001foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] I would like to call to order the regular meeting of the Boone County Board of Education for September 14 2023. please let the record reflect that all board members are present and would you please stand as we welcome Boone County High School for our national anthem and then our students from what do we have a video of them I am not singing the National Anthem do we have any vocalists in the room well then we'll just move right on to our wonderful students from New Haven Elementary School who will lead us in our flag fix that well at least they're facing it foreign anytime
002kids take it away pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all hang out there for a minute kids Mr Parks has a certificate for you you may be seated thank you let's give our New Haven students another round of appreciation thank you Mrs Goble in New Haven at this time I'll turn the meeting over to our superintendent Mr Turner for our good news items thank you madam chair September's break the mold Award winner is English language teacher Lisa Peters of ockerman elementary school Mrs Peters has been teaching the English language to to our students for nine years she's recognized by her by her peer English language teachers for the barriers that she has
003broken down with kindness and with compassion she believes a student strength comes from their family support so she finds a way to engage her students families in the educational process please watch this video Lisa Peters is an English learner teacher she prepares immigrant students at the third and fourth grade level to speak English as quickly and proficiently as possible theoretically a student who communicates well will excel in academics can feel comfortable in participating in social activities and school sports you imagine coming to a new country and you don't speak the language the culture is completely different and it's you can feel lost and you can feel lonely and so an El teacher really first of all is really built on relationships because you are helping them to be comfortable in this new space she said
004really well teacher when I come here my first day I always knowing to watch and now I can't do talk really well I just love the kids they are the sweetest sweetest children a lot of times especially the ones who come from other countries they're extremely motivated to learn very respectful generally and the families as well um very appreciative so it's just a lot of love in my job when I started on school she came with English and she was really patient an El teacher's job doesn't just end with the day's English lesson the student's family is also in need of educational and cultural supports because they're now living in a very different culture than their own my team and I are always constantly thinking of things that we can do to kind of especially
005for our new families who are maybe moving from another country I'm just to kind of help hold their hand a little bit and explain the American school system explain kind of the expectations here Lisa is a perfect example of an advocate for all of our students last winter she spent multiple days during Christmas break helping a family find housing after they were displaced and then beyond that helping them get all the Furnishings for their housing and she just spends hours making sure that her kids are safe and well taken care of Lisa and this team work phenomenally together in are just a valuable asset document okay ready Mr Peters is part of an El team of five at ockerman elementary three El teachers including herself and two El para Educators she's been teaching El at
006ockerman elementary for nine years we asked her what her job is like every year is different every month could be different because I could get a newcomer who speaks zero English maybe has never been in school their entire life I could get a fifth grader who's never used a pair of scissors before which I've had um and that changes things completely for me the biggest thing I said to us though is the connections that she makes with the El families in our El Community she's also started a process where they welcome newcomer families to Aquaman which I I love they take them before a tour through the school they do a short presentation they introduce them to the FRC coming from Florida where pretty much every teacher has to take some classes in those strategies
007when I moved here I found out that most teachers do not get any of that training and their teacher Ed programs so that's something that we've tried to really do well as a district Mrs Peters also recently formed a multilingual parent leadership team where immigrant parents give their feedback on what works for them and what additional needs they might have and she started ockerman's annual Multicultural Thanksgiving our first year our principal she cooked I think it was like eight turkeys and then we told families to bring a side dish from another country so we invited not just ER families but all families she really does have a passion for relationships with students and with families and that's what makes her so good at what she does this is my turn to say [Music] for winning
008the award congratulations on winning break the Mona Lisa you are so deserving and we are so proud of you Lisa congratulations on winning the break the mold for September Lisa once again I just want to congratulate you on winning break the mold you are a valuable asset dockerman Elementary what you do for our El families what you do for the staff the training that you provide is a asset that is has no words I'm super proud to have you win this award this year I know it was a long time coming but once again I just want to say thank you for everything you do for our Ackerman Elementary families the El students here the El families you are one of a kind and this is well deserved ladies and Gentlemen let's congratulate Lisa Peters
009Lisa if you would come forward please and if our board members would go down to uh welcome her [Applause] thank you so much [Applause] there's so many faces in this room tonight um who are so special to me and I just really appreciate all of your support over the years thank [Applause] you our next good news item is regarding our new Transportation director the Boone County Schools transportation department has a new leader congratulations to Nick Greer for taking over the post [Applause] your team didn't even let me finish Nick and get into it there following the retirement of director Bob Barracks Mr Greer knows this job is not without his challenges and has come up with some creative ideas as we continue the search for solutions to the bus driver shortage and we have a
010short video to show you now following the retirement of former director Bob Barracks please welcome Nick Greer to the Post our biggest change of need to make is just our hiring and retention we developed a Google document that I shared with the entire staff here and I said just add any ideas that you can you know no idea is too small or you know not good enough [Music] five star our office staff to to track of any missing student on the first two days of school we ended up with 53 missing students most of them were kindergartners now all of them were found of course with z-pass we will be able to identify that they scanned on the bus my additional hope to that is to be able to look at the buses and say
011all right we're having on average 30 students scanning on and off this bus every day we can add more students to this route and try to eliminate some of these doubles that we have and Mr Greer has another unique idea that's sure to pique your interest and maybe even challenge you but that's a story for another day so stay tuned thank you [Music] [Applause] good thank you excited for the future [Applause] to congratulate we've been following exceptional Boone County District Educators and administrators first superintendent Matthew Turner who made the special edition of Cincy Magazine's power 100 in the education section this is the city showcases the Pinnacle of the tri-state's leadership encompassing Innovative education and executive and important figures across diverse industry Industries [Applause] also Natasha Lovins of Royal High School and Sarah Kendall of
012Ackerman Middle School both teachers were celebrated for the Campbellsville excellence in teaching Awards the purpose of the program is to recognize the quality teaching and learning taking place in the school systems throughout the awards program Campbell University presents certificates to teachers in each grade level preschool Elementary mentally and high as selected by their school district so if Tasha and Sarah [Applause] good job [Applause] absolutely everybody oh you'll be behind it don't worry yeah he won't see you just smile that's all you got to do you'll be fine this page videos preschool thing yes the local area agreement local area agreement full utilization of preschool okay okay we'll move on now with our meeting agenda for our student board member representative report Yusuf hello and welcome my pleasure to welcome everybody to this new board meeting
013uh of the school year um I'd like to say that this school year has started off really strongly for myself and many of my peers um I felt like it's been a very smooth transition from the summer to the school year and I cannot thank the administration at my school and all the schools in this County for making it the smoothest way possible to get back into the learning process it's been very fun very uh easy way to get back into the flow of things I've talked to many of my peers as it is my responsibility to be their voice and they've said that they've also enjoyed how every time this District does a great job of making the transition to school a much easier and better process and I cannot be more appreciative for
014those who do make that possible they're one concern that has been brought up by many of my peers is the problem with buses currently as many of you may well know many people in this County experienced double or triple runs or they may be late to school and it's my responsibility to voice those problems and make sure they are heard here in front of this board and to all of you and so I hope that we can collaborate and figure out new innovative solutions to these issues which I I assume will be addressed shortly through this board meeting the student superintendent student advisory Council has also met in August then near the end of August and we there was our first meeting for the new school year we had a lot of new and enthusiastic
015members to this Council and we all went over expectations for those who are selected to be on the superintendent advisory Council and we began the process of learning to know each other and making connections so we can more strongly make impacts in this County as we have done through the previous years the high school committee on the ssac has also gone together to discuss future ideas and events that we have planned we are planning on attending kiska or the Kentucky school council Association event that will be hosted in NKU in October and hopefully we are voices here at Boone County as a whole can be heard more clearly throughout the state of Kentucky we are also aiming to make ssac a more public thing to make sure that people everywhere know that we are doing
016good work in putting impactful decisions into this County as the students have the voice they are the root of why education occurs and we want this to be known to everyone thank you all so much for hearing and I promise to give you all future events and keep up everyone updated thank you thank you [Applause] before we move ahead with our superintendent's report we did have a late business item submitted to the board today that we do need to amend our agenda and add it as a new business item because of the date requirement of board approval so if I could and if someone would put forward and motion to amend the agenda to add new business item D the memorandum with Head Start in Boone County preschool I would appreciate that and item D
017to the agenda was item D item D under new business okay so I have a motion to amend to add item D under new business for Head Start in preschool do I have a second Mrs Young thank you are there any questions did everyone see the information that came out late this afternoon okay all right so we have a motion and a second to amend the agenda all in favor aye any opposed hearing none just note your recommended action new business now has an item D and we'll discuss that once we get there uh thank you for taking care of that uh housekeeping item of business we'll move forward now with our superintendent's report Mr Turner thank you madam chair I would like to introduce Eric McCarter our Deputy superintendent for operations to give a
018report on the Operations Division of our school district I'm going to show you a few pictures uh the school I'm highlighting tonight is Rio high school and some of the programs that they're doing the Project Lead delay programs so chat if you will bring those up and what you see before you as a family consumer science room and the culinary practices that will be used in that room and how that is all put together keep going Chad please and then the biomedical room and I uh um uh then the other one is the engineering room that has a seat right a seat in Sea machine over there to the left and then the equipment there in the back of their room being able to do multiple multiple different projects throughout the day I wanted to
019highlight that because part of our facility Department and our guys are very talented and I want to thank Mr razor and his team for helping these classrooms be put together again provided to be able to take these pictures be worth your time to see this I just want to highlight that and show those pictures to you Mr McCarter just one comment on that those Project Lead the Way Pathways that are in all of our high schools are extremely useful for our students in getting into fields that they wish to get into in terms of medicine in terms of engineering we've had Executives from Saint Elizabeth and other local business and industries say they'll take any and all of our students that go through those Pathways because of just a high level of training they receive
020so you're thinking a different idea of what we show that would be a little bit different if you want to show you a finished product with kids actually in the rooms and utilizing that so I'll turn around yeah thank you so again very similar to what you saw with Royal High School um the family consumer science rooms at Boone County high school so similar projects with their layback funds and also a very strong collaboration with Mr razer's department so one of the really neat things about this you'll notice that those have stainless steel countertops so one of the tasks that Mr razer's amazing workman's ship um persons in his department where they had to build a base cabinet or Ace countertop first and then we sent these out to have the stainless steel fabricated and
021as Mr Carter said I encourage you to stop by and visit them it is so impressive to see the transformation in those family consumers um and the ones you on the far end you can see some students I was actually there during a classroom one day I hung out for a while hoping they would make their way back into the actual culinary section but they did not but they were doing some exciting this is some pictures of Jones Middle School so Mrs Park was great to share some pictures of actual students and some of their new spaces there so you can see that's the new addition one of the biggest transformations of that area aside from additional constructional space is just the lighting and what a difference having that bright light it completely changes the
022feeling in those instructional spaces and then these pictures you'll see lots of collaboration going on in their classrooms so several of their new classrooms have the movable wall so you can see one of the pictures where the wall is open um so they have two classrooms collaborating and having instruction at the same time in one very large space so it was great to be able to see those students actually in those classrooms they do have new furniture coming so you'll notice that they do have some temporary tables in there so we are anticipating that new furniture to be arrived arriving soon and then you'll see at another transformation completely all right uh moving right along one evening a little bit of a transportation update uh again I wanted to welcome Nick to being our new
023Transportation director and I can't wait to hear what the next idea is that you have in your video [Music] I just can't wait to talk tomorrow um so with Nick being our director that he was our assistant director so that leaves the assistant director open currently and we are in the process of giving that person hired um [Music] and then I also wanted to thank our bus drivers for all their work for the first month of school and getting kids to to and from school every day under some difficult situations uh they're amazing group of people a lot of them were here tonight to support Nick and they've already left but I did want to thank them and I also wanted to bring to your attention and I think I have at one of our
024workshops to answer your question about the what we're doing in in the short term for some of our adult runs some of our principals have volunteered to become bus drivers um and they are taking classes currently and one of them one of them being your principal uh you know maybe not from your principal I'm sorry about that one of them is going to be you may be thinking about it now yeah so hold that thought um but he probably will be starting on Monday uh driving and what he is doing is trying to help with the double runs that we have at his school so he will finish the day out of school and then he'll go down to the Bus Loop where that is and he'll take a double run group home and come
025back and maybe even do another uh the people that I did want to recognize that are in training that will be starting pretty shortly Matt Schaefer principal Ryan Cody Ryan the assistant principal Andy Gatewood I think he is here with us he's training um Chris ritzy uh Chris still here yep I want to thank all of them for going through the class and participating in that and we are trying to recruit a couple other principles and I think they're thinking about it we talked to him about our principal meeting this past week and so they are thinking about it and hopefully we can get more on board um driver openings we still do have some driver openings as we have in the past few months so I would encourage people to call human resources or
026the transportation department and we can help you get to the training opportunities that would lead you to getting your CDL and with that being said I know Nick mentioned z-pass a little bit earlier so I'm going to get have Kim give a little bit of an update on that [Music] is that the principal today but I don't want to share who that is yet Casey's not actually decided but so coming soon there might be a number five coming for that so just a quick update on zpass as you know we have been Gathering the opt-out form so as of this time we have 82 opt-out forms and we did send those out to about 9 000 students 9 000 students that were eligible at the elementary level and then our students receiving special Transportation so
027our next step in z-pass we will be gathering the cards on the actual ID cards and then we'll be Distributing those to the students we'll be doing a small rollout first and gradually rolling that out to all of the other elementary schools that we can get on that full on board as Mr Greer did say we have had some students who we have had to locate after school so we know that that will be a great tool to assist us with that especially when we're looking for our smallest ones within the district so our intent is as everything goes on the timeline we will have that out and up and running by mid-october as long as everything goes as we're expecting we will be going out to the schools very shortly to train their office
028staff to make sure that they have full understanding how everything works and to facilitate that implementation and just a couple more items I want to give you an update on our AED and aeds and CPR trainings we had our health and wellness committee this past Monday and we have 33 additional aeds coming to the district soon and I want to thank Kathy for her work uh with that and that will be added to the 61 that we currently have throughout the district and she is also going to be meeting with the students from thornwild I think very soon and Conor middle so because some of them have moved up in the next few days that we're here to ask about the aeds back a few months ago um and then also Jennifer yarger reported she
029is constantly training people in CPR she's also training some of our nurses to actually be trainers themselves so she can train people within our buildings to get more people trained in CPR so that's a very good positive thing our monthly financial report Linda will be giving that later in the consent agenda portion of the meeting and then the working budget will be presented as a new business item and we discussed that at our budget committee meeting last week and then now I'd like to invite Eric ball to give an HR report good evening uh some some really good numbers some really good movement so I'll give you what we had last month and then how that's changed for this month um for most of these positions so last month we had 10 teacher positions uh
030vacant and we are down to five um a little bit up and down on those but from ten to five pretty good uh we had 19 pair educator positions that were vacant we are down to nine uh we're currently still seeking 18 custodians uh six staff support and uh four cafeteria workers so last month I reported you that we had 55 vacancies we currently have 43. so definitely moving in the right direction continuing our efforts to recruit and obviously retain those folks we have with different career fairs we're attending community events so we're moving in the right direction and as always if you or a friend is interested in employment Boone County Schools please have them reach out to us we'd be more than happy to sit down and talk about benefits talk about opportunities
031we have with the district bus driver so I'm gonna defer to I don't know if you've been told Mr Grier our new director right here um 24 drivers just to break even yeah double runs and I think we were at 30 last month so that sounds fair okay there I think there's like 60 some open allocations all together that concludes our report Mr Turner all right thank you Mr McCarter I'd like to introduce Dr Detwiler to present a report for the academic side of our school district good evening everybody we're going to start this evening talking about the Strategic plan giving you an update on the academic side where we are with that starting with Goal number three stakeholder engagement lots of great stakeholder engagement happening within the district the student engagement the student voice
032we love you heard Mrs Peters talking about what she does with her non-english speaking families that's fantastic tonight I want you to hear a little bit from our special ed director Jody Hall and an event that she has planned so Jody good evening I wanted to share with you the upcoming event we have a transition Forum that you can see listed up there I don't need my glasses then if it's up there um that will be occurring on September 27th right here where we are and it is a transition forum for students who have cognitive or developmental disabilities and linking them to resources and the community that they will need both currently and when they exit high school and so topics that are really complicated like Guardianship and when do we have to apply if
033we are going to be the student's guardian and Social Security items and so it is one place that families can come and get information from all the different resources here and start doing planning and getting signed up for many things that have some waiting lists so by the time that they need to access that they would have the opportunity to do so so we're excited about that it is the first of four and just to preview the other ones that will be occurring is that there is an IEP 101 and trying to familiarize parents with the parts of the IEP and build some better understanding so when they're in meetings that have a lot of people and a lot of discussion going on that they feel confident in what they're looking at that will be
034in October in January understanding autism and in February a behavior night and so to talk about routines that could be supporting Behavior across settings and so we're excited to be offering those and I wanted to share that I do have some flyers I can pass down if you'd like them with the sign ups and I have one other thing I want to share just hot off the press and so even Mr Turner I'm not sure if he knows so yesterday it was announced that for the second time so since I know I've been in this role we are lucky to have a special educator as a finalist for Kentucky teacher of the year for special education and so Dana wild at Collins Elementary I got the pleasure to go tell her that yesterday and so
035we will find out in November if she is the winner but no matter what it is an unbelievable privilege to be a finalist for that so she's one of three and so if you see her congratulate her so thank you Mrs Hall next we're going to go to world-class education I wanted to start giving you an idea of how some of these pieces are starting to come together some of the different initiatives some of the state groups that we've been working with so first of all world-class education looking at 1A specifically part 5 develop opportunities for students to demonstrate evidence of their learning and meaningful and personalized ways in a minute I'm going to have Bill Hogan come up here and talk about how he's working with our lead teachers with a deeper learning group
036in putting together some of the evidence of learning opportunities that fit with our portrait of a graduate and then one see the portion of a graduate specifically the third part and employ instructional and Grading practices that value student growth we'll talk a little bit about looking at grading practices but first bill why don't you come up and talk about what you've been doing with deeper learning thank you Dr delwaller for allowing me to share a very great day because we met with 100 staff members today about 45 high school teachers and Middle School teachers from three to four and about 65 Elementary people from uh 415 to 515 around deeper learning I want to take you back deeper learning just to make sure we're all on the same page is the Confluence of academic content
037standards those skills that knowledge that students have to have messing with those transferable skills such as communication and collaboration an example and what we're talking about with our teachers as an eighth grade U.S history teacher formerly a task that I might give students is as we talk about the Declaration of Independence we might do something about some students you might be a loyalist some students you might be a patriot go research why what evidence what primary sources would you pull and come up with an argument and let's debate and as they debate that between each other I might take it as the instructor give it to the student as an example of a time that they communicated effectively with an audience to demonstrate their academic content knowledge so I want to make sure everybody's clear
038and when we talk about deeper learning we are talking about both meshing together to give students the opportunity to do world world things and so today as we uh discussed we gave teachers opportunities to dive into tasks that are out there and see where our deeper learning happening for students and where could we make a shift in their instructional pedagogy to go deeper into deep learning and giving students opportunities to mesh those things so again just want to make clear we're at the very beginning we have six one-hour sessions throughout the rest of the school year and that is bleeding from the work that we did over the summer June 6th and 7th when we had about 150 Educators at ignite talking about deeper learning and our profile of a graduate any questions thank you
039Mr Hogan so that's portrait of a graduate deeper learning and now we're going to talk about evidence-based learning with our local Laboratories of learning if you remember I think two years ago the board approved our participation in this Statewide initiative there were three cohorts we were part of the second cohort and this really came from commissioner glass's work with united we learn where he listened to voices across the state about students and families experiences with assessment assessment in particular so as we talk about evidence of learning we really think about our practices and assessment through Laboratories of learning we've been able to get funding to work with various groups across the country and one of those is the Aurora Institute now there's gonna be a quiz for everybody so let's see everybody in the room
040see how well you pay attention to this this is a list from the Aurora Institute of really what ifs what if we could do this for every student what would assessment look like what would evidence of learning look like so I want to go through each one I'm proud to say and here's the quiz part I can strongly say I feel confident that we are really really moving in the right direction on six of these there's one of them that is difficult we'll see if you can pick it out so the first one students are empowered daily to make important decisions about their learning experiences how they will create and apply knowledge and how they will demonstrate their learning empowering students and that's really about the portion of a graduate's about number two I highlighted
041because this is what local Laboratories of learning is focused on assessment is a meaningful positive and empowering learning experience for students that yields timely relevant and actionable evidence when commissioner Glassman across the state and started doing those empathy interviews he was finding that they were not good experiences for a lot of our students they were not good experiences for a lot of our families and when we did our own empathy interviews that we were required to do through this initiative we found the same thing so part of our job with local Laboratories of learning is to make sure the stakeholders who are involved with that group have their eyes on the work that we're doing with assessment to make sure it is a good experience for everyone number three students receive timely differentiated support based
042on their individual learning needs that's mtss number four students progress based on evidence of Mastery not seat time about 10 years ago we did some work with Mastery learning with Tom guske many of our schools have picked that up Conor Middle School is a great example they've kept that going number five students learn actively using different Pathways and very pacing number six strategies to ensure equity for all students are embedded in the culture structure and pedagogy of schools and education systems and then finally number seven rigorous common expectations for learning are explicit transparent measurable and transferable number six and seven we find with our work with the um the opportunity myth that we've done in many of our schools all right so which one do you think it is which one do we think might
043be difficult for us anybody board members audience which one it's not the highlighted one I hear six I hear four how many say six how many say four well I would say it's four and it's not the Mastery part it's the seat time part the students are saying six students are saying six student voice will have to talk to you we're gonna have to talk to you about that I want to hear about that so from a student perspective I do want to hear about that I'm not I'm being serious but if you add the not the seat time seat time means we put into the Henry Ford way of doing things 100 years ago kindergarten grade one grade two and we have followed that and it makes sense efficiency for efficiency's sake in the
044district of 20 000 students but what's efficient might not what be best for every student so what this initiative local Laboratories of learning is allowing us to do is to work with Aurora Institute go to The Institute take some principles some LSS people and really learn about how can we further our our work and do we want to further our work in this area so we're really excited to do that um any questions and I do want to talk to the students so afterwards if you're still here I'll catch you in the back all right thank you thank you Dr Detweiler I just want to give a quick update on a few items with the board some of my activities and a few things going on around our school district we do have some great
045things going on and we have great people in our school district Kevin Daly of Valley Shannon Middle School was named the Valvoline Kentucky teacher of the year in 2024 so congratulations goes to Kevin he will be working very hard in that role once 2024 starts the I attended the northern Cooperative Northern Kentucky cooperative for Educational Services Board of Directors meeting uh earlier uh in August late in August and earlier this September uh that's our regional superintendent's organization also attended the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce board of directors meeting late in August and delivered information to them on the start of our school year what was going on in Boone County and some of the challenges facing schools with transportation and with Staffing our district health and wellness committee has met uh recently here on September
04611th visited the Northern Kentucky area Technical Center that's on the campus of Connor High School you may know some of the programs some of our students spent half their day at the high school and half the half the day at the Area Technical Center and that serves all four of our high schools our transportation committee uh met here on August 24th teaching and learning met on the same day our board members all attended the Kentucky School Board Association fall regional meeting September 5th at receptions for some training and updates our District budget committee meeting met on Wednesday the 6th let's see on September 7th we held the second meeting of our district ambassadors program the student services department under Miss rootman and Mr Brock there did a great job presenting at the new Fine Arts
047Center at Boone County High School one thing about that program is we try to move around to different parts of the district where so our parents from each of the schools that are part of that ambassadors program can see some of the different facilities it's the different places around the community they really love that student services team shared how they assist students families and schools in the areas of student attendance discipline School Resource Centers service centers and students mental health needs just a couple more for you there of course we had a special board Workshop held on Wednesday August 30th to discuss our district organizational chart I've had some conversations here recently with State superintendents and other state board of education Representatives on various matters also had a long discussion with the Indiana Secretary of
048Education unfortunately I have a good relationship there she's a former colleague of mine when I was a principal and she was a teacher met with several different Northern Kentucky Community leaders to discuss possible activities on which we could collaborate together and also met with some student Representatives on the school board to review tonight's agenda we had that meeting over at Cooper High School with Yusuf he is I'm really excited for his work they had their first meeting earlier this year as well so I'm really excited for the work of our advisory Council also went to the Collins Elementary School Multicultural family night that was a fantastic event we had a great crowd there lots of opportunities to meet with families and uh and also all the different Community resources that are available to our families
049and to our schools and also just a quick note here to teachers especially 2023-24 Boone County Ed Foundation application is on the website please consider for applying for a mini Grant the deadline for that is October 16th and that will support learning in your own classroom in schools Madam sure that's all of my good news thank you all right thank you Mr Turner appreciate that at this point we'll move on to our audience of citizens and as always our little informational statement that we do welcome the opportunity to hear from our community uh to take an opportunity to inform the board of your views on matters keep in mind that our agenda is set and we can only discuss the items that are present on the agenda we cannot legally nor would the board discuss
050an issue specific to an employee or student in respect to privacy as well as any pending litigation our meetings are streamed live on YouTube so keep that in mind and if you do have a concern that you would like a response from the administration please leave your information a contact information over here with Mr ball so that we can make sure you are responded to timely we do ask that you keep your comments to two minutes so that all who wish to speak may we do have several signed in and we'll start with that sign in list um Dave Payne okay absolutely just state your name for the record please hello my name is Amber Hoffman I come and speak in front of you every month this month I I've actually reached out to you
051guys personally only one of you responded back to me so instead of taking the time to speak to you I'm going to take this opportunity to speak to the Educators and administrators that I know are listening to this and that are currently scared of the implementation of SB 150 and Boone County school districts so this is a guide to Kentucky's Senate Bill SB 150 SB 150 does not require schools to out lgbtq students it actually prohibits the Kentucky Department of Education from requiring schools to keep information private from parents it requires it does not require the removal of Pride Flags or safe space tickers it says nothing at all related to these items it does not or it does not say that you have to ban the use of preferred pronouns it actually says that
052Kentucky prohibits the Department of Education from recommending the use of preferred pronouns with trans students um it does not require students to call CPS if they feel that outing a student would put them in danger expressly it says that Personnel may not tell parents if they think it would endanger a child adding that Personnel who do not call parents in this case are not failing to report neglect simply by not reporting this to the parents it does not prohibit talking about referencing lgbtq people in the curriculum it says that schools can instruct or present topics on gender of gender identity gender expression or sexual orientation all humans have gender identities expression and orientations in fact the brill expressly says that it does not prohibit all discussion with context of sexual of human sexuality both the
053sexuality of groups and specific individuals though the course or curriculum on human sexuality must be reviewed and allowed parents to opt out would can I finish or would you like me to how much more because we do have several people signed in two left okay um it does not ban lgbtq Affinity clubs it does not say anything related to this at all and it does not ban sex education it bans sex education in K through five and gives parents the right to know the content of sexual curriculum in the right and the right to opt out in 6th to 12th grade so I hope this will clear out some misunderstandings about this law in our County for our Educators thank you for your time thank you Miss Hoffman Jenna van laningham good evening I'm also
054here to talk about SB 150. my name is Jenna van laningham I'm a graduate of Boone County High School and the parent of two students in Boone County Schools one of whom is gender diverse I am here tonight because I'm a proud queer Kentuckian and because I care deeply about lgbtq plus students and families in Boone County Schools I know you all aren't responsible for SB 150 you probably didn't really ask for what's in it but here it is and we have to deal with it however I do think the way that you all have been dealing with it goes too far and lacks transparency weeks ago I asked for new or amended policies around student pronoun used to be shared and was told there weren't any and I've asked to see the training materials
055that were used to train teachers and staff a few weeks ago I've received no answer there's also links on the website that are broken I can't see board committee information additionally our requests that our child's teacher use their preferred pronouns never even received a response it really feels as though the board the superintendent staff are purposefully making things unclear and confusing I know that each of you care deeply about students and I know that you want each student to achieve their Highest Potential as a learner and citizen but having poor communication about policies and trainings that negatively afflict lgbtq plus students and families just deepens the hurt that we've already been subjected to from our elected officials in the state legislature tonight I'm asking for transparency what was the training given to staff if a
056student changes their name or pronouns are there new or amended policies or not should I have expected Silence from my child's teacher I ask you to please make communication on these issues priority thank you [Applause] thank you Miss Birmingham if you would want to leave your information with Mr ball we'll get your questions answered okay Sophia Lynn wolf hello today I'm going to teach you all a little lesson about gender just in general as you know my name is Sophia and wolf I am a freshman at ignite Institute I'm 14 years old you do with that information as you will I identify as non-binary but what does that really mean well there are a lot of different meanings behind it and that really depends on the person that can go from somebody that doesn't exactly
057feel connected to either one gender or another whether that be more masculine or feminine but it can also mean a bunch of other things like um a more common reason that is arise especially when it comes to a female in a way it is um been a way that a lot of uh females can just throw gender roles out the window and this has been really um beneficial in a lot of ways because in a way it's kind of like a big Act of feminism it's allowed females to get the job um get a say get their part in something that they haven't been able to before and this is something that I don't think a lot of people have realized and it's way more important than I've again a lot of people realize um
058so with this information oh my God I'm sorry so with this information this should open a lot of eyes because it means a lot of the people that identify something that they weren't born as they don't always want to just change their body physically it's more of a mental thing it's more of a way to get out there to get their say get their part just and nobody really chooses this you know as a way to get attention because it causes a lot of difficulties as a queer kid now a lot of people don't realize So yeah thank you Sean Mull are you gonna reset it or make it six I don't care I just want to make sure I give you time I'll wait so our Casey and Allison here hello we are Sean
059and Casey Mall let's play a game do you know which of us is which who is Sean and who is Casey let me give you a hint you're probably wrong my name is Sean Maul I'm a product of Boone County Schools I went to Burlington Elementary Conor middle and Connor high and I'm a mother of a current Boone County student I'd like to speak to you today about SB 150 I understand it is currently the law regardless of our opinions or whether we even believe it's constitutional but I would like to discuss the emotional and physical pain that being misgendered caused me you see I think it goes without saying that none of us get to pick our names at Birth we get whatever name our parents give us regardless of how good or bad
060it is it wasn't until I was four years old in preschool that I first heard a boy tell me your name is Sean that's a boy's name I didn't know was a boy's name I had never met anybody else named Sean and why would I think that my parents would give me a boy's name if I was a girl but I heard it again in first grade that Sean was a boy's name and again in second and third you get the idea is it short for Shawna no just Sean did your parents want a boy and according to them his name would have been Edward throughout my life my name has caused me nothing but problems pain and oh so many tears like literally thousands of Tears Substitute Teacher Calls attendance when I respond with
061here when my name is called they scold thinking it must be some smart alec kid trying to be funny in college I had to show my student ID in order for my biology Professor to accept my test because no way was Sean a female job interviews imagine the surprise from hiring managers when they expect to see a male applicant and here's this short blonde lady scheduling contractors for our home improvement projects I call and set up the appointments with my name my number when they call me to confirm and I answer they say oh we're sorry we're looking for Sean yeah this is her with extra emphasis on the her trying to withdraw money from our joint bank account I put my name and amount on my slip and I'm told sorry we can't accept
062this unless Sean is here too at which point I get a manager show my ID and advise them to educate their employees I'm not assuming names have a gender associated with them you see my entire life I have been called a boy I hate being called a boy I hate that people thought I was a boy I hated that my stupid name implied that I was a boy because I don't identify as a boy but my name does so how does this play with SB 150 which names are boys names and which names are girls names is there a list is there a gender neutral list for names like Casey or Jesse if I had wanted to change my boy sounding name to a more girly sounding name like Susie would that have been okay
063since I'm keeping a name that's associated with my birth gender or if someone wants to go from Susie to Sean how can you say that that's a boy's name when I'm standing here is proof that Sean isn't only a boy's name or is it only about pronouns so if Steve wants to be called Susie but says that he's still a he is that okay but if Steve wants to stay Steve but says he is a they is the pronoun the problem even though there's no name change please help me make this make sense if I were at current Boone County School student what steps would I take and who would be notified if I wanted a more feminine sounding name and to which standard of names are we using since clearly there can be girls
064named Sean and boys named Kelly I am of Irish descent so Sean actually translates to John so is my name John would that be okay we have over 60 different languages being spoken in Boone County schools which language are we using to set the bar for which are female versus male names is Google translator going to be the judge in these name change requests and you know why this sounds ridiculous because it is I wish with all my heart that I had been brave enough like the kids today to make the change in elementary school and change my name my name does not reflect my gender it does not reflect who I am it does nothing but calls me problems frustration anger hurt and tears why then would I wish a lifetime of hurt which
065I'm telling you now is a 36 year old misgendered named woman is exactly what will happen why would I force that onto a child if someone identifies as a female and wants to have a feminine name let them it hurts no one but not letting them will it is unnecessary pain we're forcing upon these kids if they don't identify with their name it causes them pain and tears why would we want that does this make learning easier does this make them more ready for college do sad kids have better test scores show me where this improves our school I fully support the students in their right to the freedom of self-expression as a guarantee to them through the constitution in the First Amendment SB 150 is unconstitutional and will be struck down in court I
066understand until that time we have to play by the rules let's just make sure the rules are easily reversible once this law is removed I encourage the board to use the same language as the Fayette County School Board which I believe does as little harm as possible to the students and eases the burden on our already overworked over stressed underpaid teachers let's make sure we're supporting our students and not causing unnecessary harm or telling them to just suck it up and wait till they're 18 they can do it then because believe me at that point it's too late everyone is already going to call them the name that they have known the mass since first grade and their hated name is going to fall them follow them the rest of their lives trust me thank
067you [Applause] Randy sigal I'm Randy Stegall a12 Alvin Court Hebron Kentucky denied I want to voice my disapproval of the purchase of Panorama monitoring and display software since a decision is delayed perhaps my thoughts will shape the later decision my primary objection is sel inclusion I describe SEL as mind mining of the soul of the student and the students family having such deep personal data available later by demand by colleges employers lenders and the government is base loading a Chinese social credit scoring system I contacted a premier education researcher here in Kentucky concerning Panorama he thought the use of Panorama to collect student academic data for use in the mtss intervention process seemed acceptable however he believes that including SEL assessments is very dangerous in Panorama to me reviewing the cell job that occurred at
068the last tnl committee meeting SEL assessment accumulation seem more or at least equally important than academic assessment SEL is dangerous not very definitive data that can be calibrated and very dependent on the world view of the assessment survey creator I don't think my input is will completely stop this but you might be able to remove some of the long-term dangers of its use since many stakeholders including students and their parents are allowed by the Panorama licensed to review the data and I think a policy needs to be put in place and approved before you place the order points of the policy should include what are accessibility requirements and procedures for each stakeholder student parent teacher principal all the levels of MTS interventions the court even what's the process for data correction of the student or
069parents believe the data is incorrect or biased what's the limits of transmitting the data to subsequent K-12 schools in and out of the district private Charter or parochial schools transmitting data to subsequent teachers and interventionists tends to bias those people against the struggling student how will damaging history be expunged from the when they change and mature most important the policy must require Panorama to destroy as outlined in the license agreement all accumulated assessments except academic when a student leaves the district for any reason graduation Dropout or attend another K-12 School if you won't kill this then driving it then excuse me then giving it a limited viable lifespan where students lives are not damaged long term is the second best thing you can choose um Karen Ellis I'm Karen Ellis I've been with Kentucky schools
070for 32 years been with Boone County for 28 years has a assistant uh trans as an assistant for special needs I'm coming to you coming to you tonight about the second assistant director um my reasoning I feel that it that we can utilize this money somewhere else I'm against the second director I feel that we can utilize money somewhere else we have a shortage on age we have a shortage on drivers that we need to utilize that money and to hire some new ones and to train them properly I'll give you an example I was off on a PM on a PM run one day they put an aid on that bus who was not trained properly on how to handle special needs again I love my job I'm not putting my job down I'm
071not putting my students down but I have students who will kick hit seizures they need special attentions we can't just put someone on a bus who's not been trained my driver had to get up out of his seat to go take care of the student on that bus Which at that time I feel that the driver should be in her seat watching oncoming traffic walking the surroundings if I have a need if not properly trained we need to be training them and I feel that hiring a second assistant director at this time week is not acceptable in my opinion we need to utilize that money somewhere else for our students and for our employees thank you thank you Miss Ellis Joanna Frost good evening I'm Dr Joetta Pro I live in Hebron about a block
072and a half from thornwild elementary school and walked by there every day with my two dogs um I am a retired mostly retired psychologist I moved to Northern Kentucky to Boone County about eight years ago and uh my wife and I moved here because we wanted to be near family and um I've only come to one other school board meeting but I come today about SB 150. in Georgia where I lived before I was the director of policy for the State Department of Behavioral Health and developmental disabilities and before that I was the training director so I come to you to say I know you didn't ask for SB 150 I hope in your hearts that most of you believe that it's wrong um I think you've heard from some other people about the harm
073that the bill can do I think what concerns me is that what I've heard on the street is that the policies are not clear for Boone County and that the training may not have been clear for what is actually required by SB 150 and I want to say to you that um in my heart I believe policies are an anchor that help people to do the right thing you have the choice to write policies that either go with the very minimum that that terrible Bill requires or you have the right and the authority to write policies that go beyond that Bill's minimum requirements that my friend Amber kind of clearly outlined and um I urge you to think about policies that demonstrate respect and not restriction and that are not harmful to lgbtq children and
074their families because they all have families who care about them thank you thank you [Applause] okay that is everyone that Madam chair Madam chair I would like to interject something if I could okay um I just like to take a liberty here because I can testify that there are strong allies an lgbtq community members within Boone County schools and they have been working on this with a deep level of care and concern for all of our kids and I'm saying this is a parent of a non-binary student not just as a board member but being a board member I do get a front row seat to many things happening behind the scenes and I promise you that when it comes to our kids all does mean all in our district and the district leaders are
075doing all that they can to minimize the stress and the confusion that's been put on the students and the educators the issues discussed here today they are important for those in our district to understand because it's not as simple as many try to make it seem the legislation passed was not as clear-cut as many like to make it think and the reach of it especially when it comes to curriculum is deep and the confusion and misinformation that is spread has caused an uphill battle over the last couple of weeks for some of our strongest Advocates and it's been hard enough dealing with the reality of the legislation alone with versus the stuff that's been completely exaggerated so this has just not been a very easy thing for people in our school district to navigate I
076want to specifically give a big thank you to Dr Detweiler and the LSS team they have been working diligently on how to best educate teachers and to roll out this legislation while keeping our at-risk kids as safe as possible and I want to thank Mr Reed with the bcea for all the work that they've been doing with the teachers to help provide a voice for those Educators because they're terrified right now they're terrified to speak up because of a political climate that have them in fear they're afraid that their safety will be put at risk for themselves and their families if they speak out about anything that they see in SB 150 and this is reflective of the sad state of our society because our teachers they cannot speak their mind to their District leadership
077they feel fear and that speaks volumes and we need to do a better job of providing a safe space for these professionals to use those voices so I do ask too that our district leaders that you all please remember that it is impossible for us parents of lgbtq Youth and their Advocates do not think of worst case scenarios when we're looking at stuff like this we cannot see this stuff and not be hypersensitive when we see legislation through lenses of suicide risk and homelessness and drug use and hate crimes and all those risks exist for our kids and kids like our kids and we parents will always be thorns in the sides of any legislator any District any school leader Any teacher whom we feel that kids like ours or ours are at risk and
078it might seem like an unnecessary annoyance but we do call it good trouble or civil rights advocacy so Mr Turner I am hoping that through your leadership and the dedicated work of Dr Detweiler and the LSS team that we will start seeing a lot of the confusion continue to get cleared up that we will start seeing the transparency that's being asked for because we need to have that we need to have that transparency not just for educators not just for our teachers not just for our parents but for our kids sake it's important I can't stress how important it is lives are at stake in a lot of these circumstances and that's all I wanted to say thank you thank you Mr Wolf [Applause] as always we do appreciate everyone's comments we do take them
079to heart and um even though sometimes depending upon whether my work week is 50 hours or 70 hours I may not always get to respond to an email but I do read them all and I do go and start asking questions and a lot of the questions that have been posed about Senate Bill 150 that have been posed about the new assistant director position for transportation that have been posed about Panorama that have been posed about a lot of the I don't know 80 or 90 plus items that were on our agenda tonight those have been questioned either if by not by me it by someone at this this board because we don't take this lightly and I I've said it a self myself a million times and I do agree wholeheartedly with what Ms
080wolf said in Boone County all does mean all when it comes to our students and our staff and for some people they don't like that but we our premise is to educate students and to prepare them for life whatever they come into our buildings with we open the doors because we are a public education system and I think we're one of the best in the world mainly because of the people that are in this room that you see that are staff and um so we're going to keep working on the things we love to do we're going to keep working on the things we don't like so much and we will do a better job of communicating I know there's been a lot of misunderstanding about the guidance that we rolled out and we may
081tackle that a little later on um and and I think that because our teachers do care so much that they want to make sure that number one they do the right thing because again whether we like it or not uh 150 is the law and we have to follow the law and that's sometimes hard for the community to understand but we take an oath to do that and whether we like it or not we follow the law and then we go to work to try to change it to make it better for kids whatever needs to be done and and that's where our advocacy as a community comes in for whatever law that we have that is not good for kids or not good for public education and there's a lot of them out there
082that are unfunded but we're required to do them but I I don't want I've never had a problem with teachers coming to me and telling me what they think because they tell me it goes it stays with me I don't share names and but I take the heart what I'm told and no teacher should live in fear about doing their job which is to teach the students in their classroom and use their discretionary judgment right I mean they have that it's not this Senate Bill 150 situation is no different than a thousand other situations that walk into a teacher's classroom every week and we have great teachers we have amazing teachers we have amazing staff in our building and they care about the kids and they know that they need to provide them a safe
083secure learning environment regardless of who they are or what they bring in with them through the front door of the building because there's not just the lgbtq issues in the community there's poverty there's abuse there's neglect um there's kids going home at night with nobody there and no food and no place to sleep and the kids that get to go to a home or an apartment are the lucky ones because we have those that don't even have that so and for some reason now our job has gone from just educating kids to being everything to kids so if we have to be everything to kids we've got the people we're that that are going to do their best to make it happen but that's going to be every child that is our commitment every child
084so didn't mean to get on a soapbox but um I have the microphone so and the gavel so point of privilege there we can move on now to our recommended action consent agenda uh items a through Triple S I believe we went through this month after we have our recommendation from our superintendent and our treasurer's report and yes if you do need to leave because of school and everything like that please feel free to go ahead and excuse yourself we will not take offense Mr Turner thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action consent agenda items a through SSS as presented with the treasures report given by Mrs Linda Shield okay I have a short report tonight we began with an adjusted cash balance of 44 million 683 889 we
085had total revenues approaching 7.6 million and total expenditures um just short of 10.2 million our net decrease in cash for the month was 2 million six hundred one thousand four hundred forty six dollars and our balance at the end of the month is 42 million eighty two thousand four hundred forty three dollars it is a very rude been a real very routine start to this school year um just a couple of items that are noted uh 1.1 million of occupational license taxes were collected and you will note that the transportation expenses may look a little higher when you're comparing to last year but that is because we paid for some new buses that were were delivered early this year our debt service payments for the month were three hundred and forty seven thousand and I
086will I've provided the usual reports and will be happy to answer any questions that you might have okay I have a recommendation do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented in the recommendation motion Dr Brown is there a second Mr Parks any questions for Mrs shield on the treasures report or for any items on the consent agenda we have a couple consent agenda questions okay Mrs wolf we have items double v and double w they are two Esser contracts I noticed on the board member that there were no notes on future funding for those two items do we have plans for future funding for those two items because those look like they were renewable contracts we we discussed that in the budget committee when these came forward because of the fact
087that Esser was is being used for this and has been for the kinvo last year correct so that was my question to Dr Detwiler what's Plan B when Esther goes away and I have members leaders were able to make requests this is a tool that is very much needed like anything and we discussed this in the budget meeting we will have to make choices moving forward so is there a funding source for the following year no not yet there is not so as we go through our purchasing cycle we're making some changes Mr McCarter might be working on some ideas on how we can do that But to answer your question there is no current plan for that we will have to just prioritize moving forward anything else Miss wolf or any follow-up to that
088no I just wanted to see if there was any future funding for that particular item and I did have a person email me and I just wanted to verify that item H the bid award for the data room relocation that was just adding the fire protection correct that was not in addition to Mr Hayes okay that's what I thought that's what I told the person I just wanted to confirm that I was correct on any other questions Ms young yes yes on items um III and GGG it sounds like a song page two are both of those um contracts it says this the program is open only to students of Erlanger ellsmere schools I oh yeah we've fixed that I caught that as well and brought that to Mr Turner's attention that a contract with
089Boone County Schools shouldn't include all students from Erlanger Hills Middle Schools yeah that was just a a typo on that that so that that is going to be dealt with already been changed anything else thank you for that we did update that online through your system so you should be able to see that now can we um discuss QQQ the ins well not QQQ the membership for that where is that one RR RR um can we talk about insert because I just want to talk again about what that is because I might move to pull that off consent agenda to vote for that separate the insert organization is a superintendent's organization a nationwide superintendent's organization that has approximately 80 members across the country superintendent organizations are kept small like that when there's a number of
090them probably half a dozen different superintendent organizations that are similar so that superintendents can gather it in a smaller Cadre to work together to learn together to learn from each other and so that group we meet three times a year to sit down and we bring in education experts experts in other areas anything regarding education we sit down and we learn together we talk a lot there's quite a few superintendents that I know now in Georgia in South Carolina and New York state in California in Arizona and we talk a lot about the different aspects of school it could mean anything from activities and things that may be going on some Innovative things in the classroom it is also some of the conversation we heard a little bit earlier tonight about how do we better
091serve the mental health needs of our students and it's also looking at what are some strategic things that we can do with our buildings with funding mechanisms and each of those states have different funding mechanisms and different processes and things that govern schools in those areas so it's it's really meaningful to learn and to work alongside of those so at any given time I can call someone from a different state that is doing the same job I'm doing working through some of the same challenges our district is working through and so that's been very beneficial and so during those meetings we get quite a lot accomplished and we have quite a few people that come in and present and help teach and help us learn because we have to make sure that we stay on
092top of that if we want to provide a world-class education to our students myself as the lead Learner in the district I have to make sure that I'm on top of those things and learning and trying to stay abreast of of all of those things so that's essentially what the group is it's a professional development group for superintendents so is that the phone calls or you have to pay the seven thousand three hundred and fifty dollars to make the phone calls to the superintendents no those there's there's travel to go to those events there's there's other other programs they put together for the superintendents so there's an expense to uh being a member of that organization which helps them it's a non-profit organization they don't uh seek a profit essentially the dues that pay that
093the superintendents and Boards pay for that goes into all the activities of that organization and I may need to clarify with Ms amalung um isn't part of our superintendent's contract membership in x amount of organizations of his choosing so that this is one that Mr Turner has elected to use within his contractual agreement correct so under Mr Turner's contract which I knew you were going to be looking down my way so I pulled up under Section six he is entitled to join four professional or Civic organizations and this is one of those per his contract and that is a standard inclusion in most superintendent contracts and if I remember correctly when we first became involved with one of our former superintendents through insert you have to be asked to participate in this this is not
094just is that correct that's correct yes it's By Invitation Only so um okay so yeah just to throw that point out there too so I mean you can choose to pull it if you want but he is contractually entitled to have this membership Mr Turner If I recall two I know in the past we've talked about when we look at opportunities for the lead learner one of the things that has been mentioned about this group in the past is that the sizes of the school districts are quite varying whereas in Kentucky I sit next to in some of my ksb training I sit next to schools that are the entire district is smaller than my elementary school so I think that's something that you've highlighted before is that you get to speak to some of
095the larger districts is that still the case with the current membership oh absolutely that's the case and the group that I'm a part of currently we have superintendents that have nearly a hundred thousand students in their school district we also have some superintendents that have some very small school districts we have a variety of different boards some of the boards of Education in New York have 13 members um and so it's it's a the variety of of the different school districts and and the things that they work through it's really beneficial to interact and learn about how they do things learn about how things operate and how that can help us here in Boone County anything else I had asked a question on EE about a field trip where I noted that um it was
096checked yes that students might be denied the opportunity due to financial reasons we're trying to get clarification on that sometimes that form is horrendous and people Check Yes because they've checked yes above it below it not realizing that they're saying yeah we're going to not let kids go for financial reasons and that's never anything that I like to hear so um I think Mr Turner reached out to the principal and we're going to have some conversations on that to make sure if that was a valid yes we'll figure out you know what you know if we need to do sponsorships or from the community or help them do a car wash or something to make sure that all students get to participate in the activities they want to participate in so and if I may
097that's the reason that checkbox is there so we can be aware of needs that are at our school level and make sure that we can provide resources to try to meet those any other questions on any other agenda items all right hearing no other questions we do have a recommendation motion and a second all in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay hearing none motion carries we have no old business before the board this evening so we will move on to our recommended action new business first up item a is our working budget for fiscal year 24. thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business item a the working budget for fiscal year 24 as presented Nation do I have motion Dr Brown is there a second
098Mr Parts Mr Turner the working budget before you is very similar to the budget that the board approved earlier this year the the main difference has been the inclusion of the tax rate that the board levied back in August so we're available for questions from any of the board members Mrs Shield Mr McCarter or myself any questions on the working budget I just want to say thank you to the budget committee that is a not easy so thank you to everyone who serves on that committee I know you guys have had some hard conversations I didn't mean to interrupt you Mr Parks so thank you Dr Brown yes Mr Parks and I do serve on that committee and it is an extremely vocal and hard-working group [Music] um and uh you know kudos to Mrs
099shield and Miss Jackson and the staff there for uh all that they do to make sure we have the information that we need when we need it because the budget drives what we can and cannot do sadly any other questions on the budget okay seeing none we have a recommendation Motion in second all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none motion carries Item B Mr Turner additional assistant director of Transportation thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business Item B the additional assistant director of Transportation position as presented have a recommendation do I have a motion motion Dr Brown is there a second Mrs Young I would like to ask Mr McCarter to come forward and give a presentation and provide more information to the board
100on this proposal all right thank you Mr Turner um back a few weeks ago we brought this item to the work or to the organizational chart uh Workshop that we had at our first meeting and we also discussed it at our second board Workshop as well um and so looking at just some of the items that I have before you we also included this at our budget committee meeting last week and was unanimously supported by that committee to bring before the board what we are trying to do as you know Nick has become our new director with the retirement of Mr barracks and so we are at presently like I mentioned before we are working on replacing Nick's job which is the assistant director and we have been working for a few months to try
101to add an additional director to that working group just for multiple reasons that we will I will go through the slides which I presented to you before but we'll go back over them and I know one of the questions one of the main questions asked at our last organizational chart meeting or Workshop was what would be the cost and we discussed that in our board workshop last week the range would be is what's before you 58 000 with that zero experience all the way up to 77 000 that's somebody who came in with 15 years experience in the transportation area because you get to the next slide Chad okay the rationale that we've come that we have used or come before you with and that I've given you that information about is the needs have
102grown with um over the years um we know we have not added any additional staff in the last six years in transportation the expansion of social programs or special programs excuse me mckinney-vento ignite homebuilders fire science rise and all the different special education field trip preschool parochial schools the daily transportation for all those areas has really put a strain on our transportation department and you need somebody to oversee those all those hours of the day we have a work day that probably starts at 5 5 30 in the morning and it goes till 6 6 30 at night and there's multitude of things that happen throughout the day and it's put a big stress on the people that are in charge of that um Chad could you go to the next slide and so what
103we have are what we are asking is to add this extra director or assistant director and divvy up some of the job responsibilities um and I'm going to let Kim go over some of the Opera some of the things that we have come up with as far as an operations part of it that would be covered and then also a logistical part so Kim I'll invite you to Mike thank you so on the screen in front of you you see some bullet points and obviously that's not all of the duties that an additional assistant director on the operation side would manage but looking at how the transportation department is structured you can basically split those into two main areas but then underneath each of those areas there's also many departments or many areas that they
104focus on so looking at the operation side that person would take care of all of as the title says the operational pieces looking at the training and the hiring and the recruiting which we know is a key piece of being able to meet the needs of all students in the county also a big piece of transportation is the compliance piece making sure that our certifications the reports that are required to be filed or done timely and correctly as well as working with our shop one of the things we've talked about at our board workshop and I do believe at the budget committee as well is just that the undertaking of maintaining not just our buses but our shop also maintains the as we call it the White Fleet all of the district vehicles that you
105see out and about and all of those vehicles are obviously necessary our facilities and maintenance department utilizes those they are vital when we have snow removal and when those aren't working that presents a problem for us as well another highlight from that operational piece would be working directly with human resources as well as working with finance and participating in those beautiful snow drives so that a lot of other things would go under operations but those would be the main pieces of that Chad you can go to the next one please first side of that is the logistical piece so looking at all of the requirements to make sure that we do what we can do to get our students to school we know that that is they can't learn if they're not there so the
106assistant director of Transportation on the logistics side would be that person who's overseeing all of the individuals and all of the tasks that are required in order to get students back and forth to school looking at routing students strategizing to minimize those doubles managing the office staff working at cross-training staff to be able to cover since we know that we still experience some office staff that are driving buses also being that liaison with parents and with the schools one of the biggest pieces is that communication piece and making sure that all of our stakeholders are informed and know of the challenges that we're facing and how that impacts getting students back and forth to school also again as we talked about a lot of those special programs that we've added Through The Years and we're
107very blessed in Boone County to have all those extra programs but the other side of that is we have to get students to those programs looking at the addition of all of our indict programs Gateway fire science to include our extended school Services we even know it you know at the elementary school a lot of times we think you know our special programs we just think about high school but really looking at our extended school services and what that takes to be able to transport students after school at elementary and middle is a key piece of that also another huge piece of the logistical part with transportation is that collaboration with a special education department our district fours the the district that takes care of a lot of our special education students and those students
108who have some special Transportation needs across the board there's a lot of compliance with that lots of reporting that's required in order for us to continue with funding and to be compliant and then also just that continued work with the coordinators meeting the needs of schools assisting with changing routes on the you know on a regular basis you know we like to look at that as an ongoing task we don't just assign them at the beginning of the year and leave them and especially now with making sure that we can eliminate as many doubles as possible so being able to add that second assistant director and really just divide those duties would allow us to be very intentional and to be able to do what we can to address the needs of Transportation [Music] also
109I want to mention that we are very respectful of everybody in transportation and we agree that we need to have more Aids on our buses that was mentioned before and we're not saying we shouldn't continue to hire people in that area we do and if there was a problem that was mentioned before we will look into that problem but the pro our department or the transportation department is the largest Department in the district and it never ends it is at multiple moving Parts at all times and it takes a lot of people to work that work through that department so we've given you as much information as we can and we have done that again in our workshops and our budget committee and we had full backing of the budget committee myself is here Kim
110our new director if there are any questions any questions from the board um when we had the organizational meeting I thought our next step was for us to discuss this next not to pull the trigger on it right now um and I don't I think I wasn't the only one under that impression um I'm not saying I don't see the need for the position but I thought our next step was to have a more robust conversation about the transportation situation to determine if this was The Logical Next Step or if there was another thing that we should be doing right now because of the transportation issue that we're facing so that's where I think I'm a little bit disconnected in terms of us being here right now with this position pulling the trigger on it
111today um we I I'm gonna try to answer that for you so this this conversation about the transportation um director has gone on for quite a while even before Mr Barracks Departed my apologies and you know as we learned in our organizational meeting that there was only a few remaining recommendations that were even going to be acted upon in that and so this this is the conversation because we had to have it sooner than later to try to Shore up basically um a difficult situation with our transportation Division and mechanics garage and all the things that they just spoke about um anyway hope that answers we've had the conversation quite a bit whether we've had it at this board meeting or in the transportation committee that's you know and then two meetings worth we discussed
112it at the organizational meetings and and the budget committee which I know you don't sit on I wish those were recorded so we could share them um but I'm with you as far as I wish we had more information or before today but when is here we always don't have enough information I'm just concerned about what this might do for the morale of the bus drivers because one of the big things that we hear with our classified employees is oh another management position and I have heard that when this hit the agenda and that's a big concern and they're concerned about pay rate and they should be they they want pay raises and they're entitled to and they should have them and they're seeing another management position and I'm wondering if this is going to
113hurt morale more than help the situation at this point that's a big concern again has that been discussed yeah well I'll just tell you my opinion about that since we're in the nuts and bolts of the conversation the I consider myself a friend of the bus drivers and I've since I've been on this board I think we I've lobbied and passed I've been a part of passing multiple raises for the bus drivers um since day one of my arrival here I have advocated for the transportation staff repeatedly almost every meeting and there are multiple things that we need to work on and I'm in a total agreement with the training and I was going to go into some of the emails we got about bus repairs and not having enough money to in the email
114that says that we are saying there's not enough money for bus repairs I don't believe that's true I think that someone has mislabeled some things when they're discussing those if there's training that needs to go on a manager somewhere needs to Institute that training and that is the issue that we're trying to fix one main manager cannot do this job and when you when you look at I heard I met with bus drivers at restaurants I met with bus drivers for coffee I met with bus drivers at at the Bus Loop and there was all types of issues there's communication we're not we're not getting communicated with they're not telling us what's going on um which all of that is true and we demanded better communication from the district and one of the the big
115systematic thing is is that this district is too large um for one or two people to manage these complicated operations I am not absolutely not in favor of adding managerial Personnel most of the time and I think everyone in here knows that about me in this particular case one person cannot run the bus garage all the logistics of repairing all the vehicles and the management of the people and still run the logistics of picking up all the children every day while driving the bus while dry well hopefully the new person will be a bus driver too um you know in my experience has been in my life in operations of large dealerships we have a service manager and a sales manager and a parts manager because one person can't manage all the phases of the
116game and I think in this particular case it is tough to swallow for me adding another individual that is quote unquote manager or admin or whatever but once you understand the scope and you go to one of the and I know you've been there and so so we all been to the bus yard with all those buses just the mechanics alone the mechanics of keeping a bus fleet moving by itself um is mind-boggling again while your mechanics are driving buses right and then we have all these other issues that crop up we probably could use one whole person just to do the recruiting all the time 24 like 24 hours a day we probably need a maintenance Czar that's over all the repairs of all the things with combustible combustion engines in it we can't
117do all that stuff and and so and I'm with you as far as I don't want to I am the most I consider myself one of the most frugal people um when it comes to the public dollar and public tax dollars and I've you know heard from citizens on both sides of that issue all the time and sometimes not the most popular person about that in this particular case and I'm going to just be super Frank we're going to be looking for another Transportation director in five years if there's not some relief for that that position these folks wake up early same with the bus drivers if it was up to me I'll just be honest bus drivers would make 80 000 or 90 000 a year starting out for day one and so would
118custodians for that matter if it was up to me and if we had it in the budget of course yeah but since we don't um I don't know how we can fix the communication problem where one District isn't doesn't really have any strings attached to the administration other than you know through the district coordinator and that kind of thing it leads to some disconnect and there's you know there's a lot of kind of systemic issues because of the size of the district and whether it's fortunate or unfortunate I think in in my humble opinion again just from listening to the bus drivers and reading like the email some of the emails said we don't need a admit another administrator because we need training and our bus is fixed and I'm of the opinion that because
119we don't have effective management we don't have training and our bus is fixed so to me it goes hand in hand you have to have good management in order to get the training that you need the bus aides hired and the bus is repaired and if you have a manager that spread too thin somewhere in there there's going to be some give or they're not going to get that part done whatever part that is and there's only really one part in the morning that matters and that's picking up well it's picking up Cameron Parks on time no you're not I go for a walk after the bus comes so I'm good with it um anyway so I think for me and I guess I'm just telling my colleagues here you all know me I don't
120want to add anybody I mean I've said that really been really clear about it and some of the people in this room really could care you know not want me to say that anymore in this particular case bus drivers need to make more money bus AIDS need to be make more money all classified all classified needs to make more money I think that's the audience need to make more money but that's not what's on the table tonight what's on the table tonight is to give some support and try to help Matt and Eric and Kim um and the transportation director get all the things that our drivers and our bus aides are asking for in place and they need unfortunately some assistance with that so they can make sure that they're managing this giant operation
121and and more importantly retaining the employees that we have now um by doing a good job as good managers and that's why I support adding this particular position at this time and I agree with the position itself I'm concerned about the morale of the employees in the process and that's why I'm saying that even though the like a pay increase is not on the table that we're talking about that tonight can we put it on the table to talk about that in the very near future for all classified employees because we're facing an issue not just with bus drivers but with custodians with para educators and it's we need these people I think if I can summer oh sorry did you I was just going to say please don't forget that last year we increased
122classified salaries with 5.1 million dollars they got a percentage increase though that looks a little different but still everyone's acting like we didn't do anything I know but and that that bothers me and I agree I'm not saying it's we we don't want to pay more but there's some classified roles outside of transportation and custodians that we haven't touched at all that also need consideration and if you want to talk about morale let's just get real at that first organizational workshop with the reaction from the board over adding positions my opinion was a dagger through the heart of the transportation leadership because they were begging for help and this was a way that they thought we could give them help and the whole conversation was totally negative and to me if that if there was
123any morale Damage Done It was in that meeting and and May and and I'm with Mr Parks the first battles I fought around here were for bus drivers and for bus routes and things along those lines so I've tried stayed on the transportation committee for so many years is because it's the heartbeat of the district if if those big yellow boxes aren't running we don't have school and if you sit in a meeting with those people and if you want to take my place in a meeting sometime just let me know you're going to find out the amazing people that we have dispatching those buses routing those buses and driving those buses and being an aid on those buses and you'll you'll sit and listen to Mrs best and Mr McCarter talking about this driver
124saying well I finished my run who else needs help it may end up at a school that's totally not out of their District but kids need to be picked up and they go get them and they do it day in and day out and we need relief at the top to be able I agree wholeheartedly with what Mr Park said to be able to give relief at the bottom the salary ad hoc working committee is still doing its work we've got a meeting coming up and we're going to you know tackle the next phase of that the board on top of the already negotiated raise gave an additional percent rates on top of what we already had agreed to do we gave more so I think we've proven that if we've got it we give
125it but it there's a big pie here and there's a lot of areas that haven't been touched that are classified as well and it's not saying that I agree if I if we could pay bus drivers eighty thousand dollars a year I'd be one you know and I don't say that flippantly because that would be not maybe getting close to what they're worth and what they put in but if we don't give some relief we're going to lose more people at the top than we've already lost and I just want to add that I think my takeaway from the organizational meeting was that we would get an updated organizational chart and that this was identified as a priority need and that this priority need if I recall the recommend there wasn't a recommendation per se
126but that conversation said can it get to budget can I get the salary let's get it to the board and I think the challenges we're looking at it as an or situation we still have the work of the ad hoc salary committee we still have the work of all of our committee structures so I don't think we're negating one or the other I think we're Rec there was discussion about cross-training certain employees and making sure that we you know had all of the things that we needed in place to support those systems and to refine those systems and to make them even more efficient and I think this position was identified as the top priority need out of that conversation so in my mind I was absolutely anticipating that this would be at the board
127this month when I walked away that was my assumption was can it get to budget can it get to salary yep okay we will see it in the board meeting so I guess I assumed that it would absolutely be here so I was not surprised that it wouldn't be on this particular agenda and in the budget committee the project manager position that we discussed was always brought forward and we said no let's focus on this one that one can wait a while but this is the critical need um about some of the other issues I I reached out to and I do appreciate everyone who reached out with their opinions and whether we agree or disagree on interpretations or anything like that I always appreciate people when they they reach out and tell me how
128they feel because you have Insight that I don't have um but I reached out to Mr mcarder and Mrs best about some of the issues that were brought up that Mr Park saluded to about the um buses not being able to be fixed and I knew we had had conversations a while back that there were supply chain issues at one point that were impacting receipt of parts and things like that and and you can't fix something if you can't get the part to fix it um but do you want to share more information on that so that people in the community and and even within the district understand that we are not putting unsafe buses on the road I mean let's if we're not putting unsafe buses on the road let's make that clear yeah
129I think in order to back and forth communication one of the things too we had to keep in mind that I presented to you was the cost of parts has gone up and our transportation department has a budget within our budget and when that needs to be adjusted we rely on WE relied on Mr Barracks or now we're around Mr gear to make it make us aware of that so we can adjust the budget to help those situations also with the safety aspect of it our buses are inspected every two weeks and they have to and we are known throughout the state as one of the safest districts in the in the in the entire State and our garage has always been up to a high level always since I've been here and that's the
130kudos to our people in our garage and the people that work there and and go to work and manage it every day um I don't know what else to say about the safety records we are we our safety audits have been clean and they've never been questioned um so I don't know what else to say to emphasize how safe they are we would not put an unsafe bus on the road to jeopardize anybody um yes we do have problems with some of our mechanics are driving because we have a lack of drivers and that does pull them away from the shop at times and we have some of the people in our office that drive some of them every day because we have a lack of drivers we do have double runs and we're trying
131to address that I know that was brought up earlier which I appreciate that um and we made we were transparent about that before school even started that we had 18 dedicated double runs to start the year off and we're trying to do the best job we can with that I know that frustrates people and we also combat road construction there's construction going on in Frogtown road which is that's where a lot of traffic comes in the morning the Rio campus is very crowded and I know people get frustrated with that but we're trying our best and I know Nick has done a great job just as the assistant director and he'll do a great job as the Director and really all the people at Transportation are working very very hard and you guys see that
132at our transportation committee meetings they are wonderful people and our bus aides and everybody associated with it so I don't know what else to say to make people understand that we are trying our best we're safe and we're trying to do the best we can to get kids to and from school in a very difficult situation so what is the Avenue for a driver that has expressed concern about bus repairs needing to be done what do they do well I would say um I will I don't know if Nick if you want to answer that question as far as if they have a something wrong with their bus it obviously comes to the garage and if you want to know garage I mean they can see they're coordinator they can see myself our garage before
133you know Say Jimmy Joe he's right there at the window and they turn it in too so he hears them all he and if you've ever visited our garage at all it's constant notion they are working on buses they're inspecting buses they're taking tickets that Nick just described to go fix that bus they may need to go get a spare bus obviously we have uh 24 drivers or short so we do have some spare buses that we can pull in and go on to that route why the bus gets fixed because sometimes some of them need more repairs than others it may take more time so it's an ongoing process every day of what's going on over there I don't know if that answers your question but it does I just I just want to
134make sure that any drivers who have concerns over bus repairs or bus safety or concern that that they know that there's an Avenue to get that addressed I I can't believe that they would not know that there's an Avenue because I know Nick is very vocal as far as communication and our routers our dispatchers are all very helpful as well if there's a problem on the bus or if a bus would happen to break down we will go out and get that bus and bring a spare bus transport children if we have to to another bus so it's constantly I I hear it on the only reason I can tell you that is because I have a radio that I hear all the back and forth and I know those jobs are getting done well
135in the spirit of communication let's just make sure we can recommunicate that process so that if if a driver does have a concern that they feel comfortable and confident in bringing it forward and that they will be heard okay fair enough okay any other questions yeah I just want to follow up with something um you can sit down thank you I think I just I wanted to just sort of clear up Something I Said So in talking with over the my term here on this board and talking with people there's been a sense that the transportation the management and the transportation department has had trouble communicating or addressing bus driver needs like the things we just mentioned bus repairs training whatever it is My Hope and understanding and sort of um desire is that from
136what I can understand and the reason I'm supporting it like I said earlier is that the management team is spread too thin so I ex I would like to see in a in a school year some of the complaints of bus drivers and bus aides alleviated by more management more direct management and active management and listening to the bus drivers in all the districts um and having these needs that are brought up addressed and because no one's asked me for driver Aid training I don't know if they've ever asked you no I don't so if if I was giving the option I would support that if it was on an agenda no one's ever asked me for more money to repair a bus other than the budget that Linda and her team put together if
137they did I would be in favor of buying more parts or whatever it is they've asked us to help with the management and so that's what I'm supporting and I'm with you that there's a lot of work to be done to pay more people pay people more in this District and I hope the Idaho committee continues to work on that but um anyway I'll leave it at that and just remember that's why we have the transportation committee it's it's a concerns committee it's an informational committee and it has elected representatives from every Transportation District in Boone County so they are your elected Liaisons to that committee and their purpose is to bring the voice of the transportation department and not just the transportation department but to me it's it's it's the whole classified we call
138it Transportation because as Mr mcarder said transportation is the largest largest Department within the district as far as as moving Parts um but um that's what those people are elected there to do is to bring those concerns forward Charlie buffondo sits on that committee he is your classified Association president he brings concerns for AIDS and custodians and transportation employees and classified staff across the district we're not limited to Transportation so there's you you can talk to your own District Representatives and have them bring it for you if you feel like it's not being heard and trust me in that committee we address it we'll figure it out we'll we'll send back you know recommendations to get it done so there are there are Avenues out there and you can always continue to reach out to
139the board too as well that's what we're here for too and Mr Parks and I said on that committee too and we can bring those issues forward it's not like we haven't done it before and continue to do it so there are Avenues use them because we can't get better if we don't know the right information to to work on and approach so are there any other questions Madam chairman comment yes please yes well I am the student representative so I want to bring in the student perspective of this matter um I know I'm not going to try to fool you guys saying I'm a financial budgeting whiz because I'm not I don't really understand how this works at the district level and I personally do not know many of the bus drivers or bus
140Personnel except for my own bus driver who safely takes me back and forth from school every day for the past three years um but I do want to add that as I mentioned before the bus problem is the biggest problem my peers as a student rep have mentioned to me that they want to see that fixed that is the biggest issue with double runs triple runs them having to wait outside them being unsure if they're going to arrive on class on time and of course there's the multitude of other different needs that the bus staff fulfills as in uh field trips all the extracurriculars any sort of special education that occurs outside of the main school and I feel that I and changing a little bit up spicing it up in the administration level by
141adding this position would alleviate uh for Mr Greer the new new director because I was there when Mr Barracks uh was present last year as part of ssac I was privileged to be able to go to the garage and see how it worked and I can affirm that it's a very very movable and locomotive area that no one ever stops working it's it's constant and so I feel that this position would really alleviate some of the stress that they're going through right now especially with concerns from students and parents in all parts of this district and that this uh alleviation of stress will hopefully trickle down to the student level it might not be an immediate change but hopefully it'll be an exponential benefit to this to this District if there's changes in the administrative
142leadership of the transportation department I don't want to say that this is the only answer we have there's plenty you have great minds here in this District who can maybe think of better Solutions but as of now with the information given to me I do want to say that I believe students will be really happy to hear that there are changes going on that are assuring the deacons safely and efficiently get to school every day thank you Yusuf appreciate your perspective I think um something that might help with the communication side is to make sure that we're communicating this is a piece of the solution not the entire solution and so our bus drivers realize that we're not throwing this at them as the solution to take care of the problem of our shortages and
143our double runs this is a part of it because I think that when this was probably going to pass I think it's going to be looked at by some as oh they're throwing a management position at us it could and it will as some bus drivers have a morale issue but if we're communicating it well they'll know that this is a piece of it and that we're not giving up on the Recruitment and we're not giving up on fixing the actual problem and we see the salary issues and we're still trying to do all the other pieces that this isn't the big solution I think that's where the miscommunication will come from if we're not out in front of it Transportation meets next week so we can continue this discussion there as well good point
144I agree anything else okay hearing nothing else we have a recommendation Motion in second all in favor please say aye aye any opposed you're a no okay so um it does pass with one no vote it was just one no vote right thank you just want to make sure the record is correct so um we will move forward with posting that position I assume Mr Turner correct yes ma'am and um good luck Mr Greer item C dual litigation the Altria settlement Mr Turner thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business item C dual litigation the Altria settlement as presented we have a recommendation do I hear a motion motion is as young as their second it's a tile give it to Mrs wolf um any other additional details
145you want to share Mr attorney yes just very briefly this is a settlement to the lawsuit that the the board agreed to be a part of with Altria for the jewel litigation and just a few details here Boone County Schools is eligible to receive a gross offer of 143 489 dollars as part of that settlement subtracted from that unfortunately we don't know the amount would be attorneys fees and some Court expenses Etc in addition there may be some liens on settlement funds so it may take a little bit of time to see that money actually um this was a several several years of litigation the board can choose to reject the settlement offer as well if they wish essentially we would stay on with the ongoing court case in the system that would be a
146delay that could mean that the the settlement after a period of time could be less depending on how other settlements go and how long the case continues but as of right now it's on the table for just under 144 thousand dollars and the board stated they if there was money coming from that it would be for mental health services and uh um and awareness around our school district and our community okay thank you Mr Turner any questions okay with our recommendation motion and second all in favor please say aye any opposed hearing none motion passes with our added item D is our um a memorable random of understanding between Head Start and Boone County preschool thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business item D the local area
147agreement and utilization for Head Start in preschool as presented have a motion motion Mr Parks is there a second Mrs Young thank you any Dr shires yes he's going to come forward and just share details on this local area agreement this is required by KDE each year for every school preschool in the state it is it's required by Kentucky Department of Education to have a local area agreement between Head Start and preschool programs we work closely with Head Start it just defines the responsibilities for a preschool and Head Start well that's what it does and we've been doing this for a lot of years yes we have okay any questions for Dr shires or anyone okay with our recommendation Motion in second all in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed hearing none motion
148carries that brings us to our information proposals and Communications does any board member have anything they wish to bring forward I would like to make a suggestion um we every year we do a financial audit and every year we have more and more data that we use more and more computer programs computer systems I like to explore the probability of doing a yearly audit on our security systems for our data our computer data I think that we need to be responsible on that proactive um I don't I'm not a technical person so I don't know all the language on that but I think that that's something that would help our communities peace of mind with a lot of the stuff that we're doing especially with more and more things being computer-based and I know the
149VA does a lot of computer-based stuff itself and they do a lot of annual audits so um I think that that's something that a school district our size and especially with as many computer systems as we're looking at especially with something like panorama having something like a yearly audit would be in our best interest yeah I just Rankin's out of town this week but when she gets back we've talked about having kind of a preliminary meeting to look at all of these contracts that we do for that very reason because more and more we're using programming that does touch data and there's a lot of things that we have to do by law that protects that a lot of the contractual language has the information on data privacy and security some language is better than
150others and you know frankly that's one of the reasons Panorama was pulled is that there was some language that we needed to do a deeper dive into to make sure that the district is protected and our student and and teacher data is protected so um we're kind of working on cleaning up some of those processes and I think that that's definitely something that could be brought forward to in that conversation with Marianne when she gets back on how would we create a procedure for that now there's got to be something in other school districts larger school districts they have to have somebody who already does this that uses a very good reputable third-party auditing company it's a very good point and the number of software platforms has just accelerated over the last three to four
151years much more than it was Prior and so that's presented its own set of challenges so um I agree with you completely on on this idea anyone have anything else um I just I wanted to uh just remind the board that Mrs Mrs Young brought up last I think was the last meeting about maternity leave and so I was wondering if we if I guess not wondering no no answer needed right now but I'm looking forward to the proposed changes for our maternity leave policy that may come before the board soon yeah let me give you a brief update I'm glad you you mentioned that we've had some discussions with uh Mr McCarter Mr ball and myself legal counsel as well as there is state law that does govern part of that so we've we've
152started the conversations we have more work to do but we can certainly give a report at our next meeting and just to give you an idea of where we are and what might be some next steps uh the other thing that is um on my mind is uh I would appreciate if at some point maybe now just a verbal exception that our board reaffirms our commitment to preschool education I would like to know that we all agree that it's important and it deserves our attention on occasion and that we all understand that it's a vital part of our school district here in Boone County it's a gateway to Boone County Schools it needs to be treated that way you won't get any argument from me I I want us back in a preschool education Academic
153Center I'm with you I want it out of the buildings I want it concentrated back into a designated spot so that the great work that was begun in that environment can continue because of how critical it is that by a child reaches kindergarten they're ready for school and it used to not be that way used today you used to go to kindergarten to get ready for school but now that's not the way it works anymore because our world just moves too fast but yeah my support for that has not wavered at all and I do think that our legislative committee actually needs to meet at some point this year and that should be a top priority Mr Turner when when who is the chair of the legislative committee I know it used to be Dr
154Ford I think you know that's myself Ford I'm sorry that's myself oh it is you okay yeah well you're the committee so it's up to you and remember full day kindergarten funding in that as well because that's as important as preschool right anyone on that end anything to bring forward no I just support the what um Jesse what Mr Park said about preschool all right all for it this is my son went to Boone County preschool and it did have a world of good with this speech so I agree very supportive of it and where they are right now is not where they need to be over there I like to see them moved the the The Welcome Center and the eval Center needs to be moved okay good luck all right so well we
155talk about I mean we talk about what's important so we'll say quickly one of the things that I think about quite often that when we go to these kspa trainings that they often say that Boards of Education you know sort of produce the vision of the district and it's been hard for me to understand how that works because when I come in the contracts are already on the docket you know and some someone a lot Brighter Than Me thought about the plan um and so I I appreciate everyone just at least verbalizing on on occasion whatever the thing might be our commitment in this particular conversation to preschool and we might have other things later but it it it's always one of the you present the vision and I'm like I don't know when that
156happens is there a vision meeting I mean what's um so I appreciate September 14th you just contributed to the vision true um ksba is having a board of directors meeting our quarterly board meeting next weekend so I'll be in Frankfurt for that we are actually doing our work session a little bit different we have one of our state legislators coming to meet with us ksba is currently putting together our advocacy program for the upcoming coming general assembly and one of the things that we heard back and thank you all for attending the regional meeting Northern Kentucky is always a very special one [Music] that um you know funding is always an issue funding for full day kindergarten is a has been discussed a lot of by input for ksba advocacy also there's a lot of
157conversation tied to funding of looking what are the benefits or potential non-benefits of changing funding in seek from Ada to ADM so that's going to be part of the focus of our conversation with our legislator when they join us next Friday afternoon I've seen both sides that could be helpful or hurtful so far our gurus in the room that live our numbers and data and statistics I would be interested in I've seen some numbers from ksba on how Ada a change from Ada to ADM would impact Boone County so if anyone has any insight into those numbers before I head to Frankfurt next weekend I'd appreciate it and any other concerns like I bring up preschool I bring up full day funding for kindergarten I bring up nonpartisan races for school board members which as
158you all saw was one of the most overwhelmingly responded to question by school board members across the state that was like what 90 something percent I can't remember it's a huge number against partisan races for school boards and um the general assembly is not the largest selected body school board members are the largest largest selected body in Kentucky so we have a lot of power in our seats from a an unelected body and we need to get better about using it to advocate for for students in public education and those who provide it because if we don't do it it doesn't get done so any thoughts or along those lines that anyone wants to send to me as we prepare for our our ksba meeting next week please send it my way [Music] um and
159I want to congratulate our Kentucky teachers for the being finalists and actually winning Awards I want to thank everyone in this room and watching or who's already gone to bed to get up in the morning to go back into the classroom thank you for getting us off to such a great start this year I watch every day for our message saying all kids deliver at home and I know that that's when everyone can breathe a sigh of relief so thank you for all that you do thank you for your dedication and your care whatever your role is you're all vitally important to our success and we do know that acknowledge that and thank you for that so if there is nothing else that anyone wishes to bring up we have no closed session tonight so
160all I would need would be a motion to adjourn motion Mrs wolf is there a second Mrs Young all in favor aye any opposed We Stand adjourned thank you all very much have a good evening call to order the Finance Corporation of the Boone County Board of Education please let the record show all members are still present somewhere I had