Boone County School Board Meeting For April 2023

001[Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] good evening everyone the April 13th meeting of the Boone County Board of Education will now come to order please stand as we welcome students from Boone County High School who will lead us in our national anthem [Music] through the night [Music] ly streaming [Music] that our flag was still there [Music] hello home [Music] students if you will remain up here in the front from Boone County High School let's welcome our students from Stevens Elementary School who will be leading us in our pledge to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible for all

002thank you what our students from Stevens Elementary just wait for a moment before you leave and actually just come forward we're going to want to present a certificate to all of our students from Stevens that just assisted with the Pledge of Allegiance please come up to the front thank you please [Music] thank you um [Music] thanks again to our students from Boone County High School and Stevens Elementary we're getting our meeting off to such a great start at this time we will recognize Mr hang Yang who will give our student board member representative report hang thank you we all needed and appreciated spring break and we are ready to finish our year strong while the upcoming season of State Testing and final exams are tough there is hope for a relaxing summer break as a

003reward for our challenging work throughout the school year the superintendent student advisory Council met yesterday for our annual School Board Representative election I commended council member from all of our high schools who bravely stood up and ran for the position of student School boards representative I'm thrilled to announce that Yusuf Saeed of Cooper High School is the next student representative of the Boone County School Board foreign I have confidence in his ability to represent our school students and bring meaningful change in the school district why don't you have some remarks yourself is this working oh there we go I had to get closer my bad uh I'm super excited for the opportunity I'm so glad that I got elected to this position by my peers and I really hope I can meet the expectations and

004set a good example for everyone and I really hope to also be a good Legacy to hang oh the good work hang has done this year and uh thank you once again and again I am I'm grateful that the ssac is in good hands now um our next meeting is on April 26th at which we will celebrate our Mental Health social media div and student Voice work as well as the video we were able to produce Mr Brady would you like would you please play the anti-vaping video for the board did you know that 26.1 percent of all Kentucky high school students use e-cigarettes no I didn't know what are e-cigarettes E-cigarettes are devices that heat a liquid creating an aerosol that contain harmful chemicals such as nicotine our e-cigarettes bad for me yes the

005use of nicotine products can negatively alter the developing brain reducing attention learning ability mood and impulse control cigarettes are considered a gateway drug according to the centers for its Disease Control also known as CDC some users may be compelled to consume much harsher and more addictive drugs such as cocaine or heroin do e-cigarettes have any other adverse effects e-cigarette users have almost two times the risk in developing certain cancers compared to non-smokers they also suffer from nasty withdrawal symptoms like irresistible Cravings anxiety or depression these cigarettes also contain as much nicotine as a whole pack of regular cigarettes making them highly addictive if we want us to bring um science students may have heard the term acetylcholine those receptors in the brain are transformed when nicotine is given to the bloodstream and so the brain

006expects the nicotine in place of the acetylcholine when it first came out it was it it was stained as oh it's just Vapor it was not very unsafe it was much safer than a cigarette and when they test these products that's absolutely not the truth at all and it's extremely addictive and and it seems youth often feel like that everyone's doing it and so that creates this feeling of I need to do it too if everyone's doing it [Applause] [Music] thank you well that concludes our report and thanks to everyone at the ssac and Mrs Roman for her excellent guidance and and Mr Turner for his advice as well thank you Hank appreciate your report and appreciate that excellent work uh putting that video together as quickly as you did so many thanks to all

007the students who participated in that and Yusuf congratulations on being elected by your peers to be the next student board representative um hang has been wonderful we know you will be as well so we look forward to you joining us next school year at this time Mr Turner I'll turn the meeting over to you for our good news items thank you madam chair Yusuf congratulations as well we know you'll do a great job and hang you're not finished yet though you have work to do thank you yeah senior itis is uh might be coming around but I'll try to cut it off as long as possible hang there's no such thing as senioritis it does not exist I'm here to uh announce the break the mold Award winner this month's winner has served in two

008professional roles over her 19 years in education Terry Hall has been a school counselor for eight years and before that she was a teacher in the classroom she's the kind of counselor who has the ability to forget you're talking to a counselor the supports that she provides to her students at school she also follows through with them at home proof of that is a life-changing decision that she recently made that speaks volumes about the kind of person and professional that she is please watch this video Terry Hall is a counselor at Steeplechase Elementary School she does what school counselors do with their students help eliminate barriers to learning five days before Christmas she encountered an unimaginable barrier three siblings at Steeplechase were being removed from their home and placed in foster care but there were

009no foster homes available one of the workers was just real honest with us and she said right now we don't know we don't know where they're going to go we don't have anybody that we feel like can take all of them that's when I found out there was another one a preschooler and that I didn't even know about and she we just don't have anywhere I said so what are you what are you saying to me about Christmas like what does that look like for them because like we're five days away from Christmas and she said well you know they they'll probably have to stay in our office we'll take turns so you're telling me they're gonna spend Christmas in an office what no how do you do that to Children Terry without blinking an

010eye just stepped up to the plate and said I'll take these kids Terry has three children of her own and one of her children Carly also attends Steeplechase it started with three three kids in the office and Mom's crying and I'm like Mom what's wrong and who really who are these do I need to go because I know how she is she's a counselor she has students with her and then she pulls me on it's the hallway and tells me that they're going to be coming home with us it's kind of one of those things you kind of put your money where your mouth is you know I can't tell people solve these problems we gotta fix it and then turn my back when I see that need it helped that she already knew the

011students in her counseling capacity at school but there were still some big hurdles to jump Terry wasn't a foster parent she had to jump into the classes and quick she had to prepare her home for a family that had now doubled in size to eight they've never had their own bed before to just see them get so excited about having their own bed it's something you just take for granted so it's really opened my eyes I think to another level of what my job is and and things that I need to keep an eye on she was prepared in some ways but children in foster care sometimes come with additional issues and baggage that your own children have not been exposed to it's also been a great learning opportunity for my own kids to say

012well you know for them to say Mom that's not what we did yes but we're trying to make it better we're trying to make it better so how can we make it better we have to try something different you know in a game it could be a small small thing that changes the outcome for the game but in life it changes who students are and what they're going to become and that's what Terry's done she stepped up to a plate in a difficult situation and she continues to Prevail and she perseveres through any challenges that are coming your way and she's just she's a remarkable person Mrs Hall is an amazing asset to Steeplechase Elementary to our students our staff our families she is constantly working with the students she pulls them does groups she

013does classroom Guidance with the students she works with students individually and is really making a difference almost four months later Terry Hall and family are still going strong this experience has strengthened their family bond the children are learning trust love and appreciation as it is modeled in Mrs Hall's home and she has gained invaluable on the job and off-the-job experience just ask Carly if her mom is worthy of breaking the mold I was like yeah yeah that's pretty much right yep she deserves that it's great Terry Hall I am so proud of you and excited to work with you you are an amazing human being in everything that you do congratulations I couldn't think of anyone more deserving for break the mold Terry Hall congratulations on winning the Boone County break them all award you

014are most deserving of it and we're so proud of you here at Steeplechase giddy up girl congratulations mom for bringing break the world um I'm really happy for you I love you [Music] congratulations Terry Hall Terry if you would come on forward if our board members would go down to the floor to uh award Terry I don't know what I'm supposed to do thank you [Applause] our next good news item is for hanging hang it will be receiving the Daughters of the American Revolution good Citizenship Award this award is given to high school seniors who are based on recommendations exhibit the qualities of dependability cooperation helpfulness responsibility leadership patriotism and good grades here to present this award is Peggy Kennedy of the Boone County chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American

015Revolution ladies if you would come forward join our board members and uh you can give your give your award there to Mr yang [Applause] thank you foreign thank you our next good news item is the rotary teacher of the year award the Florence Rotary Club recognized three Boone County Teachers as teacher of the year recipients each teacher received a 500 check from Heritage bank to donate to an education charity of their choice and citations from the Kentucky Senate and the Kentucky House of Representatives also a Boone County Proclamation naming that date as those teachers day and also a Kentucky Colonel award so congratulations go to charity Ehrenberg of Rio High School Brittany Gilbreth of Stevens Elementary School and Kim Foreman of yaley elementary school if you'd please come forward thank you foreign our next good

016news item is spelling bee winners we want to acknowledge the following students who were finalists competed in regionals or reached first or second place in their school spelling bee from Burlington Elementary Colin O'Neill and Heidi Payne from Kelly Elementary Paige brummett and Bodie Weber from Gray Middle School Charlie Cooper from Florence Elementary Carmen Thompson and Donnell Williams from Bali Shannon Middle School Tara Rakesh and also nusim Syed from Mann Elementary School donith Harris and Amelia Joshi from North Point Elementary School Katie Bowie and Abe Houston if you would please come forward [Applause] can we have the students up front in the adults behind them thank you foreign [Applause] thank you [Music] thank you more faith all right congratulations congratulations [Applause] thank you very much to our students congratulations [Applause] we're very fortunate we have lots

017of good news lots of great things to celebrate our next item is ockerman Middle School students performing in the 2023 Kentucky band organization we are acknowledging the following students who were selected to perform in the 2023 kbo Kentucky band organization Middle School All-State band in Kentucky this year's event was held at Eastern Kentucky University for the Arts the Center for the Arts students from all over the state submitted auditions and 84 students were chosen from 36 schools across the state chosen to attend from ockerman middle school or Ty Gatewood Wendy Griffith Macy Mitchell and Emma Proctor congratulations please come forward foreign [Applause] let's have one more round of applause for our students our next good news item is the superintendent's District ambassador program two years ago we started this program to select a parent from

018each of our schools across our district to come together and to learn more about our school district and how everything operates in a large school district Tonight is the last session of our second class of the superintendent's district and master program completing a nine-month program that started last summer to give Boone County committee members and parents an in-depth look and understanding of our school district these ambassadors are graduating tonight with a charge to go out into the community and encourage others to get involved with the Boone County Schools well the following ambassadors please come forward to accept our appreciation and thanks for all you've done and what you will also do in the future Angie acuda Kimberly Barack Ryland Bender Aaron Benson Jane Breckenridge Joshua Brown Mary Cochran Regina Fink Rose Gray James Gribble Cindy

019Herron Brian Hart Jennifer Hart Chelsea Holstein Ashley Huff Sil Rita Jones Melissa Kelly Stephanie Kendall Pat kubacek Amanda perzel Angie pies Lisa Randall Brandon Rutherford Travis richer Susan Shackleford Denise van leuven Kristen vossmeyer Eileen Miriam Wang Matthew Webster and Heather Weiland [Applause] insurance well they're still handing out the certificates we do have one of our ambassadors that would like to say a couple words at the microphone oh yeah I got rid of the microphone different aspects but I have to tell you my favorite part of the whole entire program was going to the transportation office and driving a bus so if you have not ever driven a bus I say when you they have one of these open houses at least go and drive a bus but I'm telling you when I retire I know

020what I'm doing I'm gonna be driving a bus if we want we could probably work around your current job we don't have to wait till you retire d um Merry Christmas thank you thank you [Applause] two more we have two more Awards our recognition to put out our good news item number seven here is family re resource youth service center recognition in March at the Family Resource youth service center regional meeting three Boone County frisky coordinators the Family Resource youth service center coordinator were recognized for the work they've done at their schools and the impact they've had on the students that they serve at their schools they are fristy frisky coordinator Jalen Clark from Connor Middle School frisky coordinator Garrett Griffith from Collins Elementary School and frisky coordinator Rachel Carroll from Ryle High School congratulations

021to the three of you and thank you for the work that you do if you please come forward [Applause] unfortunately these three were not able to attend so we do want to recognize them regardless our last good news item is the Kea ESP of the Year finalist for the national ESP award last year at this time we acknowledged Michael Johnson head custodian at the ignite Institute for winning the Kentucky Education Association education support professional of the Year award that put him in the running for this year's National Education Association annual award his nominator Charlie buffano said quote we recently traveled to Seattle Washington for the Nea ESP conference along with the BCC BCC EA group selected by the Kea to represent Kentucky to cheer Mike on during this competition while he did not win the

022national award it is still very prestigious to be one of the 38 nominees from across the country and we at the bcca and the Boone County schools are proud to have one of our own to be in the running on behalf of the district Mike we congratulate you thank you he please come forward [Applause] Madam chair that concludes our good news items thank you thank you Mr Turner and to all of our good news people we have dis recognized thank you again and congratulations and we appreciate your participation tonight if you are here just for the good news items please feel free to excuse yourselves we will not be offended because we know it's still a school night so we'll give you a minute to kind of clear and then we'll move on with our

023meeting [Music] right okay we will move on now with our agenda next up is our audience of citizens just a few housekeeping reminders that we have this on our agenda always have for our community to have an opportunity to bring their thoughts to the board um our agenda is set for the evening and we'll we'll only be dealing with the items that are on the agenda we cannot legally nor would we even if it was legal discussing issue specific to an employee or student in respect to their privacy our meetings are streamed live on YouTube so please be respectful in your comments if you have a concern that you would like a response from the administration please feel free to leave your information over here with Mr ball he has a sheet over there if

024y'all we may basically just need a way to contact you if we need to respond to any questions that you might have our comments are at two minutes and that's so that everyone who has signed up will have a chance to speak in this allotted time for audiences citizens I'm going to call um these individuals and the order that they signed up and first up is Sage bar hello I just would like hello I would just like to say that I am a trans kid I'm not in Boone County School District I'm homeschooled but everyone deserves access to materials books websites whatever as long as they're appropriate books talking about queer rights issues or mental health stuff should are not inappropriate for kids Thank You Sage Amber Hoffman and the person that signed up after

025me is Casey mole and he would like to donate his time to me if that's okay with you guys okay all right sorry I'm gonna be about three minutes so I wanted to make sure I got it covered sure not a problem go ahead I'm here today because words are powerful words spoken to this body last month brought me out to share some words of my own last month three people stood up and spoke out against the written word books specifically about my children and every child in Boone County's right and freedom to access certain books while I'm not going to get too far into the Weeds on what this attack on books is really about I am going to tell you a story about how words have affected me when I was in kindergarten

026our school had a play put on by a program called who this play taught me a couple of new words you see this play was about sexual assault what it was and what to do if you find yourself in this situation as a small child and it was during this play that I found the words to describe what was happening to me until that moment in my life I did not have the words to describe what was going on and right after that play I told my teacher who was a mandatory reporter the individual told the authorities and that man was arrested and my days of sexual assault ended and it ended because of the words spoken to me at school that day so you can see why I was so concerned to hear people

027people that are not members of our County and do not have kids in our Boone County Schools get up and speak about banning books simply for the mention of something like sexual assault it is clear to me that these individuals have no experience or education on how to empower children to become their own Advocates and give them the tools that they need like words to be able to speak their truth and to be able to protect themselves I implore this body to continue to seek the guidance of individuals educated and experienced with children to make the decisions on what is appropriate for school age children to read to hear and to communicate about as I am sure you are aware as it is child abuse awareness month that Kentucky is the seventh highest child abuse

028State 1 in 10 children are sexually abused before their 18th birthday in this state it's common knowledge that the individuals suspected of abusing children are usually those closest to the child and in a perfect world The Board of Education in a school would not have to consider these statistics but in the world that we live in sometimes schools teachers plays and books are the only defense some children have to find the words to empower themselves to speak out so again I ask you to please take stories like mine into consideration if and when the time comes that you are asked to remove books simply because they speak about an uncomfortable experience because you and I never know who needs to hear or read those words to empower themselves like I did on that day thank

029you thank you Miss Hoffman uh Kathy Nicodemus hello hello good evening um the world's a mess let's face it and uh but I I just have some things to say and I know you can't answer me um does any Boone County Schools have classroom instruction or discussion by Personnel or third parties on sexually ornament orientation or gender identity does Kentucky or Boone County School System have Dei instructor and if so how much are they paid um on equity I read something that's very good Equity outcomes for students no matter what even if it means treating some students perfect purposely unequally if that makes sense to you also I want to comment about the girl that spoke in January I just watched it on TV tonight or this afternoon and she was talking about bullying in

030schools and bullying for all kinds of woke crap that doesn't need to be in the schools and I think it starts with the superintendent the Board of Education the teachers it shouldn't happen and so kids come to school to learn what they need to learn and not other things and also tutors maybe some of the state or local Boone County could have tutors for kids that are having trouble and have fallen behind with all the um over the two years so that's just that's just a suggestion and one more thing also could there be tutors for the ACT that that Juniors and seniors take um I would think there would be teachers that could actually be paid overtime to tutor these kids like some people if they can afford it then they pay for it

031but a lot of people can't so if you want to be talk about equality then have it equal have tutors that's all thank you thank you if you want to leave your information Miss Nicodemus for any of those questions to have a response you can you can sign in over here with Mr Paul uh Randy steigel are you present Randy good evening good evening I'm Randy stegalli 12 Dobbin Court Hebron Kentucky my statement this evening responds to the board's choosing to fund legal activity by CBE against the 2022 attempt by the Kentucky Legislature to offer parents options in in addition to Public Schools house bill nine funding This legal action with taxpayer money is an abuse of power the rationalization by one board member that this funding was legitimate goes to the heart of why

032this is abuse of power his rationale was our legislators especially our local legislators were adversarial to public education consequently this board considered legal action and appropriate choice to thwart the adversary your adversary if that's a concept you wish to expound are voters like me all legislators in Boone County were all elected with school choice being a prominent Pro promise if elected the legislators are our proxy therefore a majority of Voters in Boone County are in favor of school choice and appreciate any action by our legislators to open the window to a bit open the window a bit for parents who desperately seek this option if the members of this board want legal action funded write a personal check you can even suggest teachers administrators who may have the same view you have write a personal

033check don't take the money contributed to public education by the people you call adversaries to fund legal action against a school choice concept they support thank you I like this right into the record thank you thank you Mr sugar what's our time okay does anyone else wish to address the board right now just state your name for the record please Naomi leapson live down the street and I say in regards to the book Banning in 1939 my the Nazis came into my grandmother's Village in Poland the first thing they did was shut down the stools and from that point on she never went back books and education were used as a weapon the Nazis started with Banning books then they started burning books and the next thing they started burning people and so when people

034come into this school and tell you try to tell our Educators who have gone to school and are experts in their field on what the children need no one I don't care if their parents or grandparents should have the right to come in here and tell you how to educate our children when they do not have that background furthermore if we look at the kind of books that are being banned they're attempting to silence our minority groups not just people like me from the Jewish Community but the Asian Community the African-American community lgbtq community the Muslim Community it is an attack against our minority groups our minority cultures and trying to other people who are not from the mainstream white Christian culture which is completely unacceptable it is an othering of the disabled it is

035an othering of people who might be just a little bit different from you and it is it goes against the concept of Education to even accept that kind of thing because the purpose of our schools is to educate people about the diversity and multiculturalism in our society and I hope you as Boone County Schools can make sure you stand up for those values that I believe we all share and uphold that light of knowledge that I think we all want our kids to be able to attain thank you thank you ma'am anyone else to state your name Mr hell yeah sure I'm Dave Payne um so this does fit into two minutes I'm Dave Payne I'm a parent in Boone County with kids in Boone County Schools my daughter was here tonight at the March

036meeting there were several ladies here on behalf of their group which has aimed to challenge books in other counties school libraries these ladies do not have children in Boone County schools and one of them doesn't even live in Boone County at the March meeting one of these ladies stated that if her group does complete any requests to have books reviewed for possible removal and these are her exact words quote the process will not be focused on Race sexual orientation or political belief the basis of our removals will be based strictly on inappropriate sexual content end quote I'd like to thank her for being clear about this I trust that she is a woman of her word and that this board can hold her and her group to that statement I bring this up because the

037other woman from that group has brought up concerns at the Campbell County school board meetings about the book called stamped which focuses on the topic of racism in America and does not contain inappropriate sexual content also in one lady's statement from last me last month's meeting she mentioned transgender topics her exact words were quote we need to stop normalizing sex rape abuse drugs and changing genders all the programs being pushed on our children the books the drag shows and the leftist ideas of some teachers end quote while she seems to equate changing genders with the normalization of rape abuse and drugs this Viewpoint is actually not in line with the vast majority of legitimate peer-reviewed medical and psychological research gender affirming care for kids is supported by the American Medical Association the American Academy of

038Child and Adolescent Psychiatry the endocrine Society the Pediatric endocrine Society the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association so regardless of what those ladies tell you please be sure to investigate each individual or topic for yourself thank you Mr Payne are we done okay all right thank you all very very much and again if there are any questions that you need answered by the staff or the board just leave your contact information and the information that you need and it will be responded too so thank you all very much for coming and sharing your concerns with the board we appreciate your input now we will move on to our consent agenda um Miss wolf are you going to yes I'd like to um I guess move to motion the items F through S

039are moved from the consent agenda to a new business I believe it's F through S you don't need emotion you can just ask they be removed okay uh s isn't related to math correct there's an S an R yeah I just it's curriculum though but it's reading right okay so yeah consent agenda items f as in Frank through S as in Sam they will become under new business items D through Q we're I wish all of our spellers hadn't left they could have helped us with our alphabet does that sound right okay all right so uh we will then need a recommendation on the remaining items on the agenda minus F through S Mr Turner thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action consent agenda items F through double s

040if I recall correctly as presented yeah I didn't fill out my with the treasures report by Mrs Linda Shield okay we began the month with an adjusted cash balance of 74 million six hundred twelve thousand four hundred three dollars we had total revenues of 11 million four hundred eighty thousand five hundred fifty six dollars total expenses of 19 million two hundred thirty eight thousand four hundred and fifty five dollars uh we had a net decrease in cash for the month of seven million seven hundred fifty seven thousand eight hundred ninety eight dollars leaving us with a cash balance at the end of the month of 66 million eight hundred fifty four thousand five hundred five dollars um our uh cash balance at the end of the month compared to this same time last year is

041about two million dollars lower but that is attributable to a timing difference that's occurring because we had three payroll uh dates occurring in this current month that the timing difference is due to the fact that it occurred in April of last year so by next month will be uh having the same number of payroll dates and you'll see uh a more consistent pattern in the expenses at that time um the other uh notable items are the county sent us three million in occupational license taxes and the expenses otherwise are can tend to be consistent in maintaining a pace similar to last year our debt service payments were 1.3 million and I've provided the usual information regarding the covid grants our comparative cash balance and our tax revenues and I'll be happy to answer any questions

042that anyone has okay we have a recommendation motion please motion do I have a second second motion Dr Brown's second Mrs Young any questions for Mrs shield on the treasures report or any item remaining on the consent agenda anyone okay hearing no questions on is it a through HH now is that what we're okay keep the same lettering okay all right no questions all in favor aye aye any opposed hearing none motion carries we have no old business before the board so we will move on to recommended action new business Mr Turner item a the 22 23 final end of year calendar thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business item a the 2022-23 final end of year calendar okay we have a recommendation do I have a

043motion yes motion Dr Brown is there a second okay second Mrs Young if you want to discuss something you do have to have a motion in a second it doesn't mean you vote for it it can be tabled whatever but if you want to talk about it we got to have it official so says Robert's rules um okay Mr Turner Madam chair I'm going to have a director of people Personnel Mike Ford come forward to discuss the calendar proposal thank you Mr Turner and members of the board you should have been provided in your packet this evening copies of two calendars stapled together if I could direct your attention to the bottom calendar dated in the upper right hand corner of December 9 2021 please to start on December 9 2021 Boone County Board of

044Education adopted the calendar that you see in front of you for the current 22-23 school year you see that on that calendar May 25th represents 175 instructional days for students you also see that there are different days highlighted in yellow blue green goals represent days that the school district are closed shut down for holidays and or allow for professional development days for our teaching staff as well as required by State Statute an opening day on August 15th and a closing Day on May 26th this calendar in its adoption by the board fulfilled two areas of requirements for a school year calendar for Boone County Schools State Statute which requires a minimum of 170 instructional days for students also included in that statute 1062 hours minimum of instruction for students and then the contractual obligation for

045our teaching staff of 187 days again this calendar for this current school year was adopted December 9 2021. from there if I could draw your attention to the calendar on top dated in the upper right hand corner January 31st 2023. for the most part this is the same calendar the only amendments to this calendar are weather related days if I may draw your attention to January 25th and January 27th those were delay days were due to inclement weather the school district operated on a two-hour delay those are still inclusive as instructional days for our students and within a separate State regulation we get full credit for those days even though we were on a two-hour delay because there is a regulation within the state that allows for the first six hours of weather related delays

046to count as full days the other day I want to draw your attention to please is January 31st this is where we initiate the change on January 31st Boone County schools closed completely for a weather related inclement weather related day with that action taken if you look at the end of May the students last day shifted from May 25th to May 26th that became day 175. which shifted the closing day for teachers to May 30th which is the 187th day fulfilling the teachers contractual obligation historically when the school district has encountered one or two weather days very rarely has the end of the year calendar been reduced for student instructional days but please remember the teacher's contractual day cannot be reduced there have been occurrences and this is a separate conversation that has has occurred

047historically where we have had several weather days and in order to meet graduation timelines reservations for graduations not to string school year too far into June because we do start summer school very briefly after the end of the school year etc for those reasons we have had to reduce student number of days at the end of the year for those calendar years where we were hit by several weather days resulting in the closing of school so what you see in front of you in summary is the original calendar adopted by the Board of Education for the current school year and the current status of the calendar for the school district for this school year impacted by one weather day that has extended the school year calendar for both teachers and students by one day I

048hope that provides a thorough explanation of what you see in front of you as well as what is required by school districts to fulfill state statute and Boone County Schools contractual obligations and I'll be happy to answer at this time any questions that you may have in regards to the school year calendar questions for Mr Ford Mr Ford did you say it was the state statute was 170 days the state statute for student instructional days is a minimum of 170 days historically the school district has started the year I have been your DPP for 18 years for 18 years we have started the school year with 175 student instructional days because what has transpired with the number of professional development days that we have built into our calendar the number of holidays that are required

049by State Statute to be identified within a school year calendar as well as opening day and closing day which are required to be built into a school year calendar by starting the school year with 175 identified instructional days for students we end up with students ending on one day staff closing on the next day and that's why you see the original counter drafted that way again if I may the other requirement by Statute is a minimum of 1062 instructional hours for our students every day that the children enter School that's considered an instructional day elements now that impact the number of instructional hours our students are receiving are for example the two half days that we implemented this school year when I create the school year end of year calendar that is required by Statute

050to be submitted on behalf of the school district to the Department of Education I'll have to take that into consideration as I calculate the number of instructional hours that we have provided to our students to ensure that we have met or exceeded the 1062 required hours when do we hit that number when do the 1062. if you recall on the last board meeting I submitted a memorandum to the board for approval that each instructional day for schools in Boone County would be six hours and 15 minutes so if you take that and calculate it out subtract out the two half days and I don't have a calculator right here in front of me but I can do the math for you very quickly if you would like for me to uh I can get my

051phone I'll do it it's approximately day 172 this year because of the two half days that we implemented this year because for each of those two have they we would only get credit for three hours we get counted credit for the instructional day but the number of hours of instruction on those days has to be precise towards that 1062. 71.12 thank you very much 171.12 thank you next time can you get just a little bit closer to that quick math in your head yes ma'am I'll do my best uh please remember but I'm not thinking about that okay that is not up for discussion yes ma'am are there any other questions so Mr Turner one of the questions that I had asked is I I know that there are two calendars kind of floating around

052the original calendar that was approved by the board and then the one where after that snow day we kind of bumped it so are there any schools that are relying upon the May 26 day for instructional events that can't be pushed or that we would disrupt planned instruction at any of schools that you're aware of does that make sense I apologize yeah no at the end of the year activities on the final day vary from high schools and middle schools potentially doing final exams and things of that nature elementary schools having a variety of different activities in in middle and high school sometimes as well so there may be some closing of the Year events some type of assemblies or activities Field Days potentially uh those that's usually what makes up the final day of

053school specifically the 26th we know was that the question on is there anything specific on the well in terms of the school scheduling things on that I mean they have their final day of activities essentially they wait until the the final decision by the board on whether that's going to be on the Thursday or the Friday or whatever day at the end of the school year is going to be and then if it rather than the 20 26th that would still be a teacher contract day correct and what would that look like typically uh I was I'm very happy you asked that question because that was one thing I want to remind the board with any reduction in the student year the teaching staff their last day is going to be May the 30th that

054is day 187 of their contractual obligation with the Boone County negotiated contract okay so then in the past with those days we've used them for professional development and other types of instructional programs for staff yes ma'am anything else I I guess just my only question and as long as we meet our statutory requirements it I don't really care as long as instruction isn't short short changed and historically we have always exceeded the minimums because this is not a minimum get you by world you have to you put in the minimum your you're going to get that return on your investment it's going to be minimum so I've never had a problem with us having our extended days and having longer instructional days and hours above and beyond that I I think our the performance of

055our students outside of once they leave our district shows that that does have benefit to keep them with a quality instructor for as much time as we can I guess my only confusion is once the original calendar was bumped why was it still on the website because to me that kind of creates confusion why was I'm sorry why was it still yeah I mean because they're both there I mean it's still showing the 25th uh right Mrs wolf that's what yes the um there's three calendars on the website on the same page and the very first one is the original one with the 25th end date and that's the first one everybody sees if you go to Google and you go to download that calendar um that's the calendar that downloads not the one that

056ends on the 26th that's been adjusted I unfortunately I cannot answer that question I'm not in charge of that area I can assure you this I manage the calendar that you see in front of you I have for 18 years anytime there's an adjustment for a delay day or a weather day that counter is adjusted by me personally you see it here and it is shared out with all Administration throughout the school district but I have no control over what is communicated out from that point but it is done the day it happens that's why you see the calendar date in the upper right hand corner of January 31st because that's when the weather day occurred I know I know I'm just I want I just want I just want to clarify that well I

057would I would just say for future reference I mean calendars get adjusted we have weather events we have water main breaks that affect a third of the district and everybody has to stay home I understand that um but I just think for you know future reference to avoid confusion for our parents who depend upon the information we put out that it if you make an adjustment it needs to be communicated out because the parents may need to make adjustments as well so that would be my only thing as to which day we use as long as we meet our statutory requirements and we give the best that we can give to finish up this year and we do not shortchange any buildings on any activities that I'm sure they have already planned it doesn't matter

058the question weather related events built so three snow days if we had more than three snow days then we went to NTI days my understanding that correctly so as to not add to the school year correct so why are we adding the school year we only had one snow day why are we adding to the school year was Mr Mr Ford described traditionally what we have always done with our school calendar to try to avoid as much confusion as possible if we miss one or two days is to Simply add that to the end of the school year if we missed more than that that's when the board has to take a whole different approach to the school calendar shortening the school year for the reasons Mr Ford just mentioned earlier some of the challenges

059that can come out if we are adding days and getting into June the second week of June or further on then we have to look at Contracting things because there's so many issues that can occur getting into summer school things of that nature as if if we have so many days that are added if that makes sense it doesn't it just said we just said that we added three days that were built into the schedule and we only had one right and yet we're adding a day yeah those were the hours yeah both things well those are the hours that Mr fitting the employees and the parents okay it was if I may go ahead as a reminder to this division this agency it was communicated from the Board of Education that the first three

060weather days this was communicated to the general public the first three weather days would be considered old-fashioned snow days and those days would be added on at the end of the school year after the third snow day traditional type of snow day then we would start using the entire days that was communicated from the board to the general public the community much earlier in the school year that's just a reminder so that what we have done is what we said we were going to do we only had one of three but we dictated to the community that it was going to be a snow day we be in school district that was communicated to the community and that day would be added on at the end of the school year so they weren't built into

061the schedule they were still going to be added on regardless the first three were going to be added on that was communicating about what was communicated to me okay I didn't okay I'm just saying I'm just reminding that I understand I'm just saying that's not that is not what was communicated to me yeah I would say universally so do that that's not how like from our end when we received it because we weren't on the board when it happened we were just parents at the start of the year and when we received the data it was oh there's three days built into the school year got on the board that's not the way that it was presented to me it was we have three weather related events and then after that it will be NTI

062so as not to add to this so yeah exactly exactly yeah okay you know I think just on a small poll that I conducted personally with building principles they were unaware that the students would be in the building on Friday I mean I didn't call every principal obviously but a few of them weren't aware that's a major problem for planning um that entire buildings don't know that they're going to have students in their building on a certain day until I think recently you submit a memo that was provided to the the building principles and I think it just created Mass confusion I mean still on my phone I downloaded the I calendar I just checked it it still says the 25th and so I think most of this parents and according to the conversations I've

063had with several principals they think that there's no students in the building on Friday the 26th well in in response to you're talking about the downloading the calendar there are three calendars on that webpage one is the calendar for students the calendar for staff that Mr Ford mentioned were approved last year the last one is the calendar that Mr Ford has shared with you as well that's on the website along with those three in regards to you the communication with principals you know Mr Ford did describe that's always sent out that updated calendar to District leaders and to school leaders as well you know I can't speak to every single Principle as you were you were referring to as well but I know that being a principal in this District we've always had to pay

064attention to the school board meetings towards the end of the year because we know there may be an adjustment if we have days of school that we miss or we have multiple delays so moving this the final day of school is not an unusual event in our school district as we're trying to adjust and you know depending on how many days of school that we may have missed and what the adjustment may have to be have we met the state minimum requirement for instruction if we let the students out on the 25th of May yes that's correct yes that's correct so what's the reason for adding the extra day just for our own going above and beyond yeah as I mentioned earlier traditionally that's always been what our district has done if it's just one

065or two days we've added that back onto the calendar if it's been more than that there's been a reduction of days yeah so it is the board's prerogative to you know to to change the calendar I'm just communicating what's what's traditionally been done in trying to be as as consistent as possible over the years by the when Jesse's talking about downloading the calendar it's not when you go to Google it you get a different format you'll click on it and it'll download the calendar to your phone but it only downloads that first one so parents that are doing that through their mobile device are just getting that first calendar they're not getting the other two okay thank you yeah a motion to amend the proposal to um let the last day for students be May

06625th I'll second that Olivia if the last day currently is May 25th you don't need to motion to amend it you would just not let the motion die yeah I got you right we can do that are there any other questions just for me on January the 31st when you updated this calendar how did you send that information out throughout the district I sent it up to the upper level Administration from my office for review in the form of an email with this as a PDF attachment okay so it didn't go to the buildings at that time no ma'am it went up for review okay all right thank you yes ma'am please remember that if you moved to May 25th teachers will still have to work May 26 and May 30th that will not change

067because they have a contractual obligation of 187 days just a reminder so that means we would have to amend that part of the calendar right so yes so that that is correct you would have to amend that so your motion would be not to amend the proposal as is but to make an entire New Motion in and of itself so you would move to amend the last day for teachers and accept that new calendar has there been any discussion of allowing teachers to make some time up on May 16th which is when our schools will be closed for primary day that's not permitted as we have in a primary election day our schools must be open and available for those elections that is correct I don't think the law states that staff can't be there

068just students I could be mistaken but I'm pretty sure that's what I read so you can't obligate the tech the teachers to work that day anyway so regardless you're going to have teachers that are going to be coming here there are also days set by law and regulation that you have to give them the opportunity to go vote so it as a general premise that day is just always off limits for the calendar even for teachers and staff the going to vote law I'm very familiar with it gives you ample time to go vote it doesn't give you the entire day off right that's for employers generally but for schools it's a little different this is something that has just been historically done I mean I can pull up the statute and see if this

069is specifically one that is designated because KDE does by reg designate a list of days that I can pull up now if you just give me a minute so if our if the um if our staff the bcea agreed to have their members and other teachers work on the 16th so they could get out before I think Memorial Day would that be acceptable to the district I mean I'm just posing a question well not if they make up the day on the 16th right it would move to the 29th I think or be moved in the 26th the 26th they would be out on Friday so the problem the one problem with that though too is that there's also a significant amount of regulations about how many of those days are flex days and in

070service days those are different ones that are initially just set for teachers to come into work are different than flex days that they can choose to work or not work so that also might affect some staff calendars and some of their contracts as well and to be frank the conflict that that could create just trying to navigate who's working that day does their contract permit it could create a lot of confusion because it's it's not just changing the date of a normal staff work day it's creating a new flex option if you're giving people the option to be here versus just saying this is a staff day well if it would be required to reach their contractual obligation of number of days it couldn't be a flex option then right theoretically but most likely yes

071I personally would be very uncomfortable with allowing it to be a flex day just because of all of the regulations that I think you would have a hard time navigating which staff members could actually elect to work that day versus which couldn't because that's set by contract so some yes I suppose could use it that way but most probably could not it's a very complicated analysis that is specific to you know certified versus classified you know there are a variety of different contracts that we give for staff members is the last day currently the 30th for both classified and certified staff is that correct but the certified so we we wouldn't want to shortchange the classified staff by cutting them out of a day let's say they can't Flex to is that what you're saying

072in other words we we can do that but then that would be cause some issues by cutting them out of eight hours of pay on that day is that correct more or less yes okay any other questions or comments I would just add just to clarify that that particular part of the conversation you know if the board chooses to um have the final day on the 25th or the 26th that you know that's workable in either either way moving the closing day does create a whole lot more challenge due to the contracts that our board attorney was just referring to different lengths of contracts for different employees classified and certified employees that work nine months nine and a half months and those that work 12 months there's lots of differences and that can be quite

073the challenge for our HR department for our payroll department in tracking all of that it is much cleaner and that's what and that's why it's been done this way essentially is just having closing day being moved where it is keeping it whole versus having some type of other option so just my recommendation if you're wanting to move the day at the final day of school that is one thing if you're wanting to move closing day I would just advise against that as well I I think and I agree with you that moving the day is the confusing part and that's that's why we're having a conversation is is that the emotion that was submitted to us was to move the day and we're advocating to keep the day the same and that's what the opinion

074of the most majority of the parents are um so you're I think keeping it the 25th is this the stay in the what we've just what we've had I agree with you about the flex day I don't know how that could work logistically um and also Mr Parks I apologize to interrupt but to answer your question Kentucky law 158.070 does require that if the school district is in any capacity used as a polling location the district shall be closed the whole District it says the district shall be closed okay okay so right now we have before us a recommendation motion and second to accept the calendar as presented with the last day for students of May 26th and last day for staff of May 30th to complete seat time days and contractual obligations that is

075the motion before us now all in favor all opposed hi you can say no you can say I that yes you're opposed either way is fine it's still a no okay so that motion fails so I think what we need to do Ms amlong should we deal with student closing last day for students separately than teachers or does everyone understand that as I see it that we can't really change that last day for staff even if we move the last day for students is that correct am I stating that correctly yes so your motion at this point would just be to extend the last day for staff to May 30th but do we not also have to say we're going since we did not accept the proposal of last day for students as the 26th

076should that motion not also State the last day for students as the 25th so the initial calendar the last day for students currently is the 25th so since the proposal to change that did not succeed it remains that way okay so you don't need a motion to that effect just want to make sure we're trying to clear up confusion here okay do I have a motion then that someone would like to make I'm in the motion that the end date for teachers and staff will move to May 30th okay we have a motion the last day for staff for this school year would be May 30th do I have a second second Mrs Young thank you are there any other questions just to be clear that's because we're contractually obligated to that number of days

077for the staff all right anything else hearing no other questions or comments all in favor any opposed hearing none motion carries okay recommended action new business Mr Turner memorandum of understanding for ignite between Boone County and Kenton County school districts for 23-24 thank you madam chair pardon me I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business Item B the memorandum of understanding for ignite between the Boone County school district and the Kenton County School District for the 23-24 school year okay we have a recommendation do I have a motion motion most of Mr Parks second Dr Brown Mr attorney any information to share on this new mou for this year not necessarily new just renewal yes the uh the items that we discussed between Kenton County and ourself in terms of changes to

078the memorandum of agreement between the two districts was adjusting some of the language with the unfortunate passing of Dr Julie whites last year um we need to change part of the language that was in the memorandum that defined the co-principal model um that was that was existing with a principle from Boone County and a principal from Kenton County leading ignite um it always was the actually it was the language of the agreement that the Boone County principle would become the sole principle at whatever point the Kenton County principle left the position for retirement or or whatever reason it may be so that was one item that we stricken from the new memorandum of agreement we also had a few other small pieces of language that we adjusted in the memorandum but it is essentially in

079standing exactly as it was last year except for a few of those minor changes okay thank you um any questions on the updated memorandum hearing none all in favor any opposed motion carries item C Mr Turner resolution authorizing litigation against social media companies thank you madam chair recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business item C resolution authorizing litigation against social media companies okay we have a recommendation yes so this is on the agenda um I know that the board is somewhat aware of what this is about it is on the agenda to discuss proposed and pending litigation and executive session for further details should the board like to see that if that's the case and you would like to discuss further in executive session I would recommend tabling this and moving it

080to the end of the agenda for possible action after executive session however if you feel you all have enough information at this point you're welcome to take it up at this time okay thank you for that clarification what's the pleasure of the board do you want to deal with it now or wait for more detailed information is it is it not something the Resolute we just read in the record resolution authorizing litigation against social media companies is that not something that we can talk about outside a closed session so it is if the board would like to discuss it in Open Session and I apologize for not making that clear you're welcome to do so as a general default anytime I'm giving legal advice or discussing something of that nature you know I give you

081the opportunity to have that in closed session because this is one of the exemptions of the Kentucky open meetings act however I understand this is also a topic of some Community interest if you would like to discuss it in Open Session that's the prerogative of the board and also if at any point it gets to the situation during discussion where you decide we need to have an executive session for more information you're also welcome to do that if you'd like to reserve that right I would be in favor of discussing it openly I'm okay with that okay all right then so we have a recommendation do we have a motion motion Mr Parks second second Mrs Young okay whomever Mr Turner MS amlong we'll all start we have on the agenda a resolution against litigation

082against social media companies and I'll just give a little bit of information directly off this resolution that the board would potentially be uh approving discusses that uh approximately 90 of Youth today use social media primarily YouTube Tick Tock Snapchat Instagram or Facebook that they're successive and problematic use at times of social media and that can be harmful to the mental health behavioral health and emotional health of young young people It's associated with increased rates of depression anxiety low self-esteem eating disorders and suicide and social media companies have designed their platforms to maximize the times that all users including youth use them and addict people addict youth to their platforms last year 50 almost 50 percent of teenagers in the state spent between one and three hours a day on social media and 30 averaged more

083than three hours a day many children are burdened by mental health challenges and young people everywhere face unprecedented learning and life struggles that are Amplified by the negative impacts of increased screen time unfiltered content and potentially addictive properties of social media social media companies have made choices to Target youth to maximize the time you spend on social media platforms and then design their algorithms to feed children harmful content videos promoting Eating Disorders violence self-harm or even suicide social media companies actions related to their social media platforms are substantially contributing to the Mental Health crisis of America's youth the harms allegedly caused by these companies include but are not limited to intentionally designing marketing and operating their exploitive social media platforms to be extremely popular with youth users despite research confirming the severe and wide-ranging effects

084of social media on youth Mental Health research has also shown that excessive and problematic use of social media is harmful to the mental behavioral and emotional health of Youth and is associated with increased rates of depression anxiety low self-esteem eating disorders and even suicide the social media's business models are based upon maximizing times that youth spend all users spend on their platforms defendants have designed their platforms so that users constantly face the need to be on it school districts first and greatest priority is the health and well-being of our students and this includes the social and emotional harm they may suffer because of negative impacts of social media public schools have been significantly impacted by the resulting crisis from overexposure to social media because school districts are one of the main providers of Mental Health

085Services for school-aged children in our community school district and its employees spend a significant amount of time and resources assessing or addressing students mental health issues the school district and its employees spend a significant amount of time as well providing counseling and educational services to our students and related to some of the harms caused by social media our school district believes it's entitled to compensation for its efforts and resources expended to address and treat these mental health issues caused by social media the school district desires to reduce the negative impact of school media on the mental health of students and the and saying here the Boone County board of education has determined that it has the responsibility to protect its students and take legal action against these social media companies any additional questions or additional

086information that you need or you would like us to try to provide it's my understanding this is a class action suit so it is a little bit different so class action is a little bit different than what we have here so to date I'm not sure if the board recalls Ron Johnson and his firm hendy Johnson Vaughn and Emery handled the school's litigation when this District as well as numerous others across the street state to Jewel and other companies similar that were promoting bad habits and providing problematic things to students in the district and the district had to address those concerns so that was what we call an mdl lawsuit which is multi-district litigation basically what that means is instead of filing a class action lawsuit where you have a group of plaintiffs with similar

087similar goals and objectives that file in one District because you have multi-states with multi-plaintiffs across a variety of places in the country it's called multi-district litigation where every individual plaintiff files his or her or in this case the agency's own lawsuit and one Court across the country so here this mdl litigation has been picked up in San Francisco in the federal district there in Calif where basically you file your lawsuit here in Kentucky in the eastern district and then the California Court just kind of makes a list of all of these different cases that are have been filed across the country and puts a giant pause on them there will be one or two that are selected as a trial case where those cases will actually go to court there will likely be a trial

088if it doesn't settle the chance of this District getting selected for that being in Kentucky is very very slim but I suppose there is always the chance in all likelihood given the federal laws around mdl litigation the test case for this will likely be in California so we file here as well as in a variety of other I guess districts across Kentucky I believe I just saw another one come through yesterday so I believe school districts in Kentucky there are 14 of them thus far that have filed this lawsuit in their respective districts so in the eastern district of Kentucky there's about six or seven the remaining being in the Western District Fayette Jefferson and a variety of other schools districts have already filed we have about two months to decide but the sooner that

089we get in on it the better the chances of the district getting a exposure as well as some potential monies recouped for this because bullying is a very serious concern for a lot of school districts this is no different someone here on staff could probably speak much more eloquently and much more knowledgeably about it than I could but even under Kentucky law bullying is something that could subject the district to litigation at some point there is a statute that requires this District to take preemptive steps to combat bullying so this is a preemptive step um again this is not the only School District in the state that would file should you all choose to do so there is no cost to the district to do so the firm Mr Johnson's firm fronts most of the

090export all of the expenses the only expense to the district possibly would be a couple hours of my time to help facilitate Discovery and then of course Manpower for when Discovery is being done the district will receive a questionnaire just with Statistics seeking you know what kind of student reporting is happening how many students we have more Logistics than anything but other than completing those two items the district largely just kind of sits back and waits to see how it shakes out in the other test cases that are ongoing or prepares for settlement I know that was a lot of information but if anybody has any questions assignment to this particular court is that positive or negative for a potential outcome on a case like this it's pens it depends on the school district selected

091it depends on the social media companies there are a multitude of them that will be named and it's hard to tell however at least historically in mdl cases like this especially with ones that are as significant I mean the amount of districts across the country that have filed these already is a number I couldn't even give to you because there are so many and when those kinds of things come up usually that incentivizes companies like Tick Tock Instagram meta to go ahead and settle those things I can't say what this would do in in a California District Court given that those companies are based out of there however from everything that I've read in my conversations with Mr Johnson it's pretty clear that every school district Across the Nation is dealing with this and parents

092your average Durer is going to be aware of how much bullying occurs across these websites and the problem with them is that in large part the district might not be able to do anything when you have an anonymous account on let's say Twitter who's sending harassing messages to another student what can the school district do to a faceless other student that they can identify so that's what these school districts are trying to do by filing these lawsuits is to hold them accountable anytime you get on meta or Facebook these days I don't know if the young people are still on Facebook but I am and every time I'm on there you see the censorship of you know this goes against Community standards so these organizations are taking steps to try and censor and combat some

093of the harassment that's ongoing but the question is is it enough what your average juror in California would think about that I couldn't say but parents everyone that I've talked to and most of the media coverage of these litigation or of these case filings that I've seen seem very favorable for the schools and again at the end of the day it doesn't cost the district anything to do it so looking at cost benefit analysis that's for you all to determine of course but you could see money that could come back to this district and be used productively or you get no money and you're out a couple of hours of Manpower answering discovery Mr Turner do we have a plan if there were a financial outcome from this do how would we envision using those

094funds to combat the types of things because we're not going to stop social media use of course we're not going to potentially even significantly change social media use so where where how do we envision using those funds to try to accomplish something if this actually were to come through those funds will be used as a as a resource for providing Mental Health Services other supports for our students and families supports for our employees that are working with students struggling with all the items that we mentioned that are coming from social media foreign I'm personally no no fan of kids and social media using social media but and it is all the things you pointed out are absolutely the case I I'm hesitant because we it's yet another area in which this the school districts not

095just this one but most of the other districts have to try to do something unilaterally because the federal and the state legislatures won't regulate it um so we're back in the same situation that we were in a couple other topics where what do we do we're struggling with this problem um and I'm glad I'm glad to know that what doesn't cost the district any money other than a couple hours of the board attorney's time but um something that you said the idea would be that maybe the pressure from the legal challenges through the social media companies might make them change the way they operate or sensor information or allow maybe a district to do something when it comes to bullying that is also a bit double-edged sword wise because I'm not necessarily in favor of

096limiting access to information to students which is another debate that we've been dealing with in our neighborhood if if I may I apologize um and I apologize if it came off a little unclear and I should have been a little bit more clear on this that's not what the end objective of this lawsuit is so under a theory of products liability which is one of the legal avenues that would be pursued through this is essentially when you are a company and you put something into the marketplace and especially if you put you know any pun anyone who's ever bought an item from the store there's like 30 pages of caution do not use this for this do not use this if you are you know X Y and Z once a company takes on the

097onus of putting a product on the marketplace especially when they're willing to already put forth effort to try and combat certain uses of it that they know are causing harm to people once you put that in the market if it continues to harm people that's when you create problems and you create liability for your company so when I was discussing the fact that you know they put those censorships on there and they're trying to combat bullying it's not to say that they should continue to censor materials that are put on there it's just showing that they recognize the harm their their products are doing which is what creates more of a chance of legal success for the districts that are filing those lawsuits it's not to encourage continued censorship in any way I gotcha thank

098you I think for me this is a little bit of a struggle just because with Jewel I think there would be very few experts that would argue that a 14 year old child using anything vaporized that they're breathing would be good for them right but I think with social media there are positives for some of our there are positive uses of social media there are negative uses of social media so it's not as clear-cut as Jewel where clearly we know these products are doing significant harm to our children there's really no rationale for why any student would benefit from using a nicotine loaded Jewel there's just not so I think this is hard because it's following a similar logic but it's not in my mind potentially as clear-cut and I don't know I know we

099can't predict the outcome but I can provide some clarity though on how the law addresses those types of things again under the theory of products liability products that cause harm don't necessarily cause harm all of the time let's say you've got um you know fireworks are a huge thing for kids sometimes you go enjoy the fireworks show and it's it does exactly what it needs to do and sometimes they can really cause damage to people and property so when you assert a legal claim under a theory of products liability on those types of cases you're not necessarily saying that this product is harmful in the way that the law combats that is you get a reduction in Damages so the damage assessment would be commiserate with how much harm is it actually causing sometimes it

100could be small sometimes it could be significant that would be something that a jury would have to determine so the law recognizes that sometimes things that are harmful are not always harmful and that's reflected by what your damages are calculated to be I guess where I see harm and Mr Ford may remember a year ago year and a half ago all the tick tock challenges to go to school and do this thing and this thing and this thing and it totally disrupted the educational process and how many oh thank you yeah right so to me allowing I mean I I'm a First Amendment girl I'm all about free speech but that kind of stuff promoted harm it promoted disruption got a lot of kids in trouble because they didn't think um and you know parents

101were scratching their heads I can't believe my kid did this how could they you know how could they fall for something like that but um but if you if you watched any of the uh committee hearings when The Tick Tock people were literally grilled and fried I was cheering in the background because they should bear responsibility for allowing to me that was harmful it was harmful to the students it was harmful to the district it was harmful to the buildings it disrupted the educational process um I don't know offense attended I don't like to be involved in lawsuits and to me it's it's not about any potential windfall the district could get as a result of it it's about holding people accountable for what they do with their product um we're held accountable everybody should

102be held accountable so that's just my thought anyone else okay well we have a recommendation of motion in a second all in favor aye aye yeah okay any opposed motion carries okay now let's go to yeah do do we go with new letters so we do go with the old can we stick with the old letters from the consent agenda on the items we moved as long as it's easily identifiable up to your discretion our discretion is it's easily identifiable to leave them as they are but we will have to take them one at a time or can we take them by by uh curriculum like item f G and H are all contracts for i-Ready math for ockerman elementary Florence Elementary and Collins Elementary can we do them that way if the board would

103like to address them that way then yes but if any member of the board wants to address them one by one you have to address this does anybody want to address them one by one or can we address them by program this is why we have a consent agenda but I like Esther Adams on new business that's just my my personal oppressive preference for transparency okay we're going to look at F G and H first which again is i-Ready math using Esser funds for Collins Florence and ockerman elementary schools well we need a recommendation first thank you madam chair I would recommend the board to approve the items just previously mentioned items F through S contracts between our schools and through eight we're just going to take the first three oh I'm sorry F through

104H excuse me okay we have a recommendation do we have a motion so move Dr Brown's second Mrs Young thank you okay uh let me give a little bit of background and I'm going to ask Dr Detweiler to assist with a little bit of the conversation here but I'll give some background these are approvals for math curriculum from our elementary schools there you see listed uh we have put together a process of looking and evaluating at math curriculum for our elementary schools we put a significant amount of time into that process and Dr now I will talk a little bit about it but this a question and a concern that we have to to work through these is Senate Bill 1 of 2022. this was the Senate bill that essentially moved the approval of curriculum

105from a school's sbdm Council to the district for the superintendent to have final approval of curriculum curriculum um and so with this process that we've put together in the time period we we do have to have a public sharing of curriculum due to Senate bill one where we will be listing the curriculum for next year and receiving public comment from that curriculum and that would happen before the final approval by the superintendent of that curriculum um so this is the first year of that implementation so we have some steps into place and so um I may have to to beg your forgiveness if it's a little bit clunky and a little bit uh inefficient in in terms of that process right now um so what I'll essentially be doing for the approval items here is

106just asking for the board to approve simply the expenditure uh for the curriculum programs we will not execute the purchase until we complete the comment process and work through and make any adjustments as needed to that curriculum so in a general sense we are waiting for the public sharing of those of that curriculum and so we can get that information from our community uh before it's finalized so Dr dot well if you would please walk through the process that we've constructed and some of the steps and the resources that we've put into place to get to where we are now with this sure in terms of the the math content I'm going to ask Kelly Stidham to join me because she has a lot of the information she's really The Mastermind behind the protocol that's

107been put into place to select programming we had not had this in the district before um if you remember we actually have received some audits in the in the distant past talking about autonomy of schools and the problems that that creates with the transition of our students so about the time Esther funding became available LSS started talking about let's put together some processes so we can select programming to make sure that our elementary schools in particular are adhering to the research-based criteria that KDE puts into place making sure that it fits our Curriculum maps that have been put into place so I'm going to ask Kelly to maybe talk a little bit about that process where we are I'll train hello um so as Dr Detweiler said oh a year and a half to two

108years ago when we began the SR spending process those were the math materials was a priority that many of the elementary school principals identified after speaking with their stakeholders in their schools we set then in a timeline and a process that would be in coming up to and now um and that process included working with some principals as a small group to identify what's working in our schools mathematically looking at data looking at student input and then um spending a year with teachers in unit studies so representatives from every Elementary School and every grade level to learn together to look at what was working what we needed and how they were using the materials already in their schools so that we could come up with a framework for looking at what materials we needed to

109best serve kids so we've been doing that for the past year meeting monthly with those Representatives looking at how the materials and the instruction are working for students leading up to the excuse me March of this year where we put together some resources for those schools to make data informed and well-informed decisions about which which materials are going to best meet the needs of those kids we looked across and developed a framework for it that had the look for is mathematically speaking we wanted a problem-solving curriculum where kids are engaged in meaningful problem solving every day obviously we needed those materials aligned to the Kentucky academic standards and our district units and timelines we also looked through on the Kentucky Department of Education suggestions for what's important in instructional materials we had samples of those

110materials in our schools we had some one sheets for each school to look at we also had vendor presentations that the school teams could look at to help make their decisions as a district team we started with all of the um programs on the market that passed some gateways through several different outside invest evaluators and then looked at which of those met though that framework that we had identified as important we gave that list of five to the school teams and based on what they felt their teachers best needed moving forward they made that selection and let us know that's what they were interested in that's where you have the contracts there again The Next Step would be to go through public comment and execute that purchase after public comment ended one important thing to

111note is that our timeline was set a little bit by the perimeter of getting the materials to teachers and the training to teachers before the start of next school year you know that if we waited till next year that bumps us back another month and then executing the professional learning can be timely so thank you what other questions can I answer about that process what are the major I mean I know we're dealing right now with I ready math for these three schools but we also have other math programs listed which we will get to Into You Know by that particular program or that curriculum oh I I guess my comment is I understand you you found five that you felt like met and you let the schools choose but I thought our whole purpose

112was with these changes to have more of a district driven Focus and you know I'm all about letting the schools pitch in and give their opinions because they're the ones that are going to have to execute it and and be held and will be held accountable for it but um I thought the whole thing was trying to more narrow our Focus so we don't have so many things across the district that we're trying to manage you know five things over here five things over here managing it from a technology standpoint that we we have a little bit more of a narrow Focus on high quality curriculum that's going to work for everybody that has challenging curriculum for our gifted Learners that has remediation for struggling or our English language Learners and and things along those

113lines so I guess that was my main concern is when I saw this that was the first why do we have so many I thought we were supposed to be um thank you for that I think that your Point's well taken we um are doing this work with an equity lens we want to make sure that no matter which classroom your student is placed they they're teachers of high quality and that teacher has high quality tools to execute execute meaningful mathematics instruction in our district before this process we had lots of different materials being used too many to really even like make a list of so part of this process was again spending that year with teachers helping us understand what are the critical elements that we need those instructional materials to support them with

114getting that to five and then if you look at the five or the three that actually ended up in the list they're very very similar in terms of their instructional framework the the lesson structure the curricular framework and also the general approach of emphasizing a lot of reasoning and mathematical thinking those are what we know are most important for our kiddos here in Boone County Schools we also govern that Equity through our instructional framework and through our curriculum framework that is published on the website every year for parents to see I hope we move towards an even more coherent model but I feel like this is a really important First Step the differences in the three programs I already excuse me i-Ready Envision and Eureka squared or great minds are reeling in the types of

115resources that that teachers are given so we have a core instruction iready comes with a really great um set of online things that those teachers want to be able to pull in especially for El students you'll notice that the Florence cluster chose those great minds or Eureka squared has a really great assessment tool that the teachers in and Leadership at those schools felt like were critical for them Envision is something that we've used in the district for all three of these we've used in the district but Envision is we've used for a long time and a lot of our schools felt like they have a lot of teacher capacity and professional learning built around those tools and want to continue to impress that learning with their teachers so we these represent a core of common

116instructional ideas and philosophies and resources but have somewhat different resources for the teachers that best meet the needs of that school I love thank you for that question okay so the follow-up so it's since we are trying to minimize any potential lag because of the transient nature that we do have uh at times in Boone County so if I I'm renting a house in Florence and my child starts third grade at the beginning of the school year at ockerman but I find a home that I can buy and I moved to Burlington and we go to Stevens in January and now we're using enVision Math is my third graduate going to still be in a Content area flow so that they they're not behind they're not too far ahead that the content that they had

117had in iready math the first semester enVision Math is going to pick it up and carry it to complete the year and there's not going to be any conceptual loss of learning in math principles we already have a tough job we don't want to create intentional content gaps that we have to come over later well it would be tough on the teacher too if if they are at a point in their particular curriculum that either my third grader in the middle of the Year hasn't gotten to or finished six weeks ago that puts another burden on the teacher sure and so we our teachers are burdened enough we that's why I'm you know I was concerned about you CJ see what I'm meaning so we we actually in Boone County have a couple of different

118things in play instead of adopting iready as a program that dictates our daily instruction and our timelines we adopted as instructional materials that teachers use to teach our district curriculum and timeline so when you go onto the website and you go to curriculum and you pull it down you won't see I ready as that curriculum we have a set of units that go in a certain order in a certain timeline those materials that we purchase supports that that teacher teaching that timeline and that's common across all of our schools so instead of adopting iready as a program and then following it cover to cover an Envision cover to cover um we follow that timeline these particular metisets of instructional materials we're purchasing one of the key critical review items is will this instead of instructional

119materials help my teachers teach that curricular timeline does that help it does it does and knowing that we've got it narrowed down to five or four or however many that that that is encouraging as well we don't want Marianne having a heart attack thank you any other questions do we can do some math together if you want the um I want Mr Ford to do my math for me the public comment opportunity how are you planning on rolling that out [Music] it's currently on the website we're on the website today there's instructions it's a Google form that that parents can scroll down and pick their school and then there are three links one for elementary one for middle one for high and I wanted to say actually in at the same time this was all

120happening Dr Puri and um Dr Watson were working with their principals to collect all of the curriculum from all the different areas which is a massive amount of material it took months I don't know how many months it took to kind of pull that all together so when you go in you can go in today and look at those links you're going to see all kinds of information that parents will be able to see that we've never had before on what materials are being used in the classroom so it went up today it'll be up for 30 days tomorrow Barb Brady will be sending out a newsletter that will give instructions to parents on how to go ahead and look at that information so that's the timeline for the Senate bill one public comment can

121we encourage principals to send that out on their own as well and with instructions written in their language to yeah I was just thinking about actually we were thinking about the languages we have to deal with that for sure but yeah we can do that we can provide those links because I mean I love everything you said but my my concern is sb1 and the processes that are in place with that and that commune that public comment opportunity and voting to approve funding for something that hasn't gone through that yet um that's that's a concern of mine I want to make sure that we're not putting the cart before the horse because it doesn't look good it looks like we're we are the ones that are approving the curriculum not the way it's supposed to

122be with the public commentary and in the superintendent given the okay and then we know all that process has been done and then we give the okay to spend the money so it's just I feel like we're putting with the with this piece just the cart before the horse here because of how sb1 is written I do want to clarify though that with sb1 it still Falls to Mr Turner even if there's comment the decision is still Mr Turner's decision oh no I know that but I'm just saying with us approving this now before the public comment happens it makes it look like we're the ones approving without any input from the community it's like just put in the cart before the horse I think the way I spoke on sb1 was written it's what

123do you do with those comments if one parent out of 5000 surveys doesn't like I ready do you not use it no I mean but how many of those comments are math curriculum experts because I know I'm not I'm not a K-12 math curriculum expert and I'm an educator so I think the commentary part is not just for them to weigh in as experts but to ask questions and get information but is there a mechanism that they they all receive feed like if they were to ask what happens to third grade I don't know I can't even imagine they're not necessarily going to get a district response is that correct I think I don't want to speak for for Mr churn but I think the we always recommend that they go to their billing principle

124to ask the question a specific question like that this mechanism is not set up in so you're right Senate build one is not set up in a way to um respond to the comments it's a consultation it's getting the information and being able to put our eyes on it to see what the public thinks but for specific questions we would always recommend that they go to the principal for that question where the uh the schools that selected one of these programs did their spdm agreed to that software or would we Supply that software yeah okay so all these as you said the Florence cluster and some of the other schools those spdms are already aware of the program that their school is going to be using is that correct all these all these are Chromebook

125based for the the direct instructional okay um component yeah and I think Savas does too doesn't it it's in Vision right right it's not and they stand up because I'm having a hard time hearing them use your teacher voice mode of instruction Chromebook is not the primary mode supplemental materials eject on the screen not the primary note so if you don't mind being put on the spot I would say I hate to do this but I don't really hate to do this um what was your process at Florence I mean or or anybody Mr Fuller come Kathy come tell us uh everybody come on down and just kind of clue us because you know that is our concern we the process for deciding on the program not deciding on the program because knowing heard of

126the through your buildings you as administrators as leaders your teachers involved if your site base were involved you've had parent involvement so all the voices have been creating this process which is the way it should work my opinion but sb1 says you have public comments and then you proceed then the superintendent makes the decision um and we are trying to commit funds without doing that and um we're all about transparency here and we're all about following statute so um but I am curious just so that we have the input on who did you involve how did you do it in your particular building because most likely in some form or fashion that was replicated across the district sure I can tell you that our our team leaders had a large amount of input into adopting

127the program we've been using a similar i-Ready program for our Intervention Program for the last couple of years and since we're already familiar with the processes and the the interface and everything with that it made a lot of sense for us to use the the math instruction for our tier one instruction as well the the math Pro program for the tier one instruction as well it integrated very well with the the program that we're already we were already using for interventions okay if I can use just a little bit of his comment there the discussion about the timeline um you know moving forward and getting everything together for Senate bill one there is a challenge to that and it's not perfect right now um but also the question about the timeline on how many programs

128do we allow and things of that nature our goal is to try to get to one but I think that has to be a multi-year process where there's already some commitment like he had just mentioned with that particular program and those those tools that they've used already that we have to give our our schools our principals and our spdm councils a little bit of time to work towards that goal so it's going to be a multiple year process in my opinion and making that really usable where we can say to them in three years or in two years we need everybody on the same page true and we may not because there could be a lot of demographical changes correct that certain tools within these curriculums May suit our English Learners more so than others

129and if we get another huge influx like we did a couple of years ago four or five hundred Refugee children their needs are going to be different than someone who grew up in Boone County uh so okay who's next next step I have a quick question Karen um the sustainability of the program so after we had the contract as a limited time so when it's over how are we going to fund it that's a concern okay I'm here and just to clarify for Florence you are already using this and you are wanting to continue to use it all right okay thank you for that Mr Fuller go ahead Kelly do you mind if I just clarify that particular the sustainability question is super important I mean I love the principles to speak to their individual

130plans uh but the the totals that you see in the contracts for this year we're using Esser funds to make sure that we set those uh principles up for sustainability well so there are some one-time purchases that support the beginning of the implementation that wouldn't need to be sustained over several years and the principles um had some of those numbers to help them make those sustainability decisions a tough part about this sustainability is going to be that we don't get textbook money as a school anymore and so as a non-title one school all I have are sbdm funds and so if we start looking towards a reading curriculum that you're spending 30 or 40 000 on a math criticum you're spending Thirty or forty thousand dollars on I no longer have ESPN money now right

131so that that is a concern moving forward that we're gonna have to work through and and figure out and hopefully there's gonna be ways we can work through that with the district our process at thornwild was to uh we have a math committee that had a represented from every grade level and I made them commit before we started this school year that if you're on the math committee you're going to be a part of the year-long work with Miss Cinema and LSS going to these meetings and working through this this curriculum process we were already in Envision School we've had pretty good success with it um after working through all those things we made the decision as a committee to present that to our site base went through and I I presented basically for kind

132of public discussion with my site base in January I try to get a month ahead of that before we gave everything to LSS in February to to bring for the public discussion if that makes sense it does thank you appreciate you sharing that Mr Fuller my site-based budget is about twenty six thousand dollars a year and programming at Kelly we have not had a program at all there is no program we do not have so as a team and when I say team it was all of my math teachers because there's all six of us so our team we met with well I was on the original team with Kelly when we were putting this um the process together so I took that process took it back to my school all of my math teachers

133we looked at all of the different programmings and we did look at costs you will not see Kelly on your list because we cannot sustain we don't know if we'll have that money our our site-based funding we are title one but each year our title one kind of goes down just because of our numbers we're 230 strong so with that being said we are looking at a program to purchase through our Title One program to see we have nothing to begin with right now we need something to supplement we do stick to those timelines because we were a Stan we are a standards-based grading School we're the first Elementary to go standards based and we those timelines are our Bibles so we stick to the district timeline so if students do come from somewhere else

134in the district they are on they're exactly where we need them to be the programming doesn't make a difference so if they bring their Envision book it doesn't make a difference gives us some extra stuff to look at but we have we've had strong math scores so right now we are looking at a program that is specific based on our needs assessment for problem solving and working through math so that was our lens and it was our entire math department which is like I said all six of us and we sat down with our parents and our on our Council so right now we did not go with the SR funding for any program because we don't know if we can sustain it in the future thank you appreciate that insight Madam chair if I

135can just say one thing before go ahead Stephanie um thing say one thing before she gets to the microphone from what was just said I think that's a really important distinction there the discussion of following the district standards and following the timeline for the district standards that's the most important thing in this entire discussion of of math uh learning and helping our kids be successful is that we want all of our schools to be making sure that we're teaching to the the adopted standards that we have in place and we're using that timeline for what we're teaching through that what we're talking about here is really just teaching the the tools that we're going to be using for that teaching but that timeline is the key and that's what we're we're moving towards to getting

136everyone on that same page where we're using all of those same standards and we're following that same timeline some of our schools that are using that and follow that strictly those are schools we're seeing lots of growth thank you I will Echo what Mr Turner just said for us at Long Branch it is not about any program we say we have readygen and we have envisioned but that's our starting place and our instructional practices are identified of what's successful through our data what's not successful what do we do so we've been using Envision since I've been principal so this is our fifth year using it and for us it goes back to that sustainability and that professional learning piece for us I knew that if we adopted something new which as a committee we didn't

137feel like it was a need because it's working for us currently our data shows that time and time again through case or star or KSA so we that's the big reason we decided to stick with Envision but that sustainability piece you know we have almost 900 kids and 65 certified staff members so the sustainability of that professional learning piece outside of PLC work would be nearly impossible for us to fund so that sustainability piece was a big deciding factor for us and it's it's been successful for us but we also had kind of the same as David said his team actually was our team leaders were most of the people on our math committee that did the math all math work all year long and they really decided that you know Envision as long as

138we're sticking with that timeline which is huge it's it's meeting our needs as our starting point and then in our PLC week we decide okay Envision hits this this and this but we need to pull in some stronger resources for this one piece of this unit so we're really drilling down in our instructional practices through our PLC conversations thank you appreciate that insight and sorry to well I'm saying I'm sorry but I'm not sorry because we rely on you guys because you're the ones in the buildings making us look good and your input is valuable it definitely valuable to me so um any grants opportunities for schools and situations like Kelly and you be proud your 230 strong some continuing doing fund opportunities that we'll talk about as we go through also as we said

139a lot of the sets of materials we're looking at have many many elements to them the gift of essers that we can give them a year of the Cadillac version as they decide which of the elements work best for them and then of course working with with the district and to look for grant opportunities and further funding as we go along one last piece I would add I know the public comment is an important piece so I I know we talked a little bit this about this at the teaching and learning committee too but we also have a plan for as we teach this year with these instructional materials collecting more purposefully um information from the students their perception of how the materials are working from them and from parents throughout the year each of

140these sets of instructional resources actually come with a family letter for every unit that explains the math and maybe a game that kids can play so we're hoping that our communication home especially about math because everyone loves math so much it's their favorite thing they want to know more about it there's a lot more communication back and forth with the schools using some of the materials that we're looking at now thank you enter those materials in more than just English they often are and we've already contacted our folks here in the district that will help us translate for those languages that aren't represented okay good to know any other questions for any of our panelists tonight I just want to say thank you for that explanation because I have no hesitation setting forth funds to

141support clearly what is an incredibly intensive process that involves I can say firsthand from my kids some of the best Educators I've ever seen so thank you to all the people who spent lots of hours in plcs and planning because I would say hands down you guys rock and I have no hesitation setting forth funds that could be used for that so thank you and I have no issue setting forth funds but I want to also make sure that we're following the statute that was put in place so that's my concern okay so I'll defer to our board attorney Ms am long well my my computer internet's gone so I'm really glad I printed out the statute so I can read directly from it you know we do that again thank you guys appreciate appreciate

142you doing that for me yeah so with respect to Senate bill one and how it changed KRS 16345 the process still as as Dr Brown alluded to earlier rests there is certainly a process in place but the ultimate decision does rest with the superintendent to determine curriculum appropriate textbooks and all of the materials that come along with that so the district has elected as a reasonable response period to use the 30 days which is what I believe is going to be implemented between now and the next board meeting to allow for that public comment period so per statute there are no timelines actually implemented in place it's completely with the discretion of the district's needs and with this District being as large as it is it was a little bit tight from what I understand

143to try and get this process in place so we are running up against you know making some decisions but also approving things early enough to get logistically all of this stuff to the district and implemented by the year by the start of the new year so as long as the process is followed that there is a reasonable response period for public stakeholders to provide that comment which the district is doing that's all that's required to Prov or for this particular purpose because the statute specifically reads that the superintendent before the final decision is made has to consult with the local Board of Education school principals school councils and provide reasonable review and response period for stakeholders so thus far the district is in the process of doing all of that approving the funding for the

144things that have been identified thus far does not disrupt that process because those materials will not be necessarily ordered today they will be ordered or finally signed those contracts will after the response period is over so very well in accordance with this process at the May meeting Mr Turner may receive an influx of comments that may maybe there's one particular program people just for whatever reason really hate he takes that into consideration and should that sway his decision and what he has decided based on the extensive process that has gone on thus far he could very well come back to the district next May or to the Board of Education in May for that board meeting and say look we decided not to use those funds that you approved can you approve them for this

145instead pre-approving the funds does not disrupt the process set out in statute because the statute does not specifically provide timelines for these things to occur I know that was a very lengthy and kind of convoluted response so I apologize if you need me to clarify anything please let me know does anyone need that clarified all right so back to the matter at hand for items f g and H which is to approve the funding source for i-Ready math for Collins Florence and Ackerman pending public comments and the superintendent's final decision all in favor aye oh so before the vote happens though I do think that one thing merits um some clarification so per the statute the board is not necessarily approving the program itself the board is approving just a monetary amount for curriculum although

146the superintendent based on the curriculum needs and the discussion from Super or from the principles has already identified that for you the board's obligation is solely to approve a monetary value so theoretically even if that value is approved and let's say another another program is it chosen alternatively there's nothing that necessarily needs to be changed from this board's vote so when you are making your motion if you want to caveat that you're approving specifically that amount only if it is used for this particular program your motion needs to reflect that but if you're approving the money period for this curriculum the motion needs to reflect that alternatively what is our option to table it till next month to give it time for the public comment like can we do that yes anyone that wants to

147chime in I think one of the biggest issues with that is if we don't get funding approved and get this ordering we're going to have kids without resources come August well you can't order it until it's been through the process already that's the thing right but then we'd have to wait to another meeting so it's easy something it would back it up two more meetings if we were to do that and then we wouldn't be able to order it and then just because we've dealt with a week or two when we've already had reoccurring agreements with some of the companies before like we've ordered for the prior year already and it still didn't show up until almost the end of August if that makes sense that would be my biggest concern just although it makes

148sense but with the process that we're doing though we shouldn't even be ordering anything until the commentary period has been done so you still are going to have to wait until that the next meeting anyways where you could order it where I to my knowledge we're not ordering anything all we're doing is giving them the superintendent permission to spend money which is not outside of what we've been doing for years and I trust the superintendent and the principles to make the curriculum decisions um I would agree with you Mr Parks and my question is what would be different in a month I'm not going to read all those comments I won't have access to those comments it's not our responsibility though it's the superintendent's responsibility but at least we would have given the opportunity what

149he all he's doing now is we're saying when you get all that done go forward if you so choose we we have to juggle between the way the legislation binds certain things um and they they kicked the obligation for curriculum to the superintendent who's our direct employee so we've employed Matt Turner to make the decisions on the curriculum all we're doing is providing the monetary amount of money he needs to do his job so I say we we hear the building principals who are entrusted with the students saying that they need to get this done now let's allow them and Matt Turner to progress through that situation and if for some reason there is something that comes up with one of these curriculum pieces then he will make that determination not us I get that

150but I'm just wanting to know if we vote on giving the money now and they need the resources and we can't order them now that's my concern we can't order them until this piece happens so how are we going to make sure this piece happens so we're in compliance with the statute it's up tonight is what they explained I think public comment starts today is that right and I hate to be cynical right right but if we get a hundred comments I'll be surprised well we're the third largest District in the Commonwealth and we don't turn on a dime and we're talking about having materials to educate students to improve math performance for our youngest Learners and that's just getting them we're not even taking into consideration the professional development and training that's going to

151have to happen before the students even show up so this is one of those things you kind of have to do on faith so can you do that I don't know I can because I know these people and I know where their hearts are and I know where their passions are and I know that they want to be within the law just like I want to be within the law I'm a rural follower and if I don't like a rule I'm going to change it and if our legislator would quit putting bills into uh standing that are so vague that they give you no clear Direction so that they can check a box look what we did then we wouldn't be in some of these situations that we find ourselves in I have utmost faith

152that if this motion is approved to expend the funds as outlined in the superintendent's recommendation public comment period will happen with fidelity Mr Turner will take that into consideration and if any of these schools have a backlash of negative comment I'm sure the process would be go back to that building go back to that staff go back to those teachers drag Kelly back into another committee meeting and figure out what don't they understand what do we need to do what kind you know and and and get it done I'm going to call the question on this and we need to take a vote and you either support setting aside the funding and and Trust our staff or you choose not to all in favor aye aye any opposed roll call vote Mrs Young Dr Brown

153Mr Parks aye Mrs wolf the chair votes I thank you now let's move on two items i j and k which is contracts between Burlington Urban Beck and North Point for great minds for Eureka Math I was saying too but I think I've been corrected it's squared the two's not in the right place for it to be square this is a math curriculum okay Dr Mr Turner yes so it is technically an approval of the contract because it's for the funding but just so it's clear in the record the substance of it is still left to the discretion of the superintendent and the superintendent alone so while it is a motion to approve the contract everyone here needs to be under the understanding that it is not an approval of the content of the actual

154whatever selection for the program it is itself it is an approval of the contract insofar as it is setting forth the funding for a program in the Boone County Schools it seems very tricky and I know it's very tedious but the board could not vote no solely based on the content of the program should a board member elect to vote no it would either be for funding purposes or because of some other term of the contract that is disagreeable or otherwise so as long as the minutes reflect that you're good so I have an actual question about the math great minds what what is it different like physically different than some of the other curriculums and the reason I point that out I'll make it real quick is there is a shipping and handling charge

155on all of these contracts of over four thousand dollars like they have to ship some great big box to us or something like that so I'm just curious about that a big this may be part of it but Jesse is that what they're purchasing are the teaching materials so many of these are manipulative supplies things lots of stuff so to speak the teachers using in their classroom so these will be boxes that will be full of all sorts of different little things they will use in the classroom and the kids the manipulatives and things of that nature widgets models of different different things so yes those will probably be big boxes with just lots of stuff in them in addition also a workbook for every student so you can imagine when you get into that

156number of books it's quite a large shipment but the other the other programs don't have workbooks because this I think I didn't see shipping and handling in such a large number on the other contracts I'd have to look at the contract I'm not sure but they do include books physical books workbooks all of them well I'll just say as an aside I don't want to draw this out very long but I will say uh that we're we're sort and we really need to get to the rest of this agenda but um we just sort of glossed over the fact that one of our schools can't afford the programs that we're talking about yeah um and we also glossed over the fact that the other schools can't afford these programs next year um we're talking about

157sb1 and which is a reasonable topic but this potentially is a bigger problem long term that we we currently have a school that can't participate and we have other schools that won't be able to afford these products and their current cost next year or going forward and you know I would like to hear what the public comment would be about that that we have such this disability yeah and disparity between one school and another school and how one one I mean that to me is a bigger topic is that what do we do next year so is but it's not next year is it it's because this is like 23 24 and 24 25. so the problem's going to be in 26 27 correct is that right so here's what I think you'll see is

158that and I hope they're listening I ready math great minds for Eureka and Savas Envision will in fact sharpen their pencil and offer all school districts a better cost because I think personally that all of the vendors are inflating their costs because of extra money and so what we'll see is hopefully the cost will come down and then ours our district Personnel will do a better job in negotiating these prices so we can provide all of our schools with the necessary components to make sure that the kids can excel in math well I know from personal experience Dr detwire is the master negotiator for his Wizardry and getting our Chromebook costs down when we initially started buying them for the whole District the best part of the concept we just spoke about earlier in this

159conversation where we're moving towards fewer options and getting everyone on the same page and there and there are some differences slightly with each of these items that we're doing but as we move towards the end of this contract period you know what you heard Jesse is not falling on deaf ears that's some conversations that we've had previously where we need to be doing something as a district to take care of that funding and that means maybe thinking a little bit differently in terms of approaching it purchasing it from the district level not with school funds but with District funds and and how that would look in that way it's beyond me that we would be spending thirty thousand to forty thousand dollars of school or authorizing that and one school can't do it I mean

160I I think we should just add that school to the list from now on and I give them the same thing that everyone else gets well when we did that vote last month on the um the nineteen thousand dollars for the lawsuit one of the things that was said was oh nineteen thousand dollars is just a drop in the bucket of our our budget why can't we find nineteen thousand dollars or twenty thousand dollars to give Kelly Elementary to help them with the curriculum if it's just a drop in the bucket of our budget uh let's look into it and we need to make sure that all of our schools have all the tools and they I mean even the other schools involved here if they're not um a title one school they don't have

161enough money to cover both their reading program and math program as it sits currently well when we have schools sitting there without reading programs for years years right without reading programs and their teachers are begging for reading programs right now begging and there's no money because they don't have Title One money so let's what I say we let's move on with this small topic which is really what it equates to and then we our district people need to get to work and see figure out how we're going to do school in 26 2026. I agreed sounds like another addition to the Strategic plan Okay so back to we had a discussion without the recommendation in motion and second but that's okay we'll do that now Mr Turner I make a recommendation for the board to

162approve the expense expenditure for items l through I through J I threw J we haven't voted on Eureka Math I through k i through K thank you I too look like a j for approval I need math help okay motion Mr Parks is there a second thank you Miss wolf are there any other questions on these the Eureka math squared for Burlington Urban back and North Point all in favor I any opposed hearing none motion carries items l through Q for enVision Math for Long Branch New Haven Stevens Steeplechase Thorne Wilde and yaley Mr Turner I'll make a recommendation the board approved the contracts for math curriculum for items l through Q thank you motion motion Mr Parks is there a second second who seconded Dr Brown thank you any questions on these items for

163envision math schools hearing none all in favor aye any opposed motion carries okay then we have item R for Mann Elementary McGraw-Hill for everyday math Mr Turner I recommend the board to approve the expenditure for everyday math as presented we have a recommendation motion Dr Brown second Mrs Young any questions on everyday math hearing none all in favor I any opposed sorry I yeah reading I'm sorry you live too close to colony of the vote no on that one okay uh hearing none all in uh motion carries which brings us to item s for Goodrich Elementary School and amplify for the ckla yeah I'm going to ask Dr Delta Weiler to step forward a little bit again this is an item for English language arts and we are working on that same process we were

164talking about with mathematics but it's been staged a little bit they're not happening at the exact same time so we have this one schools request for materials yes they wanted to do their reading expiration earlier than math is that correct Dr Watson so the elementary schools are going to be entering into the exact same thank you principals we appreciate your input what's going on the elementary schools will be entering into the exact same process for ELA reading and writing that Kelly described for math next that's the next one but Goodrich requested to do that first correct so training is now equipping them to do this amplify ckla which is really about the brain and the science of reading um so I I felt like that was that was legitimate because of the professional learning so

165uh Dr Patrick and I have been working together on that so she will adopt math when everybody else is adopting reading this next coming School okay all right thank you for that clarification we have our recommendation do we have a motion I moved so moved Dr Brown is there a second okay thank you are there any specific questions since this is a little bit different than the math curriculums we've been looking at can I sneak in a general question that in the future when we do these processes will the now that there's a process in place well the public comment period be scooched forward so that we don't or is that something that's dictated timeline I was just curious if okay yeah that's good to know that we'll kind of get things in right order

166as we get through this these growing pains and and learn to make sure that we do follow what we're supposed to do to solicit comments from the community okay with the recommendation motion and a second all in favor aye any opposed hearing none motion carries okay that's for the added items which concludes new business um superintendent's report Mr Turner thank you madam chair I'm going to first turn to Mr McCarter to do a present complete a presentation on operations for you thank you Mr Turner I want to update the board just about on a couple of committees that we have done or meetings that we've held this week and then turn it over to Kim and Eric for some updates as well um this morning we held our most recent meeting about the disciplinary committee

167with the passing of Bill 538 that this gave districts and school boards more flexibility and guidance in terms of dealing with expulsions the length of those expulsions and Alternative forms of discipline being able to being available to school districts one of those policies from the entire bill came when the when the policies of those come out in May at the end of May we as a district will need to go through those changes with our principals and building leaders a lot of what is in house bill 538 supports the reasons why this committee was formed at the beginning and the charge of the board and we discussed that at our meeting today along with that we have our code of conduct committee that is formed but many people that are in that committee are on

168the code of conduct committee and that will be an ongoing committee that will update policies and procedures and I know that Mrs wolf was added to that committee today or invited to be on that committee by Mrs rootman um so with our committee that we have we have decided to um put a pause on that committee and reconvene when it's necessary the code of conduct will continue to work and um well when the the policies come out in May we may have to reconvene to adjust that and I didn't know if any other committee members wanted to make comments um concerning that I know Mr Ford was explained that 538 in very good detail today I don't know if you needed to explain anything or if you have a question about that okay we had

169our salary ad hoc committee last night we will be moving to bring some proposals to the budget committee next week that meeting will be next Wednesday we had our fees committee our second fees committee meeting March 28th right before spring break so that recommendation will not be presented tonight but will be presented at the at the May board meeting I am going to turn this over to Kim to give us an update on our work with the classified staff and Mr buffano and what we have come up with so far and then Eric will follow up with a human resource update yep sorry about that allergies are getting to me I have a really deep voice right now so um we did resend out that classified survey after the last board meeting um and we

170currently have 706 responses which was nice um so I actually sent it out for me instead of having it forwarded from some school buildings so I feel like we got a little bit better response so that gave us 54.8 percent responses um we have done some work with Eric myself and Mr buffano and talking about what this will look like when we convene the task force to work on that classified culture our plan for that would be that we would start that work in June so what's going to happen is tomorrow the interest forms going to go out to all the classified staff to see who would like to join us on that task force because we do have such a large number of classified staff we will look at those inter forms with the

171intent to make sure we have a balanced group the goal will be we have a balanced number between different role areas across the district as well as members who are bcca members and non-members we want to make sure that we have a fairly balanced group but not make it too large so that'll be a lot of work that Mr McCarter and I will be doing to kind of sift through all of those interest forms to make sure that we get a good balanced group and then at that first meeting that determination will be well be made what our purpose is and what the end result that we hope to see from the work from that group so it's very exciting to see that coming forward from those 706 responses we did have 267 just open-ended

172comments I did add a question add a question at the end that said tell me anything else you want us to know and as we've said in the previous board member pay was probably the overarching thing the last time I counted there were about 38 different comments that included something related to pay it may not have been pay outright but it alluded to pay situation so about 38 of those comments I have stopped accepting responses to that just because digging into that data makes it really difficult to keep doing that when I'm continuing to get new responses and that's all I have for that um all right um I'll do construction if Chad can bring it up those pictures so you do have the construction report that was part of your board packet um Boone

173County high school before I get to the Jones pictures I'll just give you an update on that we are very excited to be moving to the final phase of the second phase um so over this weekend they'll be converting taking this classroom the classes that are upstairs will be going out to the mobiles those teachers will be coming into new classrooms and this will be that last transition so super excited to have that happen um I feel like we're getting building some momentum and moving forward rather quickly in that with that summer completion date for that so that's very exciting same thing with Jones Middle School so on the screen you'll see some pictures there the flooring has started to go down so these were from Tuesday or Wednesday I can't remember which one um

174and they had just started doing the flooring in that upper level classroom so everything is prepped and ready to go as you can see the rest of the classrooms look fairly finished they have ceilings they have white boards um and I don't know if they up there a couple other pictures somewhere through there you'll see doors have gone in those are other pictures of flooring and when I was there they were installing projectors so it was really nice to see some technology going in there as well there's our gentleman there installing the projectors the middle picture is the tile floor that just went in in the bathrooms and the last picture is the picture of the prep work that was finished is actually one of the new science labs it has this really nice workspace

175back in that corner so really excited for that so again that project is on schedule so they'll be finishing up all of that addition work fairly soon as soon as students leave then they'll be connecting the new building a section of the building to the existing section of the building so that'll be the next big piece for them any questions for me thank you all right thank you good evening good morning all right um before I share some staffing numbers we want to give a little bit of context uh throughout the year we usually give you uh the number of vacancies we have and it makes sense because we're not in hiring season right before uh spring break we finished up all of our allocation meetings with principals so now they've begun the business of

176posting for the 23-24 school year and then we'll see this number ebb and flow probably rise through the months of April May June July and then come down obviously as we enter the school year next August so I'm going to give you numbers and they're going to sound inflated from the ones last month but that's very typical from April May June and July so don't be concerned that when I say there are 31 teacher vacancies we have resignations and retirements that are happening and they naturally do these are for next school year so don't be concerned that the numbers are large now 10 special ed teacher vacancies 18 and a half para educator vacant sees so we do have some half part-time positions in there half allocations 18 and a half special ed pairs 17

177custodians which I will say is a reduction of four so we filled four that number is going down not where we want it to be which is zero but making progress eight staff support uh 10 cafeteria workers so 114 total vacancies right now but again that is not a surprising number based on the natural attrition that happens through resignations and retirements this time of year any questions did you say Transportation at all I did not include transportation Mr Barracks I know right he's already he's just went over to the garage right um and that number is the number we typically get from him we called earlier today and shockingly they weren't able to to answer and return that call that's usually a number I like to get from Mr Barracks because we post I'm sorry

178I you may yeah I'm I don't have to go to that now do I because I mentioned it okay uh yes I have the number I have the number not yet last month yeah so so on on the site on our website we have one posting for bus driver so it's not easy to just go and get that number straight from the website because we just post one bus driver position so we do have to get that from Transportation because as they hire that number goes up and down and we usually ask for two different numbers from them to be honest one is the number of uh vacancies that aren't filled based on their allocations and then the other number we ask for the number of vacancies that are existing that would allow them to

179not have double runs each day so those are actually two significantly different numbers it's it's it's not a it's not a huge number to get down to those zero double runs uh but I would agree it's usually that does happen on occasion yeah so miss be more than happy to get that number for you I just unfortunately was able to get it we tried like to get it is is close to the meeting as possible just unable to do so today thank you if you remember last month we started the cdip update and we did Elementary So today we're going to focus on student services and secondary beginning with Kathy rootman and she's going to be addressing goal number five increase the quality of school climate and safety indicator which includes mental health services so

180she's going to give you an update on some of the work that's been done in that area thank you for letting me have a few minutes tonight what I'm basically going to do is give you an update on the mental health programs and services that we've been providing um one of the first and big collaborations that is happening right now is why I passed out those handouts to you you will see the logistic the logic model the project goals the um objectives to for the two Mental Health Grants that the Cooperative the Northern Kentucky education Cooperative Road the first one is for trauma-informed support for schools the co-op received nine thousand nine hundred and seventy thousand dollars to use to help improve our trauma-informed care work that's for 10 school districts I'm not going to

181go into it so that's why I gave you all of those details the second handout that I gave you is for mental health services in schools where the co-op is also working with us and other school districts they there's a million dollars for the first year 300 million dollars over the next four years to help provide and improve Services mental health services to get us providers to help with getting practicum students into schools and to get people to go into the mental health Fields so those are there they're not fleshed out yet we just received those two grants Our intention also is the trauma-informed care Grant the t-i-s-s grant the 2023 Grant is coming up so we would like to apply for that for just for Boone County even we have 970 000 you divide

182that by 10 school districts us being the largest that's not going to amount to a whole lot of money or a whole lot of service so we're going to attempt to work with the co-op to write our own Grant also the other thing I wanted to tell you about is that um we have 16 Community Partners Mental Health Community Partners in our schools North key is in many of our schools each one of these Community Partners is almost full to capacity of what each of the therapists can provide services to with 16 were not near covered with our mental health services so we're working on some other strategies one of the strategies that we've used over time is our PBIS framework that's our framework for Behavior mental health trauma-informed and self-care where we look at

183tier one tier two and tier three tier one is what everybody gets tier two are for those students who need a little bit more in order to meet our expectations of safe responsible and respectful schools and tier three is for those students who need more intensive help so if you look at that in a pyramid situation you would have I'm going to knock this over you will have a situation where about 80 percent of your kids are at the tier one level at the tier two level there may be 15 and at the tier three five percent and as you go up the interventions increase the mental health uh pieces increase as to do the strategies for self-care so every one of our St our schools is involved in that and we're in the process

184right now of going to every school and monitoring for Fidelity of implementation of that framework so we've been doing that for several years was hard to do during covet but we're re coming back around the other thing that we've done recently is we've re-upped our mental health task force that mental health task force over the years before coven provided three mental health Summits one each year where we had several thousand people come parents students community members and had all of our Community Partners there with their a table to talk about who they are and why they're there we had keynote speakers both on a Friday night and a Saturday so as our mental health task force got together the other day we did we met twice we have 26 members now on that task force

185that used to be we were running about five or ten but I was impressed that in inviting the Community Partners they came so 11 Community Mental Health Partners are sitting on that team helping us play in so as we went through the last meeting we decided we needed to do some things right away we did finish up our team charter but we also had some quick hits what are we going to do right now what are some things can happen now to impact our students and our schools and our families some short-term objectives and some long-term goals quick hits or things like Implement QPR right away that QPR is a suicide prevention strategy where we'll Train everybody Kathy goetzweiler is on that team she provided and one of the quick hits to be her parent

186addiction program that she's had two meetings on where they're providing information for employ did you go to that you did did you yeah we're a School site where a psychologist comes in and talks about addiction the addictions that they were focusing on was technology addictions but that goes over the entire process of addiction a short-term objective was to make sure that we have some training one of them is that we make sure that our counselors our school psychologists have refined training and threat and risk assessments a risk assessment is for a child who had or an adult who is self-harming a threat assessment is if someone threatens to hurt the large community school or a group so we're having some trouble with consistency there so that was another quick or a short-term objective long-term objective

187is we will have a summit in the fall so those are just a just a quick update of what we're doing for the mental health so we're increasing our work and hopefully we'll be decreasing some of this situations that are occurring for us any questions no question just a comment I'm happy to hear that we're planning another Summit because I would only ask you know please check the different calendars and District calendars and Community calendars so that we don't conflict because I missed it last year because of that so we'll do the very very best we can I know it's hard but just taking a perusal to see what else could be going on that might keep people from coming to this point well taken thank you if if a student um you mentioned their

188Community Partners if if a student um is is requesting some Mental Health Services and what is the process let's say you're a ninth grader do you go to your account your school counselor to request one of the Community Partners to meet with you or how how does the kid get to the community partner there's a couple of ways typically you would go to your school counselor first school counselor would then have conversations with you and if necessary with your parents um sometimes there's interventions that are put into place through like those tears that I was talking to you about in order to get with a community partner there's a form that's filled out parents have to sign that form giving permission for us to share any information and to have them access those services I'm

189wondering that this recent topic that we've we've all been living through with um public violence and that type of thing we we um we often also talk about suicide prevention and we've provided in Kentucky a mechanism in which students can reach out on their own to get Suicide Prevention help is there would it be okay to look at a situation where we we would provide a similar situation for kids it might be thinking about committing a violent act or maybe just need some Mental Health Services that didn't necessarily go through the people at their at their school because it because they may have an issue with talking to the counselor or the counselor's busy or maybe a link on the website if you if you're feeling this way call us or something like that we

190actually do have a hotline out there and I know it's posted in most of our schools where the students can call and and ask for help not only is that through our schools but we have those like two when you dial two one one you can get help yourself through uh through the United Way right and there are other help lines out there too we provide a lot of that information in that Code of Conduct Handbook or phone numbers and things for students we are required in the first month of school to provide suicide prevention training to all of our staff who are especially interacting with middle and high schools including our coaches and others anyone who is working with our students so one of the things that we are thinking about doing with that

191is instead of using that safe schools where everybody can go in and click and it's over I mean you already know what's going on we're going to provide that QPR training which is a very succinct shortened suicide prevention training to all of our staffs now our we're still working on that and we're working on providing that information to the and working with the principals to provide that but we have Outside Agency is ready to do that right unless that will provide more input Place ways for students to access help okay thank you thank you very much thank you Mrs rootman now we're going to hear from Dr Puri Mrs Schaefer they're going to handle goal six which is post-secondary Readiness and goal seven which is graduation rate um yeah as Jim said as part of

192the review I'll um talk with you about post-secondary readiness I'll do that with Bill Hogan speaks for itself it's whether our students are ready College and Career ready upon graduation I'll have Tracy Schaefer spend more time on graduation rate you guys have a folder from me um it'll have the the goal six and seven it also has a summary of the various career and college Pathways and pathway preps that we offer in the most General sense um I want to remind you I guess of of the role of our high school counselors but more important or as equally important our career in college readiness coaches uh there's continual online or sorry continual training in Infinite Campus as well as monthly counselors meetings uh that are centered around post-secondary Readiness and appropriate supports for our students

193we do Panorama training as well to survey student well-being and to support development developing student action plans when necessary but all of that work that's ongoing with the high school counselors and the career in college coaches is obviously focused on the students given pathway um also that and I know it's listed there in your handout and it's more of the long-standing and traditional Avenue is that I wanted to remind you of our Area Technical Center in its offerings which are listed there for you with electrical technology Auto Tech diesel tech Health Sciences Machine Tool technology metal fabrication welding Ed also offers dual credit um it should be noted that the ignite Institute on its own is um a pathway for both career and college Allied Health biomed science computer science design the education program the

194engineering program so you need to look that it ignite is actually a a very important and continually growing pathway for our students I'm going to say um one more item that I want to bring attention to and then I'm going to allow Bill to I wanted to touch on some of the more traditional things I want to spend some time on the more Innovative and growing programs this year the state provided a greater support in lavac fundings to our high schools which was great and so I want to kind of transition as being quick they're saying because I know you have good familiarity with our traditional Pathways so I want to spend some more time on um our newer work or growing work that layback money all of our high schools have been able to

195expand their pltw Pathways in engineering uh in all domains of that engineering pathway as well as biomedical science they also went ahead and increased their schools of Education culinary science and agriculture so that lavex support into our high schools was was a great way to improve and and reinvest in our College and Career Pathways but I want to turn it over to bill for him to touch on some of our other programs and show you growth over time thank you all for giving me the opportunity want to talk about a two or three of our programming uh first is what we used to call home builders we are now renaming that intro to the skilled trades to try to be a little more encompassing plus even home builders will say we don't call it home

196builders anymore it's the building Institute of Northern Kentucky so uh as you know that's that program started seven years ago it is located in Mineola Pike at the building Institute the vision was always a two-year program much like a vocational program students would get an introduction into masonry carpentry electric work HVAC and some Plumbing so over time uh in the second year they would then Co-op and really didn't have a lot of success getting them to co-op until about three years ago right after we dealt with covid and we got some students out after that and it's grown ever since I talked to Jesse lay from laying Plumbing one of our first co-ops was placed there he is now an apprentice driving his own truck for for Lay plumbing and that's what he wanted to

197do he was steadfast in that and he worked his senior year almost full time with with Jesse so that's a success we had two people started that year also at CVG and so that was a growing partnership we still have two students at CVG this year we have 30 students in the program and that were somewhat limited because Ludlow and Cub cath are also members and they send students as well uh building Institute opened up a new building in Covington so the Ludlow and the Cub Cass students will be going there next year and so we will be the only School District in uh Erlanger and so next year while we have 30 this year we're going to go up to 42. we already have 42 registered and ready this year we have 13 co-ops

198out about in businesses six of those students have already been offered positions starting with the company upon graduation so about 50 percent of our students are going to go continue to work with who they are working with now another great thing happened through the workforce investment board in the state of Kentucky for a certification to become career applicable to where it counts for our career Readiness the workforce investment board in the region has to to support it and put it to the Kentucky Workforce investment award once that happens KD would then approve it as a certification the home builders National curriculum was approved for certification and so our students for the first time this year will be able to take a test that will count for career Readiness as most of you know I really

199don't those numbers I want the student to be ready the numbers are great it's a win-win but the biggest thing is are we putting kids in a position to be successful when they graduate and so our numbers our experiences with co-ops is getting better and better and so I'm happy with that next year we could have a possible 24 kids that will Co-op out of Home Builders so if we think about the growth every year we're getting better and better at the process so that that's the building and I would say Vicki Burling if anybody knows Vicki she runs the building Institute it's phenomenal partner we'll do anything and everything she can to help us so if you ever meet Vicki I would appreciate it if a little plug if you want to follow me

200on Twitter a lot of times I post pictures of this the kids building Mason walls uh putting electrical in in a wall or putting windows in whatever they may be working on out there the second partnership is the one that we just kicked off and that was uh in partnership with regular blacktop we have seven students Juniors at regular blacktop going four days a week they started the fall semester at Gateway taking two college classes on construction and they got their OSHA 10 certification which is kind of the foundation for anything in the trades uh upon completion of those two courses we moved into regular and the reason why we work that regular January February March they're dead they're not doing anything and so it was a good time for them to have our students

201out there now's post spring break they're hitting it hard and so um I want you to also understand five years ago was when that process started five years ago Casey James myself JC or Gateway regular RJ regular and Francis O'Hare from Kenton visited Fairdale High School they were the only other program in the state that offered heavy equipment we went down visited taught about it covet hit we waited and to be honest then there was some back and forth between Gateway and regular blacktop about some construction projects that did not get go a certain way and Casey and I had to kind of mediate and say hey guys it's about kids can we can we work together and so that ended up working out and so what happens now our students in their senior year

202will come back and they're going to go in pairs of two with the construction managers and they're going to sit and then they'll rotate every so often so they get to see every aspect of regular blacktop in the construction process and so during their time at regular they were able to go to the Northern Kentucky water district on a trip they were able to go to an asphalt company and see their work they were able to go see a Mason do some concrete masonry work and so at every stop they got told if you want a job we have a job you can apply today and so the opportunity is there regular is actually offered two of our students right now summer work and so they haven't been employed by regular to work all summer

203along with them in between we aren't finished with them the next two days that they have are the 18th and 19th they're going to get trained from the Kentucky Department of Transportation as well as UK they're going to have certification in basic work Zone traffic control and Flagger basically the people that stand out and say go stop and work Zone traffic control technician those two certifications are for two years with those certifications our students can go out and get jobs at 25 an hour when they graduate um while there they also learn blueprint design surveying they laid a slab of concrete last week at the new building at wrigler if you have not seen the simulators I would tell you to contact me anytime we did start that with Esser Esther funding pay for two

204of the simulators that are out there that are caterpillar simulators but I can't say in uh RJ wrigler which many of you may know graduate of Boone County High School uh has been instrumental in this world Michael Taylor the head of HR for them is the other if you go out there RJ's teaching the kids how to survey teaching the kids how to read blueprints Michael is overseeing the simulators and if he's seeing something as they're doing it he explains why the machine's shut down or why they fell when they complete something on the left-hand screen of the simulator just like if you have three TV screens over here it talks about this is your efficiency this is how much fuel you use this is how many times you hit a truck this is how

205many times you hit a barrier uh you failed you passed and it gives them a score and so the the standards were quite high for that they had to do pre-maintenance checks they had to walk around uh the simulator make sure uh every bolt was where it needed to be so it was just a really great experience for our kids um and I believe uh next year we're talking we're going to have about 10 kids out there I believe is where we're going to be they want more obviously we have to buy another simulator so there's discussion on how we can make that happen they are expensive but I also wanted to get through the first students having two years of experience and make sure next year goes smoothly we don't want to up it

206and then have issues that we Face the second year so those are the two kind of innovative programs that that I wanted to talk about that that are are really College and Career ready so those students are regular will will be College ready because they took the Gateway classes uh a couple more things talk about you science if you don't know what use science is it's an aptitude test for our students that we take as a freshman uh that aptitude test is much like the ASVAB it looks at a interest and their aptitude and where those two things match we get a report and says this this student has interest in this and an aptitude for this here's the careers that they might be good for them and so how we use that at Connor

207I met with all the students that had heavy equipment or construction sat down talked to them about the two programs so it's a good way to isolate and say listen you have an interest to this and an attitude this might fit where you want to go not a hundred percent but let's let's give it a try if you're willing so every school uses that as a high school to either in their exit interviews and even for programming uh dual credit uh one of the things that we wanted to talk about is the number of students taking dual credit in summarization excluding ignite we didn't want to put ignite in here because they would skew the numbers uh because of their their purpose but outside of that are other four high schools last year we had

208851 students taking at least one dual credit class this year we're at 1086. it's a 22 percent increase in students taking dual credit fantastic just a great number if we see another 22 percent which I don't doubt we will uh we will get where I think we should be um an example just to let you know of Ryle started a partnership three years three years ago with UK they started out one of the things we're seeing with dual Credit in our dual credit the teachers that are credentialed to teach dual Credit in high school you have to have 18 hours in your subject area so if I'm a history teacher for my masters if I take 18 hours of Master's level work in history I can teach dual credit classes for Northern or Thomas More

209the problem is as you know the state of Kentucky said you no longer have to get your ranked too you don't have to get a master's so if I'm going to do that then I'll probably get in my rank two and my rank one in administration guides counseling or something I'm not going back to be a master teacher in in math right now we did see an increase from 18 to 26 teachers in the in the county that can teach dual credit but to head that off colleges are getting very unique in the way they're attacking dual credit UK started three years ago with Royal High School where our students sent in a class from eight to nine in math It's a UK Professor on Skype teaching the class that way our teacher doesn't have

210to be credentialed but we have a licensed teacher in the classroom to give support and help to grade to do those things to help the instructor from UK so they're getting their classes from UK while it's on Ryle campus that's Statewide so those kids maybe in a Skype classroom with kids in Western Kentucky or Eastern Kentucky so that's one Gateway is doing the same thing except they're having students sign up virtually Connor is really using this Conor has a really doubled the number of students taking dual credit by having them sign up for a Gateway virtual class while they're sitting in a class of that if they're in math then the teacher is a Conor math teacher but the Gateway class is coming from their professor so they are going about it a different way

211to increase the number of students sitting in seats and so I just want you to know I anticipate Early College numbers may drop as students elect to stay at their home school and take classes that are offered so it's a give or take but as long as we offer choices I believe it's great for students and finally just to let you know Gateway Northern Kentucky Thomas Moore Kentucky State Murray State Campbellsville and UK are our current partners for dual credit UK was added three years ago rile is the one that you sorry uses Campbellsville the most and that's a two-year process that we've been through with Campbellsville so Murray State is farming Agriculture and we have a couple schools using them so that concludes all the things that I wanted to talk about any questions

212for me all right thank you sir yeah it was especially at whatever time it is now okay I'm going to talk about goal number seven which is graduation rate and goal seven says increase graduation indicator from 93.7 to 96 by May 2023. so I'm going to talk about three main points to support this goal the first thing I want to talk about is our middle and high school counselors collaborations supporting transition to ninth grade by by collaborating with the middle and high schools and getting the counselors together some of the activities that they do is set up Summer Bridge programs for students they are able to assign student mentors to these students they actually have deliberate scheduling for these incoming 9th graders meaning let's pair them with certain teachers to have them be successful and

213then of course we also have the IEP and 504 transition meetings so those middle and high school counselor collaboration meetings really are high school counselor from Connor High School will go sit down with the counselors from Connor middle school and they will outline these kids that are somewhat maybe at risk or having trouble and need that extra support so that is a really big um that's that that's just key in trying to grab these kids from ninth grade knowing okay we got to keep our eyes on these kids and we got to kind of follow them and give them the support they need the second thing I want to talk about in order to try and help our graduation rate is to offer Credit Recovery opportunities but not just credit recovery but enrichment opportunities through

214our ESS programming so all of our high schools do offer summer school programming predominantly for credit recovery however there are other opportunities for kids to just earn credits to try and get them ahead of the game or make up something that they need that they've never taken before so we can offer a variety of things that way we do PE and health we do CTE coursework those are all led by teachers from that building mainly though that credit recovery is key when you're talking about trying to help a kid get caught back up so that he can graduate in four years and then I think the third thing that I think has a huge effect and I'm probably um really love being a part of is the collaboration between LSS and student services these two

215departments work very close together and I have to give them a huge shout out for one part is as you know we have the Excel Academy the Excel virtual program through Katie Parks work in student services she's kind of refined the enrollment process she has made it very unique to each building by going there early on and setting up meetings with their counselors to say who would be a good candidate who needs this program we are able to catch so many kids by offering him this option when you're talking about a senior who might not be successful and have the opportunity to um you know graduate so our Excel enrollments from last school year to this school year is up 22.7 percent and I just wanted to point out in this school year alone we

216have 281 high school students um 35 middle school students and right now we are only taking emergency seniors into that program right now to try and help them however we can get them that diploma that they need and that will be a district diploma um the other thing that I want to highlight is we have the early graduation program opportunity we do have eight students district-wide completing that program what is new to the district this year and really across the state is the Early Access to GED program I don't know if you all are familiar with that program but it does allow a 17 year old student Early Access to do the pre-test for the GED and then that way we help them be successful with that so that they can go and take that

217GED test prior to being 18 that's a unique individual though most kids want to try and earn that diploma but we do have that option too so that that helps the graduation rate because that student is no longer a dropout um and then I think lastly I want to just talk about again this partnership with student services we do Whole child supports and intervention are key when you talk about ninth grade 10th grade 11th grade 12th grade there's a lot of factors that go into a student and why they drop out so um very proactive with the DPP office and involvement in intervention meetings with parents and students at that grade level at the school level so that you're trying to catch them early if you see a kid kind of going down the path

218of behavior we try and step in early to navigate what's going on with the student how can we get them support that they need and then of course the big key and I want to highlight is alternatives to suspension learning and prioritizing this is a big priority for the district we will have all the principals attend this at in June at the end of the school year and the whole key there is how can we keep these kids in school suspending them and sending them home for XM a day is not good for the student we need to deal with the behavior but what can we do in the school to try and keep them in their seats so that they can learn and then of course we always has through the student service office

219District behavior training and code of conduct review so we're constantly looking at those policies that's it any questions see thank you Mike thank you Bill just 30 seconds I wanted to update you where we are at the Strategic plan timeline so next week in strategic planning we'll call it we're beginning to go into the schools so we're going to Bali Shannon gray middle school in Camp Burns Middle School to kind of introduce the teachers and the staff to the goals and the strategies in a partnership with the ownership with the principal the principal put it into context for their faculties and then also on Tuesday we're going to Workshop if you will and do final edits to the glossary of terms with strategic plan with LSS on Tuesday so that's where we are doesn't it

220yeah thank you thank you Jim appreciate it so the last thing on my superintendent's report is just is actually just reporting some items of work to you I do want to clarify a few items from last month's meeting a couple questions or concerns that it kind of come our way one was about Staffing allocations for schools and them being late I just wanted to explain for the record allocations are determined by the board Staffing formula that's approved in January and that can we also consider the estimated number of students for each school we hold meetings with each of our principals to discuss school needs and assist with planning processes um Mike poori and Jenny Watson and their team did a lot of work meeting with principals talking about some of the very specific unique situations

221they have in their schools and some of the needs and where we can make sure that we have proper Staffing but also to make sure we're we're not overstaffed in areas and so that's a constant process and so we really dug a lot deeper into that process this year the deadline for schools to receive their Staffing allocations are always March 1st of the year and on this and at that time we always hand deliver the documents to our school principals so they have their allocations there on that date so that they can start working with their sbdm councils um also at last month's meeting there's a comment about the Strategic plan and and it being late and so Dr detwar had just mentioned a few things about that as well you know last year we

222began significant work on a new strategic plan for our school district and the last strategic plan we've had in our school districts was in 2015. and then just overall research indicated that we've not had a strategic plan over the years that had measurable goals in it and so for our new strategic plan we created a design team last year where we invited teachers and parent representatives from spdm councils of every school in addition to school principals representatives from each department of our school district um in addition to school board members we invited representatives from local government local Faith leaders several non-profit entities in the in our community that provide services to students and our families we also met with a variety of Business Leaders to determine their staffing needs for their for their businesses and

223what skills or abilities they desire in their employees because we want to make sure that we're aligned with some of the needs of our employers obviously here in our community and what they want and what they need additionally we presented information and gathered feedback from the Boone County Fiscal Court the Florence city council the Union City Council and the Florence Rotary Club based on all of that information all that feedback including an internal self-evaluation bowel of our district leaders and a school board public workshop last year a new strategic plan um you know it was we had drafted things there and we included the priority areas of world-class education and empowered Workforce stakeholder engagement and operations and Resource optimizations as our four priority areas now over the course of this school year we've completed significant

224work with our school leaders of drafting and editing the plan prioritizing steps for achieving the success measures that we would have trying to make sure that we could stage that work properly and making sure that things can get completed without it being completely overwhelming trying to accomplish everything at one time so we were working on having that staged out our next step says Jim mentions to share discuss the plan with sbdm councils at each of our schools by the end of this school year you know our plan is not light we're simply working to ensure that we have the understanding and the buy-in for the plan I do not want this plan to be my plan I know you don't want it to be your plan this plan has to be our plan our District's

225plan it's bigger and much larger than any of us we wanted to make sure that it's encompassing everything that we think it needs to be for our students and for our community and in just a general sense you know this is a significant undertaking making a strategic plan and and some matters like this it's it's better to go slow and ensure buy-in than rushing through the process and and having to deal with the problems that may incur with rushing through the process I want to make sure to take a couple minutes just to brag on some of the great work we have going on and just report on a few of the items that I've done here since we last met Ronda ruse is a wrote a book principal's role in the PLC process professional

226learning communities that's an emphasis in our school district we want to make sure we continue to support our principals and our teachers and how they can work better together um so that happened actually uh last uh earlier this week the mental health Summit Kathy had just spoken about that and we have that in the planning stages moving forward mark your calendars April 21st at Royal High School's Borland stadium is the gross motor skills track and field day it is one of the most spectacular things you will ever see the gross motor skills class A couple of our high schools teach that it's a and a PE elective for for regular education students it is for some of our students with significant cognitive disabilities and physical disabilities it's their physical therapy it's their occupational therapy so

227you essentially you would see both groups of students in the gym with them interacting where the kids the regular education students are creating the exercises the games for these kids to play and they play them with them and that's their physical therapy that's them growing and and getting better in their physical work those classes have become extremely popular in schools that are teaching those I think we have 14 high schools across our across our area 14 Schools I should say we have some in elementary schools and middle schools and other districts are doing some of that work as well so that's a fantastic event I would highly recommend recommend that we mentioned allocation meetings Human Resources I just want to brag on them they've developed a new electronic Staffing request and recommendation process for our

228principals and District leaders they've met with all of our levels about training they did some specific work with elementary school principals and they're they were wanting to have this process put into place where they can actually see the requests and where they are in the process so when they have a job opening and they they put that electronic request in they see whose desk it's sitting on they know where it is in the process so they can you know rest assured they they can contact that person if they need to but they know it's moving or not moving and they can pay attention to that so kind of giving them some ownership with that and making sure that we move things quickly through the process I was part of the Statewide superintendent video conference on

229legislative matters with the Kentucky Association of school superintendents this past month met with an NKU leader to talk about relationship building for our partnership with them with our district and the University um you may or may not have seen Kentucky tonight there's a panel discussion on discipline that I was a part of on KET um also just with a couple of our local legislators I facilitated the request with the Kentucky attorney general to to release a new opinion um issued on March 14th about the expulsion of students and the length of expulsions um let's see in terms of our we had a recent District leadership meeting our leaders shared their priorities on different strategies within the plan recent Middle School level meeting with discussions on school safety discipline Staffing for the next year multi-tier systems

230for support for our students and some other topics also our human resources team hosted an alternative path to certification an open house to assist interested people in getting certified as a teacher so we had some some a good turnout for that also one a very unique thing we're planning with multiple County leaders here the celebration of Boone County's 225th Anniversary and that's the week of June 21st 2024 we're going to continue to be doing some planning we have a planning event actually in April that's going to be taking a bus tour around the county discussing the celebration and planning our events so I made sure that we uh we were working with the Boone County government and the Boone County Library to partner with that work fantastic you're on the bus um so I'm very

231excited about that there's uh it's a very unique thing going on with that and how we can get our kids involved in that could be very fascinating could be a lot of good work there I did meet with some national leaders to discuss uh plan the planning and the activities for the implementation of our strategic plan trying to get some support and other expertise collaborated with a state leader in School counseling to discuss some some better support processes for our students I've recently met with a vendor to investigate rooftop solar installations about generating electricity and saving funds it's been on power so we have a possibility on one particular project with that I did go to the Stringtown Quilters Guild if you're familiar with Karen Evans she's a a member of that organization it's pretty

232phenomenal they had an event at First Church and actually we had some students attend the Cooper High School has a class or a club called so Cooper sew and that's part of their home economics if you will they're a family consumer science courses but they've got a club of for quilting also attended the Northern Kentucky education Council spring convening I was at Thomas Moore there's an update on education matters in Northern Kentucky in general reports on and work on resiliency looked at the Kentucky schools data science pathway uh potentially that could be an option that we look at providing for our students went to the Collins Elementary School Multicultural Family Resource night Karen was there as well April 21st um had regular conversations that I planned with Florence mayor Aubuchon staying in touch with the

233City of Florence also do the same with the city of Union as well attended the insert conference with superintendents from around the country to discuss share and learn about relevant issues and topics within education attended the Northern Kentucky Workforce investment board program youth committee meeting earlier this week discussion of programs that they're that we're moving forward with the workforce the Fort Worth Workforce excuse me investment board and then lastly and we've mentioned several times here's hang Yang the student council advisory met Mike Ford did a nice job facilitating that And discussing the purpose with our students and motivating them for taking that election seriously and they do it's it's been pretty oppressive and thanks to the Boone County Board of Elections because they actually bring a voting booth in and they vote on that machine

234for that election and you met Yusuf tonight he's a phenomenal young man he's one of hangs lieutenants right now and uh I think he's going to do a fantastic job and do some great things Madam chair that's all I have thank you okay thank you Mr Turner appreciate all those updates we're a busy District everyone has stuff going on that moves us on to our information proposals and Communications does anyone from the board have anything they would like to share from updates information committees next week Sheriff's information from that when it when we have it as was mentioned we did have our salary ad hot meeting last night and um will be taking proposals from some excellent conversation that we had last night to the budget committee next week for consideration to give to the

235superintendent as recommendations to the board so and transportation will meet I guess next week as well correct doctor almost Dr best so I always won't go like that so um I want to say again thank you to uh it was good to see Mike here tonight getting his recognition um he was great when the Kentucky School Board Association board of directors and staff all came to ignite uh on Friday afternoon March 17th and Saturday morning [Music] Terry gills and his staff were amazing welcome everyone left ignite telling me they want one of those in their districts and it's like well you know 15 million dollars you can have one if Toyota gives you a building so um I just really appreciated the the opportunity to showcase one of the amazing things that we have going

236on and that's just not the only one but it was a great way to get people to Northern Kentucky who may never have been to Northern Kentucky unless they were on their way to a Reds game or something like that so I really do appreciate Jerry and his staff for their warm welcome and allowing us to use that facility I don't have anything else anybody I just wanted to share that in teaching and learning this month we Dr Detweiler started out saying it would be a short meeting and that never ends well but what we talked about several things one of the things that kind of struck a large conversation was some of the work that's going on for early childhood education and one of the data that were shared with me were the scores

237on the Brigance and our district average for kindergarten Readiness is 53 percent but our ranges go from I believe it was 83 percent kindergarten ready for North Point down to 28 kindergarten ready at Collins so some of the work that's being done for those identification of programs first steps are you know three-year-olds or four-year-olds some of our preschool programs and some of the work that's being done there one of the things that Dr shires mentioned was some of the behaviors that they're seeing and how challenging even some of our most experienced Early Childhood Educators and Perez are trying to get really creative at trying to address groups of kiddos who may or may not have had a great deal of socialization during the pandemic so that struck me and I'll put a plug in my

238daughter Morgan is in her second year of GMD at Cooper and is her favorite class of all time and I cannot tell you how many stories she comes home those kids are like her kids and I think every student should do that so if I can add to that that's one of the most amazing programs ever started at Royal High School it completely changed the culture of the building in a very positive way where students that have significant physical and mental disabilities were included in so many other things because of that class they took a field trip to the zoo and the teacher essentially just was escorting and just kind of being around where the students were all paired up and so they were going to a zoo to the zoo with a friend they

239weren't simply just going to the zoo it was probably four years in after that program the homecoming queen was a member of that class and that was just it's culture changing it's a fantastic program and it's so competitive now they have an application process and I can't tell you how many times mom I have to go to choir concert so and so expects me to be there and I promised I would be there I need to go to this event or I need to see this person it is amazing if any of our board members would like to go see that class one that I'd be glad to take to you and like you see that it's it is truly phenomenal I've known students who have been involved in that over the years and it's

240some of them are Educators now in our district so you know it's it's great facilities did met we did have a good overview of where we are to get us you know new members up to speed the only thing that I want to do is talk about dates I want to do a special workshop with Mr Ford for him to bring out his crystal ball and expound to us on while we have his expertise and experience and wisdom in the DPP world to coordinate that with what we are looking at for future predictions of students growth or decline demographics along with the facility plan and where we may need to go with that um so I Michelle I'm not sure if you could start that fun process the thing you love most about your job

241of trying to hurt us board members uh hurting cats herding cats is easier I think than trying to tie down our schedules but I I want to get that done within the next three or four weeks if we can possibly find time within that time frame before we get into the crunch of the end of the school year and graduation weeks so so kind of look ahead at your calendars for your availability with what you've got going on with your kids and other commitments and things like that so and just Michelle if you could just put pull out some dates to us and I already know I can't do May 15th but that's the only yeah yeah okay okay thank you and also just to reiterate some of the earlier discussion um we started a

242concept of all means all and looking at everything through an equity lens and I think it became glaringly apparent tonight as Mr Parks pointed out that we have some inequities that we need to address and correct and um being that Mr Parks and I are both on the budget committee we meet next week so we need to um we need to address that or we need to quit saying all means all if no one has anything else um we would go into closed session [Music] um for just KRS 156557 section four so do I have a motion to all right we stand adjourned to closed session staff thank you so much for everything that you do and for being with us through this evening