001all meeting to order please rise for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we have a roll call one here here fine here here jardine here palmer here hunting and high work here please note as a courtesy to members of the audience of the board of education please silence your cell phone public will only be able to speak during public comment if signed up and i have three forms right now we're good thank you mr merkel all right first off approval agenda can i get a motion support all those in favor yes yes opposed all right passes first up building presentation from south elementary sure so very excited to have south
002elementary with us tonight and uh i know we have dr england and mrs hyde here and take it away ladies thank you well we thought it might be um not only educational but fun for you to participate in a reading lesson tonight and we've probably um shared before with you about our tier one reading and how we address reading instruction not only itself but across the district um but we wanted to take it a step further and let you participate in what it looks like at step two or tier two when we are looking at reteaching or re-looping some of those skills so we're going to give just a really kind of brief overview of how we in granville kind of address literacy and that accusation you probably already know is through that mtss which
003is that multi-tiered system of supports and that level one tier one is usually whole class whole group instruction um but then what do we do at tier two where it's pulling those kiddos out and saying let's take a look at where additional instruction might be needed and then also tier three individualized when needed so we wanted to share with you a program that south has been using at tier two for the last two years it's called ufly and it originated out of the university of florida and we're really excited about it. South Reading Interventionists and our kiddos have made huge gains using this at Tier 2, so we wanted to give you some hands-on experience with it. So that's what our amazing kiddos are here for tonight. So just a little bit of background about
004how we form the groups that we do at South and across the district. We have two reading interventionists right now at South, Lori Smith and Kim Hyde, who I don't know how they do everything that they do, but they have really helped us move forward with addressing the needs of each individual child. So we start with that Tier 1 instruction where we're teaching those basic reading skills, and then what we do is we look at Tier 2, how can we fill in those gaps and what that means to fill in those gaps if there are some. So the first thing we do, of course, is look at the specific skill and then data-driven as it's being used. It should be. We look at the data from our kiddos, each individual kiddo with our classroom teachers
005and others on our team and say, okay, let's look at a skill that maybe a small group of kids could use a little bit more practice on because we all have areas of strength. We all have areas that we can still grow in. So we form those small groups. We look at that really targeted skill development and how we can address that through UFLY. And then apply it in those groups. Okay. Great. So we look at those small groups, which you're going to be able to participate in one of the lessons for that, and then we loop back around through formal and some informal assessment and say, okay, where do we go from here? Do we need to reteach using a different pedagogy or can we move on to a new skill? So with that,
006I'm going to turn it over to these amazing ladies and hopefully you will learn something new tonight. All right. Good evening. I am Kim Hyde. Like Dr. England said, one of the interventionists at South Elementary. So in front of you, we have placed kind of an overview that's on the UFLY website of what UFLY is and what it's all about. We're not going to go through all of that tonight because Dr. England gave a really great description of what it is. But we want to show you how it's implemented and what it looks like with students. So UFLY is an explicit and systematic program created by the team at University of Florida. The program was designed to use, to be used in core instruction. In the primary grade, so kindergarten through second grade. And then
007also in interventions with struggling students in any grade. So the eight core pieces that we work on in a UFLY lesson are phonemic awareness, visual drill, auditory drill, blending drill, new concept, word work, irregular words, and connected text. So we're going to take you through a typical lesson would be two days. We'd have a day one, a day two. We would work on the first four skills. Would be kind of a review of the skills that they've learned previously. And then lesson five is, or program five is the new concept that we're going to be working on that day. And then six, seven, and eight would be the new skills. We are going to kind of condense what we're doing tonight because a two-day lesson would take about 60 minutes. It's about 30 minutes a
008piece. So the kids know that we're going to be kind of skipping around a little bit, but we'll explain that to you. As we get through this slide. You ready? All right. So the other packet that we gave you, if you've got a colored copy, you've got two copies. And the second one is the lesson. And if you have a black and white, it's embedded in there. So all right. Boys and girls, we are going to start with our phonemic awareness today. So I'm going to have you take a look at our slides. We usually start our day one with the schedule. This is going to be our schedule for day one. So boys and girls. We're going to start with phonemic awareness. And I love how your eyes are already on the screen. Nice
009job. All right. We're going to do our blending and segmenting. So blending, remember, is we're going to say, I'm going to say the sounds, and you're going to put the sounds together to build a word. Ready? I-N. Fine. Fine. V-E-Z. V-E-Z. S-O-K. S-O-K. S-O-K. A-T. S-K-A-T. All right. Now we're going to segment. So give me your whole word. I'm going to say the word. I'm going to say the word. I'm going to say the word. I'm going to say the word. I'm going to say the whole word. You give me the sounds. Are you ready? Begin. Eve. Eve. Eve. Eve. Eve. Eve. Give me both sounds. Ready? Eve. Eve. Eve. Eve. Eve. Good job. Ready? Try gave. Gave. Gave. Gave. Good job. Give me code. Code. Code. Code. Nice work. Give me shine. Shine. Shine.
010Nice work. All right. Can you give us our sound when we get done? Ready? Cha-ching. Cha-ching. All right. We're going to move on to our visual drill. And boys and girls, look at me. Visual drill is with our? Eyes. Eyes. We're going to see the graphemes, the letters, and then we're going to say the sound or the phoneme that it says. Okay? All right. So now you're going to want to look with your eyes on the screen so we can run through our sounds. Everybody ready? A says. A. Or. A. Good job. O says. A. Or. Is. Is. Oops. Sorry. You guys started to say it. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Sorry. I jumped out. All right. Let's try this again. Oops. All right. We're going to go to the next one. I think
011they get extra credit. There we go. I think they get extra points for that. So. You want to move to NK? Yeah. There we go. Ready? NK says. Ng. Ng says. Ng. Wh says. Ph. Ph says. Ph. Ch says. Ch. Th says. Th. Th. Or. Th. Give me the voiced. Th. Th. There you go. Good job. All right. SH says. Sh. CK says. F. F says. L. L says. O. SS says. S. ZZ says. S. All right. Watch me. S says. S. Or. S. Nice work. U says. Uh. Uh. E says. Eh. Eh. Nice job. Watch me. Auditory is with your. Ears. Ears. We're going to hear the phonemes. Okay. And then we're going to write the graphemes. So I need you to get out your Etch-a-Sketch quickly. Nice work. Can you spell the sound
012A? One, two, three, show me. Nice work. Can you spell the sound I? One, two, three, show me. Nice job. All right. Can you spell the sound O? Show me. Good work. I gave you the easy ones first. All right. Ready? Spell the sound N. One, two, three, show me. Good work. All right. Tough one. Watch me so you can see my mouth. Spell the sound N. R. One, two, three, show me. Yeah. Nice work. All right. Spell the sound CH. Okay. One, two, three, show me. Good work. All right. Next one. I think we'll do one more. Can you spell the sound M? M. M. M. M. M. M. O. M. M. This one gets confusing. One, two, three, show me. Nice job. All right. You can go ahead and erase. Put your etch-a-sketches
013down, and give a cha-ching. Cha-ching. Good job. All right. Board members, what we would do next typically is step four is our blending drill. The boys and girls would get a whole word, and then we would either ask them to change one sound beginning, middle, or end, and they would chain it into a new word. We do this blending drill on an online platform that's interactive. We're going to skip this piece because in the day two, there's a word work piece that's very similar, and we want to show you that with magnet boards. And then, oh, give me a cha-ching just because we're doing a good job. All right, then it would be our number five is new concept, and this is where we would teach the boys and girls the new concept for the
014day. We're going to skip this as well because on day two, we review that new concept. So we're going to start with that with day two. All right, can you give me a we did it? We did it. All right, so day two starts with a review of that new concept. So here's our schedule for day two and the new concept review. So today we're going to review long vowel sounds in words with silent E. So remember, vowels make their long sound or say their name when there is a silent E at the end of a word. So the long sound for A is? Acorn. A as in acorn, yep. So watch me, A, and then you guys say? Corn. Say the sound. O. A. Good job. So A makes a long sound in words
015like silent E like the words? Make. And? Say. Good job. And here is the sound card that we would put on the sound wall after we introduce that sound. The long sound for I is? I. I. The long sound for I is I as in? It. What's the picture? I. Ice cream. I as in ice cream. So watch me, I. So you try. Ice cream. Say I. I. Yep. I makes its long sound in words with silent E like? Bike. Bike. And? Mine. Mine. Good job. And here would be the sound card that we would put on the wall for the I. And so then it would go through the O and the E. E. E card. So then we have some words that we read together at the end. So let's read these words
016together. Ready? Came. Ride. Here. Please. Good job. And? Cha-ching. Cha-ching. Good job. All right. Our next one is our word work and this is where we are going to use our magnet trays. So can you guys all get your magnet trays out for me please? Okay. I'll give you just a couple of seconds to make sure all those letters are. In the right spot. Okay. All right. Yep. Magnet trays guys. Yep. Just the magnet trays. Don't use white boards right now. Just your magnet trays. I got these. Well that's all right. Are you ready? Show me a thumbs up if you're ready. They've got to be perfect. They've got to be perfect. They do. It's perfect. Okay. All right. Here we go. Ready? Okay. You guys could please make the word bike. Bike. And give
017me a thumbs up when you have it. Bike. Good job. All right. Adults. Did we do good? So good. All right. So good. Okay. Take that word bike and make it into hike please. So change bike into hike. Now you have hike. Please change it to hide. Hide. Hide. Now you have hide. Change it to ride. Ride. Now you have ride. Change it to road. Road. Road. All right. Now we have road. Make mode. Change road into mode. Good job. And cha-ching. Cha-ching. Good job. All right. Boys and girls, can you put your letters back on their magnet trays where they go? And then when you put those magnet trays away, grab your sound boxes and your eraser and your marker please. Hey Walt, it's getting kind of warm in here. I sent something to
018you last. Thank you. All right. Our next section is irregular words. And if you look at the example up there, the word is said. And you'll notice that a few different things. That some of the sounds have a blue square underneath them. Another one has a red heart underneath them. And then there's also a line under that AI. So if you guys, so who can remind or tell everybody why those blue squares are there? What does the blue square mean? What's the blue square mean? The vowel? Good try. Is that the regular sound or the irregular sound? Irregular. The regular sound. The regular sound. So the red heart is for the what sound? The heart, the red heart doesn't actually make the sound say the actual sound. Yep. That's the irregular sound. Yep. And then
019the red line is for sounds that have how many letters? Two. Two, three, or four letters. Yeah. So when a sound has more than one letter, there'll be a red line. So when a sound has more than one letter, there'll be a red line underneath it. So they know those go together. All right. So our first irregular word is, let's read this one. What's this one? There. There. Yep. Our next one is? Where. Where. Good. We have who? Thy. My. My. All right. Now we are going to spell some of those together. Okay. So the first one we are going to spell together is there. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. Spell together. How many
020sounds do you hear in there? Two. Two. So how many boxes should we use? Two. Just two. Yup. All right. Can you show us when you're done? Good job. Good job. So this little thing right here is movable. So then I would just move it down and they can see the next one. All right. One more that we're going to spell. Your word is my. Can you spell my. How many sounds do you hear in my? Two. Two. So how many boxes are we going to use? Two. Two. I'm holding on to mine. up when you're finished good job everyone go ahead and erase and let's hear our sound we're gonna do connected text so typically we would have the students read multiple sentences first on the screen and then we would and this is
021a sample of the sentence that we would do so can everybody read that with me ready all right all right and then we're gonna practice spelling a sentence so can everybody get their whiteboards ready all right so your sentences I like to sit in the shade so say the sentence repeat the sentence first I like to sit in the shade so how many words do we have I like to sit in the shade so go ahead and make seven lines on your whiteboard so we're gonna write seven words I like to sit in the shade okay so then we also have this caps poster that we go through and the C stands for capital capital so did we start our sentence with a capital yeah all right a is for a person a person a
022person a person a person a person a person a person a person word appearance can we read what you wrote p is for punctuation so did we put punctuation at the end yes okay and then s is for spaces and spelling did we get all those things right yes awesome all right the last piece we are going to let the kiddos do independently with our board members before we end typically what we would do is we would do together and that would be the first sentence we would have the students read a decodable passage that is completely decodable by them at this point. At this point in Lesson 57, they have learned every single sound, every single phoneme and graphing that's in this passage, and they've learned every single regular word that's in this passage
023as well. So we're going to end, we would also kind of diagram or go through and come to digress this session, or this passage, excuse me, by having them highlight the key skill that we've been working on and the regular words that we've been working on, but we're going to skip that stuff tonight. So boys and girls, board members, you have the passage in your packet, and you have your turn to that, and then you have your student read you the passage, and then on the very back, we have our roll-in brief game, and then you can teach them how to play that. So we're going to leave you there for a few minutes. Good. Is this my passage I'm looking at? No. Yeah? Is it safe? All right. I think it's this one. You
024have two packages. Oh, wait, hey, Rosie. You probably lost it. I thought you stole it. No. No. All right, you want to show me this passage a little bit, Izzy? Yep. This is the passage in the radio. Okay, you have the make, write, change, and the art, because states, what does it start with? Change. It talks about侍. It goes back in principle to Parallel mythology- Five feet? Yeah, five feet. Okay. So you just see how one does it one, right? Yeah, so you just see how one does it one, right? One, right? One, right. Then it says except for one, it's not the same as any character, correct? Maybe... No, that's wrong. Right? And it's just one. Okay. Oh, I see. Oh, that's correct. That's correct. Now this passage can solve a lot of things.
025For instance, if you do the three chances, are the same, they are the same, right? One is five and six, is it the other? Yes. What would that be? Pick Penguin? Within zero. And there's a single piece of the top of the horse. There you go. Have you seen it? So it can't be. It can't be. It can't be. And I can't change it. I want to have a little bit of fun. I can't change it. And I want to have a little bit of fun. I can't change it. I can't change it. I can't change it. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes. OK. It's a little game out here, huh? All right. Boys and girls, one, two, three. Eyes on me. I know that. I'm interrupting you and I apologize. We want to be
026very respectful of the adults' time tonight in their meeting, so we're going to stop right here. I think we've given them a really great idea of what we do in our reading lessons. Can you give your adults a hand? Thank you for learning with us today, and we appreciate you learning about youth life. Ms. Brown. I have some questions. I don't care. So, the district invests, so you guys are youth life, right? The district invested quite a bit in unlocking the reading code. Yep. That's our tier one. Tier one. Yeah. We use that across the board. You still use that? Yes, we do. Okay. And that's . This is tier two. Okay. So, for those smaller groups. And I think this really hits, as you can see, small group. Trying to do this in tier
027one, I think would be really difficult. Yep. Especially for the row. Nope, you've answered my question. Any other questions? My friends. You've been amazing. Yeah. So amazing. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, thank you. That was great. I know. You've not done that at all. It's intimidating. Good job for them. You were really . Yeah. Yeah, you were. all right on to the next item which is a reports agenda or start with the board members report let's start with Joe oh thank you well I just want to say thank you to Roger so I'll skip the usual stuff but I'll say thank you to Roger for the letter that went out to email that went out today I just want everyone to know in this district we
028have an incredible security team between the SROs and our director and mark easterly some of the best in the business so I appreciate them I spent a couple hours also last week with a reunification training it was up for Rockford but it was good training so we're planning on bringing that same reunification drill to Granville probably sometime this winter so if you prepared for that and I hope I'll be able to Amy just a couple things fun watching marching band they're out there and they're doing a lot of work and they're doing a lot of work and they're sweating it up even during the school day so I'm very proud of our band members they are very hard workers my parks and recs appointment on the on the parks and recs board is really great
029because a lot of our students in the district really like to go fishing along that section especially behind the factory it's interesting to look at our environmental impacts on the on Buck Creek and different things in parks and recs and we're working with trout unlimited to turn that into more of a section that has a lot of activity and I think that it's really cool because it's a section that has turbulence so that we can have more trout in there and it's just really cool for all of our students you see kids from Granville back there all the time fishing and it is so much fun to see how the parks and recs in the school just it's it's great it's right behind the cemetery so yeah it's like a straight shot and so apparently
030when it's a straight shot it's actually bad for your it's bad for Buck Creek so you need the turbulence you need to make sure that those the like the micro quad google maps đó so that our fish are thriving so that our fish are thriving and so that our fishermen are things and then I had one note I got a note from Jen Harper who just retired from the Granville Education Center and she said would you please share this with everyone at the next board meeting she said I want to tell you how thankful I am to all of Granville for the opportunity that I have had to teach it has been wonderful and a tremendous and it has been wonderful to work with the tremendous leadership team the Board of and all of our
031educators. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. So Jen Harper had a great, she was an amazing leader. My granddaughter had her as the head of the Early Childhood Center. And, yeah, she will be missed. She is greatly appreciated. That's all I have. Great. Thank you. Kim. Thank you. Well, I just want to say thank you to the communities putting together so many fun activities for the whole family for homecoming. If you haven't been to the website yet to see all the things that are coming for homecoming next week, take a look at it. It is really, it's turned into such a fantastic event the last few years, and it keeps growing, and it's a joy to be there and watch. Unfortunately, I'm going to be out of town, so I'm going to miss
032it all this year. But have fun for me while you're there and enjoy the fellowship because it's just a great night to see the best of Granville all together. It's community and learning. And then community night at the band last weekend was just fantastic. So community night is a night where the band put together their show so far for anyone who wanted to come out and watch it. It is phenomenal. I have not seen marching like this yet, and my kids have been in band for upwards of ten years in marching band. So this is our final show, and it's fun to watch. The kids come home sore every night. They're running. They're ducking. They're diving. They're doing a lot of great things. But then after, before the show, they did a senior night too.
033And seeing how many students have gone through that program from, you know, fifth, sixth grade all the way through. I mean, it was all the way across the entire football field. And so it's just amazing to see the dedication to it and the lives it changes and how many students said they're doing something with music in the next step of their life. Whether it's their career or a side activity or, you know, jumping into a, you know, a club. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or in the next step. It's really cool to see how it carries on and becomes a lifelong learning activity that enriches them. So thanks again to our music department and all the families who support that program because it can't be done just with a teacher. It's many teachers and many community
034members, and it's really cool. Thank you. You're welcome. Barb. Did you say Barb? Barb. Sorry. Yeah. Bob. Barb. No. Okay. Yeah. There's no R. I agree. There's no R in Bob. So. Robert. Robert. I have nothing. Okay. I just want to say, I know we all know about it, but the article on our principal at Cummings Elementary in the School News Network, it was so good. He's just got so many great things going on and his love of children. So Alan Bosker, I encourage all of you to look at that on the School News Network and appreciate the guy. He's got it going on there at Cummings. So that's all. Thank you. Thank you. Nothing. Nothing. All right. Very good. So thank you. You already was intuitive. You knew. I knew. All right. There we
035go. Right. So first off, thank you all for coming. I'm sure you guys are all excited about the great night we're going to have ahead of us of policy review and financial audit. Right? So it's going to be a barn river tonight. So we'll have a little fun. So thank you for everyone's comments so far. Obviously the band, the senior night was really great. So thank you to those that put that on. And I have a senior member of the band. So that was a lot of fun. And you're right. It was kind of shocking to see how many seniors we had. I hadn't realized that, that there were so many seniors. So that was really cool. And the show was coming along great. I got a chance to spend some time watching a lot
036of tennis with my senior as well. And it was a hot one out there today. So yeah. So just encourage. I know that everyone's out there and doing everything they can. But man, as much water and as much hydration as we can get all those kids, it's money well spent if we can get it out to them. So it's hot out there right now. It's hot and dry. So other than that, that's all I have. So we'll turn it over to you. Okay. Thank you. Thanks for sharing everyone. I just want to thank South Elementary again for doing a great job and bringing the kids in and getting a little snapshot of that tier two intervention. So we just really appreciated that. Some things on the horizon. Kindergarten tailgate is this Thursday from 430 to
037630 at the high school. That's always an exciting time. You know, they get a chance. They get a t-shirt. They celebrate with their families. And then they get to run through the Bulldog. I think that's probably the most, you know, the biggest thing they'll remember, you know, far down the road. And as was mentioned, homecoming is Friday, September 27th. Really looking forward to all the great activities that are in store. Victory Day is coming up. That is Saturday. October 5th from 1030 to 1130. If you have never been to a Victory Day, you're really missing out. So, you know, every year it's just an amazing thing. And everyone walks away from that with a big smile on their face and just a great celebration of our wonderful kids. And as Joe had mentioned, we sent
038a communication home today. I wanted to follow up a little bit on the. Alleged threat, if you will, from last week. But really wanted to talk about the process we use and many of the things that we go through every time there is, you know, a potential or alleged threat. So, if you haven't had a chance to read that letter, please do. Because, again, it really does give you a nice thorough look into our world when something like that happens. So, we greatly appreciate it. Other than that, just happy to be back in school. You know, we're thick in it now. We're, you know, have weeks in the books here and just excited for what the future is going to bring this school year. So, that's it for me. All right. Great. Thank you. All
039right. Moving on. Into the consent action agenda. Can I get a motion? I'm out. Support. All those in favor? Yes. Opposed? Passes. Passes. Passes. On to five. Report and discussion items. 5A, the financial audit presentation. Yes. As you know, we go through an audit. And we have Heather here. And is Kayla going to help out, too? And we have Yo-and-Yo here. So, take her away. I'll turn it over to Michael from Yo-and-Yo. Michael Eberhard from Yo-and-Yo. He and his team completed our financial audit this year. Do you want to go? Do you want to go? I know. I'll put it in here. You'll find the financial statements and then the schedule of federal awards as well. Thank you. All right. Thanks for having me today. I've got a short presentation for you to go over
040the audit results for the fiscal year, June 30th, 2024. So, I'll just kind of jump right in. So, in your packet is all the official reporting that has to go to the state of Michigan and the federal government. And then you'll find the financial statements and then the schedule of federal awards as well. Yes. So, they're all available to the state of Michigan and the federal government. So, there's probably about 100 pages of stuff in here, so we're just going to do this PowerPoint like usual. So, on the first slide, you know, these any kind of audit presentation I do, no matter who it's for, the first two slides are always the same every time. So, this one says that the district is responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and this includes having
041good internal controls at the school district in order to produce accurate numbers. All right. Thank you. So the reason why this one is important and why it's first is because it's you know, we want to point out that as your auditor We're not coming in at year-end and helping the business office clean the books up or anything like that There are certain things that we're allowed to help with in certain situations But for the most part we're very very hands-off. We're not doing any kind of bookkeeping or anything like that We're coming in as an independent third party to verify the accuracy of all your numbers And then on the next slide it talks about our responsibilities, which is to Follow all the professional standards that are set before us in order to conduct your
042audit appropriately So a little bit about what the audit is and what we do Think that's a audit is a word that is a scary sounding word and a lot of people don't know 100% what it means other Than that we're in verifying a bunch of stuff So it all starts with understanding your internal controls So the audit standards say that in order For us to have any idea of what we should do in an audit where we should spend lots of time where we should spend Not a lot of time. We have to have a really good understanding of the inner workings of the district So the first thing we do is we start with your policies and procedures and we say You know as they're written are they designed appropriately or are there
043some deficiencies in there? There are some holes somewhere where something could go wrong Then we sit with the people in the business office and we say, okay, you've got these great written procedures How do they actually function in reality? Do they function the same as they were last year has has there a new person have they picked up everything? They're supposed to be doing type of thing so every year we even though we have an idea of how things work we have to you know kind of Start at a base level and you know pretend that we know nothing So we do what we call walkthroughs and we pick a number of transactions for the year and we walk them through from start to finish so We look for where could something go wrong and
044once we do that we form a risk assessment and come up with Areas that we think we have to spend that lots of time in in areas that we feel really comfortable with and we think We can scale back a little bit. So we do a number of procedures substantive procedures bullet point number four those are the best they're very it's hard evidence it's a it's confirmations and receipts and statements and things from third parties that are you know independent evidence analytical procedures are more of what we expect to happen versus what actually happened we audit a large number of school districts in Michigan so we have a lot of data to compare districts against then we can say okay well these 75 districts this happened and you're the only one that this happened that
045seems weird we also skip the next bullet point unpredictability is something that we have to incorporate into our audits every single year and the reason for that is auditing there's just a certain science to it and a lot of business officials are pretty familiar with that and they can probably tell you a lot of things that we're going to look at before we look at it so we give a request list to the office and it's got probably 80% of everything that we're going to ask for on it already they have lots of time to prepare for it but there are certain things that we kind of hold back and we know it's something that we didn't do last year the year before and the idea is to keep everybody on their toes and you
046know say that you never know what we're gonna look at we do have to perform your audit in accordance with government auditing standards because so much of your dollars is you know grant dollars or federal federal you know property taxes all that kind of stuff and so we're going to look at that and you know some of those things that we have to pay for so we have to be cognizant of fraud waste and abuse under those standards we have some other grant compliance testing that we have to do you know you get grants from many different sources and we do have an audit manual in Michigan Department of Education wants us to follow and you know we have to have to follow that and then towards the end we help prepare your financial statements
047and then we do all your filing for you there's a data collection form that has to go to the federal government we file with the state federal your local ISD and I do want to mention this bond audit at the end so you do have some significant bond projects going on at the district obviously and have for a number of past few years so each year when we do the audit we're auditing the bond dollars as well and doing our samples technically the bond audit doesn't need to be done until the end of the project but we do it every year as we're going along so that way it's less cumbersome at the end so get into the audit results you received an unmodified opinion unmodified means it's basically a standard opinion we didn't have
048to modify it in any way to say everything looked great except for something so it says that we attest that all the numbers and your financial statements are materially accurate some more results so when we do that internal control evaluation if we come across anything we have to report that to the district and then we'll have to report that to the district and then we'll have to report that to the district and then we'll have to you if it's significant again the the objective of an audit is to get that opinion on the accuracy of the numbers it also you get an opinion on compliance with grant regulations so the objective of an audit is not to give you an internal control evaluation but you know we are going to make recommendations should we see
049any you had no material weaknesses no significant deficiencies those are the two highest levels of deficiency we can communicate you had none of those which is good thing regarding the single audit this is something completely separate from the financial statement audit you know financial statement audit we're just auditing numbers and making sure all those look good single audit is more following rules of grants so there's a number of larger grants that you get and for probably the fourth year in a row are one of at least one of our major programs was the education stabilization funds so this year that's mainly s or the s or three type of grants there's a couple other small grants there's a couple smaller ones as well so that's where we focus the majority of our time and attention
050you are a low risk oddity because you've had several years of excellent audits with no findings so the standards allow us to audit a little bit less because you've you've had that you know that demonstrated history so regarding the single audit we had no material weaknesses no significant deficiencies again and no material non-compliance so that was completely clean Some other things we're required to tell you, we had no disagreements with management in any way, no difficulties in performing the audit. An example would be, oh, we don't have support for that transaction, it went missing. Or we had questions nobody knew the answers to, or unreasonable time constraints, that kind of thing. Everything went fantastic. You're a pretty good sized district and you're ready pretty early, toward the beginning of our schedule. And to get your
051audit results communicated this early tells you how prepared your business office was for that audit. We had no material audit adjustments, which as an auditor, that's my favorite part. That the books that we got were clean and we didn't come into a messy situation where we had to propose a lot of different adjustments in order to make the books right. And then somewhat rare is the last comment that says no matters for management's consideration. That would be something that's not material, but it's something we noticed and we just wanted to let you guys know, like not a huge deal, but we did find this. We had none of those as well. So we'll get into some high level financial results. We got some graphs for you after these pages. So this is a summary of
052the revenues and expenses for all your funds. So you can see the general fund, had a change in fund balance of minus $400,000. Your capital project funds, we put those all into one line item there. So I know whenever you see a negative performance in your mind, you think, oh, that's bad. But the idea of a capital project fund is to hold all the dollars that was passed for these projects. So it's going to keep going down until it's gone, until you spend it. So debt service fund had a good increase of about $1 million. That's largely real. That's largely regulated, calculated for you. You levy enough taxes in order to pay our future debt payments. The rest of your funds were pretty much awash other than the sinking fund that had a decline of
053about $1 million. So some more on that in a little bit. We have a budget to actual comparison for you. So the original budget would have been done in June of 23. Couple big things that are not known at this time is what your student count is going to be, which drives the amount of revenue that you're going to get for the year. And the budget at the state of Michigan is, I can't remember the last time that's been passed as of June 30 when it's time to pass the budget. So that's unknown at that time as well. So you're guessing on some things. So you can see budgeted for about a $500,000 decrease over a year ago. Then your final budget came in nearly an identical number. The same. And your actual performance is
054also nearly identical. So $158,000 variance on an $86 million budget, that's very, very close. Got some graphs for you coming up. So some of these are informational, like this one. It's just where does our general fund revenue come from? So 65% comes from the state of Michigan. 21% is from local sources, property taxes, and things like that. Inter-district revenue would be from an ISD type of source. And then federal at 5%. And I believe I said last year, and I'll say again this year, that that federal piece is going to continue to decline unless something changes. But there was a lot of one-time grants from federal sources in the past several years. And those are coming to an end very, very shortly here. This graph shows your general fund expenditures and how those are distributed.
055OK. OK. So the teal slice and then the orangey looking one, the two big ones add up to about 80%. That's a little higher than most districts. Usually that number is about 75%, 76%. So you might think, oh, 4%, that's not that much. But 4% of $85 million is a very big number. So it's a little bit higher than I usually see. It's been that way since I've been on the board. We're usually 80%, 81% when you add those two. We're just a nicer district. We love our people. And then everything else, purchase services is about 9%. Everything else is minimal percentage-wise. This slide shows it's kind of a benchmarking or a comparison. So for the current year, the huge majority of audits are not into the state yet. So there is no data to
056compare. I'm going to compare you two for the current year. So the best I can do is the prior year. So if we look at last year, if you take your fund balance and divide it by expenditures, you get a ratio. That ratio for last year was 10.3%. So we've got a couple pieces of data here. The statewide average was 22.2% for last year. And then if we compare you to your peer group, which is districts of similar size, the average was 18%. So your general fund is quite a bit lower than the average district in Michigan. Now for 24, that's lowered a little bit more. It's down to 9.3%. Again, I can't compare you this year. But the key takeaway here is you are quite a bit lower than most districts. I got another
057question. Yep. So of the peer group, how many in that peer group still receive and how big of an ID, how big of a, how big of a care is it for 20J funds? Are they still active? I mean, other districts who get, like Forest Hills. I'll give you a perfect example of Forest Hills. They're a 20J school. Couple of years ago, you know, they were getting the 2X. They were trying to normalize? Yeah, they were trying to normalize. I think there are a few districts on the east, southeast side of the state that are still receiving a little bit more in terms of foundation. So I think that's a good question. Yeah. Yeah. I think in Kent County, that they're leading a little higher. Other than the small ones. So it's now we're at,
058we're finally at a level playing field? Yes. Okay. Yes. Thanks, Heather. Another good point that I want to make here, and I mentioned this last year as well, is the nature of these COVID federal grants, they were long-term in nature. Most of the grants you get are a year. Some of these had like a three-year expenditure window. So the districts have a lot of flexibility. Do I want to spend a whole bunch this year? Do I want to spend a third, a third, a third? So the data isn't really 100% comparable until all these COVID grants are done. So that's one thing to consider as well. Next graph shows enrollment trends. This is your blended count. So if you have a number in mind of what your October count is, that's why this is a
059little bit different. But it goes back to 2013 and just shows your total enrollment at the district. So. At the end of this current year, you're at about, well, 5,459 students. And 2020 was COVID. So we lost students to homeschooling and. Well, any downward trend there or something? I guess, and I'll bring it back again when I bring a budget amendment, but this trend follows the state trend as well. Yeah. So there is, you know, yes, they have people left. Yes, but people have also come. I mean, we try to net that loss that we anticipate for the summer or the spring count. But I know I've shared it before, but I'll share it again, the slide that has statewide pupil count against the grand bill. Does this also take into account any kind of
060birth counts? Birth rates are way down. Birth rates are way down, correct? Yes. Yeah. Good point. This is nothing unique that most of our districts are not seeing. Well, not in this group. No. This next graph shows your general fund balance and what that's been doing over the time. So it goes same back to 2013. You got a couple lines here. The blue line represents the total fund balance, and that's everything that's in your general fund, regardless if it's set aside for something else. And the orange line shows the unassigned portion. So within years where you are budgeting a deficit for the upcoming year, you're going to have to do a little bit more budget adjustment. So if you're budgeting a deficit for the upcoming fiscal year, that's kind of saying, you know, we've got
061those funds, those are committed already, so we have to set those aside at year end, so that's why those numbers are different. This slide is probably much more dramatic than it appears if you just look at the line because it's a, you know, a long-term thing, but this one goes back to 2009. So this is one you kind of do have to look at the numbers for, and it shows the retirement rate history in the state of Michigan. Back in 2009, the rate was 16.5%. For the current year, it is 48.2%. So in that time, it is about tripled. A couple things I want to point out here is the blue line is the total rate that you're required to pay on every dollar of payroll that goes out the door. And the orange line
062represents, we call it the unsubsidized rate. So the difference between those two lines is money that you're getting from the state of Michigan to help pay that total retirement rate. So for the current year, there was a very large increase, almost 3% of unsubsidized costs for retirement, which again is a very big number on your general fund. For next year, 24-25, it's staying almost flat. It's a very minimal increase. It's like .1% or less. I put this slide in here just to mention something I don't think the board cares too much about this new accounting pronouncement necessarily. We'll talk a little bit more about it next year. It changes the way we record compensated absences. It does not affect your general fund in any way. So that's all I'm going to say about that. So
063that was what we had for the presentation. So I'd like to give a big thank you to Heather Roszkowski and Kayla Garza for all their help during the audit. Again, you guys are a pretty good-sized district, and it's a lot of work to prepare for the audit. We have a pretty decent-sized request list, and there's a lot of things that we look at. So just really appreciate everybody being so prepared and allowing us to give you guys a really awesome audit and turn it around quick for you. So any questions anybody has? So, Michael, I probably said this last year, but I really enjoy your presentation, how you break it down, how you start with it, how you get to where you want to start with it, and then how you end. So thanks for
064how you present it. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I enjoy the larger file. Yeah. Absolutely. Nice job. Thank you very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. I just like to thank Michael and Yo and Yo. They do an outstanding job, a very thorough job. And I also want to point out, as, you know, it's no surprise, but Heather and Kayla and the other two, they are the ones who are going to be doing the audit. So thank you. And Kayla are just phenomenal with the business side of things. So just very blessed to have them. Thank you. Thanks. Amazing. Thank you very much. Thank you. Great. I had no questions for you, Heather. Geez. I don't think I did. 20J. See? 20J. You stuck one in there. You all thought I was joking
065when I said we were going to go through a financial audit. I wasn't joking. I'm going through that statement. All right. Next up, Throon Board Policy Review. Yes. So as mentioned earlier, you're receiving a hard copy of the first draft that you will see. We decided to give the entire piece to you tonight, and then we're not going to review any of these tonight. But what we ask you to do is over the course of the weeks here, take a look at them. John's going to explain the process we'll use for breaking these down and reviewing them. And then after all are reviewed and we've had our discussions, then we'll come back for an official approval. Just to shed a light on a few things, John and I spent a great deal of time going
066through these. There are certain areas of this where we have options as a district, and during those pieces, we looked at our current board policy from NEOLA. Okay. Okay. So we looked at the board policy from NEOLA to make sure they aligned as best as possible. And it wasn't too hard to do that. I think Throon makes it very easy to look at that and align. But anyway, John's going to talk to you about these and take it from there. Yeah. So if you look at just probably the table of content is the best place to at least begin that thinking. You'll notice there are five different series as opposed to our old one. So we're going to go through them one by one. Okay. So one is the administrative guidelines, as opposed to our
067old one where there were eight or nine. The organization of this, I think, is really handy because anywhere where there's an administrative guideline or a form, I just placed it underneath the policy as you flip through. So as you look at the first table of contents on the first five, six pages are all of the policies. And then underneath of that, you'll see the table of contents for administrative guidelines and forms. So as you're flipping through and taking a look at some of those, you'll be able to see not only the here's what the policy is but then also here's how you should work through that policy and if there are forms that are associated with it you'll see that what you might notice on a few of the pages or a few of the
068items on the type on the table of contents is there are some that we placed intentionally left blank and in most cases those have to do with policies that were related to covid and we're treating covid across the state as any other communicable disease so we elected to leave those policies out so but we had to keep a placeholder so as you're looking at the table of contents where you see intentionally left blank that was a policy related to that or a policy that that didn't apply to the work that we're doing here and was given an option by troon that says you can have this or you can leave it as intentional or you can leave it as intentionally left blank and so in some cases we we elected to leave those intentionally left
069blank our plan is to do a couple of first readings so at our next board meeting we would do a first reading of policies 1000 through 3000. no i won't read it word for word page for page but gives an opportunity for you to take a look at that roger and i prior to that meeting will give you a summary of some of the highlights in those places the first reading of policies is the policy that we're going to be looking at today is the policy that we're going to be looking at today is the policy that we're going to be looking at today is the following meeting we would do the first reading of the 4 000 to 5 000 series and again roger and i would give you some of the highlights of
070those and give an opportunity to have some dialogue on that and then from a voting standpoint under the second reading essentially would be that first meeting in november so we wanted to provide ample opportunity to spend the time in it that you wanted i gave paper copies because i figured far easier if you're sitting in front of the tv watching a game flipping through you have a highlighter a pen whatever there's plenty of white space i was careful not to there's a lot of pages because if it's a single page board policy i didn't do it front to back i tried to make it as easy as it could be for me to read it for you to read it i know it's a lot of paper but just tried to make it easy to
071kind of pull through and take a look at so that's the process that we plan to use thank you yeah i like the fact there's one-sided yeah because you could just leave everything in the book correct yeah barb did you have a question i wondered if there was a schedule of what will be reviewed when yeah yeah i heard it you say it yeah but is it what meeting is it yeah so the first meeting in october will be series one thousand through three thousand oh so one thousand two thousand three thousand okay and then the second meeting in october will be the four thousand five thousand series got it and then we will in november do any voting on them until november okay so i know the policies themselves say that we only require
072to have a first reading in this case it makes a whole lot more sense to do some readings work our way through it ask the questions and make sure that you've got had a chance to pour through and ask any questions that you may have as we work through it so john you just said something that caused me to reflect okay one versus two if i would i mean i'm not in favor of having one reading and an approving policy is there an expediency to it is there a concern what's what's the what's the motive to change that piece of it yeah i can speak to that it's not that we're changing it you may decide to have two readings and adopt it like we always have but what they're saying is that you're only
073required to have one reading you don't have to have two but if this board says we would like to have two readings before we adopt we can continue to do that okay yep do you have any kind of crosswalk to help us guide from where we're at currently to where these are at especially since the numbering system's different so we're not you know spending 48 hours trying to connect the dots this is what it says in the proposal versus this is what it says now right in terms of like this policy in true in a with this policy in YOLA I don't yeah and they and they don't I can ask yeah I can ask it true but I didn't know if they're a comparison we can what we can do is as we review
074through John and I can point out anything that we see that's different or significantly different than what we've done we can point that out because we've reviewed each policy we had to make choices and like I said we made them as aligned as possible but if there's something we say hey this is different than what we've had we'll tell you that I can give you I can give you an overview I just wouldn't be able to give you item by item yes yep for sure yep I can do that is that what we're trying to do here is make sure it lights up with those others or what is our role just to be familiar with them or we don't like the way in your words because this is like from from law yes yes
075they are very aligned to the law and not that YOLA is but the terminology is the big piece here to make sure it's clear and concise okay so I should be looking for that and more tied to the state correct because YOLA does five to seven states this is specific to the state of Michigan so it should be more easy I saw there are some highlighted things too for us to you have the highlights in there already yeah there there are a few places in there where if something's highlighted blue or highlighted yellow those are forms that we're still plugging away at and making sure that we're passing those out to the right folks and getting those specifically aligned so that's how when we looked at them if there was a place where we had
076choices they were blue if there was yellow that was something that was optional language that you could have in there and so there are a few in there that are that are like that because one of them I'm having Adam help me with a few of them I'm having Caroline help me with just to be certain that the practice that we have in this policy the practice that we have in our YOLA policy and what we're actually doing are all aligned so yeah so there are a couple of places where we're still plugging away at those to make sure that it's all 100% accurate so a thousand and two thousand are all set those are ready to go yep one two and three are good yep it's it's in the five thousand yeah predominantly where
077there's there's some of that that's there yep yep good any other questions to have the later policies the five thousand odds the areas highlighted where there might be significant changes so you guys don't have to talk about them all right so what we'll that's the part that we'll do prior to our next meeting for 1000 to 3000 as well we'll make sure that we we point out here the areas where these are the same here the areas where they're different we'll do the same with the four thousands to five thousand so that you have that well in advance and can take a look and ask some little questions for sure but like Heather said in the three thousands when we looked at the policies while the numbers might be different the order was remarkably similar
078the verbiage was remarkably similar but there were places that were very Michigan specific that that they've done a really nice job of condensing and pulling together than what we had before like I get true and updates weekly on things that are happening and how that aligns to our this is what policy that aligns to and if you have questions on it start here and here's your administrative guideline and here's your form and this makes us far better at staying aligned with our policy that this summer all of our schools went through a student handbook rewrite that aligns a lot better with the tune policy as well so now all of our schools have the same student handbook policy and I'm currently working on the employee handbook policy to make sure that that aligns inside of
079it as well so just trying to get everything in alignment and spiritual opportunity to get out ahead of some things when instead of chasing our tail trying to get somebody to explain this part of our policy to us the way that it means in michigan and how that works good a lot of work thank you any other questions thanks john all right thank you you need help caring all right we know a lot of discussion items we will move on to public comment all right first we have uh kaylee jansen's okay so we have five minutes that will be taken by this klein and she will give you a one minute warning um so first i'd like to apologize because i'm kind of barreling through a process that i've never gone through before um hi
080um i am the parent of an lgbtqia plus child in granville public schools um i am here to bring attention to an issue that impacts all lgbtqia LGBTQIA plus students and their parents in our district. Recently I received a list of members that currently has access to Granville Parents for Education, GPFE for short. This is an advocacy group in Granville that is closely associated with Moms for Liberty and Ottawa Impact. Two advocacy groups that are chipping away at LGBT student rights. This list contains various members of professional and support staff, as well as spouses of current school board members. And some of them have been in that group since 2021. I would like to ask the school board president, Jason Haybor or anyone else on the school board, if it's appropriate, to please conduct an
081investigation that is independent of the school board and its members. I suspect based on what I've seen that two school board members may have known about the transphobia in this group before they endorsed school board candidates, Sean Yonker and Mary Gunther. These school board candidates, I mean, the school board members are Brett DeHaan and Joe Steffes. I am certain that there are multiple, multiple violations of board policy, specifically school board policies, conflict of interest, board member ethics, public expression of board members, use of social media and possibly discriminatory harassment based on one of the posts that I saw from that group. For clarification purposes, there have been multiple court cases stating that social media sites such as Facebook, and Facebook groups, do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. If this investigation determines that no
082violation of school board policy has occurred, I would like to ask the board to seek legal advice to create or amend our school board policy in the service of preventing further future incidents where special interest groups have uncontrolled access to school board members and their spouses. That's all. Next up, Beth Leggett. This was once my son's notebook. He's now a senior, but at the top it says what it's like to play Five Nights at Freddy's FNAF, but I'll skip that page. Just a real quick comment tonight. Obviously the Title Line is a huge thing across the state and across the nation, and you guys are gonna do the hard work of getting through all this information and kind of boiling it down for our school district and for our school district. So, I guess just,
083yeah. I'm just wondering how you're going to disseminate that out to parents, so that it's very clear, from my understanding, what it is simply is it does protect all students from harassment and discrimination as well as I believe employees as well from sexual violence, assault, harassment, discrimination. What it does not say from my understanding is that does not include students using any bathroom that they would like although some people have brought that up or men playing in women's sports at this point so just helping to clarify that as you communicate that out to the Granville School District so thank you appreciate it thank you for your comments and McCarthy hello I'm in McCarthy I have three kids in the district and as I've stated here at prior meetings I'm very proud of Granville Public Schools
084we considered many schools more than once throughout the years and now they have three kids in our high school I'm so happy we stayed and I love us all the opportunities my kids have received I mean I have a senior who's running cross country for the first time I have a sophomore who's playing tennis for the first time like the fact that they can have these new opportunities at this point in their school career I love what I want for every family no district they have those same feelings about Granville Public Schools and as our Soально-epel school district school board you guys are responsible for a lot of things including setting policies but also I feel it's setting the tone of our district and part of that tone is protecting all the kids that go
085to our school so I think some statistics from reputable sources are important to share here tonight according to the Trevor Projects 2022 National Survey and LGBTQ youth mental health LGBTQ youth are significantly more likely to experience mental health issues compared to their peers the survey found that sixty percent of LGBTQ youth report feeling depressed or hopeless with nearly half having seriously considered suicide the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning shares that social emotional learning programs that include education on diversity and inclusion can be particularly impactful on that schools that integrate SEL with a focus on LGBTQ inclusivity these students report better emotional well-being and academic engagement SEL helps build resilience social skills and emotional support which are crucial for all students but especially our LGBTQ students who face bullying and discrimination the American school
086counselor Association their guidelines stress the importance of having counselors who are trained to address these specific needs of LGBTQ students because they're aware of the increased needs of these students. And the Children's Institute of Mental Health states that LGBTQ youth encounter higher rates of bullying and harassment which can contribute to mental health challenges. So supportive school environments with inclusive curricula and anti-bullying policies can help alleviate these stressors. Could you imagine your child dreading to go to school every day because they know that leaders of that district look down upon who they are? Any transgender child is does better emotionally, their mental health is better, when they can live out who they feel that they truly are. And when they do that it hurts nobody. It doesn't hurt other students, it doesn't hurt teachers, it doesn't
087hurt parents, and it doesn't hurt the school board. So if what was stated was true that is a statement. If it was true, then it's a statement. If it was true, then it's a statement. I'm here to support for the school district and I agree that it needs to be looked into. Because every child, all we need to do is respect and love everyone. Everyone we come across, but these are kids. These are kids, and your job is to protect them, no matter how they identify. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. That is the end of the meeting. The next board meeting, the grant board of education, will be Monday, October 7th, 2024 at 7 p.m. at the administration building. We are adjourned.