001Good evening. It's 6.45, so I'll call this meeting to order. It is the July 12th Cedar Springs Public Schools board meeting. And if you would rise with me for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. Thank you. So moved. Support. Any discussion? Having none, Vice President Schaffner? Yes. Secretary Slager? Yes. Treasurer Gilmore? Yes. Trustee Vander Heide? Yes. Trustee Rivard? Yes. Trustee Bowser? Yes. President Reed? Yes. The agenda is adopted as presented. And that brings us to gratitude. Let's open the table to any gratitude that you would like to share. I would like to say that with the news about H. Justin Harnden, I am grateful that we live in a community that immediately, immediately jumped on, let's get help. Let's get, what can we do to
002support? What can we do to help? So much love on the Facebook page. I'm grateful to our community for that. Thank you. input was insightful and significant to the outcome of the process. So it was just really neat to hear them process and be involved in that work. I'm grateful that we as a district do that, that we bring students in to help. We did that with the band director as well. I think that's really great. I don't think a lot of places do that. I could be wrong. Thank you. We'll move on to our next item, the consent items that are before us, and I would entertain a motion. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
003Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. With me tonight is Peter Matusiak. He's an attorney for Troon Law, and he's helped put this information together. And so I've already presented Secretary Slager with a copy of the tenure charges, but what I'll do is I'll share the rest of the information with the other board members, and then I'll
004turn it over to Peter, and let him share some insight as well. Sure. Good evening, everyone. What you've got is handing out now are tenure charges, which were also provided to the teacher in question, who is a high school English teacher, Karen Polanius. Typically how these proceed is that the teacher has the option of considering the charges in the open session or closed session. It's my understanding that the teacher here decided to have the matter considered in the open session. So my game plan is to have you carefully review the tenure charges that were just presented to you. Then we will give the teacher an opportunity to address you with any concerns she has that you'd like to make. And then at that point, you may ask her any questions you may have. You can
005ask me any questions, or you may ask the administration any questions you may have. And then during public comments, any supporters will be able to voice their opinions on that as well. And then once we get to action items, there is a proposed resolution. Should you decide to proceed with the tenure charges? If you choose not to proceed, you can simply note in the meeting minutes that you need to do the charges. That wasn't until I met a Cedar spring. It wasn't much simpler, smaller town. It's grown quite a bit since then. But some important aspects of it have stayed the same. The community, the parents. But for me, the best are the students I've had the pleasure of interacting with each and every day. I love teaching. Another reason I love Cedar Springs District
006is because it has always been supportive and understanding. When I decided to join the Army National Guard after September 11, 2001, the district graciously supported me by allowing me to get a sub for the first two weeks so I could finish a basic training. supported me by allowing me to use my pay to come off for six weeks at the end of the 2014-2015 school year so that I could take care of my then-husband who was undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia. And this year allowing me to take four days off in the spur of the moment while everything's going on to fly down to Mississippi to help my kids say goodbye to their dad the past three years. And he finally passed away. This is why you can't In all of this, Cedar Springs has never
007failed to support me in my time of need. In this way, I know the difficulties my students continue to face. This is a significant part of my priority. They know this. They know I will always be there for them. Before school, after school, during lunch. I spend my lunch period with my students. I don't go and have lunch with the teacher. Weekends are enough. I was and still am a support system for many current and former students. Additionally, my end of year student results were, and still are today, always at the highest rating, equivalent to that of my peers, which is my children, my family, my friends, and my job as a Cedar Springs teacher. I could go to a different district, I suppose. Not like this, no, but I have a job next year.
008It wouldn't be Cedar Springs. It wouldn't be my current and graduated students who decorated my classroom for my birthday five years running and only stopped because of COVID. It wouldn't be the Euchre games, playing with my kids, some of them I've never even had in class, before school, after school, during lunch. And certainly one of the amazing colleagues I've had the distinct pleasure of working with for the past 22 years. It wouldn't be home, 22 years, six administrators, and I was proficient the first year Mr. Gervais evaluated me. I love this place. I wanted Karen to be able to stand up and tell you who she was instead of me, a stranger, coming up to tell you who she is. I think that there's some additional information in this document that will help solidify for
009you who Karen is. Karen has been a dedicated teacher, as she told you, for over 20 years. The way things are set up in the system, I told her that if you go forward with tenure charges, there's a good chance that she will lose her job. The bar has been set much lower in tenure cases now to where it's arbitrary and capricious. So if you have any kind of blemish on your record, they can use that to move you out. I suggested that she look for a job somewhere else. This is a teacher shortage right now. There are many districts that would be happy to have a teacher with their experience. But she said, we work back and forth on some ideas about what might move her out. And she really couldn't come up with
010anything that would convince her not to come to this meeting tonight to talk to you and make her case. And so that's why I'm here. The picture that you got. from her evaluator, Mr. Verweiss, is carefully documented. Earlier this year, he met with Sharon Locke to try to make sure that all his ducks were in a row so that he could move her out if necessary. I don't think that Mr. Verweiss is a bad man. I think that he ran into a couple issues and started viewing miscellaneous through that lens. through a negative lens, start looking for issues rather than strengths. So I'd like to talk about some of those strengths here. I'm going to kind of walk you through the document that I just handed you. So the reasons that I would like to
011see you continue to employ Karen as a teacher at Cedar Springs, the reason I think that it would be a benefit to your students, your community, starts with this. She kind of expressed some of her positive student relationships. This is something in all of her evaluations has held true. Even in her most recent evaluations, that's ending on. She connects to her students. She connects to the students that struggle. She connects to the students that feel like misfits. And she encourages them to reach their full potential. Her student success. This year, more than any other year, has been an incredibly difficult year for students, families. teachers. Many students across this country and across the world have struggled to be successful in this environment. Karen was able to coax that success out of her students. She was
012able to help them meet their growth targets both in the standardized and in the classroom goals. It's hard to look at somebody who's able to do that in a year like this year and consider them incompetent. one of the biggest things i think that's a testament to karen's abilities is her success in the face of stress uh this year again tough for anybody a lot of teachers took time off took uh i i've i've personally have helped teachers who had to take time off because the stress of this year teaching under the conditions of public presented us with the difficulties of trying to manage quarantines, online learning, all those things, put them in physical danger, have blood pressure, things that require them to take time off medically. Karen endured all those things. In addition to
013that, she had some personal issues that she alluded to. And I'm not getting into detail there in there, if you care to read a little bit more about them. But she was very good at trying to compartmentalize that, not bring that into her students, to continue to encourage her students to grow. But it definitely impacted her abilities to do what she needed to do. This year, more than any other year, would have been a very difficult year to be trying to work on an individual development plan. In addition to that, she had two brand new preps this year, things that she had never thought before. Typically, if you have a teacher that is struggling, you try to limit new things that you put on them so that you can try to work with them to
014support them to get them where they need to be on the other things. One of those was a mythology class. Not only did she tackle this new class, mythology, but she recognized that her students have a strong interest in Norse mythology that was not reflected in the course. So she did the work to bring Norse mythology into the mythology class. knowing that that would help get students interested. That's a great knowledge of content. That's an understanding of what her students want and need and dedication to making sure that those things happen. This was a tough year for her to do that. This was a tough year to do anything. Some of the things that were requested, the weekly lesson plans, that sounds like a very reasonable thing, that everybody turn in weekly lesson plans. In
015the world of teaching, it's not very practical. You generally run with a curriculum guide. This is what I do over the course of the semester. Here's what I do for this unit. And then you break it down, and then you evaluate on the run. So I might have penciled in on my calendar, I'm going to teach this lesson on Wednesday, I think, this lesson here, and this lesson here. But I'm not doing the detailed lesson plans until I get closer. I may have to move Wednesday out. Maybe we go through the stuff that's ahead of that more rapidly, or I find out that the students need a little more prep. We've got to build some background now, so I may have to delay that. So as you get to that, you're writing your detailed lesson
016plans the day prior, maybe two or three days prior. But, Karen? Did what she could to accommodate that. Again, in a very difficult year, writing detailed lesson plans that you know are going to change and you're going to have to rewrite throughout the week is a lot to do. There was an issue brought up with her not turning them in on time. According to the individual development plan, they were supposed to be in on Friday evening. She was teaching Friday, going home, recovering from a week of teaching and COVID, and then spending her weekend working forward on what was going to happen next week. She was getting them in by Sunday evening. So still ahead of that week, but taking time to evaluate what had happened the previous week, to go through the plans and
017things that she needed to to incorporate, and then turning that in. Again, extra work that... In most of the cases I've seen, it tends to be busy working because she's going to have to rewrite those plans as she goes forward throughout the weekend to meet the needs of the students, to diversify her instruction, to use formative assessment to determine what happens next hour, tomorrow, and next week. But she did that. She jumped through that hoop, not to the... liking of the evaluator, I get that. Overall, though, what you see is a woman who was a successful teacher here for 19 years, had success in her 20 and 21st year, but was not rated that way. So did she suddenly lose the ability to teach? What's the variable here? Part of it could be the stress,
018but we still have the student success. I think the variable here is a brand new evaluator. a new administrator. Again, not a bad guy, but a guy that I think got it wrong. I think that he was looking at his job as identifying teachers that needed to go and helping them out the door instead of identifying teachers that needed help and providing them support to be successful. So what I'm asking you guys to do is to give her an opportunity next year. Just so happens that they announced that her position would be teaching four sections, of English 12, one prep. Perfect for somebody who's got some things to work on. I have one prep to focus on. I kind of get a few iterations throughout the day to try out new ideas around student talk.
019If I'm developing learning targets to try to implement, I can use that time to put those together and put together one set of learning targets. Now, your different hours may be on different pages. But that allows you to evaluate what's working with a group, what might need to change for another group. So it's a perfect opportunity for her to move forward. And again, your students have not been harmed by having care and planning. They've made their growth. They're being successful. We don't have a list of parent complaints, student complaints. We have an evaluator that did not like what he saw and brought it to your attention. And I think that's fine. I will tell you, one of the lessons that she presented that was observed was a lesson on survival. She had the students read
020a couple selections written about survival. She presented them with a list of 20 items that they could have in their scenario. And then in small groups, they had to work through using the readings to support. They had to come to consensus on what items they would take in the scenario. When she wrote this up, she put a learning target down that said that they were learning, they were studying survival. That's a common mistake with learning targets. When people first start implementing them, they use them as tasks. They list the components of the task instead of tying it to the underlying structure that they're trying to build. The lesson that she did was fantastic. It had them reading two different selections. It had them evaluating the information they were giving. It had them trying to compel
021another person in their group to believe what they believed using evidence. It had them then forming a consensus about what would assimilating information that they had and putting it into another context. All of those are very key elements of language arts. Those are things that you want your students to do. The things that she had them doing is why they're successful at the end of the year. She just needed a little work on how to talk about that when you're using learning targets. So it's not that she wasn't doing good work. It wasn't that she had a bad lesson. It's that she lacked that one little piece on how to talk about it with the evaluator. At the end of the day, you have a teacher who is providing success for their students. who is
022connecting with the students and who is encouraging them to do their best. She has support amongst her colleagues. She has support amongst the community. If you gave her another year to prove herself, you're not out. You're not putting your students at harm. You're giving her a chance to prove that some of these things are not out of her. That's what we're asking you to do. Thank you. Yes, so Mr. Ruiz and Mr. Garibaldi. Do we have the information on your students' scores and where your students ended up compared to other students? I do not have that information. It was commented on that the teacher has supportive colleagues. Do we have any evidence of that support colleague? We do have a letter from, an email letter from one of the colleagues. Sure, I'll ask another question.
023You made reference to the evaluator that made a decision perhaps to figure out how to have the teacher remove rather than give her opportunity to improve. Did you note that we had several opportunities for her to observe other teachers? And although those opportunities were taken, the improvement was not known. One of the first questions that I had for Jeremy was what supports you to do that? He said, I put her in contact with six different individuals that are really exemplary teachers. I said, wow, that sounds really fantastic. What that amounted to was one day where she was allowed to go and observe one hour of their teaching throughout the day. So she was given a sub for the day and spent the day observing one hour. During those observations, she saw... What you would expect
024any time you drop in. Some things were fantastic, some things were typical. One of the people had a learning target that had been on the board for six weeks and admitted that. So I think to expect that somebody would sit in the classroom for an hour with a teacher and then suddenly be able to implement. Yeah, there was. Whatever was happening that day, they didn't say, hey, this next Tuesday I'm doing a great piece where I use great student thought and I'd like for them to come and watch this and then I can sit down with her afterwards and talk about it. So it was exposing somebody to potentially some really good teaching, but there wasn't a lot of follow-up with that. In my view, that's surface level support. Say, hey, we'll let you go
025watch a teacher. You know, and I think that I will give you an example. Talking about that lesson that I talked to you guys about, after the final evaluation, we talked, and I said, so your learning target, you know, you said that for that lesson, your learning target was survival skills. And I said, do you teach survival skills? Well, I did today, and I said, what was your goal in teaching that? She said, well, then started talking about reading multiple sources. So she knew what her goal was. She was misidentifying what a learning target was. She thought it was a task, delineating a task. So, yeah, that's what they were doing that day, but that's a description of the lesson, which, again, is a common practice. When I say you want to tie that back
026to your underlying language arts, goals and lessons she went oh my gosh i wish i would have known that so the fact that i could have a 15-minute conversation with her about a lesson that she thought makes me wonder why that conversation wasn't happening like why didn't he say this is what we would like to see here's an appropriate one and i run into this with a lot of evaluators The problem is when you're trying to help a teacher develop a new skill, you have to scaffold that skill. You have to sit down with a lesson that they presented that they didn't do well with and walk them through why it was not successful and show them how to fix it. Once you walk them through that and you give them the tools, then you
027can expect that they should be able to take that and start making some progress. If all you're doing is reporting the failures over and over and over again, and you're not giving them a good exemplary way to fix it, with that specific lesson, with that instance, I think that your support falls short. The district provides professional development. Yes. And so that is a great question. This is where although Karen has been dedicated to making sure she meets students with the stuff that's been going on there, she admitted she did not need to attend all of the professional development. That's been the event that she needs to release some of that extra pressure. So, making up some of that PD. I know that when districts implement 5E, they typically do learning targets as one of the
028first things that they kind of move towards because it's a brand new construct. And there's typically a lot of professional development offered around designing, writing, implementing learning targets and success criteria. Karen missed out on a lot of that. So, finding a way to... work with a colleague to get that or sit down with her. And I will tell you, I have a string of five Ds. My goal, if you're hearing a chance to afford it, is to continue to work with her and support her from my end. The MEA has some great tools that we can make available to her to help her be successful in those areas. There's also the other thing that Steve talked about. that was kind of a goal for Karen. And I know that some of the, there are some
029aspects of student talk that are kind of . One of them is using student questions where you make sure that you're hitting everybody. You don't just call on the people to raise their hands. Karen is very sensitive to students that have anxiety or that... She knows if she puts them on the spot, that will be an issue. And she talked about that. But some of that rubs against her knowledge of how to deal with physical problems. And so I think fine-tuning some of those things, creating opportunities in small groups for student talk might be a way to do that. But she is thinking about these things and trying to figure out how to do them. Again, having that opportunity to have somebody sit down with her lesson plan and look at places where you could
030integrate some of those tools, I think would be extremely helpful. Again, her lesson plans are spot on. She's teaching the curriculum as it's presented. She's getting the curriculum across to students. She's just not using the tools that Jeremy was looking for her to use. The new things that are important to find. The whole idea of a learning target. was developed from watching teachers who are really good at what they do. Teachers that were experiencing great success. Students were making adequate yearly growth consistently. And they tried to capture what those teachers did. And I specifically asked him, I said, how many of them actually put a wooden frame on the floor? And he said, well, probably not very many because that's kind of their 5B's construct. It's a way to... scaffold to help somebody pick up
031a practice that maybe they didn't already have. I'm sure some of you had some fantastic teachers in your time. I can't ever remember any of my teachers using learning targets to test criteria in that form. Now, it's a great tool. I'm not saying you shouldn't use it. I'm saying maybe it shouldn't be put on a pedestal. And if you're not doing that, you get fired. That's what I would say about that. It's a useful tool. In five years, there will probably be another set of tools, another terminology that we'll be using. That's the nature of teaching. That's something that comes from online. Your job tonight is not to judge miscellaneous or miscellaneous competencies. Your job tonight is to determine whether or not there's significant enough evidence. to proceed through the proper procedural channels and engage
032in the tenure period. So while Mr. McGee has done a wonderful job presenting information to you in a 15-minute span, his facts are biased, and I would encourage you to be mindful of that. Your work tonight is just to determine if we want to review the board's support. the district's recommendation my recommendation to move forward with the same your job is not to determine whether or not miscellaneous deserves another opportunity so to be clear in that process and just move forward for further investment. Peter, I have a question for you. In your review of the file, was there any course plans you can send to me? And I would ask Karen, that expectation repeated over and over again in your failure to submit your lesson plans in a timely manner, how do you justify that?
033Again, though, I would ask that the license plans were requested to be in by Friday. Continually, based on what I'm reading, you failed to have those in. You're saying that it's a living document and having it in by Sunday was timely enough, is that correct? You're indicating that after you went home Friday, it would take a day and a half, Saturday and half a day Sunday, to look at their work, determine what your lesson plan would be, and then you create that lesson plan and then get it done Sunday night? On Friday or Sunday? On Friday. Do you see the slippery slope that you're going down or we're going down by suggesting that Although the requirement was Friday, you know, if we were to allow teachers to change that to Sunday. Sure. But that's not
034appropriate. No, I mean, you're right. Okay. I can agree with you on that. This is a requirement that would not require any of us. I understand that. I logged over 400 hours by Canvas between August and September. One class was the best my ability. I was given generalities. I was not given specific. I asked the numerous times to sit down and roll them in less than. I just wanted to know what I was doing. So hard. Yes, there is a procedure that you can go forward with tenure charges. Just in case that's what you're looking for. Yes. And for the record, we don't have evidence to present this evening that Mr. McGee is presenting because we're not prepared for him. Really, there's two charges. We're seeing those two charges. Based on her evaluation, out of
035a four-point scale in 2021, her overall score is 2.16. which factors in student growth that the district, that all teachers in the district, all administrators, my evaluation is based on the same factor that we're doing. And so, you know, to get a score of a 2.16 is, you know, in my 25 years of administration, rarely have I seen a score this low. Now, I've only been working with 5B for 10 years in my previous district. And in this district, but it's the insubordination. And that revolved around, again, the lesson planning piece. And specifically, it involved her failure to submit lesson plans for her absence. That was a waste of time. And it required her peers to step up and provide directions to that substitute. And that was a planned day off? I don't know. My
036son. This is from Kelly. just a couple of closing remarks um this year has not been question And then I had a question about the insubordination. When they talked about the lesson plans being due on Friday and your assessment, you need to go back to say, can we change this due date to a Sunday? Because I need more time. And the answer you received was no. Thank you. you're ready for our audit and we're up for the next fiscal year as well so i'll try my best to be brief uh in board book is the year-to-date budget the general fund updates i'll start with that it's very worthy of knowing even though the fiscal year ends june 30th both the revenue and expense side of the order are very far from home so much like
037teachers are paid through august for work performed this last year We received revenue from the state of Michigan in July and August. So I won't be later anything here, but just with the final budget here in this second quarter, we're still quite a ways off when you look at our new data. And that's because we still primarily have two state agencies, one July 20th and one August 20th. That revenue is yet to be realized. There's a lot of federal revenue as well that we can't draw down until we pay the teachers in July and August and incur that expense. So that will continue. You won't really see final orders over here. It's a little in there. And on the expense side, as I said, there's still invoices that are in the public. Same thing with
038the bond, just received an invoice today, so I'm not going to put it on the screen, but there is, of course, the bond budget update. Received an invoice today from GMB for progress through June 30th. And so we'll pay that in July, and we'll pay the expense back through June 30th because of the work that's been going on. That will continue to change. The big piece of news, coming out of Lansing really last week, is the finalization of the school aid budget. The state budget is not done. There's a lot of work to be done. But the school aid budget, House Bill 4411, was passed, it's awaiting the governor's signature. And as I snuck into our final budget at the last moment, we will see a 589 per people increase to $8,700 next year. So
039that did come to fruition. That will be the case. I did put some other points in here, and I won't go through each one, but there is an increase. to retirement costs, which, of course, as salaries go up, and then each year they ratchet up the percentage that the district must spend on a hip surgery call, which is a public service employee retirement system. There's offsetting money in there. You may remember the school safety grant that went away. The district had quite a large two-point system with that. That is back in the budget, so there's a quarter million dollars for that. dollars um and then when we first question that is 31a at risk slight increases there so although we're the almost through it all but uh the district by district breakdown shows that if
040we were to help hold uh enrollment constant just from the the large increase in foundational loans alone look at post-pandemic and getting the help that pretty much as we were hoping would occur lastly our investment earnings i have not reported on i wanted to uh in a few months here i wanted to just throw our final picture of course this was a lot more money prior to the pandemic and it's not really as much fun to trumpet now but you may recall a mid-year change Thank you. our daily investment earnings are more than they would be if we had discussed it. I'd throw that in there. Is that all right? Is that what you have in your head, James? I'm in the mix, sir. You're indicating that largely for the day, it goes out of
041your way to go off. Wages and, for example, it depends on when teachers and other administrators... district employees came into the system and now you have options that are different much different than what scott but each year they ratchet up the percentage of the district so this is a way to offset that increase for example from 1920 to 2021 the basic nip grade as they call it went from 27 and a half percent Not a substantial percentage increase, but it equates to $100,000. And so there's extra money coming in. So it's really kind of like a flow through as they try to get the pension system to have it completely funded by $100,000. Right now, if everybody in the state retired, we wouldn't be able to. We are applying for another safety grant. Yeah, so
042this was just announced. And I went through the water of faith language. I said, oh, they put that back in there. They haven't announced anything. It did say up to $250,000 per district. I know before, I want to say, I don't remember the dollar exactly, but there was two different tiers. One was, I think, $100,000 with no district match and up to $250,000 with a district match. And that's the one that Cedar Springs did. So, yes, we will, you know, at that time, once we know a little bit more, we're familiar with that grant application, we'll get together with our SRO and whoever else. Absolutely. I think I'll stay here because I think I have the next one. You are. Next up we have annual school bond loan application. Yeah, so this is up for
043action tonight. Again, this is an annual requirement. You can see here this is from the Department of Treasury. We are required to take action and file this annually by August 1st. So we're ahead of the game. This whole document is in board book. I had a small presentation on it last time. I don't know if there's any questions that they have. It is worth noting that it's an estimate at this point in time. We wouldn't actually borrow dollars until our May 1st debt service payments. So right around mid-March, that's when we look at things and say, this is the month we're doing this. And this will block us. And then it just kind of gives us every idea, I suppose, of what the need is. I have to see. Sorry, I don't have it right
044here. That was a little long, right? Yeah, so as presented in our last meeting, you have the body of handbooks for each of the individual buildings. The primary changes are more to format than they are to content. One question is... came at the table from Redlock. And the language in the Redlock handbook, as I understand it, is in line with the middle school and high school because sixth grade students eventually will become middle school students. And so the language is more reflective of the secondary handbooks than it is the online. um and that was just the unexcused absence for car trouble and i had to visit better with the staff if it's car issues that student had no control over i felt like it was a little harsh to punish a student or something that
045may event completely out of their control if there's a list and then you're correct so looking at them they brought up a lot of questions for me Looking at Cedar Hills and Beach, they had homework policies, and I've seen a lot of studies that show that homework at that age is not only not effective, but can be harmful. And so I don't know that actually looking at the handbook is going to fix that, but I'm hoping we as a board can look at policy in the future to maybe make a policy on homework irrelevant. those young grades. I really don't think homework is appropriate for that age. I still don't like the dress codes in the older grades. So I guess depending on if we're voting on the actual handbook or if we're voting on
046just the revisions, that will change my vote because I don't have a problem with the revisions that are put in. And I also had some questions. I think we should revisit our wellness policy, get some guidelines in for individual buildings because saying you can't bring any in any suites, or I guess suggesting that you can't bring in the suites for your birthday, but you can bring in cheese and crackers. opens a lot of questions to me as to why those are so different and what happens if they be green and the cupcakes, et cetera, et cetera. So again, it's not so much a handbook thing, but something I would like us to look at as a overall policy. We definitely have time. Item E, extending fund millage proposal with price and . it's important to
047point out that the district currently as we discussed last time has a one-minute uh safety funding that expires in December of this year um and we could put language in that calls that a renewal um but we've had a heavily rollback that's occurred over the last three years and so going with this language we do a couple things that I think the pros out there First one is it would restore it to normal. Again, it would be subject to rollback. It would continue to grow at a rate that exceeds CPI. But most importantly, this would allow us to put new language in that was not allowable in 2012. That language is right there in the fourth line. outside of taking care of our buildings and our department. I thought so, because the current language, the
048language of 2012, says that very much as well. But we really need to have, and this is speaking to our lawyer at home, we need to have language. So, I apologize. It was here at the last meeting. I'm not understanding, I guess, why we're asking for this. Because I know when we went out to the bond, this was a big thing. Hey, this is the funding, so it's okay for us to get a bond. So it won't be a big deal on your taxes. I guess I feel like this is not going to pass. I feel like it's a snowball chance. So I'm wondering where it came from. I have no idea what we were even thinking about. So we did not, that was not part of our bond proposal that, you know, I never
049said we would pull this off. Oh, no, I know it wasn't. It was used as an argument for some reason. So right now we're looking at a significant project at the high school. The track is continuing to delaminate, and it's now reached a point where really our only option is to do a major overhaul. that's the type of significant project that we would be able to use. And so it's for those other things that come along that aren't being addressed by the bond itself. okay i understand that i'm under i'm not understanding i guess why we think this would be a good time track you know renovation things like that that would be a good burden to the general fund but as we move past these as we move past these that's our dollars we
050have to find new money to technology that we're not one to one with current this would give us a great you know way to do that but this would be the last time that we could come out with voters and say truly not you know much like that village plus seven mils We're not increasing it beyond seven miles. Right now, the community is paying this one mile. We could just be consuming that for the bond. That's why, I mean, we have the same. Sure. When I'm just looking back to when we talked about doing the bond, we had umpteen million surveys sent out to find out if it's going to be worthwhile. And my feeling of just talking to people is, what? I haven't done any surveys, obviously, so I was just curious why we
051didn't do that research first. Like, I understand we need the money to totally get that. And I understand why this would be, I understand based on this would not be an increase, it's just kind of an extension. I get that. But I'm surprised that we didn't do that research first to find out if it would be for the board anyway. Yeah. Okay. My question about the document is nowhere, and I know you explained it, nowhere on there does it say renewal. But number one, you're running back one mil. Number two, my understanding is you can't get the technology and security for renewal. Is that right? So we would have a marketing program in place that would indicate, hey, it's going to say increase, but it's going to be renewal. It's really going to say increase
052because it's renewal. move on to the emergency operations plan. So that document again is a document that we previously shared at our last meeting. It is the document that we have in place that we use as an endpoint on those days when we have a bomb threat or another critical incident on campus. The primary changes from the 2020-2021 plan. So this plan was the inclusion of some floor charts and other things around taking more of a student approach. You'll notice in this document there are some gaps in terms of the identification of specific team members at the building level. And the reason for that is that those team members will be identified. at the beginning of the school year in August to take into account individuals that make important changes over this. So it is
053a document that we have to, the board has to approve on a annual basis and review it on an annual basis. It's something that we need at least to discuss as an emergency response team. And part of that feedback and part of that evaluation is getting feedback from our school resource officer, Kent County Sheriff's Office, state commission, state police, and other local agencies that can help provide us with guidance on these things. Thank you. I don't have any concerns with the documents, but just a wondering overall is does the state of Michigan allow for districts to enable teachers and staff to carry concealed, provide an extra level of security, is that something the state of Michigan law allows? And then my second wondering is are there any districts in Michigan doing that, and is there
054data that supports that? Because I have heard about other districts in other states. where our teachers have stopped time for people who've been stuck there. So my wondering is, does state of Michigan allow that, and is that an added layer of security that will help? So the state of Michigan would allow it. We would be one of very few districts that I know of that would have it. And I'm not aware of any data in support or opposed to having our staff care. So I'm not suggesting to stop the document in this track here, but it's something I would like to learn more about as we think about how we continue to provide increased security for our students and increasing their gain of experience. Thank you. We'll move on to Item G, Facility Bond Project
055Update with Kristen Kamp. So just a quick overview on where we are with progress on each of the buildings. So at Cedar Trails, many of the classrooms, they've done it in a phased process. So some of the classrooms are now entering into that completion phase. And so the team will be able to start moving furniture and moving things back into those rooms as they transition facets of the project. And they're tracking very well to be complete. to be able to turn that building over on the deadline in the middle of August. The Cedar View project, the planning is going very well. We did a page turn last week. And in that meeting, we go page by page through all of the detailed documents that GMB is putting together. So we start with demolition. Then we
056go new construction. Then we go electrical and plumbing and HVAC and go page by page through each of those facets of the work. The team was very excited that they, their impressions and as Triangle and GMB continue to talk with one another, that they're tracking the favorable direction from a budget perspective, which is always good to hear. Another update is that... We have a student painting group on campus and they're making great progress putting more paint on walls on certain days than we can purchase. And so we're finding that we're going to be able to expand the scope of their work and we're actually getting in and starting to paint individual classrooms to continue to provide some freshness. in that building. The project at Red Hawk is tracking very well, working through the nuances of
057how to really get the most out of that building, but also to be very mindful of the budget. There are two documents that are included in Board Book. One is just the overall building proposal, and there's another document that just shows some preliminary site proposal concepts. We're a little concerned about the site proposal because it looks great, but it wasn't necessarily in the original scope of the project. And so while it may look great, we may not be able to do it right now because of budget constraints. But we're hoping that there may be some things that we hold on to as contingencies in the event that other facets of the project come in under budget, then we will be able to fix them. from a prioritized basis. So that's Cedar Trails, that's Cedar View,
058that's Red Rock. I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. LaHaye to take the middle school and . And there's five weeks, five and a half weeks. But summer goes quick, as we all know. So every middle school curves and sidewalks continue to be poured. That's why you see them being poured. We did elect to have a lot of that cracked sidewalk that runs right up to the building pulled out. And that's going to be completely poured. So all new curves and sidewalks are going to be poured. We'll be right back. So That's something we're looking at. Ionization. The benefits to the bipolar ionization in the wintertime, it helps reduce energy costs because it requires us to filter less cool air into the water. And so the systems that we're moving forward with that will help
059us improve the water. Are there any reports out of materials? Are we, is there any shortages? Are we having any problems getting the materials ready for projects? Not at this point. And that was something, you know, when we were choosing. Thank you. Just for the sake of the folks in the room, the UV lighting, that's inside the duct lighting, not inside the glass. Okay, that brings us to the portion of our meeting with public comments. To whom it may concern, I am pleased to write a letter of recommendation for my fellow colleague, Karen Williams. Karen and I have worked collaboratively for the past seven years at Seaman Springs High School. Karen has been the general education teacher and I've been the special education team teacher of English 9 and English 12 courses. Karen has a
060unique ability to make long-lasting relationships and connections with all of her students, but especially with students that struggle to make connections with other staff members. It is a rare occasion when students are not kind enough to meet in their classroom before school or during lunch periods. They feel safe in her presence and they respect her. Over the past several years, especially the past few years, I've seen Karen working towards her goal to become more effective in the classroom. She creates detailed lesson plans with very described learning targets and test criteria for each lesson and for all three of her classes. She is knowledgeable in English language arts and core standards. She follows the curriculum that has been established among our district and collaborates with her fellow language arts colleagues to ensure that all students receive
061a guaranteed and viable curriculum among each core content area. Sincerely, Shannon Horton, English 912 Language Arts Resource Team. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So I don't understand how come she's being targeted. I get it, people fall behind, but we're going through some tough times, but truly, I struggle at work myself. COVID's not easy. Working from home isn't easy. Working from home and going back to school and going back home and going back to work, that's not easy. Some people need a break. This has been a really tough year. In fact, it's been a tough two years. And it doesn't just show in the future, right? It shows in our kids as well. Our kids are struggling. The teachers are struggling. Everybody is struggling. And it wouldn't hurt to do, and I'm sure you all have,
062I'm sure you all have full-time jobs outside of here. Would it be easy for you? Working from home and then going back to work and then working from home because the government needs to be fit. The government needs to be safe. And I'm sure it wouldn't be a struggle. It's an appeal. And I think we need to show more empathy. I'm sorry if I'm letting you. Thank you. A couple things. She was talking about masks. And I know that they say that the masks need to be on the school bus. Now, what they said is the masks need to be on the school bus because of public transportation. Schools are not public transportation. I can't get on that bus to ride it. I can't do this. You know, it's like a plane. You pay to
063get on it, you pay to get on that. So I feel like that is one statement that we can make and say, no, they don't need to wear a mask on the bus. I could be wrong on all that, but I'm just saying that's what I've read and that's what I've heard is that they're saying public transportation. So buses are not public transportation. We do not need to mandate on that. If someone wants to wear a mask, that's their choice. I don't know where you are or how you are with, and this might not be where it needs to be, but with KCTC. I don't know if you can give me information on... what they're following. I don't know my cycle is there next year. And I'm hoping that they are what we're following is
064not having to wear the mask and all that. The other thing that I have is I heard the other districts are hiring, I can't say the word, but it's the equity. You talk about the CRT, you guys are like, no, that's not coming here. The other terminology that they're using is equity. or whatever that word is and they're actually hiring people in to the school district and saying okay we want you to teach whatever they're teach the teachers how to teach the third however it is please don't do that please don't bring those people in just forget all about this here you forget about that equity diversity and inclusion it's wrong wrong wrong we talked about this before about a meeting so i don't want to raise down here but the other thing i do
065want to quickly say i was not aware of this one issue i just want to say my son hates school hate school she got him to get a bn so you tell me a kid that hates doesn't want to be here he wanted to quit because of all this he's like i'm done i don't need to go She got him a B. I mean, I don't know what she did, but obviously she did something right. I mean, he doesn't get B. I'm lucky if he passes his classes. So for him to get a B in English, I was like, whoa, that's really good. Good job, you know? And then we hear that she misses her job. I was like, what the heck? You know, so those are just my few things that I want to
066bring before you guys. Thank you for what you guys do. um It was critical race theory for one of his classes, and, frankly, I almost lost my mind. As I read through this, it really bothered me, mainly because, as you boil it down, it basically says, here's all the reasons why you're a racist, and if you disagree with me, then you're a racist. I'd like to read the definition. um And they give an example. Research conducted in schools suggests that black students collectively code switch between standard English in the classroom and after school English with their peers, which elevates their social standing with each independent audience. We also see examples of guidelines encouraging black people to code switch to survive police interactions, such as acting polite and respectful when stopped and avoiding running even if
067you're afraid. I try to act polite and respectful when I'm not. But I don't consider that code switching. I just consider that being polite and respectful to the officers. Colorblindness in four ways. I won't go through all those. Cultural appropriation, cultural racism, implicit bias, internalized racism, interpersonal racism. sexuality, microaggression, model minority oppression, people of color. It ends with racial equity, racial justice, racism, racism. Structural racism, volunteerism, which is one of my favorites. It basically explains that if you go on a mission trip to a foreign country and you volunteer your work, you're a racist. It ends with white apathy, white centering, white exceptionalism, white fragility, white privilege, white saviorism, white supremacy, and white supremacy culture. And then white. I'm asking that you guys please put up a brick wall. against bringing any of this into
068any form of teaching in our school. Thank you. Thank you. We've got polls out there. are ready to pull children from schools. I don't know if that number's 100% accurate. $8,700 a student. Someone's going to lose a job. So with that said, your last letter that you wrote out, you said, this was written by Scott Seabrook, came out June 28th, Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, all based, yeah, of course, right? Thank you. um 22nd this update we will provide our plans and launch um for the 20th school year please note it may change so you guys wrote a letter prior to that saying you know hey kent county please give us a chance to reverse it but then now you're going right back down to what we wanted to go so i'm going
069to ask you guys everyone a question why are you affordable pretty simple Number two, do you enjoy enforcing these infectious diseases, restricting them, simply as we do? Do you support critical race theory? Pretty simple question. Do you believe it should be a human's choice to be vaccinated? We're asking for it. If you're going to do the mandates, make an option. Everybody has their own rules, right? Number six, do you believe in social distancing and is it effective and a good choice for our children? This is a simple question. We deal with it every day. Number seven, do you believe that COVID-19 restrictions have caused our children to be in poor cultures? Because to tell you what, we could call it bad. You guys represent us. You're our voices. Remember, we can be part of it.
070And I believe more of you will. So please, I'm asking you, represent us. I know you're going to rock and hard with us. I get it. We're basically asking you to break the wall. Thank you. sure yeah we want to hear you so I don't know if you did go into the detailed description of where the spending for PPE came from. I'm not too sure how much of that was given. But I just wanted to give you a description of how we have that much money spent in PPE. Pretty much found the same suit with the whole mask and vaccine. It really should be. Are you guys going to enforce the mandates again? Or are you going to... because I can tell you I have my oldest one who is not in the conversation. She
071had a rough year. It's wearing pretty bad. It's not okay. And she's not the only one that I found out about. So we really need to start protecting. I know it's hard. I know it's scary. But how do you think they feel? How do you think the parents feel? I'm not saying nobody, no mask, no vaccine, no nothing. the other things There's all this talk about all the shedding and the transmission, and it's a big problem with the whole reproductive system. It's a problem with, it's an issue that just got announced today about the neurological effect of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. So, I mean, we really need to be given the choice. And then, if we have the shedding and the transmission, we can do that. Since we want to protect our kids so
072much, we want to have the vaccine, we want to have the map. So then are you going to separate the ones that are vaccinated and not? You know, there's that issue. There's a snowball coming. First, I want to say thank you. I know that we have the community. I would like to know a few things. So we asked what the ward did and I think you answered that on the website maybe. But I'm not sure. So if we could have better communication when we ask those questions. It looks like things just get put on there and we don't always know that they're out there. Even though it's the information that we're looking for that you want to share with us. We don't know if it's there unless it's sent out somehow or if there's a
073better communication on where to look or when to look. So I do appreciate that you put that out there. I asked the board what their job is and what they do. So thank you for putting that out there. I'm interested in knowing if we decide to go forward as a school district with not following the recommendations and guidelines, what our repercussions would be. I'm happy to help in any way that I can. But as a community, we would like to know what is it going to go against the school? What's it going to cost us, whether it's monetary, whether it's... I don't know. But what is it that it's going to go against the school district? We stand up and say, no, as a district, this is not what the parents want. Scott, I'm just
074going to call you out because your name's on it, but the letter that all of Kent County's superintendents signed, I'm just looking for more information on that. I don't know anything about it, but just kind of trying to understand what that was that you signed for the inclusion, because I think that maybe... We're misunderstanding what it was that you signed. So there could be something more that we're not really understanding. So just looking for some clarification on that because as our superintendent, I'm sure that you have the best interest of our children in our district. So if we can have some clarification on that, I'd really appreciate that. And you've heard what everybody else is thinking and what's going on. But as parents, we would really like to know what that involves. So you can
075follow up on that. And really that's it. But thank you for the time that you put into everything. I know that's a lot of hard work. And as I heard earlier, you're stuck listening to us and us criticizing you. And I don't want it all to be bad all the time. We did mention recall. It's not something we want to do, but we want people up here who are going to stand up for our kids, stand up for the parents, stand up for our district. So thank you for what you do. It's time consuming. It's raining. We know that. We understand that. We're behind you. Let us know what we can do to help. Thank you. That closes the public comment session of the meeting. And we'll move on to our action item. And our
076first item for action tonight is the tender charge resolution. And it was presented before us. We are forward. I will entertain a motion. Take the recommendation. I'll be honest. I'm very torn. I've had bosses in the past who have done very similar things. I'm not saying that's what Jeremy did. But I've been in a situation where I had a boss decide he didn't want me there anymore and got a lot of technicalities lined up and out I went. I also have a lot of, after two years of COVID, this seems like a terrible time to do this. I'm very torn about that. And in the 11 years I've been in the school board, we've only had one other person come up in front of us. for a 10-year charge that person i'm not sure how
077much i can say about that but that person was allegedly having relations that were inappropriate we'll leave it at that and that battle cost the district millions of dollars i shouldn't say i don't know exactly how much it cost a lot of money i know that in lawyer schools and it wasn't simple this person I mean, obviously, your story is very. you know you're up you're sharing it's it is it is moving and we have a huge difference in the lives of students and i don't think that should think i i still have concerns because there's been this is why i'm doing this for me because i i 100 believe in grace and second chances and work you know working with teachers to help them reach their fullest potential just like a student. I guess
078the history of other issues concerns me. So I think there's just on paper, I mean, I think there's enough here to say this is worthy of at least investigating because we really only heard one side, you know, a little bit more. So it's hard. i would want to hear both but i really appreciated shannon's comment in her experience because that is something that's taken so i've been a school board member for very long so i'm probably going to say when you've got a teacher that's got 21 years or 22 years in the district there are obviously we want the best teachers i think everybody on this board is here but there's two charters one's in competency and one's in supporting In competency, I know that there's a rubric and there's a reading, but Mr. Ruiz
079isn't here to explain to us kind of how those points went. I get maybe he's not supposed to because he's not a reader, but it feels like if we're going to push this forward and possibly end a 21 or 22-week teaching relationship, it would be beneficial for me to feel like I understood the rubrics, I understood the deficiencies, and I don't feel like I understand them. i would almost rather discuss this at our next meeting when i have more of that information because i don't feel like and i know it's maybe that's not our role right because our role is maybe it's just to say yes or no but if i don't understand what the conditions were it's hard for me to push it forward and say just just go ahead that's hard for me
080to do so i would want to understand a little bit more about that and compensate the teacher maybe not following the rubric of the I'm torn as well. I tell there's two compelling arguments. It's hard for me to take a stance that would end. I wish we could hear from Mr. LeWise. I just feel very comfortable making a statement in regards to the one other teacher in 11 years. I almost feel like I wish there was a sabbatical or something, like a year, like, get it together. But I mean, I know I'm not part of that conversation, but I just feel like... It's hard being a widow myself. And what you go through and seeing Karen and with COVID, if it wasn't a COVID year, I'd gamble it. But with it being a COVID year
081and it's so tough, there's just so much. I don't really feel comfortable. I'm sorry. So my thinking in bringing that motion before you guys is... I'm not here to assess whether the charges brought before us are accurate or not. I'm hearing the charges being brought before us as charges from the 1st and 2nd assessing whether or not there's enough criteria here to say, yeah, this needs to be moved to the next step. I'm hearing where at that point in time, somebody judges the actual criteria. is that correct so i feel like right now i'm not in a place to determine whether this is accurate or not i'm just here to say that yes there's two charges and assuming that it is accurate i want to investigate it that's my thought process and then like scott
082was saying before the evidence would be brought to the judge at that time to make that determination Here, I feel like there's enough to compel me to say, yeah, I want this investigated. If we have a teacher in the district that is not performing very well, who has had multiple chances over multiple years, yeah, I want that investigated. Whether it's somebody I don't know, whether it's my wife, I would want them investigated to say, why are you not approving? What's going on? Is this information accurate? And maybe it's not. And at that time, it will come up. But I feel like there's nothing here to warn us. That's my thought. My trust is in the process. This is uncomfortable, unfortunate, but the process... hearing my thinking second in the motion, whether it goes before an
083administrative law judge, that that's what they do is they hear out and they look for the truth. And that's not our role here today to make that perfect. Our role is to say, as Matt said, does this warrant more looking into from that state of law judge. I don't disagree with your premise at all. My thought is if it goes to a judge, then only the fact that we help people are a lot of our family. is not going to be considered in that actual we have an opportunity here today to take into consideration the fact that colgate is here and there were circumstances for this teacher that were unique and the facts aren't going to bear that out the facts are going to be these are this is what she did and the administration
084has indicated and this is what she's saying she did and the facts are going to bear out i'm not ready to go to that point No. No. No. No. I just want to clarify. voting on just the revision not voting on anything that was in there prior Okay. And I can, we can talk later about stuff that was questioned on later agendas. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
085Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. and several questions Thank you. I mean, we're not answering.