Board of Education Board Meeting - January 23, 2023

001good evening the January 23rd 2023 Board of Education meeting for the Cedar Rapids Community School District is called to order do we have a motion to approve the agenda I move that the agenda of Monday January 23rd 2023 Board of Education meeting work session be approved as set forth and that each item is considered ready for discussion and or action this is a roll call vote aye director marshbrock director Roundtree aye director humbles aye aye president taminsky aye tonight we have two public hearings regarding Ada restroom upgrades at truman Early Learning Center in Jefferson High School Board Secretary Day have we received any written correspondence related to the public hearings we have not do we have anyone who has requested to address the board regarding the published hearings we have no requests our public hearing

002is officially closed and we will move on to the superintendent's report superintendent sethoff I'll turn the meeting over to you thank you I have a few good news things tonight and one kind of informational reminder and we'll get some slides up here that go along with that now this first one shows a picture of Jefferson High School and we're pleased to share that Jefferson High School has been designated an additional site location for Kirkwood Community College due to the number of Kirkwood classes that Jefferson offers on site Jefferson currently has 25 Kirkwood concurrent enrollment courses which means students can earn both college credit and High School Credit simultaneously upon successful completion of the course this offers our students many advantages of course in terms of College and Career Development as well as cost savings for

003the family and we're able to do that without them having to to leave the convenience of the building so we're really appreciative of our partnership with Kirkwood at Jefferson as well as all of our high schools this next slide pictures Jefferson High School students who are finalists in the Iowa State Bar associations know your Constitution project students can take a multiple choice quiz and short essay on the topic at the U.S Constitution there were 100 finalists selected from more than 500 students across the state Kennedy High School as a finalist as well and the finalists along with their teachers were recently honored at an awards luncheon in Des Moines so congratulations to all of them these are pictures from a recent event that took place at 10 of our elementary schools elementary students were able

004to watch a newly commissioned piece from the Cedar Rapids Opera company called Charlie and the Wolf and the peace is an opera modeled from classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker this Opera was commissioned for our schools and serves as a reminder that everyone is playing with the same notes we just interpret them differently and the rest of our elementary schools will have the opportunity to view the performance next school year this is Kennedy High School bowler Luke dolphin he scored a perfect 300 during a competition last Thursday January 19th this is the second year in a row he has scored a perfect game in competition to achieve a score of 300 a boiler needs to get 12 strikes in a row that could be a lifetime total for some people but

005for Luke it was one good game and congratulations to him and then finally just a reminder about our snow makeup day crcsd students and staff will now report to school on Monday February 27th that's the makeup day for January 4th that was reflected in the the board approved calendar for this year and if there are additional no school days from this point on then those makeup dates will be added to the end of the school year and that's the wrap up of the superintendents report for tonight thank you for that report do we have any void reports I had the pleasure of attending Metro's winter graduation as always it was a pleasure and to hear the teacher speak about their students and I always enjoy uh that graduation great thank you for that director Garlock

006did you have a report as well yes I have brief legislative update um oh boy where to start later in the board meeting will be voting on a resolution in opposition to vouchers and I'll speak more about vouchers at that point but just to update you on what's happening at the Capitol today both the Iowa house and Iowa senate are debating the voucher bill I think the the house came back into session about four o'clock this afternoon there were some procedural amendments to the voucher bill that they were discussing and they're currently debating it um and so I don't know if we'll expect a voucher vote yet tonight or probably tomorrow likewise the Senate uh gaveled in this afternoon they took a recess I don't know if they've come back into session but I think

007the plan was for them also to address the voucher bill today and I'll I'll speak more about the pros and cons of voucher well the kinds of vouchers later once the voucher situation is settled um there's we are going to have some other difficult legislation in front of us probably starting with the SSA which the governor's proposed at 2.5 percent and I think most of us in this room know that with with inflation and costs as they are 2.5 percent for us is going to not be enough so we'll watch that one carefully there are also a couple other bills that are working their way through the process one concerning lgbtq students and curriculum appropriate to to those students and a separate bill dealing with transgender students and parental rights so we'll be watching those

008closely I do want to say thank you to everyone who has been advocating on the voucher Bill I know that our legislators have been getting a lot of phone calls and emails there was a forum this weekend that I attended and they were unanimous both sides of the aisle that this has been a very hot topic so I appreciate any any efforts you have done to support our Public Schools so thank you appreciate the update tractor board chain um I just I I think though thank you so much for that legislative update if there are any board members or public that that really want an exciting Valentine's Day that is iasb stay on the hill so if anyone would like to go to the Capitol and meet with legislators on Valentine's Day let me know

009any other updates or reports next we'll hear from those who've requested to address the board Laurel do we have any members of the public that have requested to address the board we have no moving on to our consent agenda are there any items that a board member would like to pull for a comment question or a separate vote do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved here a second any further discussion this is a roll call vote due to the Personnel report in item ba 23-262. Dr Garlock aye director Newman aye director marshbrock director Roundtree director humbles aye directory aye president taminsky moving to Administration there is a request to sbrc for special education administrative costs are there any questions for Carla comment I make the same comment every year so

010here we are again special education consistently runs a deficit when it was passed as the individuals with disabilities and Education Act it was promised to be funded at 40 percent from the federal government it's only ever been funded between 11 and 12 percent so that is my comment if you uh think that that we should be receiving what was promised to us from the federal government please contact your legislator and let them know to fully fund special ed at 40 percent all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed same sign next is a recommendation from the administration on school naming I will turn the meeting over to Eric for introductions in presentation hmm good evening president tamisky members of the board it's great pleasure tonight to come to you with the proposed

011new name of our most recent school that we will be constructing soon tonight I have principal Joy long with me from Garfield and Jen Nuri who's the principal at Arthur and these two ladies have collaborated very successfully in the naming of this new school so I decided to give them the the opportunity to share with the board tonight in the community the process that they used and then finally at the end revealing the new proposed name so I'll turn it over to Joy I gotta click Justin clicked he needs to click again just click here there we go okay so we had some goals as we were um thinking about naming the new school we wanted to seek input from our staff our students in our community we also wanted to as we moved forward

012once the name is chosen align some of the Construction and design of the new building along with the name so that there was some continuity there and um and then we wanted to make sure that the name that we chose was Timeless so it has longevity has meaning and is timeless with our district so that was some of our goals so the process that we engaged in was we first started with our students and we read a book called Alma and how she got her name delightful story about a little girl with a very long name and how all of the pieces of her name had some significance and so we used that story with all of our classes to help them understand that a name should should have some significance it should be long

013lasting and have some meaning and then after that we um gathered some we we had a Google doc and we had the students and staff and then families submit possible possible names that they would want to see and we had some really interesting names um some named after one was named after Jen and I both so you know um no worries um very Timeless garther Rose to the top garther as partially Garfield partially Arthur so um the kids did a really nice job of being very thoughtful about the names that we might consider then we created that Google doc as we said and we got feedback from kids staff and families we narrowed the list by having each of our HRS teams separately kind of go through the list and say yes no yes no

014and we got down to six six choices that both team said yes we could live with these these names these are the ones that we like and then we took it back to the staff and they owed it well Dre helps out with that's pretty much um this one yes we totally we did have about 60 staff and students oh I'm so sorry yes I don't do this every day I apologize um sorry we had 60 staff and student selections and then the community we did have 16. I do want to note that a majority of our community members did ask that request the name after our former superintendent um Noreen Bush but as you know it has to be mentioned that her family and herself had asked that we not have any facility named

015after her so um but I do want to recognize that those names were in the Google forms multiple times and so then as Joy mentioned we narrowed down the list and our HRS teams then went down and we found agreement and then that came down to six names and then we sent that out to our two staffs and then um after that there was a clear winner and that is the name that we would like to present today one did rise to the top it does have some importance of the area and so and so I guess we were ready to present that are you ready to see the name we can't drum roll I don't have a drummer here but yes so we would like to propose that our school board helps support us

016in naming our new Elementary Trailside Elementary so if you're not aware there is a trail that runs by that building and it actually is named seamar Trail which was one of our names Seymour Elementary and so there's a trail that is connect Cedar Rapids in Marion Elementary and that is recently has been rerouted under First Avenue if you're not familiar with that because they took the overpass down um and so yeah Trail site and then just a quick Glimpse um of the building this is what the vision is looking like for our new Elementary so that is our proposal to you so we ask um I guess the next step I guess for you guys to approve that if that's what you believe should be our new elementary and if not well we'll go back

017and they will save children we're very creative I do want to um like they should name them after their grandma because she makes good cookies their their reasons were all so cute it was quite um fun to read all the submissions and the whys because we asked them why they thought that would be important so it was definitely a delightful experience and I will say and I'm sure Joy can Echo we were in all of our classrooms reading the book and um such an awesome experience just to spend that time with our students and have them talk about names and what's important to them and how they got their names we really just brought the brought it to life so to really make it important for our students knowing that they would have input into

018this process so I think that's it what a fun process and it does sound like it included so many people uh in that I actually want to go go and read that book Alma it looks like a pretty good read so I appreciate the presentation and getting us to this point uh the picture looks fantastic and being familiar with that trail I think it's just really cool to be able to have access to those types of amenities in in our town and be able to really call some attention to them so I appreciate that any additional questions from board members I will turn this to a vote all those in favor signify by saying aye aye those opposed same sign thanks again for the presentation yeah next we have a resolution for the support of

019public schools thank you vice president Garla for providing the resolution for our consideration and approval do we have any comments from board members they just want to say that we have passed a similar resolution in the in past years when the voucher bill has come up I think this particular board has been quite unanimous in its opposition to vouchers the vouchers will take money away from public schools at a time when we can least afford to lose some of our funding not only the financial aspect but just simply the fact that private schools are not accountable and transparent as we are required to be private schools do not need to take are not required to take every student regardless of disability race age whatever so I feel it's important for us even though it might

020be a moot point right now to send a message that this board definitely supports our public schools and opposes vouchers thank you I know I hate the thought of considering a moot point I think that our voice does matter and I think that we've seen that through the people that are interacting with the legislature right showing people the opposition and the reasons for that opposition so um though it might seem like it's a decision that's already made it is not already made and making sure that we're loud and clear on on where we stand and why we stand in opposition to things like this so appreciate your leadership vice president Garlock on this do we have a motion to approve the resolution is their second all those in favor signifying by saying aye aye aye

021those opposed same sign last on our agenda tonight is an update on the facility's master plan task force work I'll turn the meeting over to John and the team thank you president tamisky and fellow board members so our agenda tonight for the facility master plan is really what's our connection back to the street strategic plan and what's driving us for this plan uh we'll take a look at operational and financial efficiency uh we'll review the timeline again we'll go over what the current plan is we'll have a facility master plan Committee Member perspective why new or renovated buildings are needed from Aquatic Center and feeder systems and then last but not least there we'll have time for questions and comments so our strategic master plan I think we've all seen this document here many times

022really what I want to focus in on here is the system and resources and circle there is the facility master plan the area of this that I would actually really like to highlight though on what I think that this plan does a really really good job of emphasizing and addressing is the purpose of what the systems and resources does tough to read up there so I'll read that aloud here it's to maximize operational systems and prioritize District resources based on student needs while maintaining the financial health of the district this current plan does that exact thing that maximize our operational systems prioritizes our resources while maintaining the Financial Health of our district foreign next we'll look at operational and financial efficiency I labeled that efficiency and really in our current model right now I think

023what this slide really shows is our inefficiencies based on the number of buildings we have how they're staffed the inequities and enrollment so if we look at a enrollment versus capacity comparison just at the middle school level we currently have roughly 3174 I know that's probably a daily moving Target so pretty close to that 3200 number there with a capacity of 4 700 students that's roughly 68 full so we have 32 percent of our buildings um that don't get used that we pay to maintain every day also to note there um is when we look at enrollment projections enrollment projections stay pretty set stay pretty steady so this isn't something where we have 3 200 now but we look like we're going to grow and we'll need that capacity our enrollment projections are steady and

024we won't need that capacity in the future either um operating cost per students so we did this at the elementary level between Viola Gibson and Madison showing the cost comparisons between a small Elementary and a large Elementary so doing the same thing here between Wilson at our smallest which Mike's back here 360 students 380 students and we're about 720 I believe at Harding so looking back at fiscal year 22 which is our last full fiscal year uh about fifteen hundred dollars more expensive to opt per student to operate at Wilson than Harding I also went back and took a five-year average obviously funding here recently has been a little different with Esser funds and even back into that five year average with closing early because of kova to Rachel so there are some things in

025there a little bit different but looking at that five-year average that number actually goes up to two thousand dollars per student higher at Wilson than at Harding so what I think that shows is that we currently aren't operating as efficiently as we should be and could be um and we can do better and our kids deserve better and I know there'll be some talk on that here with the rest of the group so a rough draft timeline here and I called a rough draft because there's a lot of moving Targets in this and you guys have a full page handout because I know it's tough to read up there on the screen so some of these projects can be interchanged we can move one project from starting immediately to starting after a Project's complete there

026are some things there that aren't interchangeable my best example of that is we can't renovate the high school activity areas until the new Aquatic Center done so we can't close our pools until they have a pool to use right so some aren't interchangeable but there are some things that are in there um there's a lot that goes into trying to create this schedule the available availability of funds so within this 312 million dollar bond issue we won't issue 312 million dollars right away because we have a certain timeline that that money has to be used so there'll be multiple issuances um through that based on this schedule and based on what our maximum issuances can be another item that we have to take into consideration is when the school year starts and when the school

027year ends based on these projects so that factors in um and lastly really the Iowa weather and the Iowa Seasons it doesn't just when bid days start when projects can start obviously we can't dig a lot of Foundations right now with the way the weather is so that plays into when things can start and tend and then the duration of the projects as well so digging into the details of the plan again uh Middle School New Middle School New or renovated excuse me building at the Wilson site so we've gone back and forth on this from feedback from the board from our community and we were asked to see can we renovate that can we have somebody take a deeper look into that we have gotten a proposal to do that so that is something

028we're going to take into consideration and bring back to you guys on getting that awarded to get started on that the cost on that I think is fairly favorable so we'll have that we can have more of a discussion on that the new building on the north side of the district North side of the district meaning north north side of Cedar Rapids Hiawatha Robin somewhere in that General vicinity renovation Edition at Franklin and then a renovation Edition at Taft and remember that's an interim project that gets us started there would have to be a second ask to get that to the 1200 student building that we're shooting for there again McKinley transitioned to City View and potentially Metro alternative Harding would be repurposed don't know necessarily exactly what that means right now um but repurposed

029nonetheless meaning it wouldn't be in our inventory any longer Roosevelt would stay in place until that second stuff it second step it Taft and then we have track and field Renovations at five locations the district portion of it here and I move this up here since this has to be completed prior to a lot of the work that's being done at the high school level so District Aquatic Center diving well practice pool competition pool and again here I know that there's going to be more talk on this from some of the team here so I'm not going to go into this real in depth then at the high school level the activity area Renovations those that's the old pool spaces those projects will probably look different from building to building based on the needs of

030those those specific buildings then we have new turf fields at all three comprehensive high schools and then updates to the Metro gym Finance cost same thing we've seen before here total project cost of 300 just under 312 and a half million dollars one thing I did want to note here is we've gotten questions on this is what is the 10 Market Market contingency that is there to account for inflation the current market volatility volatility construction cost cost right now or up and down and all over the price so it's super super hard to predict what that's going to look five six seven eight nine years from now so that's there to cover any differences in that and then if there happens to be cost overruns that helps with that as well um again a question

031on what are the other costs the 20 allowance so I have some listed there so FF e that's Furniture fixtures equipment permits design fees City fees Etc um those are shown that way because those are a little bit different for every project right so if we are putting in turf fields for an example we don't have much Furniture fixtures or equipment for a new Middle School there's obviously a lot of furniture and fixtures and fixtures and equipment that we need for those buildings so that's why it's shown this way and it's not Project Specific the tax implications so this here again is the assessed value of your house what's that mean to taxpayers and homeowners in our district we've been through this before here as well so for example a 200 000 house assessed value

032comes out to 200 and 200 almost 280 dollars per year with that I'll turn it over I'm sorry guys I'm horrible about introductions I should probably introduce everybody speaking here so we have Scott druzmiskey he's a member of our facility master plan committee uh Mike Waters principal at Wilson and then Aaron Stecker the activities director at Kennedy so with that I will turn it over to Scott thank you John appreciate it and I appreciate your time tonight I'll be very brief um and I'll try to give a representation this is my um my thoughts from the facility master plan uh process but hopefully it matches those of of many many of the other cohorts that were part of this I I you know I think there's a lot of discussion and there needs to be

033a lot of discussion around the the pieces of this and how it all fits together and and what that ultimate ask of our community is but what I think is very clear from the conversations I've had both with the other members of the facility master plan committee and and with the community as a whole is that it's time to do something we can't wait much longer to to start a plan in place and so I guess that would be my ask of the of of the board as you look at this and and determine the next steps that we we can't just not do something we need to do that we need to get started fairly soon and I would love to wait for the perfect time but I truly believe and I think many

034other community members believe there is and a perfect perfect time to do it and the best time to do it is is now and to get started on this it's a good plan I I've mentioned this to several of you that have had a chance to talk to uh one on one and and by the way I would love the opportunity to sit down with any of our board members any of our community members and talk through this more one of the things I can tell you is in the short couple of minutes that I'll be talking here I cannot tell you all of the things that went into a year plus process and the discussions that were had what I can assure you is they were all discussed and they were discussed at length

035and probably discussed a second time and maybe a third time I wish I could say there's a perfect plan but there's not enough money there's not enough time quite frankly and there's much too much work to be done to put together the perfect plan plus so many of these pieces lay on top of each other John mentioned as he was talking about the schedule I think that's a one visual way to see how these things all have to interplay with each other I'll give you a couple other samples one would be the pools I would love to be able to say hey let's just put brand new pools at each of our schools and but but uh where I know someone else is going to talk a little bit more about that but the reality

036is that you can't do that and meet a bunch of the other needs that we have in the district and so you have to make decisions and there's some great opportunities that come from that shared facility uh you know I believe believe there are opportunities there and other Partnerships could even come from that but it is a little bit different than what we're used to I think the other one the thing that keeps popping up in my head and a facility master plan quite frankly before the plan came back to you the first time one of the big things we looked at was the feedback from our community about Wilson school and I'm excited that we're going to do a little more research into that because I think that's an important thing to do whether

037no matter how it turns out I guess you will decide whether you want to do that research but I think it's a good idea uh because I think whether it turns out saying you need a new school or you can repurpose that school the community deserves to hear that story and so I I appreciate that uh that that's being considered there uh quite frankly if you had a piece of land a 30 or 40 acres somewhere between Wilson and McKinley I think that would be the perfect option for a new school but you'd have to tear down houses probably historically significant as well you demolish Workforce housing and that's not what our community needs either so you have to make choices in this plan um and and so again if if you want to step

038back and say I'm gonna I'm not not for this part of it um I think the thing that is important or has to be remembered is that that impacts three or four other parts of it including others you might like I think I shared this with a board in a previous comment and that was I went home at least once and maybe twice from meetings and I thought I can't support this but what I realized was the pieces of this when they come together first of all are an excellent step forward for our school district but they're also as a collective an important piece for us and and so that's why I'm I'm supportive and I feel again that the majority of the folks that worked on that facility master plan were there and I

039also can assure you that if there's a piece that you're questioning that's why I'd love to talk to you more because I think some discussion there will help you understand how we came to that decision even if it wasn't the perfect decision but a good decision nonetheless and then I would finally just say the community supports this I've had the opportunity to start having conversations with members in our community and certainly there's questions about their costs there's questions questions about certain decisions in there but as you start to explain the process and you put that together this community is in support of this our community knows we need to do things at our Cedar Rapids school to not just support our students but to support the tax base of our community to support the value

040of our homes and property that we have in the community and it is a community plus to move forward so thank you for the chance to share a little bit from my perspectives hi well I got to say congratulations on being efficient when I looked at the agenda over the weekend and saw that it was almost 200 pages I didn't think I'd be in front of you until about seven o'clock so since we have extra time I'll do my best to limit my comments to about 45 minutes if you're okay with that um no really um Adam has a big long hook he's going to pull me if I'm more than four so um first thing I got to say it's an honor to be in front of you um it's not something that I

041want to do to talk negatively about Wilson but I do want to try to inform you about some things that may not be obvious on the surface I'm not sure it seems Wilson has uh has become a popular topic to talk about lately and I know I was requested to come in and share with you share with you some of the pieces about it we broke it into four areas safety student and staff impact teacher Recruitment and programming I'm going to hit a couple of pieces in each of those I'm trying to give you some data points I'll obviously be here and and would be happy to answer any questions that you may have coming up let's talk first about safety I'm not sure if you're aware but Wilson has one ADA Compliant entrance to

042our building every other every other entrance to our building which there are 11 of them have steps and are not ADA Compliant obviously you have the ADA compliance piece there the other thing that is not so obvious on the on the surface of that is deliveries anytime someone's making a delivery to our building they need to come into that one particular their entrance into our building once they do that they're 12 steps away from our first classroom within 15 seconds they can be to every classroom it is about 75 percent of our building to make most of the deliveries from that entrance they need to come from the southwest entrance of our building to the northeast corner of our building that's walking through about 80 percent of our building every single delivery that needs to

043be made that's that requires an entrance and a ramp that they don't want to bring up the steps something that's not obvious when you drive by and you see the beautiful building that Wilson is I want to acknowledge that Wilson is a beautiful building it's a historical building it's been around for almost 100 years that also can not that doesn't conflict with the fact that it's not effective as a middle school in 2022. those things are 2023 excuse me those things can coexist and that's what takes place we've done a lot of amazing things at Wilson Mr Zimmerman has shared with the staff with the with the board before about some of the improvements that have taken place and we're doing some of those improvements in spite of some of the facility issues that we

044have and we think the sky's really the limit if our facility was changed I want to talk about student and staff impact Wilson is what we call a building of Singletons and here's what that means we have a sixth grade math teacher a seventh grade math teacher a eighth grade math teacher through all of our course subjects so what that means is you're when you're a teacher you don't have anybody in our building that teaches the same content in the same grade level to collaborate that makes a big difference in providing the best opportunity for our students we talk about extracurricular activities we offer the same options that all of our middle schools do and when we talk about in-person Staffing or in building Staffing we have roughly half the member the number of staff

045to provide those things so you think about all the different sports that we offer we have about 35 members of our staff that are available to potentially coach those or sponsor extracurricular activities Harding for example has about 70. so they have twice as many staff members to provide the same number of opportunities for our students talk about teacher recruitment I'm sure you you you're well aware that we are facing uh deficits in teacher recruitment here in Iowa across the country um it's incredibly hard to find quality teachers um I can say from personal experience last spring um in a number of the positions that we offered I offered three different people to opportunity to come and teach at Wilson and all three of them chose to go outside of the district when I followed up

046with them and said hey what was it I thought we had a good thing going the interview went well we gave you a tour and so forth three different people that would have been outstanding additions to our staff so there was two pieces number one I didn't like the fact that I couldn't collaborate with somebody like I just mentioned to you I couldn't collaborate with somebody on my same grade level and the same content in your building and number two quite honestly I'm going to a building that's newer the facilities are better that type of thing makes a difference and as we go into this hiring season and subsequent hiring Seasons the teacher shortage is not going to get better anytime soon those are those are important things when we talk about getting quality teachers

047in front of our students um last thing I think I'll talk about is is programming and what does some physical space at Wilson feel like this is about 1600 square feet I checked with Mr Galbraith earlier this room that we're sitting in right now we have about 32 members uh people in here right now at Wilson and across the middle schools we have a 27 to 1 student to teacher ratio that's how we're staffed 27-1 my largest classroom at Wilson is 1500 square feet so just a little bit smaller than this space 27 students in 1500 square feet obviously feels fine you take that same number of 27 students put it in my smallest classroom at Wilson which is 631 that feels very different take a thousand square feet off of this space that we're

048in and put the same number of people in there that feels very different we have 18 classrooms at Wilson for our for our core areas 15 different class sizes ranging from 631 to 1500 and our average is almost 900. very different experiences for those students and those teachers in those classrooms and that that that's not something we can change the classroom size is the classroom size um that makes a difference our cafeteria is broken into two different areas because of the two different areas with the the food service area in the middle we have to run 12 different lunches for our students that's just in order to be able to get students into the cafeteria to supervise them appropriately makes a huge difference and the last thing I'll end it with is this if you've

049been to Wilson or you've seen on the news our Auditorium doubles as our gym space okay our gym is literally on top of the where the auditorium is so we have our Fine Arts events and our basketball games in the same place the national Federation of High School athletics says that a recommendation for a basketball court is 84 feet long they say there's a there's an amendment in there that says recommendation for a middle school basketball court is 74 feet Wilson's is 63 feet not only that not only is it smaller but picture this and from the end of our court on three sides from the end of the court to a brick wall is two feet so you're playing basketball full speed the end of the court to the wall on three of our

050four sides is two feet recommendation from National Federation of High School athletics is 10 feet for safety purposes all around that's we can't extend those walls that size is the size that we have in addition when we talk about extracurricular activities and supervision and safety once somebody is into our building to come to an after-school event so I unlocked the doors at 3 10 for an after school basketball game at 3 30. once they come into the building they're into the entire building there's no way to say you can only go to where the basketball game is being played or you can only use these restrooms they're in the building and they can go anywhere in the building because there's no way to to segment that out those are some of the challenges as I

051said I'd be happy to talk to you and and answer any questions you have and I look forward to that opportunity thank you but yep all right good evening again Aaron Stecker I'm the activities administrator at Kennedy High School uh thank you for the opportunity to speak with you um I will try hard to stay within my wheelhouse on this uh which is the activities and athletic side of things on this but just from my perspective the improvements of this facilities master plan will provide us the opportunities that's going to provide our students our student athletes our student performers with this the big question one of the big questions I know has been the Aquatic Center I've gotten that question from several on the board I've gotten that question from several in the community I've

052gotten that question a lot of places I've gone and they say hey what's the deal at the Aquatic Center can we have a shared Aquatic Center and have all three high schools and all the middle schools use that space effectively the answer is yes we build the right kind of Aquatic Center which Jonathan touched on that has a diving well and a practice warm-up pool and a competition pool yes we can manage the three high schools we can we can stagger practices the same as doing our gyms right now we have early and late practices we can have before school practices in that facility the ads have talked about it we've talked to all of our coaches about this and the answer is yes as mentioned before we'd love to build three brand new pools

053everything at every single facility but this is this gives us the best plan to have a first class Aquatic Center I think it opens up a ton of change for us within the community to create swimming opportunities Aquatics opportunities with folks who can't afford YMCA memberships who can't afford Country Club memberships it starts to give Equity to some of our students who want to get involved in swimming and Diving that can't afford to go to these places they have to pay because there's not space in our current pools right now it gives us great opportunities with organizations like USA swimming to bring in Regional competitions and Regional meets and use it as a revenue generated help with some of those operating costs and also bring Revenue we work with the city and say look let's

054work with our our visitors bureau our tourism folks our Sports tourism folks what events can we bring here and use a space like that for so there's a lot of positives to that the big question I get on the Aquatic Center is can we make it work with three high schools in the middle school programs the answer is yes we can because that pool will be just about as big as our three pools combined and we're making it work already and it'll be a way nicer facility with with way more opportunities um I'm going to jump ahead a bit to just some other when I talk about extracurricular uh impact the overall facilities master plan and the opportunities that's going to give our student athletes and our student performers um when I when I start

055to talk about I'll bring the turf up for example that's another topic do we really need to have the filter for all the the high schools share a couple stories with you on that first of all I think when people hear Turf they think well that's helping the football team I can speak from my numbers at Kennedy High School there will be about 670 athletes and performers between marching band baseball softball soccer football and then now you want to throw the the PE use in there and what can they use during the school day and throw all those students involved in PE classes how can they make use of that space and they don't care if it rained the night before if it's nice enough to go outside and do that so we've started to

056talk about well over a thousand students in Kennedy I know it'd be the same at Washington the same at Jefferson High School that having field Turf is greatly impacting their experience a couple of Stories on that I want you to think about our marching band students in the fall when they go outside and they practice during that first block for 90 minutes and you get to that middle to late fall I want you to think about how wet and dewy the grass is these kids come in from that morning practice and they're wearing their jeans because it's now 48 52 56 degrees out there wearing jeans and they are wet soaking wet up to their knees because that Dew is soaked up to the up their jeans to their knees and their socks and their

057in their jeans and their shoes are wet the rest of the day and that's how they spend the rest of the school day the people they're competing with and trying to trying to keep up with and and competitively engage with across the state of field turf fields aren't dealing with that they if it rains an inch the night before they're still having their marching band practice our kids are back inside and missing opportunities for what marching band's supposed to be all about so yes I know people think about the athletic side of it but you've also got 150 to 200 Fine Arts um students that would be positively impacted by the addition of something like field Turf one more example on the field trip Edition many of us will play non-conference opponents on the front

058end of our schedules I'll use again I can use Ours by Washington and Jefferson do the same thing we open with two CML opponents this year the first weekend in April we did that last year first weekend in April and we had a total of two practices for our soccer team on a full field that wasn't a gym wasn't it wasn't inside and a half court in a gym it wasn't at Kingston Stadium on half a field we had two practices to play against two schools that had field trip facilities to practice on and at every one of their practices on a full field on a field tour field now do we have to have it no when you start talking about student athletes feeling like they have a chance feeling like it's worth it

059to be engaged feeling like am I getting the same opportunities that the students at Prairie linmar Johnson Urbandale Southeast Polk Waukee et cetera is it worth my time and worth my effort do I have a chance to compete fairly inequitably with those schools the answer right now for a lot of our students is no this facilities master plan starts to close that Gap the last thing I'll talk about in terms of closing the gap on the engagement is for me I'll go back to the pool if we build the Aquatic Center the repurposing of the pool spaces we currently have because the next step we need to improve or to increase engagement and manage increase engagement and participation of our student athletes is indoor athletic training space the repurposing and reimagining of the existing pool

060spaces um it once we have that Aquatic Center built So This indoor batting cages indoor turf space so there's a dance studio yoga pilates studio that's used during the school day for increased PE opportunities during the school day and then cheer and dance practice is at night instead of them having to move cafeteria tables out of the way and sweep up the leftovers from lunch on the table so they can have a practice after school at night now they have a studio to go to again same as their counterparts at our surrounding schools already have so it's those types of opportunities that increase engagement so I'll jump to academic impact piece engagement engagement engagement is all I can say there we can show you research study after research study after research study that says that

061students who are engaged in their school beyond the classroom students are engaged in our clubs and organizations students who are engaged in our co-curricular activity students are engaged in Fine Arts and Athletics better attendance better academic performance fewer discipline referrals biggest thing for me is more positive interactions with positive adults our coaches and directors are fantastic Educators they love kids they love they love using the platform of activities and Athletics to positively influence kids and build leadership in kids and the more of them we can get involved in that the better if you want to start thinking about numbers of students who are involved in performing arts and Athletics at our high schools it's 73 to 76 percent year in year out of our students are involved that would be positively impacted by this and

062will bring more in to the last bullet there are the feeder impact I'll get to that um so don't overstay my my time here I know one of the discussions in all this and and the the overall facilities master plan is for us to create a true feeder system at our middle schools the student athletes and student performers do not have a connection or a very a very small connection to which High School are they going to move to Auburn middle schools have the students who go there and trying to compete with one another in the same teams when they leave middle school or attract you know a third of them are going to go to Washington and 25 percent are going to Kennedy the other 40 are going to go to Jefferson every one

063of our Middle School is a split in some way shape or form like that there is no 712 articulation of our activities programs so they go through our middle school programs with no connection and have a hard time seeing how basketball seeing how theater seeing how speech seeing how soccer might play out for them into the high school because they're not quite sure well I'm going to go to that high school and what students from that school go to that high school and what students from that school go to high school how will we all fit together and form a team every fall in the ninth grade it it takes all of our high school programs Fine Arts and Athletics it takes the first two to three months just for them to get to know

064one another and they're engaging competitively with other schools who've been playing together those kids have been on the same team feeder middle schools who've been playing together for three years and our kids are saying hey I'm so and so and I'm so and so it's nice to meet you and getting to know one another it just puts our kids at an incredible competitive and engagement disadvantage it makes it harder for them to to make the decision to say yes I want to keep doing this High School in this in high school because they can't see it until they get to high school and what we know is that 65 percent of kids stop engaging in co-curricular activities at age 13 unless we find a way to keep them engaged if we don't find a way

065to have them see that in their future they're done before age 13. this facilities master plan helps us build a 712 articulation feeder program that helps these students see their future in high school activities from the time their sixth and seventh graders not waiting until their freshman in high school and we've lost too many of them by that point in time with that I would love to converse with any of you at any given time I could talk about this forever but I won't tonight so thank you very much uh I commend Aaron and Mike for the stories and the details they've been able to share with you about the impact of facilities master plan work on the entire system so I'm going to tie this back together to our strategic plan so if we

066think of this visually and we think about the Strategic plan basically running across the bottom of this as the foundation for everything else we need to do in a system is a really great way to picture it it is the starting point for the effort the efficiency as to how we can engage with and Implement our strategic plan I know sitting on a board myself and dealing with a facilities master plan this is one of the most important actions a school board in a district can choose to engage in it is the Difference Maker in the effort that is going to take for us to give our students the best opportunity opportunities that they possibly can have so I'm going to also flip the facility the Strategic plan just a little bit I asked you

067first to think about it as a foundation under here but if we also flip it this way and we think about our facilities master plan which lives here in our systems and resource box we can also see how it impacts everything moving up and our principals and athletic director did a really good job tonight of giving you the details of how it impacts our Workforce the impact it has on our staff the work that they do the struggle they have doing the great work that they do every day and how much more efficiently that could be done with a robust facilities master plan it impacts the student experience how they engage that they engage that they want to come to school and be a part of this that they feel like they belong and they

068understand what that path looks like for them and then the experience lived within that and their level of success that they're able to achieve and finally that gets to our culture and so believing that we want every learner to be future righty truly does begin with this facility's master plan that allows us to do the things we need to do in a fiscally responsible and sustainable way that supports our staff and our students and our families and ultimately our community to be able to thrive and that is our ultimate goal as Educators and as a system of Education and so we hope tonight we've been able to paint a little bit better picture give you some details of the impact it goes beyond the brick and mortar building but that brick and mortar building is

069certainly important because this plan facilitates everything else that we are able to do as a district and the way we're able to do it so thank you I think with that word to the questions and answers we'll get back to that page and I think all of us are going to sit down and we'll Converse back and forth that way well John I appreciate all the effort that went into this and assembling the team I think this board was clear that we wanted to hear from folks that were working inside of our facilities and folks inside the community as well and that's obviously the team that you've assembled here um if I can can I ask two questions to get us started one is you mentioned a potential proposal that would come before this board

070on Wilson renovation what would be the expectation on timeline for that one how soon would we see a proposal like that and then what do you think would be the time to complete it and then for us to see the data that it produces yeah good question so I do have that proposal um so I can send that at any time uh the completion of that is roughly seven weeks there's about four weeks in there of data Gathering assessments um that sort of thing and that'll kind of paint us a picture of uh what can be done with that building and what addition needs to be added what spaces may not be able to be within that building that could be in a new building for a variety of different reasons and then there's about

071three weeks of time in there for the cost estimation of what would it cost to do this work so we could see that on a board agenda in February and then it would you know you're looking at what what did that end up being about three months she said seven weeks yeah or the proposal to actually go ahead with that to even approve the assessment right we need to see that first is that true or no sorry if that I didn't yeah I I guess that's a good question yeah all right well but total seven weeks okay yes right so we're looking at like April May time frame before we would see that data correct that seem fair yeah and then the other question is there's nothing for this board to vote on tonight but

072at some future point we would be voting on a resolution that would go in front of Voters what's your expectation on when do you think we would see something like that um really that's up to the board to decide um in my opinion I think the big thing right now is um for a petition to be voted on is that we have board support for this plan to move forward to be able to establish what that ballot language is uh once we have ballot language that's what goes on the petition that becomes the petition language and that's really what we're held to do at that point in time is we can't stray outside of what's not on that and we have to complete everything that is on that so um that wording can change be

073altered so that's not an overnight thing to get that created there'll be probably multiple drafts in there before we land on ballot language that everybody's comfortable with but really the board support um from a high level saying yes this is a plan we do need to work out some morning and some details on how this is going to take place is fine but really that support so we can get that language started um is really what I'm after okay great thank you for that I'll turn it over to my fellow board members questions director Fortune um when we're talking about our operating cost per students when we're looking at that Wilson versus Harding um differential there I'm wondering if that includes staff supports programming extracurriculars has have those been equated so that we're getting down

074to that that fair comparison are we providing the same number of supports are we providing the same number of programming on that per pupil data so you asking if the programming um at all middle schools is identical the dollar amount so when we're looking at those dollar amounts that are spent per pupil and there's that difference between Harding and Wilson I'm wondering if Wilson and Harding have the same number of supports example for special ed do they have the same number of special ed enrollment which is you know that's a different cost per pupil um I'm just kind of wanting to to know what the meat is behind those numbers the answer to the question around are they the same is no there's differences across the Spectrum and special ed General Ed and in the

075activity or the administrative support in terms of those numbers I'd let Carla speak to what was included in the differentiated numbers yeah so I'm the one who pulled the numbers and no we did not pull out special education we did not pull out um extracurriculars we left everything that ran through the general fund Pebble and save um in that and and we can re pull those numbers in like dissect them any way you want um but we didn't do that yet okay so the numbers that were reflected are reflecting Staffing numbers Pebble okay so I can give you the kind of the details that we pulled out uh instruction support building repair and maintenance custodial utilities and food and nutrition and that's on that per pupil correct cost correct is a free and reduced lunch

076they're getting all meals paid and Harding is not correct correct but food nutrition was in those numbers but it's the food and nutrition Staffing costs and the revenue thank you does that make sense yep okay did you have anything I think the important part is conceptually and the numbers will bear what they are but conceptually what you have is you to run a middle school you need to have a certain base right everyone needs a counselor everyone needs an assistant principle everyone needs a principal and as you think about it and it's obvious um it costs more per student when you have that base and then the additionals at Wilson currently we have the opportunity which we are grateful for to staff their administrative team at a higher level than Harding who has 400 more

077students um right those are the the inefficiencies that diverse schools would create um is that you could have that administrative team serving a larger number of kids as effectively okay my next question is center around McKinley I have asked for previously information and hope that you have it to share tonight on how many McKinley students are Walkers how many McKinley students are tardy how many students and families have transportation barriers that are both prevalent or intermittent I can pull up those numbers I think we send them in a board report but I believe it's a third of the students are Walkers and we can get the specifics on the tardies for sure thank you other board members director humbles I have a question when I look at the middle school and back to McKinley and

078the transition to City High school and Metro alternative school what is the thought process behind that because then it's impacting a community with our students and their families and just trying to get an understanding I thought that City View was going to find its own facility and so when I looked at its transitioned to McKinley just try I need to have a better understanding of that and then I'll throw in the second one too because then when I look when it says Metro update of 779 thousand dollars I understand the cost for that either when it says the Metro okay so as far as City View finding their own place um so if we look at the Timeline um the transition of McKinley what happened after all of those projects take place and that's in

079August of 2029 um so the that transition wouldn't happen until then since the City View is opening next year we need to have a place for them between now and when that Transit transition could happen so we're it's 2023 so we're six years away um if this bond issue passes we would be six years away from McKinley being available for City View other questions director Garlock yeah just to piggyback on that uh the question about McKinley becoming City View um there are no numbers included in this bond issue that would pertain to a renovation of McKinley to make it be appropriate for City View that's a separate issue that's correct okay for City View I think this is what John said but I want to put a point on it um we need a short-term

080home that we're very excited about um in in addition um we know that that will be a yearly cost to have that short-term home so the hope would be that we could find a long-term home that would eliminate or limit that cost on an annual basis I am wondering if you can share how student achievement as expressed through access and opportunity was taken into consideration with this plan I mean you know access is opportunity right so we need to think about Equity when we're thinking about Transportation um with both the Aquatic Center and and with the ability to get to their school building can you please share with in what way access and opportunity were discussed during this plan I'll speak to equity and access when it comes to the the high school additions that

081we're talking about and the Aquatic Center I mentioned a bit when I talked to the Aquatic Center in terms of the number of students that having a school district-owned Aquatic Center that we run that we facilitate that will be open for our students K-12 to use with with the right organization and programming providing access for students that normally wouldn't have access to a swimming program or to get involved in swimming lessons or to get involved in a youth swimming program swinging diving program because they don't have access currently to be able to go up to lindmar's Aquatic Center and join their program or they don't have access they can't get to or we're just limited to three high schools the number of students that we can run through those programs but the larger Aquatic Center

082gives us an ability to create more access for students younger students Elementary age students across the district at a very low cost compared to what they have to pay if they're going to go to privately owned or um pools or joining you know going to Landmark using their Aquatic Center when you start talking about how to District student they're the costs there so there's increased access when it comes to that I start to think about the renovated spaces if we build the Aquatic Center and the equity of access that we start to create the transportation piece I'll let others figure out but um you know if you've been paying attention at all with the Iowa High School Athletic Association and the the football discussion with the associate associate economic Factor being placed into football and

083one of the big discussions there is well the the reason that there's a gap when you start to get to fit when you get to if you look at those charts and graphs you get to 50 free reduced lunch rate in a school district the success drops off dramatically for schools who who come in above that 50 percent one of the big discussions on that is what kind of access to training facilities to youth programming to youth training opportunities do these students have to engage when they're in third grade fourth grade fifth grade sixth grade and the answer in our community right now is unless they can afford to pay for it and get there they don't get it by having the expanded and reimagined spaces in our high schools we can create more opportunities

084for our younger kids to get access at no cost versus having to be able to go to a perfect game and pay for the cost there or we go to Team Iowa and pay for court time there we can use our spaces to to create more opportunities for our youth to get the same experiences that they're getting in some of those Suburban schools right now again planning that sea with them that they do have a chance and they do belong and they can start to see a future of how this can be part of their co-curricular experience um so I think there's a huge increase in in excess and access and Equity by creating spaces that our students have to pay for anymore because that puts a limiting factor a lot of our families and

085a lot of our kids the impact in a school day is um programmatic impact meaning once we have the renovated spaces and this is from a high school perspective the ability to add classes offer new courses give students access to things that are interest based potentially matching up with our profile of a graduate competencies around 21st century type of thinking skills and so on that we're able to do on those that we can't right now because we are out of space and we would need more physical square footage to be able to add those type of programs and run those during the school day so there's school day Academic Program impact and then there's obviously the before and after school programming impact with the extracurriculars the clubs the activities and so on that just would

086allow us to create robust opportunities that our kids don't have access to um from the Middle School level just talking about Mr Waters and when you have that small amount of staff and the space in order to cover all of the before and afters and even content so if I'm at Harding I might only have to teach one area of content of math but if I'm at Wilson and I'm a Wilson teacher right I'm isolated by myself and I'm teaching multiple level classes because there's only so many staff then we can efficiently and effectively place there because of those student numbers being under 400. so I think programmatically right that impacts also the academic piece but it also impacts those before and after school activities that are happening within our middle schools as well thanks

087speak on the transportation piece a little bit um so we know that our bus driver number since the pandemic have gone down we are on the uphill climb which is good news um not back to the levels that we were yet um so we have had to do a lot of cuts of what can we transport for and how can we transport we've had to hire some Contract Services in order to make that work we've also kind of gotten creative with certain things bowling was one that came up that hey John we got Bowlers that can't drive to get to the bowling alley because that's their off-site practice Place athletic directors came and said can we get a van that's parked at our school that we can use for these one-off opportunities that our coaches

088can drive so we talked back and forth and came to agreement said yep X Y and Z has to happen and we're supportive of that ads we're open to that so I think those opportunities are there too if we get in this situation how can we get creative so that we can so that we can ensure that our kids have access even if they don't have the ability to drive to an aquatic center or an off-site location director Newman did you have a question can I just I'm obviously not the smartest person at this table um but I guess director Fortune my my thought on this is um I'm a show choir dad um had a chance to host the show choir competition at Jefferson last year it was pretty dang proud about uh those

089kids from Wilson who after not having a show choir program put one together and that that impacts the Jefferson kids too um so you know my kids had the the opportunity to go to Taft with a huge Middle School uh Middle School show choir program but when they get to high school half those kids head to Kennedy and the other half are at Jefferson and again having a great feeder program in there and and again as a facility uh master plan community community member I I sat and that's one of the things that kept me up at night is when you to right size to schools means you can't have all the schools in the exact same spots they used to be and that's a really tough thing um but but I look at the

090possibility of having a more diverse School in each of our four centers that are going to be our middle schools and it brings in a student population to fill some of those programs and instead of it being 12 or 20 kids it could be 50 or 60 again and I also honestly and this was from the work that I did on the pebble campaign to to realize there were elementary schools they didn't have a parent teacher organization because they're just there there's you know parents that are working at night they just isn't the support system there when you can build the diverse schools which we'll have to consolidate to do um then you are able to open up access in other ways too so again I'll just say it one more time it's not a

091perfect plan but I think it's a good plan and that's one of the reasons that I've come around to that thank you appreciate that director Newman did you have a question thank you all right all right um so first of all I believe that we do need modern or modernized facilities and that it matters a lot to student and staff but programming matters just as much and and maybe more so you know beyond the collaboration opportunities that you've talked about specifically at Wilson and the expanded capabilities can has there been any discussion on whether Wilson would become a magnet school like McKinley and Roosevelt or what the expanded opportunities might be for um for learning in that building because that's really what we're here for at the end of the day we haven't discussed a

092magnet school going in there I think those are all future conversations to have around what that program would look like what I do think we'd be able to offer is what every child at Harding or Taft currently gets with those bigger buildings um Tami waro is just in the building the other day and I don't think she would mind me sharing but she tells a story of they're trying to debate not debate figure out how to have both a track team and a musical this spring because it just so happens that a critical mass also goes out for both and so it looks like they're gonna have to pick whereas in a bigger building you'd have a greater pool of kids that would be able to fill both needs but that's the kind of programming

093example that we would get to with a bigger building okay I'll speak on the magnet stuff here real quick too and you guys jumping up I'm wrong on this um with the closing or the repurposing of a couple of our buildings that are currently magnet schools McKinley and then in the future would be Roosevelt was that we would maintain those magnet programs but they would obviously need to shift some facilities so potentially could one be at Wilson potentially is that accurate Nicole Adam yeah yes okay and those future conversations with both stats so we hate to say hey um the future Franklin will be a magnet school and we would want to be inclusive and take best practices at the time and say what's working and make sure that we're respectful of all the those

094staff members that would be affected I want to go in a little bit of a different direction in terms of the magnet and think of magnet in a different way I asked for some data and knowing I was coming into this presentation and I think one of the things that we need to do is um keep the kids that are supposed to be at our schools we have 64 students that are currently middle school students 64 of them that live in the Wilson attendance area that go to that District down south that's just it touches the Wilson boundary and so when I think of magnet from a different perspective I think of attracting and keeping the kids that are supposed to be ours to begin with my second question just bear with me on this

095so kind of relating back to the question that um I almost said Dr borcharding wow director portraiting asked earlier about students who walked to McKinley changing our attendance areas definitely impacts our students and let's just say adolescents aren't known for being early risers in the first place so yes this is a larger question than facilities but are we thinking um a lot about changing our start times for middle and high schools and helping to alleviate some of those tardies and support some of our Walkers who may become carpoolers or walk further or be bust so it's definitely something we want to explore for the future the calendar committee that met this year really focused on those conversations but again because of the giant impact of everybody involved in the community has an impact on this

096we really wanted to take kind of a slow role and collect more feedback put more out the why but that is definitely the plan for next year to have those conversations collect feedback collect input and discuss what flipping and that shift would look like and what it would do for our school system for some of those same reasons that you stated additional question Marcy question where is the temporary location for City View we are still working on it I'm working on it yep okay and may I make a suggestion that the next time we meet and have this open conversation about um the facilities master plan the McKinley piece I really want more in-depth information or we're just going to keep asking questions and then you're going to be upset because we're not going to

097give you what you want I believe that yes yes that's the for sure thing we need more information there's a lot of concerns there right because you're moving a middle school out of a community that it looks a little different from some of our other communities so there's a lot to consider there so what I'm going to ask you guys is to dig in on that a little more and when the next time we come back together and we're talking about this have some of these questions um ready to be answered simply you know one of the concerns is a lot of those kids walk to school right so removing their middle school that is easily accessible right now is going to change up a lot of things so just will you think about those

098things consider them and then when we come back together have some better information so that we are satisfied with your answers director merch by I think I saw him first sorry all right um I just uh we heard a little bit about the cost per pupil and administrative spending was mentioned as part of that I'm sure a lot goes into it and so I was wondering if someone could just speak to the concern that was brought to this board um regarding the elementary school the new Elementary School Maple Grove with the change in the bigger number of students I think we had a it might have been the PTA president it was definitely a parent leader came and said the administrators in that building are essentially overwhelmed because they don't have enough support and so

099and this was a concern that was brought up before the facilities master plan 1.0 was even passed and so we talked about the cost savings but what experience and I can talk is in an elementary school parent myself in a relatively small Elementary School when the principal knows every kid by name that does a lot for the kid's sense of belonging and so as we move to Bigger Elementary Schools bigger middle schools are those efficiencies how do we how do we square that Circle making those efficiencies you know work on paper not affect the experience in the building can anyone speak to that I think first on the teacher level um when you have middle school teams where each teacher knows their kids intimately that those are the relationships that matter most in my in

100my head and then from the administrative side I think the idea of teaming there goes the same way um these guys know their kids uh principal RAC and Mr Hanrahan at Hardy know their kids Gary and Josiah know their kids and because they're skilled administrators so where you have more kids I think it's a doable task and best practice as we've seen across the country in terms of the Middle School numbers I also want to acknowledge um Eric and I have me recently met with the administrators of those larger elementaries and there is growing pains right so if I'm leading a building of 250 as a principal and now I'm going to lead a building at five or six hundred it's going to look and feel different right because there's more but again it's about

101problem solving and sitting down with those people and saying hey where where are the needs where are the gaps where have we misstepped and then filling that in um I think is the critical piece but I definitely believe they still know their students they still know what's going on in the building but we are having conversations as well because again it looks and feels different and we've been able to have one administrator at our our smaller elementaries because they've been smaller but now that we're having multiple larger elementaries we might need to think differently about what that looks like for them would that impact the cost savings for a student by adding more administrators of course I mean they're there's right but they're still going to be efficiency cost savings and that as well and

102I think there's more conversations and it sounds like if we got more data breakdowns for you guys of what that looks like I think that would be extremely helpful okay um just looking at the cost numbers that projects as a whole the biggest one is the North Side Middle School um but we haven't really talked about it that much tonight I know everybody loves the idea of a big new building on the north side of school and a feeder system but if it comes time to looking at an alternative to this plan if this plan is put forward to the voters and we couldn't secure support for it what would be an alternative to that part of the plan alternative to a new North Side Middle School is that necessary to the plan we've got

103already excess capacity at our middle schools and so if you cut that 90 million out of the plan it might be more palatable to the voters is there any alternative being explored we really haven't explored alternatives to this plan the one thing we do know is that we have too much capacity and I believe if we get down to it and that this doesn't pass that we will still have to close middle school buildings and that would be a reactive approach because we can no longer afford to operate the way we're operating versus a proactive approach with this plan thank you um I do want to Echo what several of my fellow board members have said about McKinley especially director Roundtree and director portraiting um McKinley I don't know the boundary areas um that well

104for McKinley but it's most of the southeast side I believe where I live and my son does attend McKinley and that third that walked there within walking distance of McKinley and I have asked probably a half dozen times for this board to look at the Census Data so we know who lives in our community and where they live I don't know if the neighborhood around McKinley is a majority black neighborhood but it's certainly as close as we have in Cedar Rapids and so as director Roundtree said those are the students we're talking about when we're talking about third of students that walk to McKinley and uh I guess I'll just say you know it's almost like we're trying to gentrify the neighborhood by moving that middle school out for you know a fancy new Magnet

105High School which is a good idea I guess but unproven concept at this point and so I would just Echo the concerns that my fellow board members have expressed you turn down those did you have a question one of the things of the thing and yes we do need new facilities so I am I am not against that but I think we need to keep our eye on too we have declining enrollment so keep that in your radar because there may be the possibility that some of our other schools I don't know if it would happen What would have to close because of low enrollment and thinking about if in fact this school voucher is passed what impact is that going to have too on our enrollment so just just to keep that in mind

106um the impact it has and um I think that's just so important so I it is time and uh I I'll agree but I want to make sure that we're doing what is best for our students too and I think that's that's just so important and I'm gonna go back to McKinley I think that's important that's impacting our whole Community a neighborhood and just to keep that in mind too directory Garlock yes thanks to all of you who are sitting here so patiently answering our questions I I appreciate all the work you've done um I want to Echo what director humble said I think it's imperative that we update our facilities I think as Mr Stecker also pointed out our kids are competing against other communities that have much better facilities and we're providing for

107our kids so I think at the end of the day and we do have some some things to work out here but at the end of the day I think we have to remember that our kids deserve this our kids deserve the best that we can possibly give them and I'm confident we'll get through all of these details so back to Wilson for just a second um I appreciate the fact that we're taking some time to get a better evaluation of renovation versus building new I'm also wondering like we've heard a lot from the from the community about Wilson Middle School and the historic nature of that building we've heard folks from the neighborhood who grew up there went to school there I'm wondering if we have heard from the families who are currently at

108Wilson Middle School if we've done any surveying can we get information from the families who actually live at that building right now about how their children and their education is being impacted by the physical building because I think we can all drive by it I that's where I started my teaching career was at Wilson Middle School junior high back then it is a beautiful building but what's the educational impact and I appreciate Mr Waters you being here to share some of that with us but I'd like some more information about the families that go there and what they think about the programming yeah so me and Mr Waters we've worked on several questions to get out to that community so we will have um that's out here I don't know within a week maybe and

109um then back sometime after that okay and it's not only the current Wilson families who have the direct experience but also um discussion about including our feeder elementary schools that this will be impacted by because there's not a student in our building right now that would realize the benefit if we got a reconstruction or a new building there will be a actually probably gone from Jefferson by that time but thank you thank you um so I want to step back and look at McKinley again for a second um has there been a transportation audit for McKinley families or has there been some kind of survey for McKinley families to find out what Transportation options they have available consistently or if there are barriers that exist and if that hasn't happened I think that is something

110that would be very relevant for this board to review especially when we are considering closing that and possibly interfering with ability for patients or sorry other hat other job students to um to have access an opportunity to education um again um I you know I I feel that area is an underserved population that has repeatedly expressed Transportation obstacles and we need to be very mindful of that as we move forward um you know it's been said before on the back of this plaque it says how will this decision impact students that's always achieved that's always expressed in student achievement which is that graduation it's walking across the stage right I don't I don't want to add more barriers for students to achieve graduation I just think that we need to have a little more thoughtfulness

111in our approach there as we're examining some Transportation obstacles I'm trying to remember I just did I wanted to say one last thing um just wanted to mention the board received a letter from Save CR Heritage group and their board secretary Cindy haddish and I wanted to Echo and kind of bring to the Forefront a message in that letter um Dr Stecker right he talked about student engagement I think that's very important and what I wonder and sometimes I feel like I'm speaking you know there's probably not that much of an age difference between me and a lot of people up here but for my generation and people in Generations younger than me I wonder sometimes um how we're engaging and how we're relating to the Fuller lives that people live and so the letter

112that was sent to us talked about the decision whether or not to demolish Wilson but I think it could be taken for this project as a whole or any project that we approach and to think of the message that sends for to students and so if we treat a building like Wilson as something that can be knocked down and replaced that is you know it comes down to a spreadsheet it comes down to this conversation but that's a physical thing when it comes to our sustainability plan there's um you know carbon emissions kind of embedded in all that and so taking those and I don't know what the right answer is to this necessarily but taking those things into consideration when we discuss this plan or any plan is a way I think um I

113know you know maybe it probably wouldn't have reached me in school but um other people in my generation and certainly people younger than me who came through as climate change as a different perspective of the world opens up into a bigger world if you treat these decisions not just as numbers on a spreadsheet and like I said it's very important you know engaging in activities was very important to me in school as well but thinking of that bigger picture is another way that I learned and grew and I think it's the way that the kids these days and what I want for my children as well to learn and grow not just in an abstract way in a real way in our community and AS Global Citizens to be Future Ready I guess and so

114I just wanted to bring that letter to the table you know acknowledge that we've received that and bring that perspective as well John I think you started the presentation by saying you know showing the enrollment numbers and I think I heard you say it was at 68 capacity um later on you had said you know that whether this plan goes forward as it is or some modifications are needed for it um some things definitely need to change right so exploring those things deeply appreciate the board asking for more data it's as we often find ourselves doing but making sure that we are in fact making the decision that is in the best interest of kids I appreciate the conversation too and the comments that you've made that not just the kids that are in our

115schools now but the generations that are coming up behind them and really paying attention to the young families that are in this community they've got kids that are going to be going through this our school system going forward so appreciate everybody taking the time tonight um appreciate you assembling this team and answering so many of our questions that have that have been fielded at you over the last few months so I do appreciate that and certainly the next steps in this process as we adjourn our meeting this evening we'd like to close in a moment of silence to recognize one of our staff members I'll turn the meeting over to Jefferson High School principal Michael Hawley speaking about Martha Niemeyer Gwen everybody called her who is part of the royalty of Jefferson High School that

116family has done so much for us Martha Gwen Niemeyer passed away unexpectedly on December 26 2022 surrounded by her loving family Gwen was married to Larry Niemeyer on December 20th 1969 in Adel Iowa the two were married for 52 years before Larry's passing in July Gwen was a loving wife mother and grandmother her biggest joy in life was being a grandma she was a fixture at all her grandson's games and events she recently enjoyed spending weeks with her baby granddaughter she is known for giving the best hugs to her grandchildren if you knew Gwen you knew that she was the ultimate host she loved having her family over for large meals on holidays and birthdays she was an amazing cook and made sure to have something everyone liked at every meal Gwen loved Christmas and

117made amazing memories with her family hosting the most special Christmas celebrations every year her special talent was making each one of her children and grandchildren feel like the most important person in her life she talked to or saw her children every day something they will miss very much after spending years at home with her children Gwen became a paraprofessional with the Cedar Rapids Community School District she most recently worked at Jefferson High School and also worked supporting students at crva a job she truly enjoyed Gwen was known to be the quintessential fan for basketball softball and baseball for many years many remember her being three rows up cheering The Jayhawks on both as a parent of the Jefferson students and as a wife of supporting Larry and his teams when was the backbone of Jefferson's

118credit recovery program for many years she was diligent and thorough in her management of these classes for students who likely would not have graduated without her support Gwen was an advocate for students who were not always easy to love and her encouragement and gentle guidance assisted these students across the stage her last few years saw her carry that same commitment to Credit Recovery district-wide giving her Special Touch to many many students Gwen savored the quiet night she shared at home with her late husband Larry and their devoted cocker spaniel MJ Gwen was preceded in death by her parents Harriet Virginia and Ross Krieger and her husband Larry her family is comforted knowing they are together again Gwen will be dearly missed by her four children Nancy Nancy Ryan Waterbury Noreen Thurston Nick Niemeyer Natalie Matt

119was married to Matt Niemeyer Lorenz they have five grandchildren Mason and Lewis Waterbury Charlie and Harry Thurston and Olivia Lorenz and her two brothers Charles Krieger in Canton Krieger as we observed this moment of silence in memory of Gwen Niemeyer let us remember the lives of the students and staff that Gwen is positively impacted as an employee of our district thank you with no further business we stand adjourned