they'll post it in pictures all over the wall there's a lot of there's a lot of ramifications that are gonna going to be subjected to somebody that with a minority of a point so these were zero zero zero one percent this is not what Talmadge is and I'm just very concerned and then that's another question why is always the board meeting on a Wednesday night so that the Christians that are going to church on Wednesday night are unable to attend I believe
065it's been on Wednesday night ever since this is a question but it's that's just from your Traditions yeah the third Wednesday of every month it's crazy though because there's a lot of people who have Wednesday night services and there are people who couldn't come tonight because they didn't want to miss church so I don't know if you do know that if you do know of these people please okay encourage them to meet with this with the administrative staff that's what they're there for I just encourage them to come into the the board office I know this isn't meant to be a back and forth but I'm a Christian right I've been to church services on every day of the week so no matter what day we would choose to hold it would well there's a
066very popular one on Thursday nights but I you know those people wouldn't go to comfy came on Thursday I understand what you're saying but we're not holding it on Sunday morning I mean to be fair it's a night of the week okay okay no that's crazy because Wednesday night if you you go around all the churches it's a common there's an event I understand what you're saying there's an event in my church tonight but God still loves me if I don't make Wednesday night right okay all right would anybody else like to address the board we were here yeah for the same reason yeah I just think the transgender things it's all new none of us in this room grew up and going to school so true so true I never went to the boys
067room there was a girl right I never went to girls room because oh Franklin it wasn't allowed so I didn't do it so it's just a new era that fortunately that it's it's happening um just gotta figure a way to handle it because it's I don't want my daughters rejecting something at 12. not to mention they're starting you know it was all kind of crap I wouldn't want to do deal with that with a poignant boy in the restroom there's cracks in the bathroom stalls don't tell me you have never walked past the bathroom stall you know and seen in there I want my 12 year old to seeing the anatomy of the opposite sex either 12 years old I mean there's a lot of things that come along with uh trying to be inclusive
068I know our staff these gentlemen and ladies are on the administrative they work with us every single day trying to find a solution that's going to number one not alienate that child okay because you have to you have to also know that this is another child you're talking about and along with your children okay they're very fragile they're trying to find somewhere to fit in okay so be patient with our staff while they work through this and work with these children that's all they can ask you right now I know they're constantly working on solutions to that bathroom problem okay or or two um any other issue that they may run into so the counseling staff is working with these children these people are working with these children so just be patient if you have
069more specific concerns I would super encourage you because trust me we all know what's going on we're on Facebook we see your comments we see it all okay we're not blind okay so we know okay so do these guys because once we see something guess who our first call is to it's not to each other it's to this gentleman right here he's tired of hearing from me Steve's tired of hearing from all of us trust me once we hear a little inkling in the community that there's an issue boom my phone goes to him immediately I shoot him a text I shoot him something and he's on top of it contact him talk to him he is your best source of information okay he Ferguson before him he was my best source of information Steve
070is my best source of information and we are his ears out in the community kind of but this is the guy that's going to get things done for you okay we're on his back constantly I assure you one of this that you know if instead of allowing a biological boy to be in a girl's bathroom maybe they can have that boy go into a faculty one I mean there is it's already set up like that but they are the school is set up I'm happy to talk to you yeah sometimes there's uh you know it's a very difficult you know everyone that's involved don't you think 12 was a little young though to make them it's not my it's not my what I believe or since 2016. yes guideline this is not new um now
071what is new what you'll have is you'll you'll have the individuals will change the world didn't change this year just have an individual that um as as raised concerns and um the team here in the Middle School everyone we work very hard to respect everybody that's involved in the situation and I know it's difficult I know it's hard for folks to understand but I can assure you as a district the you know we follow the law we do it in a way that keeps it down anyway respecting everyone with your face and working our best to navigate which is a is a you know is is I understand a situation that can can raise a lot of concern higher among these folks yeah so um you know my Approach is listen to hear you try
072to find Solutions and work with you some Again by six just like the highways to call me anytime and go over how things go and Miss Watson to your example specifically who identifies as a specific gender has the right to use that restaurant anywhere I know that the law but right now it's subject to judges which can be ambiguous and I would say it's not ambiguous in Ohio right now and and I will tell you this we're having this conversation tonight but we all know this is going to be on CNN and all the other news all the way up until election in 2020 College and you you see it in Virginia there is multiple Senate bills in Ohio to to change the laws and the rules it's going to be a continuing conversation in
073CH and my my um promise to all of you is we're going to do this in town which way in a respectful way we're going to listen we're going to uh work hard to help understand the laws and the rules and and always you know I know all of you feel the same way and you started that way Kevin I think right oh Frank I'm sorry that's all right I've been called worse so and you know um we started that way as a respect for every single you know everything the transgender steps uh the students in the building of course all the parents grandparents and everyone that has concerns it's the only way we're going to make it through this folks um but I think the communications I think that was so off for us
074it was a struggle with his first several generations of Talmage not having that community yet they were really good like personal daughter that was is very wealthy and accepting the first thing that she was concerned about was not upsetting anyone anymore we don't usually place our opinions like that but we're here because we are I want to see a new unit that are working to solve on me but rather pay more to have bathrooms change so everybody feels good and safe and explain their Identity or decisions to any thank you question anything else okay I have one more question um mean I'm just curious if anyone even knows if the parents know about this or if this is all this done what kind of privacy privacy issue I mean I would just hope that it's
075a privacy issue unfortunately so thank you guys for coming in thank you for being very respectful during this whole thing it's I know it's a hot topic all right I wasn't trying to be rude when I asked about this yeah you were done that's all oh I know you trust me you don't know okay do I have a motion to adjourn the meeting please Jen and Megan thank you guys for coming please understand their offices are always open okay