001foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] High School like going through it foreign especially tomorrow and started in Alabama good evening everyone and welcome to the March 9th meeting of the Boone County Board of Education I will now call our business
002session to order please let the record show that all board members are present and if you would please join us as we welcome Ackerman Middle School who will be leading in our national anthem and immediately following that we will have good Ridge Elementary School students leading us in our Pledge of Allegiance oh say again [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] thank you we always appreciate our schools who send us students whether in person or by video because they always get our meetings off to a great start at this time we will have our student board member representative report in a different fashion hang is in DC my understanding is he was rubbing shoulders with senator Paul today so um I guess we're kind of small potatoes now but I think we're still
003pretty great but we're excited to welcome Patrick pridemore as Haynes representative who is not going to let us go without an informative and exciting Council report yes indeed thank you Miss Burton uh good evening my name is Patrick pridemore and I'm another one of Connor's Representatives on the superintendent's student advisory Council uh this month the council met for the delegate assembly which is the first part of the process to elect the student board representative for the 2023-2024 Academic Year at our meeting council members had the honor of hearing from Mr Mike Ford and Mr Mike Ford as he always does spoke eloquently to our members on the importance of continuing to be civically engaged throughout their lives he also discussed the importance of continuing to elect a student board representative something that Boone County was
004the first to do in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and also at our March meeting Council delegates named five candidates for the student board representative position and they are Austin Reed from Boone County High School Brittany ampadu from Connor High School Yusuf saeedy from Cooper High School hajar eliadi from the ignite Institute and Hannah Engel from Ryle High School these five candidates will be creating campaign videos to be distributed to every school and council members will then solicit feedback from their student body to ensure they're voting for representative that all our students support and the council will then reconvene in April to hear directly from each of our candidates and finally elect our student board representative and finally I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you on the board for your continued support
005of the superintendent's advisory Council and of student voice in the school district I truly appreciate that the district affords me the opportunity and others the opportunity to make our voices heard and to be involved at this level thank you all thank you Patrick [Applause] we um Mr Turner and I did a work session at our ksba annual conference on the 24th and we bragged incessantly about the superintendent student advisory Council and the work that you all do and what we were trying to encourage other districts across Kentucky to adopt having a student board member representative non-voting and had was approached by a couple of regional districts that are interested in having conversations with us on how we do that so we may be calling on some of the council student council members to maybe help
006us spread that word about what a great addition it is to to the district though thank you for your commitment and for sharing your student voice um now I'll turn it over to you Mr Turner for our good news items thank you madam chair just want to point out one small thing that you didn't mention is that uh one of our superintendent advisory Council presidents is now our board attorney sitting up here with us as well so uh you never know what our young people are going to do and the roles that they will fill after going through that process I figured I embarrassed her enough at our work session when I pointed that out but it was very impactful when you see that when Olivia was here as a junior she was one of
007our few that were actually elected as a junior and to see now she's back and representing us so well with her sharp legal Minds so we appreciate our current and former student board reps I would like to announce the break the mold Award winner tonight we have with us akravi Watson and Beth Fitzwater and this month's winners they're both teachers from North Point Elementary and they co-sponsor the school's student council group these two teachers have been at North Point for about 16 years and principal Kelly Smith says they both embody a growth mindset and are always the first to sign up for professional development opportunities but where their work truly shines is in the non-cognitive skills they teach their students skills which these students will use throughout all of their lives please watch this video
008okay we're going to continue our kindness today student council at North Point Elementary meets once a month under the leadership of Aqua V Watson and Beth Fitzwater the students just wrapped up a big kindness campaign for February it was great we had little candy jars for you know we filled the kids filled it with candy for every teacher every parent educator and then some of the staff members as well and the kids actually were at handmade cards to every single person if I can make a difference in the students lives every day and just show the kindness really matters it's going to change the world Mrs Watson and Mrs Fitzwater Place great emphasis on the non-cognitive skills of leadership and service to all of their students whether they be on student council or in their
009classrooms they will help in leadership roles when we have projects here at schools they also do things out in the community they may make blankets and then go to a nursing home to deliver those it's about those life skills and those character skills that are going to carry with them into adult hood and really allow them to practice now in elementary school the students work on numerous projects throughout the school year that reflect kindness they work with adults with disabilities that student for people and it's so cool because they really teaches them about the importance of the global community that human beings matter no matter who you are that builds their confidence and then it also puts them in that leadership role we we are constantly telling them that you guys are the face of
010this school you guys are the leaders so think about that when you're making choices or interacting with others you know you are the example with my students I want them to know what I've taught them here and when they go to middle school and they go high school and that kid drops those books on the floor I hope one of my student council members run over runs over there and picks those books up girls I also bought labels this was the teacher Lounge that was a resource room where everything you didn't need went to disappear these rooms now have been transformed by this group of students we decided to surprise the faculty and reorganize and clean the whole faculty Lounge it was a big undertaking and then there is a resource room that has kind
011of just been a catch-all for when teachers move classrooms and they don't know who you know different books or things belong to we helped clean up the teacher's lounge and like our book room it's pretty messy we had to like take everything out and organize it throw some stuff away we did a really good job Lounge is beautiful thank you okay you're welcome and so if you see the students make sure I mean they organized everything you open it up you know where the coffee is I mean it's nice to have a teacher's lounge you know to go to everything is put in its place it's organized and then we made a book room and you just wait till you see if now teachers can actually go in there pick a set of books up
012and read with their class just watching the kids develop and mature um um watching the staff and the community how supportive and appreciative they are of the things that we're able to do is such a reward for me this is not all these two teachers do together with the students their volunteer list is long they recently restarted their popular reading buddies program where fifth graders read to The Kindergartners on Fridays they're really fun because you get to meet the kindergarteners and you get to like teach them about reading and stuff and has been a hit like they can't get enough of it they really want to read every Friday they ask but we call reading buddies are we going to reading buddies both of them are really nice teachers they're very compassionate hard-working and outgoing
013and I love them so much back in octave you guys are absolutely amazing you have changed the culture of the school you have changed hundreds of kids lives you have made them into human beings who care for other people we are so proud of you and we are so blessed you're in our school and part of it thank you thank you thank you for investing so deep life of these kids you guys are changing the world I would like to say congratulations to Ms Watson and Miss Fitzwater for winning the break the mold award congratulations with Watson and Miss Fitzwater you guys are both amazing teachers and I think you definitely deserve this award congratulations Agave I am so so happy that we are honored for this award you deserve it great job my friend
014and co-worker Beth Fitzwater congratulations on let me break the mold you deserve it like no other person in the world your heart is pure gold I am blessed to work with you I love working with you and I love everything that we do together for the kids at North Point Elementary you are a treasure and I am blessed to have you and call you my friend congratulations on break the rule of Beth that's water aggravia and Bell thank you so much for all that you do for North Point for our students and our community you all go above and beyond every day it doesn't matter what comes up you are always student council can help with that and so your Outreach just is tremendous and recognized and you are super deserving of the break the
015mode award [Applause] we would like to invite okra V and and Beth to please come forward and the board members will will meet you and give you an award thank you for being here and thank you for bringing all of uh your friends and family with you thank you [Music] um thank you all so much are you moving means the world to me um and I know it does for Beth I'm a daughter of a Turkish Greek immigrants who came to America not speaking English I have a brother who is diagnosed with cerebral palsy stemming from a fever when he was little it was uncontrollable we had some difficult years but in retrospect it turned out to be the most amazing gift I've ever had between my parents example and some very caring teachers I
016have I learned the importance of seeing beyond the surface of a person it instilled in me a very special love for people because of the influence of a young age I knew I wanted to teach I wanted to be a teacher I absolutely wanted to teach kids discipline of Reading Writing and arithmetic but I wanted to do more than just that I wanted the privilege to help develop young minds about the gifts of the gift of kindness the same gift that I was given and my family was given it has been an absolute privilege for me to work with these kids over the years and watch them grow watch them make mats for the Hopeless support adults with disabilities raise money to support Ethan's purpose make blankets and visit the nursing homes and sing Christmas
017carols with them I truly believe um I have I truly believe and have witnessed that Panthers with a purpose at North Point Elementary has made a difference in the students they are the kindness in the world that we need every day thank you can we have a picture with our little kids yeah they are the stars she said it off thank you I didn't I want to say that Audrey and Beth I've known them for years and when I found out they won this award there's nobody better for it so I'm so glad you got honors thank you for all you do and you've done for my kids and all the kids thank you for our second good news item we want to recognize Amazon coinciding with women's History Month Amazon has graciously donated fifty
018thousand dollars to Connor Middle School to support their girls stem program last week they invited a group of female students for a stem day experience which is science technology engineering and Tech science technology engineering [Music] this experience included a tour of the enormous Amazon Casey VG facility a panel discussion with a group of female Executives and leaders in the Amazon Corporation this group of 20 young ladies were divided into groups and then given the opportunity to build their own robots before construction each group named their teams the flying Cults the brains the butter space dinos and the High Flyers here tonight to speak on the experience of principal Jamie Brewer assistant principal Lois Ellison and Amazon director of operations Adrian Melendez welcome and thank you for being here thank you absolutely bored excited to be
019here tonight and talk about the donation to one of our local schools next door to kcbg here for Amazon so [Applause] um outside [Music] because those are the fields that we want our leaders to grow up with over a large options who's also excited with the it's our first actually all women air panel and this the students got to hear about breaking down individual barriers I hear from some of the biggest in our industry including the vice presidents they're closing on Albers have to be a part of the community and we're excited to give your students a sneak peek to The Better Homes [Music] so for as you know science technology engineering mathematics that is the future I mean a lot of the high paying jobs our students are going to be available or looking
020for will involve those careers so it's actually funny how this all happened I came in from launched one day supervision those is getting off phone she's like you're not completing this we were like is this are we getting are we getting primed or is this a scam or they just want to access our bank accounts and um so obviously we went into the process and and when it came to realization it was just it was shocking because uh for for those of you who get education uh we know that the stem programs are something we want in our schools we want to start them but we also know they are very expensive to start they're very expensive to maintain uh but they're amazing experience experiences for our kids so um we're super excited about what
021we can offer our kids in the future I hope this is a long-term partnership for an entire campus to make us a Sim Hub in Boone County um so our experience that day was uh unbelievable the facility is amazing the high-tech and the mentors are our female leaders got to see former Navy Pilots former engineers and just the high-tech the technology that goes into running a facility like that was absolutely as well he did an excellent job both of these gentlemen so I don't have much to say but just if you view these as reviewing the video there was a couple neat things at one point you saw the robots kind of traveling along the floor that were flat on top so neat fact this very technical Warehouse runs 24 7. 24 hours a day
022the robots never stop there are 2 000 of those moving on the floor at all times the only time they are pulled from the floor is if something breaks down our our students the ladies they have some great questions they said how do they not run into each other there's 2 000 of them they're everywhere they're crossing paths constantly and it's really neat the technology they have stickers on the floor and the robots are programmed to know their stickers and so they literally travel from sticker to sticker to sticker they have these huge arms that pick up packages that weigh too much and special barcodes they put on certain things that are too heavy it was an incredible experience it was definitely one of those things that you never forget one of those things that
023in 30 years our kids are going to be like you remember that time in the seventh grade when we went to Amazon they were the first community group of students to ever get to see this operation and it was truly game changing how powerful to be you know women's history month and how powerful to take some gifted female students and to hear excuse me from those amazing women leaders Mr Brewer and I stood in the back and we were like wow I mean these ladies are impressive their backgrounds are insane and they come from all different walks of life and I just think it was very inspiring for our young female students to see that they could really do anything and that it's not just a man's world anymore sorry guys but that these women
024are are powerful and they are leading these technical fields and it was just an amazing thing to be a part of and we're just so grateful to Amazon to continue this partnership they're stuck with us now they can't get rid of us I'm gonna harass them every year to come see us and and do some some some more just great work for our kids so thank you Amazon we're so so thankful perfect foreign that concludes our good news items thank you thank you Mr congratulations again to our North Point Heroes Our Stars leading the student council and thank you for the cookies that they sent us I got the new raspberry Girl Scout cookies they were awesome so that's not how they won though they didn't win no no not at all didn't even know
025this was happening but I did not share a raspberry cookie with any one of those were all mine um that concludes our our good news items so if you did join us just for that you are excused to leave if you need to go on and get about your business uh It is Well we don't have school tomorrow though do we so I can't we can't threaten homework in early debate so appreciate everyone being here tonight many thanks again to the folks from Amazon for partnering with Connor Middle School stem program thank you as we move into our audience as Citizens just a few reminders that we do welcome the opportunity to hear from everyone and let us know what you think and what's going on and what you think we need to know just
026please keep in mind that our agenda is set and we will only be dealing with what we know has to be on the agenda or it needs to be taken care of tonight and that we will not uh because we cannot legally discuss anything specific to employees or students in respect to privacy our meetings are streamed live on YouTube so please be respectful in your comments and if you do 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's got a a thing that you could sign and let us know how we can reach back out to you we do ask that you keep your comments to two minutes so that all that wish to speak may speak we have
027five people that have signed in so we will start with them in the order they signed in and first up is Miss Sophie wolf hello my name is Sophia Lynn I am a student at Connor middle school and I would like to State some concerns related to behavioral issues at schools to start I'd like to address bullying I don't mean teasing kids in the hallway bullying I mean or calling literal harassment type bullying so many kids do this that I go to school expecting that this is going to happen to me because if you don't fit in the societal Norms whether that's your race sexual orientation or gender you should just be harassed in public without even being punished apparently not just to these kids uh causing problems for their peers but for their teachers
028I can name three laid-back teachers kicking three separate students out of their rooms this week alone this growing group of students are causing disruptions of classes making it difficult for teachers to do their job and for students that who actually value school to focus it makes it to make it worse these same disruptive students are using their detentions they get um from being rude as bragging rights what needs to be done is um what needs to be done is we need to basically help with the punishing um system we needed them to basically be arranged so these students actually have punishments that actually affect them they need these punishments to um actually changed their uh way of thinking so they don't actually come back and harass these students and so teachers jobs are easier and
029Kids that actually want to get stuff done can get that done and if we don't the student body can go from one fifth to the kids that are disruptive to at least one-third and I don't think anybody wants that many in there in that classroom so hopefully we get something done I need to figure out this thank you Cynthia next we have Vanessa Whitaker I would like to pass my time to Karen Strayer okay thank you um Marna eats is before Miss Strayer I'm gonna pass my time to Karen Strayer as well okay thank you I have a lot to say we Karen's usually do iron cans I'm a little taller I am Karen Strayer chair for the Boone County chapter of moms for Liberty I wish to speak on two subjects tonight first I
030would like to give a rebuttal to the misinformation from the minority during your February meeting moms for Liberty mission is dedicated to the survival of America by unifying educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government as you are aware there is a process for Review of Books parents may feel are not appropriate for their children in our school libraries that process includes completing the form requests for reconsideration of instructional Library materials to this date our chapter has not completed any request and if and when we do the process will not be focused on Race sexual orientation or political belief as the minority would have you think the basis of our removals will be based strictly on inappropriate sexual content which is currently protected under the guise of Education in
031KRS chapter 531 pornography as previously stated by the minority we also would ask that you not make decisions based on social pressure from groups who have a political agenda that is not in the best interest of all children secondly the reference made regarding qualified Educators making decisions for our children creates a division between parents and school Personnel this is a direct attack against parental rights and education which has spawned massive legislation Nationwide to clarify the fundamental rights of parents it is also a false statement implying parents aren't educated enough to have a seat at the table for their children's education parents in Boone County hold various degrees up to doctorates including myself and I graduated laude last month we were also told by a father who said that due to moms for Liberty teachers are
032exiting Florida I would like to see that data as Florida has increased its census so much they added a whole congressional district last election cycle now I would like to redirect us to this point to a local issue this school district can and should address our own teacher shortage first let's look at some research I was able to locate on the reason for teachers leaving in an article from 2019 per The Courier Journal pensions politics pay in the pursuit of test scores all get mentioned frequently as leading reasons for the teacher Exodus in Kentucky I've given you each some paperwork first is a graph in Kentucky this table shows the decline in college enrollment in education versus education job postings note that is all prior to moms for Liberty college enrollment in education decreased from
0332010 to 2019 by 25 percent while education job openings increased from 2014 to 2019 by nearly 44 percent looking at this time frame I would like to point out one of the programs initiated in our school system social emotional learning are better known as SEL SEL was first introduced in 1968 at Yale University child study center with the idea of supporting the whole child in two schools in Connecticut by the early 1980s the two schools saw a decline in Behavior challenges and exceeded the national average and academic performance note the time frame of 12 Years in 1994 both Castle the collaborative for academic social emotional learning and the term social emotional learning were born from an article in 2011 Jefferson County is one of several school districts throughout the United States embracing and implementing what
034comes to be known as social and emotional learning from there SEL has rippled throughout school districts in Kentucky 12 years later perhaps we need to evaluate the effects on our current education have we exceeded academic performance reading and math scores have drastically dropped with increasing decline since 2015. at this time I would like to congratulate Boone County teachers approximately 68 according to Ed Choice the largest group that signed up for training provided by the KDE for the program letters to educate and improve our children's reading scores I would hope we are reimbursing and paying these dedicated teachers for their time and cost of going the extra mile have we seen a decline in behavioral challenges I have noticed per the agenda we have an increase in expulsion hearings the formation of the discipline committee along
035with recent events causing national news coverage 67 percent of teachers in the Commonwealth cite classroom disruptions is a hindrance to their ability to teach with 13 percent of teachers feeling unsafe in their classroom because of threatening pupils with the teacher shortage I would ask that you would evaluate the needs for funds and Manpower toward SEL perhaps those funds could be dispersed to our teachers who deserve more pay and monies in the classroom perhaps that Manpower could improve our actual teacher Staffing what you do with the SEL program is up to this District but I don't believe we are receiving the same results as those two original schools in Connecticut thank you and I apologize my voice is almost gone thank you Mr Dave Payne oh okay so you don't wish to speak okay thank you
036sir um no one else has signed in is there anyone else that would like to bring any issues to the board at this time yes ma'am hi my name is Myrna Eads I'm with mums for Liberty first off I wanted to clear up some myths that we do not ban books we challenge the content to ban a book means to that a book cannot be bought sold or traded except on the black market we are only going after taxpayer-funded school libraries not public libraries as some may have you believe some say that kids have access to way worse on the internet and that may be so however that doesn't mean when we give them a smorgasbord to pick and choose from also some of these books if they had movie guidelines would be rated R
037or worse some people like to bring up the Bible and talk of its obscene content to them I say the Bible although talks about adultery prostitution abuse suicide these stories are not told in graphic detailed format like these books do we need to stop normalizing sex rape abuse drugs and changing genders as these books in addition to some of the program schools are attempting to push on our children all the programs being pushed on our children the books the drag shows and the leftist ideas of some teachers this is the stranger in the white van passing out free candy that our parents warned us about thank you thank you Miss seeds anyone else Mr salsan um yeah I want to address the board members uh last month you all voted for allocations that were given
038to you by Mr Turner uh last minute and so those allocations had to be into the state by a certain date which I believe was March 1st they were given to you I think on February 9th or maybe a few days before what he did to you was ask you to make a decision and vote on something that is going to impact our entire District okay so some of you voted yes there was one member who voted no and what I would ask you is uh one and I would like a response to this so I will put my name down I would ask you why you allow him to give you things last minute for you to vote on I would say in any business any organization we call that poor leadership and with
039greater leadership comes great responsibility and then comes greater accountability and I would ask you to hold him accountable in that way just as he holds his assistant superintendents as they hold their principals as the principals hold their teachers when they're given deadlines they have to make the deadlines but for whatever reason we continue to allow the superintendent to give us things in a very late fashion we're three years into this contract we yet have a strategic plan for our District we still don't have it we're three years into the contract it's supposed to be coming out where is it we don't have it most of the time as I've done research that comes out within the first year first year and a half of when the superintendent is in his role we yet to see
040that I would like a response from the superintendent from the superintendent's office when that's going to come out when are we going to roll that out and then I would like a response to the board why hasn't that why has that not been wrote out yet um along with the uh teacher allocations that we voted yes for and we actually did not know how that's going to impact my son will be impacted by that my son's school as I as I'm part of the spdm voted today that we will we will have two less teachers in his school and as data proves they will probably have 20 to 50 more students so you're asking a principal to to have his teachers do more work with less faculty but you all voted yes for that you
041as a board and so I would just like to know why why do we continue to allow our superintendent to make last minute decisions that are going to impact our entire district for possibly a lifetime not just for next year but these kids are going to be impacted because they're going to be short teachers in certain schools so I would just say the greater the leadership the greater the responsibility the greater his accountability needs to be that falls on you as a board thank you Mr salsman anyone else okay seeing none we will move on um to our agenda Madam chair yes I was going to say because of action taken in the budget committee meeting Tuesday Mr Parks I'd like to motion to amend the agenda to add an item I think it'll be
042F which is consideration of salary increase for certified and classified staff alike or in other words all staff for consideration before this board and just to clarify that's item F under new business that's correct okay um so again because of action taken at the budget committee meeting just Tuesday evening we are asking to Mr Parks has made a motion to amend the agenda to add item F under new business to deal with consideration of an additional salary increase for certified and classified staff do I have a second second second Miss wolf are there any questions on this amendment to the agenda okay on behalf of the budget committee thank you for that um so we have a motion and a second if no further discussion all in favor aye any opposed hearing non-motion unanimously carries
043we will add item F under new business consent agenda Mr Turner thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action consent agenda items a through SS as presented with the treasures report given by Mrs Linda Shield okay we began the month with a cash balance of 78 million two hundred fifty six thousand eight hundred forty dollars we had total revenues of eight million 985 325 dollars our total expenditures were 12 million six hundred twenty seven thousand three hundred fourteen dollars we had a net decrease in the cash balance for the month of three million 990 dollars our ending cash balance is 74 million six hundred fourteen thousand eight hundred and fifty fifty dollars um although we had an a decrease in the cash balance our cash balance is about 4.5 million
044higher than the level a year ago in February of 22. um a lot of that is due to the fact that we have collected property and permissive taxes uh exceeding last year's level by about 7.2 million the county also did send us 2 million in occupational license taxes this month expenses continue to maintain the pace similar to the prior year we had 5.1 million in debt service payments for the month I did add information regarding the um the covid grants on the second group of Grants we have approximately 30 percent of the funds that still remain to be spent and we do have plans to spend that those funds and the final group of Grants where the deadline is September of 2024 that we still have approximately 64 percent left for to be spent and
045again we have made are having discussions and have plans on how those funds will be spent I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have thank you Mrs Shield just do any of the board members have questions for Mrs shield on the treasurer's report okay hearing none we have a recommendation do I hear a motion to approve the consent agenda items a through SS motion Dr Brown is there a second I have questions do we need a second and then I second okay thank you Mrs wolf okay with our recommendation motion and duly seconded this is the time if there are any questions for other from the board members on any of these items that we have had for a week for review uh just uh now's your time to ask I have a
046couple um Linda I just wanted to clarify because on the the oil contract the bidders you have two areas where it says n a I just want to make sure that that means that they don't provide that service or they don't charge for that service it means it likely means they do not provide that service this one that clarify that and I have a couple questions about the item 7 LL which is stoic Health and Wellness Mrs Rudman I want to just clarify that this is for training for employees mentoring in the uh what vaping is for example of what the history of vaping is some strategies to stop vaping and the dangers of vaping and any other questions that the the young people might have okay and on the stoic memo it says it's
0471500 per four week session but on the board memo it says the total cost is five thousand yes so but four weeks would be six thousand okay I think that's a that must be a typo I'm so sorry okay I just want to make sure that we're approving the right amount of money yes ma'am thank you so for clarity it's six thousand instead of five thousand yes for the four sessions okay yes I apologize for that thank you Mrs wolf did you have any other questions anyone else I do I have a question about um item y um e-haul pass okay is that just an electronic way for them to ask to go to the restroom it's an electronic program where teachers and principals can use that just to track what students are out so
048essentially it is kind of an electronic sign out and a kind of an electronic sign back in to the classroom so that way just keeps a record of what students may be out of the classroom and when they get back in the classroom it helps the teachers and the principals understand where students may be if there's an emergency they might need to track those students down also just gives them a way to have a record of who may be out of the class do parents know I mean do are parents aware that they're being tracked that way I mean are we letting them are we parents know about it I'm not sure parents know specifically about that program they may or may not essentially the software is simply just something the teacher uses so they
049know that the class students leaving the classroom at this time and they're checking back into the classroom at another time it's just essentially a way to to understand who's out of the classroom who's not we could have just raising their hand and asking to go to the bathroom well previous in previous times simply there may have been a list a hard copy list where a student may put their name down or a teacher May mark their name down they're leaving the classroom at a certain time and then they would just write that check that name back off and put the time they rented into the classroom what he helped us is electronic electronic version of that I have a question to kind of tag onto that with that um are we confirming like that things
050like this are being used because my daughter does go to Connor and she uses the hall passes in her agenda not the e-hall pass not all schools you'll use she goes to this I can't answer that question right now I would have to ask the principal this so I mean I've I've had conversations with several people and um you know and another board member mentioned that there are other districts that pull reports of usage of certain things that the schools are using or that we're using just to determine like are they actually being used versus just spending money on something that is not being used I will follow up on that yes I'll follow up dude do we know how many schools use this off the top of my head I think we have about
051a half a dozen that use it okay my other question was about um item mm the ncert yes conference I texted you about this but you might not have gotten it what is I can't find any information about this yeah the insert organization is a national superintendent's organization where there's superintendents from all areas across the country probably about 60 to 80 different superintendents or a member of that organization and they meet a couple times per year for professional development services they have some speakers come in and work with the group there's also activities that superintendents do working together on problems that may be common to school districts in different parts of the country or all across the country so it's a professional development and a growth opportunity for for superintendents right and I you know
052like ksba we can pull them up online you can see all about the annual conference that we just went to even beforehand to find out if I can't find any information about this at all even like what the agenda is for the conference yeah I can provide that for you if you wish a point of historical reference [Music] Miss Young um this became available to Boone County Schools two predecessors prior to Mr Turner when Dr blavat was our superintendent he was involved in it when he was a superintendent elsewhere in the country before he came to Boone County Schools this is not an organization like ksba where if you're a school board member you can belong the district can belong to the State Association membership and participation in insert is By Invitation Only at least
053it used to be when we first got involved so it's a smaller group it's it's it's more of a think tank than anything and um when Dr blavat turned over the reins to Dr Poe um it it's kind of like Legacy UK season tickets it gets passed down through the family so to speak but had they not wanted Dr Poe or Mr Turner they could say don't come anymore so it gave us an opportunity to um for our superintendent to be in deep conversations with other districts maybe more similar to ours Boone County Fayette and Jefferson are anomalies in Kentucky because we are the three largest districts and um as as much as you know ksba does a wonderful job they still don't understand large districts I don't think sometimes and I tell them this
054they know this because I've also told them that they haven't had a president and a long long long long long time from a large District they don't understand how many meetings we have in as Boone County board members every month and so tacking on another four or five ksba board members isn't going to happen the next two years so uh because my meetings here will come first so it is it's pres it is kind of prestigious not that that's why we do it but it has served us well on a to be involved at a national level with some of the brightest minds and leaders in in education and um usually we would get a report on what they delved into and we evaluate that and as a way to continue to see if do
055we still want to participate with them as much as do they want us to participate with them so right yeah I just wonder Ed did you have any other agenda item questions Dr Brown Mr Parks um if there are no other questions we have a recommendation um Motion in a second all in favor of consent agenda items a through SS including the treasurer's report please vote by saying aye aye any opposed hearing none motion carries unanimously we have no old business to attend to tonight so we'll move on with our agenda for new business Mr Turner instructional time for the 2023-24 school year thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business item a instructional time for the 2023-24 school year as presented okay we have a recommendation to
056a hero motion okay motion Mrs Young second Dr Brown um Mr Turner do you have any information to share in regarding this item before we open it up to the board for questions yes I do thank you the Kentucky Department of Education requires a school board an order of approval required requiring District instructional time each year therefore in accordance with board policy zero eight point three one I'm recommending the Boone County Schools have a minimum instructional day of 6 hours and 15 minutes this represents no change to the current school schedule and this is a annual approval that the board must always make over the past years we've always had this increase by my memory probably at least 15 to 20 years that this change has been approved it's by increasing the instructional day an
057additional 15 minutes it's able to bring continuity to our school's instructional schedule allowing them more instructional time to be provided to our students during the school year and the added time will also add additional days of professional development excuse me and flexibility within the school calendar especially if we have inclement weather thank you any questions Mr Turner could you just clarify what that looks like in terms of how that works because a lot of parents might not understand that if they're watching this on streaming it live and stuff in terms of how you can increase an instructional day without increasing the day could you just explain that well essentially it's adding it's adding 15 minutes to the normal schedule that would that that would be in place the basic schedule of a school calendar I
058understand that but that language gives the insinuation that we are adding 15 minutes that's the problem like explaining to parents how that works in a given day like you know I know from the elementary school perspective that they the start time's not gonna or not to start time but the arrival time is still going to be like 8 30 at my kid's school right but they're basically not going to have 10 minutes of dead time that they're already just sitting in no no no no that's not the schedule we're operating on right now yeah that's about something we're losing the dead time and it's coming into becoming instructional time correct yeah and that's what I think parents might not understand is what that looks like yeah so it adds 15 minutes to the normal schedule
059and that allows us to build up a little instructional time to give us some flexibility towards the end of the year if we have multiple snow days then we because we're always required to have a certain number of hours of instruction and a certain number of days of instruction so this gives us some leeway to be able to be flexible with that if we do have some some days of inclement weather at the end of the school year yeah any other questions I think just to be clear there's no schedule change to any of the elementary schools that's correct no this is a annual approval that we do in order to uh as Mr Turner said provide continuity and this one this here is for all schools this is for the schedules across the entire
060District so we're heading schools will we be adding 15 minutes on top of the 15 minutes that we added last year no it will be no change what we're approving now will give us the same exact schedule that we have right now good it's important that we say it thank you but we will talk about the elementary time adjustments next stay tuned more action to come any other questions this has been our instructional time for as long as I can remember does anybody remember any different I mean so yeah but I agree the way it it reads and it's is its statue it's uh but trust me you want that extra educational seat time uh if you have a lot of snow days so that you're not going until June 17th so no other questions
061we have our recommendation Motion in second all in favor aye any opposed hearing none motion carries Item B instructional time adjustment for elementary schools for the 23-24 school year Mr Dern thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business Item B instructional time adjustment for elementary schools for the 2023-24 school year as presented okay we have a recommendation to a hero motion motion Dr Brown second Ms young thank you Mr Turner any information you wish to clarify for this for the board every year the director of pupil Personnel does some consultation with our school principals at the elementary level and comes forward with a recommendation some of them may want to adjust their daily instructional time at elementary schools and again this is a process just like the previous
062uh item that we have done every single year uh for several years where elementary schools can adjust their time that they use uh slightly so increasing that instructional day at the elementary schools allows more instructional time to be provided to the students during the day however each of the elementary schools will continue to be governed by the 23-24 school year calendar so we won't see any change to our specific schedule with this it's just approving our elementary schools to make a slight adjustment and part of that adjustment helps with travel time when our buses are arriving dropping students off it provides a little bit of extra time for our students that may need to eat breakfast and also provides additional instructional time for our kids there as well so this is is taken on by
063our principals in the elementary school some of them add 10 minutes some of the Mad 15 minutes to make their make sure that the this overall school schedule works for them for the needs of their students and just to emphasize we are approving this at the request of these elementary schools that's correct yes so this is not District driven like the previous item was this is their request so any questions on this one okay hearing none with our recommendation motion and second all in favor aye aye any opposed hearing none motion carries item C revision to the custodian salary schedule Mr Turner you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business item C revision to the custodial salary schedule as presented Mr Turner any specific information to share yes let
064me just add a little bit more there our current custodian salary schedule only allows for the distribution of the second shift differential to individuals in the custodian position however in the event of a head custodian is assigned to a regularly scheduled hours that would be considered second shift it may not be eligible for a second shift differential this update that we're asking the board to approve to this custodian salary schedule allows the district provide the second shift differential to all custodians including head custodians and Warehouse employees who have regularly scheduled hours that would otherwise qualify them for the one dollar per hour shift differential in the evenings at this time change this would only affect one District employee that works in our warehouse custodial salary schedule adjustment okay hearing no questions we have our recommendation
065motion and second all in favor any opposed hearing none motion carries Master marketing agreement between Boone County schools and Arcadia Towers Mr Turner thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action to new business item D the master marketing agreement between Boone County schools and Arcadia towers as presented okay we have a recommendation do I have a motion and I motion Dr Brown second Mrs wolf thank you Mr Turner thank you madam chair just as one reminder to our audience and all of our board members here we did have a workshop previously on this this topic with Arcadia Towers I believe that was approximately June 30th of last year so almost one year ago we've been working on this project for a little over a year essentially to look at potential
066revenue streams for our school district as we see uh inflation and other items that are creating some difficulties in our budget and some of uh you know potential losses of Revenue we wanted to make sure that we're looking for other possible streams of Revenue so we've been working with a company called Arcadia Towers over this past year to finalize the wording and what would be a master marketing agreement and what that means is that Arcadia Towers they have the ability to meet with potential carriers customers and publicize they're working with the Boone County Schools to develop potential sites for cell phone tower construction this is just phase one so it doesn't it doesn't mean that we're going to be uh building a cell phone tower on any property at any point right now but it
067would allow us to investigate further and allow the company to actually Market uh the possibility of that uh so again this process would continue if there is a a location a site and vendors that would want to to use such a tower we would then go further with that discussion meet with the company with Arcadia towers and determine what uh what that would be the need for that company and then we would have a discussion here with all of our operations staff to make sure that we're we're paying close attention if you know there's all Sites or any site that we would want to potentially put a cell phone tower doesn't mean we're going to do that it means we want to investigate the possibility of that and then any decision after that would also
068have to be agreed by this board in a separate time as well so essentially this agreement is simply asking for Arcadia Towers to Market this possibility and to come back to us with with possible options then the board can make decisions from that point moving forward okay any questions Mr Turner I just want to clarify that in the event that they do market and find a location there will be a new contract specific to that location that's correct yes thank you only if we approve it though this is not I I don't mean to usurp our board attorney down there but this is not legally binding us to be required to do anything other than allow them to Market and bring back potential sites to the board is that correct Ms amalung that is my
069understanding but Corey gam from our office is here today who I'm going to defer to he has worked tirelessly on this contract with Arcadia Towers so he is going to be uh filling in for me this evening as your go-to for illegal questions on this particular issue all right thank you good to see you again Corey good to see you but you did do an excellent job summarizing it it is an option agreement so so what it does is it gives Arcadia the ability to as Mr Turner suggested Market sites uh to potential uh self-service carriers um any future lease of a specific site would be subject to board approval part of this negotiation process however has to be has been to create a form lease because that takes a lot of the work out
070of it subsequently if they have identified a site there's a form lease attached to the the master marketing agreement that we've negotiated extensively so the ultimate terms would still be subject to board approval but we've done a lot of that leg work already Cindy I know you and Carolyn are kind of coming into this Midstream here but I know you've been brought into the loop I had a fortunate experience of being able to sit in on one of the discussion meetings when I first came on board so that was very helpful okay good Cindy anything from concerns from you okay all right just want to make sure um just to kind of reiterate some of the things um is always is the time period is what is the uh should a site be approved by
071the board where did that language end up as to Commitment time wise so the the marketing period is for an initial term of five years they have the option to extend it by an additional five years so there's a 10-year period where they have the exclusive right to Market our properties to sell carriers once they have identified a site if we enter into Elite a lease option they have a six-month period in which to obtain zoning approvals and secure the the sub leases with the carriers before they would actually then take the next step of finalizing the lease and then constructing the tower the tower itself if they lease a site I believe that it's an initial 10-year period but there are options after that that could extend it up to 50 years we still
072could I I know in that Workshop that we did back in June um was also concerned expressed about if a you know if a campus is selected and it fits with the campus access by you know out of District people on that campus and we are still in a favorable position that our campuses will be secure correct that's one of the points that we negotiated extensively was maintaining kind of board Supremacy over anything related to our sites so any access by Arcadia or a contractor would be subject to whatever reasonable rules and regulations that that we set forth so there is a clause in here that that acknowledges that you know anything that that Arcadia or one of their contractors would do is subordinate at all times to you know the educational purposes of a
073site and so um that they cannot do anything that would interfere with you know these sites being used to schools and of course we only reason we started even entertaining this is is as an alternate Revenue source for the district and we are still looking that the board retains a favorable position in that correct yes as the negotiations have gone yes gone through okay okay that's all I have anyone else any other questions for uh our attorney on this or anyone else associated with the project there are a few representatives from Arcadia here tonight so that they would be available to answer any questions as well I recognize the faces okay thank you all right thank you appreciate that um so we have our recommendation Motion in a second are there any other questions before
074we approve this marketing agreement or take a vote on the marketing agreement okay hearing none all in favor aye any opposed no okay we're both of you ladies eyes Dr Brown okay so motion carries four one thank you um support of the council for better education Incorporated resolution Mr Turner thank you madam chair I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business eye to me the support for the council for better education Incorporated resolution as presented okay we have a recommendation do I have a motion motion Mr Park's second Dr Brown additional information Mr Turner yes thank you the charter school law passed last year by the Kentucky Legislature House bill nine violates several sections of the Kentucky Constitution and this resolution would be to oppose House Bill 9 within legal means and
075essentially it is in opposition to not necessarily Charter Schools as a concept but the funding process there any project or any types of schools that would take funding from away from from public schools creates a major issue for our school district and creates a major issue for our community for our students and just a few pieces of information here currently Boone County has the second lowest property tax rate in Northern Kentucky by 0.1 however we're also the fifth lowest in the state in the Sikh per pupil the state funding for each individual student we've seen a 500 increase decrease of that excuse me per pupil over the last four years in our state funding so if you look at State funding from you know the last few years here from 2008 until 2022 you know
076the funding has changed in 2008 we received 3535 dollars per student from State funding last year we received two thousand five hundred and thirty dollars a change of over a hundred dollars per student and so that just putting that in terms of what that may look like if you just think of a graph that state part of our funding back in 2008 was 39 over the overall funding that we received as a school district from the state that number now is 26 of our funding comes from State seek so that local effort that effort that has fallen on local taxpayers to to make sure that we provide the best education that we possibly can for our students here in Boone County that has changed over time so we're getting less support from the state through
077the seek formula so that's increased from 61 percent of State funding of our of our our seek was from the state to 74 percent so that's the local effort has increased from 61 to 74 percent for this item so I'm opposing this and I recommend the board to oppose this legislature because it provides options where we could lose additional funding for our school district okay questions on the item I'd have a it says here the legal expense is a dollar per student which amounts to 18 930.29 yeah do we have like something we don't I don't know about in our district where we have a third of a student factored in here we're gonna go into FD questions yeah but um no honestly I I support everything in terms of the rationale I'm just it's
078the financial commitment that I'm not convinced of yet becoming part of this action this class action suit because I just know how people in my community feel about this and I I don't know how do I put it I don't know if there they would want taxpayer dollars to go towards this because of how they feel about this in terms of my community and what they've been expressing to me now I agree completely with the rationale but I also am a little hesitant right now do we know how many other districts are committed to this by last count I think there were two dozen or more that were committed they're they're still they're allowing people to to join in as they get the information and take it to their boards that's been in process for
079about uh four months so we got 24 out of 173 right now don't quote me on that number often it's just off the top of my head and knowing what numbers are there 171. that was from the CBE website was the 173. so point in silver Grove closed okay so we're at 171. yeah to your question Carolyn thinking about that I understand about you know spending money looking at our overall budget this is a very tiny part of our overall budget using that to fight for what I believe what could be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in state funding that that we could be out of if if such a thing occurs and funding is taken from local school districts and given to other other schools other organizations anyone else so the way
080I understood it the um education Opportunity Act will provide puts more funding into education without taking money from the state education budget it creates a tax credit to incentivize 25 million dollars in private giving that could cover a pro that could cover a broad range of educational expenses including tutoring Services therapies for special needs Career Training dual credit college courses both public and non-public students could apply for this help so the way I've understood it is not take away from the state budget so well let's just call it what it is all right the state legislature continuously continues to shortchange the students of public education having Charter Schools or private diversion of public dollars into the hands of private faceless nameless corporations is nothing but a money grab it diverts resources from public school students
081our students our community loves to show up at these meetings and talk to their board members who they've elected try showing up at a charter school to talk to the board try getting a hold of any manager other than that one principal at a charter school these schools belong to us our community if we want change we seek to change I stood at that microphone as a parent many years ago and I had an issue was on the news did all the stuff decided I needed to be on this board and I think that's a similar experience unless you're a wealthy person or you own a large corporation you can't be on the board of a charter school there's no election there's no public input by the way when there's a charter school and your
082child acts up or gets caught up in what's currently plugging us a vaping scenario you get kicked out and you go right back to the public school but now the public school is broke they don't have all the good teachers or the good programs or the good support so again I think what we're doing here is using and I'm I'm with you using public tax money to fight basically bad legislation it's on it's normally you'd see up me up here rallying against such a thing but let's just call it what it is our legislators I'm I might be the only one up here that believes this our legislators in Boone County need to stand up for our Public Schools where my daughter goes to school for at and our kids go to school instead of
083continuously working against public education if there's a situation where you don't agree with a public school or a particular curriculum they've done a good job at changing that and I agree with the changes but these are our schools charter schools are not our schools they're a nameless faceless Corporation that just bleeds the public dollar and we've seen in state after state that they don't produce any better results than our than our Boone County Schools specifically can possibly produce um so I I hope that we we are able to you know not not only pass this particular resolution but band together as a district to make sure that we that we understand that man if you have a troubled population at a school or you have what we've seen in the last few months with certain
084issues that come up I'm happy that my daughter goes to a public school so I have somebody to go talk to about it because at a charter school there's no one to talk to and if you show up more than once or twice they might not ask you to come back um so that's that is this like a one-time payment there's like no more expected of us after this that's correct one-time payment are we that guaranteed of that yes I'm gonna Echo off of Mr Parks I sit here because I firmly believe in public education um it's what makes our country great that we provide opportunities to whoever walks through our door that we have some of the best Educators in the world and I've said that all these years I'll put them up against
085anybody in the nation why because they have a heart for kids are we perfect absolutely not because people are not perfect I know this is hard to believe I am not perfect um I'm practically perfect but not perfect um this will take money from education Cindy it will um and um because tied up into this funding is tons of things we have to do that the state legislator later does not give us funding for now um we it you're right it's a money grab just two weeks ago a charter school across the river is closing after two years people are outraged they're Furious they have no they would have no idea where their children are going to are going to go to school next year and this is a pattern most Charter Schools don't make
086it past five years how long has Boone County High School been serving students in Boone County how long is this building here been serving students in Boone County how long has New Haven been serving students in Boone County go look at the dates on these buildings we're here year after year after year and we open the doors and we say come in and let us change your world and that's what we do and um the state legislature does I I agree I think that there is a a war on public education right now and if somebody doesn't fight for our schools and and our kids and if we don't do it no one else will um again I'm not a legal person but there's a lot of constitutionality grounds in in this resolution that I
087think will hold like the last decision did I'm hoping um and and to me the scariest part is this is the first time that they've come after our local dollars to send them outside of our district so um if I I don't mind paying my taxes um as as much as I have railed against tax rates in the past because I know that what we we do here in our local property taxes they it's always stayed in Boone County for Boone County Schools it's always supported our kids this could change that that there could be a startup School in Grant County or Kenton County and our Boone County tax dollars go over there and you know millions of dollars later the school closed and there's no accountability because Mr Parks is acts absolutely right they're
088not elected they're appointed they turn them they can turn it over to the management of a corporation the one in Cincinnati that just closed was managed out of Los Angeles we manage our schools here with this board with our district leadership with our building administrators with our teachers with our site-based councils and we do it together because we put the kids first so I wholeheartedly endorse joining into this as for me I do support it because if we don't do it who will and I agree with both of you in terms of the rationale completely I just want to confirm one more time this is the only time we are paying for this that's it that's correct it's a one-time per pupil payment I just want to confirm that again thank you you're welcome Mr
089Turner has there been any discussion I know I've read that one of the things the legislature is considering is trying to amend the Constitution to remove these concerns if in fact that happens and that passes this is not a two-month lawsuit this is probably a several year lawsuit what happens to that funding if the rationale for the lawsuit no longer stands at some point in the future the fun yes it does it's a very good question you know the the funding what our contribution will go to will be for the legal funding to file suit against this particular um this particular law and regulations um if it if I would go as I believe it would if we spend some of that funding for legal action then something then makes it a moot point we
090essentially would get a refund for whatever prorated from other other school districts that have done the same thing and so we would be my understanding be getting some of that money back I couldn't begin to say how much or of anything like that because it's just going to be tied up in it's for legal expenses to challenge that let's ask a government question here um I'd heard that as well they were talking about changing the wording of the Constitution would that not require a constitutional amendment on a ballot the legislator could not do that I know they think they're all powerful but they they could not do that I welcome that ballot these are all it's important it's a very important discussion so I'm glad that everyone's done the research and is asking the right
091questions because we don't take expending funds lightly when it's for something like this and I can I don't think I need more than one hand to count the number of times we've done this anything else okay hearing no more questions we do have a recommendation motion and second all in favor any opposed motion carries 4-1 now we'll move to our item F that we added consideration for a salary increase for certified and classified staff Mr Turner thank you madam chair I've moved excuse me I recommend the board to approve the recommended action new business item F the salary increase for classified and certified employees yes I'll go ahead and state what this is after conversation and work with our budget committee this is for an increase of one percent to all certified and classified employees
092for next year that is in addition to the two percent uh increase in salary for certified and classified employees that was approved by the board last year so essentially the raise for next year for employees for certified and classified would be three percent plus the step that's built into our salary schedule okay thank you I appreciate that needed to be part of the recommendation so um we have a recommendation do I have a motion motion Mrs wool second Dr Brown thank you um any other information you want to share Mr Turner just just a little bit more this has been a conversation that we've had for several months here within the district we are entering the time where schools are looking at their Master's schedules and our posting positions where there's openings and we want
093to make sure that we communicate early enough to our employees to know the salary increase for next year so again the board approving two percent last year and the discussion within our budget committee and throughout our cabinet and our district leadership with our finance department and our board members that are on the budget committee as well agreed that we can make this work for next year to add additional one percent so the overall increase would be three percent for employees okay questions I I believe you said it's three percent plus a step right that's correct three percent plus the step thank you make sure those who don't know is 1.6 right Justin I just want to say thank you to the budget committee I know that you guys have been working for a couple of
094months to get this together so that is not a small Endeavor and thank you to Linda and Lisa and the team for I'm sure the many iterations of mathematical gymnastics that had to occur yeah and and I will say um I'm a numbers person so I love numbers um and I do think Linda and Lisa for what Lisa Jackson for their work on this because uh you know my question always as as a board member on the budget committee and I did ask this which is why it wasn't part of the agenda when it was posted last week because I said no um because I needed projections my concern always is when we are looking at our Personnel budget which also all is a large part of our overall expenditure but we're we're a people
095business so we invest in people and we want the best we want the brightest we want to recruit them we want to retain them and there was concern that last year without knowing what our salaries would be for this school year we may have lost some teachers to other areas because they knew what their percentage increases were going to be so we had this discussion early but again my biggest concern is can we sustain it because sometimes to me worse than not giving it is giving it and having to take it back or giving it and then having to look at a reduction in force which I needed to be convinced that this was not going to put our budget under any undue strain not that I don't think our people deserve it because I
096think they do I think what they've accomplished through a pandemic has been short not short of heroic and um Lisa did some of the ransom numbers and projections and rolling up the budget and what it's going to look like over a three to five year time period and Lisa is always and Linda are always the first to pump the brakes if they feel we're getting into Dangerous Waters and after looking at uh what uh they rolled up into the budget looking at expenditure increases and you know how we can hold the line on other budget items if Lisa and Linda feel that we can comfortably do this and reward our staff and maybe help retain and recruit some new and New Bright Young Minds in [Music] they had the two hardest people to convince that's
097me and Jesse so we were you know both on board for that so first you know for appreciate the board allowing us to amend the agenda to bring this forward and know that it wasn't just a it was a decision that had some elbow grease behind it so anyone else have any questions or comments or concerns okay hearing none we have our recommendation Motion in second all in favor aye aye any opposed hearing none motion carries uh superintendent's report Mr Turner thank you madam chair I'd like to give a very brief update on the superintendents advisory Council as Patrick mentioned we met the other week and had Mr Ford facilitate the nomination process for our superintendent advisory Council for the leader of that and the board member that will be serving this board next year
098the student member they will be selected here within the next month they will first go on some campaigns within their own schools and then campaign amongst the the other schools and the other other candidates running for that position a very strong meeting and the leadership as you see with Patrick speaking tonight and with hing's leadership all throughout the year as well you've seen many of his other other students working to to support and have been part of the student superintendent advisory Council there's extremely strong leadership in that group and they're doing some fantastic work some very very high level work I also just wanted to give a very brief report we had our district Ambassador meeting I have a summary of that I'll give here in just a few minutes but we met earlier this
099week at thornwild elementary school right now I'd like to invite Dr Detwiler to come forward to have an update on the academic side of our organization Mr Turner good evening everybody it's time for us to give you a cdip comprehensive District Improvement Plan update and rather than give you that long document and try to give you an abundance of information what I'm going to try to do over the next several months is give you digestible pieces so tonight we're going to focus on Elementary goal for reading and math next month we'll focus on middle school and high school so I've asked three of my colleagues to come up and to give you updates on some of the strategies that are in place in the cdip if you take a look at this sheet that you
100should have in front of you just to remind you from the comprehensive District Improvement plan when we're talking about strategies we're talking about one of those seven key work processes that have the most value added in education so for example the first one you see here goal one reading proficiency the strategy of design and deliver instruction is one of those key core work processes that the state requires us to utilize in our plan and then we have three strategies that you're going to hear about tonight so I'm going to call first Upon Our Elementary director of teaching and learning Mrs Julie rubenmeyer to talk to you about the letters program thank you good evening can you guys hear me okay yes so something that weighs on Elementary Educators hearts and Minds I'm sure is that
101research has proven that a child's ability to read on grade level by grade 3 is often an indicator of their future academic success so I think that weighs on us feeling like that is really a burden that we carry and to support Elementary reading teachers in Kentucky KDE started to offer letters training this past fall for those not familiar with letters it's an acronym and it stands for language Essentials for teachers of reading and spelling letters is evidence-based training that teaches how we learn to read and what litter literacy skills need to be taught Boone County Schools currently has 61 teachers and administrators participating in letters which is really great to hear and they started last fall in October it is a two-year commitment in over 140 hours of training so it's pretty intense as
102an activity in our comprehensive District Improvement plan LSS is working with schools to continue to provide support for teachers and admin and evidence-based research instruction as they work to take steps to shift reading instruction to emphasize the five pillars of reading phonemic awareness phonics fluency vocabulary and comprehension and the amount of class time spent on teaching students to read K through two we're also providing professional learning on evidence-based reading instruction to those teachers that cannot commit to letters because it is a pretty strong commitment for teachers outside of of their work day in conclusion let's review state and District reading data from 2022 KSA for grades three through five I'm pretty excited to share this 45 percent of Kentucky's students scored proficient or distinguished by comparison 58 percent of Boone County students scored proficient or
103distinguished in 2022 so that's a celebration this is a direct reflection of all the hard work baboon County Teachers admins and families and thinking about that was past the pandemic and all of that ugliness we went through so that's great progress our goal for 2023 is set to be 63 proficient distinguished thank you do you have any questions any easy questions no that's not our job to ask the easy questions thank you Mrs rubmeyer speaking of data she mentioned the data you also have a data sheet here and this is what we refer to as the yellow sheets this is also our second strategy you see here review analyze and apply data we're going to ask Miss Krista Decker to come up our director of assessment to orient you to this to this data good
104evening everybody it's the chart I'm going to orient due to everything um in the columns obviously the far left on the top we have reading and this is all of our students this is Elementary grades three through five and then the demographics we have our current enrollment and I looked that up today so that is as of today and then the number tested as you can see it's highlighted blue those numbers are reflected to the last assessment we just took which is the other blue column which is the district elementary January mvpa which stands for Mastery view predictive assessment so you heard of in the past talk about case assessments it's the same thing they just have a new name okay um then we have on the state data Ms rubenmeyer referred to that you
105can see where the state average was for reading proficiency for grades three through five and then our students scores for 2022. for this year we have the fall star that's our Universal screener that's given to our students our fall star for all students proficiency level was a 53 percent the next data point is from October that's from that mvpa it's our interim assessment that's based on units of study during our pacing guide throughout the year so for our October date our students scored a 48 proficiency and then this past January our students were a 53 percent proficient distinguished we're getting ready to take with a March one in the next couple weeks and then our star assessment will happen towards the end of April and then finally we'll conclude with our KSA in May during
106those last 14 instructional days and you can see this our goal for this state for elementary for reading is a 62.5 which rounds up to 63 proficient distinguished the tops the reading the Deja Vu on the bottom but for our math numbers questions on we use this data we call it the yellow chart because you notice there's some yellow pieces on there those mean those scores are below the state average our 2022 State average score so we use that as our water line kind of a warning signal too we need to have some conversations or discussions to help support those demographics within our schools Chris I had a quick question I know um by some quick math about 85 percent of the kiddos were tested is that pretty typical of it depends because it depends
107to enrollment and when kids tested like if students participate in makeup tests they would not have been included or absent so we try obviously to have all students test but we do not we have not had a hundred percent okay it's pretty typical or not okay thank you very much thank you Mrs Decker and finally our last strategy we wanted to review today the design and deploy standards utilizing our professional learning communities with our principals to look at this data and make decisions Dr Watson's going to talk to you about how that process happens all right good evening I will be really quick um so as you know professional learning communities are not new this is something that we have been emphasizing it is how we do our business here uh it is our theory
108of action and we're always trying to hone that craft of what does that look like from a student level to take an assessment to I'm the teacher and I get my data back and I have feelings about that data but I have work to do with that data I take that data to my PLC my my team my collaborative team meeting and together we do some work with that data we look at themes we celebrate we look at what we call Red standards where we might have a group of students who are not excelling in a certain skill or a certain standard we identify who are those students what are we going to do to reteach them and then it goes up to the principal level so the principles looking that at all of his
109or her data from kindergarten through fifth grade using the mvpa assessment and then together they take that to the district level and then we have our own uh collaborative team meeting where we're looking at strategies that we can help our teachers with we look at research-based strategies we study a lot of Marzano and Hattie and what are the best strategies and skills that we need to employ to make sure that our students learn it that's also the time where the principal's name and claim those students and they have a role in it could be just a a nice conversation with a student any kind of encouraging a check and connect whatever that looks like where the the principles playing a part in ensuring these students are successful in the education process so that professional Learning
110Community is really the gatekeeper for where all of this assessment and data and instructional revision and differentiation all of that happens at that professional Learning Community time and again and we always say we're trying to differentiate language is important with teachers and we want to say we are a PLC as an organization I think you all would have claimed to be a learning organization we say that we are as well but I think it's even it's even more than that you know we are professional Learning Community together and that's what we really try to emphasize so that just should permeate throughout our schools there's a quote often if you see an adult learning you're going to see a student learning you see adults that are not learning you will see students that are not learning
111so again I'm really proud of our principles they put a lot of leg work in and have a lot of action steps that they're working out with teachers now so that's professional learning communities do you have any questions about that all right thank you thank you thank you Dr Watson so next month we'll hit middle school and high school and we'll just keep going that way rather than bringing you 70 pages to review I have two more items the next time I wanted to update you where we are on the rollout of our strategic plan at the teaching and learning committee meeting last month we did receive input on success measures so we're revising those next Tuesday we'll be taking that information in front of our district leadership and principles where they'll take the success
112measures and start writing smart goals that go with their particular context in their school in April we'll begin faculty meetings the district leadership will go to faculty meetings to roll out the plan and then we'll have a publication an official publication Sometime Late spring or early summer so that's where we are with that finally we're gonna end with a celebration I'm going to ask Dr Pache to come up and talk to you about our International Festival that was just held ready Chad I'm just going to talk over a two-minute video of pictures and they're one second each so um on 25th Ryle High School hosted our International Festival if you remember right before um setting of Festival sorry that disrupted me a regional Festival in collaboration with rotary and um the city really Boone County
113schools had hosted the International Festival before that which was a huge turnout it was very successful this Festival actually superseded that by a couple hundred participants we had 23 student volunteers we had a very small staff that met every Friday for months to put on this Festival singers individuals and what was really great to see for I think 13 Nations represented by them in the Parade of Nations we had teachers staff community members parents everybody was coming together lots of food we had food trucks we had booths 22 different booths where you could really interact with you could Roll Sushi you could dress up in kimonos and take photographs you could try plantains from Ivory Coast everybody talked a lot about the different food choices and how they were able to interact and just get
114a taste of what it's like to be in Dune County with our great diversity we had teachers together with students working together and and just sharing it was a great day and it was really fun to see everybody there um we're hoping another high school will host next year so um each of the hospitals [Music] Dr Detwiler I had a quick question um I am on the teaching and learning committee so I have gotten to see the work that's going on with the Strategic plan sorry it's late um at what point do you envision sharing that with the entire board I don't think I've ever gotten a digital copy or I would do that but just so that everybody kind of knows where we are in the draft process and I know the teaching and
115learning community has provided feedback but I didn't know what where at what point does that get to the entire board did you want to a weekend we'll provide you off the digital copy I can do that right after this meeting we'll send in an email so you have it and then if you have questions about it feel free to ask Mr Turner or myself we'd be happy to answer questions Mr McCarter thank you Mr Turner I have some good news to tell to the board I want to introduce our new purchasing agent Mr Donnie Grant Donnie joined our team last week and comes to us with many years of experience in the purchasing field while he serves in the military he served in the Army so I wanted to introduce you to him so Donnie
116if you want to come up and make you want to say anything foreign this is his first board meeting so he got a full experience tonight welcome to Boone County Schools we look forward to getting to know you better from one Army vet to another welcome good luck so um thank you Johnny for being here tonight I just want to give you a brief update on our disciplinary Review Committee we met for our second time on March 2nd and good discussion occurred amongst the group members I tasked the group at the end of the meeting to narrow down our Focus to one or two procedures that we wanted to either enhance or possibly change Mr Ford pointed out to the group there are many educational bills that are being filed currently and will probably linger
117into next session so we have to keep that in mind as we do our work I also discussed the or we also discussed the awareness of disciplinary measures and what information is in the code of conduct book that was brought to our attention by Jude our student reps he said she has seen this book but she didn't really know what was in it so I think an awareness at the beginning of the year with all of our schools parents May sign this that they have a copy but do they actually know what's in the code of conduct Mr Ford chairs that committee has done a tremendous amount of work over the years and has been a really good part of our committee in giving us Vital Information I also want to thank major Walters for
118joining us on joining our group I did a great job of adding to the group so thank you very much um the next thing I want to do is give you or have Eric Ball come up and give a staffing update of where we are with the district good evening BSF fishing as possible here so currently we have 48 certified and classified vacancies that may seem like a lot but roughly half of those have been posted since January 1 so they are most de facto 23-24 positions in fact several of those are a couple of principal positions we have posted so those are really positions for next year so all things considered we are in in a really good place certainly still have some uh you know areas that our concerns for us our custodial
119staff certainly still a focus for us our bus drivers still Focus as well so we'll continue those recruitment efforts we had a really good opportunity last August to a Boone County Career Fair it was well attended we hired people on the spot so we're going to do one of those either late May early June and then in August again so we'll get everybody as they're kind of getting ready to go for the summer and then we'll start to fill those gaps with uh with that career fair again in August Duke appreciate the efforts of the board that three percent certainly is something we'll advertise out and a point that you made Miss Byrd about folks leaving for neighboring districts just to kind of give you a good idea we got twice as many from a
120neighboring District than we lost to that neighboring District so I think it might be a misnomer that we uh we see people fleeing for the dollar they love Boone in a two to one ratio would show us that uh some folks maybe that aren't with us yet love Boone too so I'll be happy to answer any questions regarding Staffing I'd like to invite Kim best up to the mic to give us a classified staff survey update and construction update good evening everyone um so first I'm going to update you on the status of our classified staff survey so it has been out and open for about two weeks I have extended a little bit because I keep getting responses that are trickling in so I don't want to exclude anyone from that um I actually
121have three paper copies on my desk right now so I'm gonna have to add to that overall the responses have been really positive we have received 472 responses which was nice which gives us about a 36 percent response rate my goal would be to have at least 50 I love data more numbers are better so I would love to see that it's definitely reassuring to know we have some large role group responses so our largest group that have responded are a food service staff followed by para Educators then bus drivers and then staff support those are our four largest groups with lots of others smaller groups and individuals overall the responses have been very positive in all of of the categories and I do have a paper copy of this that I'll give each of
122you so that you can see those responses and I'll update that as well but overall in most every question we were at least I think the lowest one for they were rated always almost always are often is the top category and for that I think the lowest one here is 66 percent that they're positive so we've got some good results from that from the different categories we do have an overall ninety percent of the respondents enjoy working at their building or department and 95 percent of those people who've responded can plan to continue their employment in Boone County so that was a nice thing to see the um we did allow some open-ended comments not just those regular questions so the themes for the open-ended question about identifying strengths in their buildings or in their
123departments lots of things mentioned about teamwork being having supportive team members working with colleagues their concern and love for students positive things about leadership since a family and communication and inclusive culture so those were all of the positive things lots of responses in that section so I really just went through and looked at all of those things that stood out um looking at the open-ended question for anything further that people wanted to include with that the overarching thing was mentioned with our classified staff was pay which we expected and that's nice to hear that with the work in the salary ad hoc committee and the decisions made tonight we're hoping we'll be able to address that as well other areas that were listed in the open-ended question that we want to challenge our buildings to
124work on as well as departments would be student behaviors and some challenging environments as well as communication and being able to feel like their voices are heard so our next steps for this will be that we'll be forming a task force that's made up of a individual from each of those role groups that we'll be able to bring together and start working on some of these areas any questions on that um are you working with the bccea still on all of this yes okay when was the last time you met with them just out of curiosity two to three weeks ago because we're giving time to get the survey to be completed are they going to have input on the task force you're developing yes absolutely and the goal is to have a nice mixed
125group of members from bcca as well as non-members we want to have a representative group on that task force so that we get to hear the voices from everyone okay any other questions all right we will move on to Construction um so I know in your board packet you'll have the document that comes from Hayes that gives you the status of most of those projects but we always like to highlight with some pictures of our ongoing projects and of course right now Jones is the top of that list because you're able to see the most work going on that's visible so what you see in front of you is the finishing on the outside sidewalk areas and as I was walking around this morning I realized I'd not ever taken a picture of the back
126of the Edition to share with you maybe because it's really muddy back there but now we have this great sidewalk back there so the middle picture that you're looking at is the back of the Edition so it looks really nice there great sidewalks around there I know the teachers at Jones are really excited they're going to have some nice really really nice walking paths they'll be able to take kids completely around that building using a sidewalk now so I know they're excited about that um the pictures that you see here some finishes that are taking place in classrooms so when I went there today I had seen the addition of whiteboards in all of the rooms as well as that Center picture is the ceiling grid is going up so they are about 95 finished
127with that ceiling grid it will remain open until it has some inspections so we'll look unfinished for an extended period of time but that's a great amount of progress there seeing lots of minor finishes going in as I said whiteboards are going up bulletin boards are going up starting to see fixtures putting put on the walls they're about 95 finished with lighting as well in that room and then our next picture um the wind on the far end are the new lockers they did offer to take the plastic off for me today but I said no leave it on because I want them to stay nice and shiny and clean so don't take the plastic off um seeing some water fountains I get excited about fixtures for some reason it looks like we're getting to
128the end and then the picture on the end is the bathroom so that one actually has tile on the floor that is the upstairs bathroom the Downs or no that's the downstairs bathroom upstairs is getting tile this week and then within about the next two weeks they'll be doing floor prep so we see a huge change within that building with the floors any questions all right yeah yeah thank you Kim much needed space for that school I'm excited about it thank you all right thank you Mr McCarter a few more items just uh some information to share with the board uh the Florence rotary Teacher of the Year Award winners have been notified uh those from the Boone County schools are charity erdenberg of our high school Kim Foreman of yaley Elementary School Brittany Gilbreth
129of Stevens Elementary School and that will be uh they will be awarded that at a luncheon at the Florence Nature Center on March the 21st as you've heard from our district leaders and thank you to all of our district leaders that presented today and those that are here with us this evening also some of our principals that are with us as well appreciate that appreciate the work that you do every day we have some great work going on let me mention a few of those things uh one is our recent ksba convention and training session all the board members attended two and a half days of training for school board members and are certainly we had the appointment of the new ksba president Karen Byrd congratulations Karen I don't know how you're going to do
130all of these jobs at one time for this next year but I know you'll do a good job with it I'm not sure when you're going to sleep though Sleepless option I just also just wanted to mention attended the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce I'm the member of a member of the board of directors of that organization on February 22nd we discussed a variety of topics advocacy points for various things that may be in the legislature and other needs for Business Leaders in the region also just we have a school board Workshop several weeks ago with all of our board members on the topic of roles and responsibilities of board members along with board members bird and wolf and also executive director rootman we met with Florence mayor Aubuchon and vice mayor Kemper and council
131member Wingo to discuss some future work with our school board in the City of Florence and Aries on which we can partner together and collaborate in the future just building strong relationships and a very fun event that I was part of last week met with the community problem solving team at thornwild elementary school and if you want to meet a sharp group of students they they've got it going on um they had questions and they just reached out to me and said can we talk about CPR training and so we sat down at their school and they talked about they were very knowledgeable I had a lot of information about CPR training uh some of the some of the needs that we may have in our district and aeds and we talked about the need
132and what they wanted to do and their proposal is to increase the number of employees that are trained in CPR in our school district and also increasing the number of aeds so we've started a conversation and I think at some point in time maybe in the the April board meeting you'll see them here and I'm going to have them share some information with you and we may have a proposal or two but that might be a little further down the road but I tell you they were a sharp group and very prepared they they grilled me with questions for a period of time just on how that works who gets trained for CPR and all those aspects it was a wonderful wonderful group of students as you saw tonight we visited the Amazon air Hub
133at kcvg along with those 20 uh female students they were phenomenal they did a great job and it was really impressive seeing them and and see the learning that they were getting from those uh female Executives from Amazon and it was a the question and answer session was impressive them talking about their background as professionals and and you could just see uh the young ladies and how they were taking that in and just aspiring to be almost what some of them are just very successful professional people also met with Jude dalla our ignite student who also serves on the state and Board of Education as a student member she's also on our ad hoc disciplinary committee as well we talked about current work in our district some of the things that she's doing and some
134of the things that she's working on at the state level as well as part of a reading event at Long Branch their Winter Story night it was a very fun reading to kids when a moose when you give a Moosa muffin was the book I read just so you know attended the American Association of school administrators conference as a national school and District leader conference from all across the country with the purpose of professional development along with the other national leaders in education I mentioned the parents ambassadors meeting that we had just a few notes from that it was about the superintendent's office that group we meet with one parent from each of our schools across the whole District essentially volunteers are those that might be nominated by their principal or others within the school
135with the with the goal of transparency we have a very large district with 27 schools and and programs and it's quite often it's impossible to know or very difficult to know what's going on all across the entire District of 20 000 students and over three thousand employees so the whole goal is transparency so we've taken them to meetings from transportation to finance to human resources to learning support services and the final session was this last week and it was at the superintendent's office and actually we met out at um thornwild elementary school as when we meet they've already been through human resources and Finance in our district office they want to see the schools they really love seeing different schools other than the ones their children go to and so we made a visit to
136thornwild and we had all sorts of questions just about what happens at the superintendent's level here within the school district so we had uh Mr McCarter and Dr detwiler's share that our organization has divided up truly into just two areas operations in the academic side the learning support side we talked about all the collaboration that we do with different state entities and organizations all the work that we do to develop strong relationships like the Florence city council the Union City Council the Boone County Fiscal Court Boone County Planning and Zoning Florence Rotary Club the Northern Kentucky Workforce investment board the Chamber of Commerce all of those Partnerships that we rely on to be very connected in our community and make sure that we're collaborating and working together at a high level also just want to
137mention the storm damage and wind from the storm the storms and the winds last week we did sustain some minor damage to a few facilities power outages like many people in our community we had across some of our buildings as well um special thanks go to our maintenance leaders as they worked very very hard to put in some overtime over the weekend to ensure that our school schedule was not disrupted at all for our students and for our families but also I just want to share that um Friday while we were at Amazon with the students I was in close contact with Mr McCarter with Boone County Emergency Management Services we were watching this storm very very closely because we were very concerned that we might have to dismiss school early on that day and
138as we were following the governor made an announcement but we just kept following it with our Boone County Partners in emergency management and they were very certain that as we moved throughout the uh throughout the school day that it was not going to be as bad here as what we saw happen down in Lexington and the areas and the counties around Lexington which was was quite quite different than what we experienced here they had a lot of damage they even had some injuries and some deaths in their Community unfortunately but that was I just wanted to kind of describe the process that we were following when we have a situation like that with bad weather and how we could potentially end the school day and send students home but after a certain point in time
139um we it would just we wouldn't be able to because we couldn't get all of our bus drivers and all of our staff back and everything ready to go once we get to a certain time in the school day so we were just watching it very closely to see if we had to make any any very difficult decisions um you know if we felt like we were going to have a very dangerous situation for our students and our staff we would have dismissed school and sent everyone home and the last couple items here the Boone County Education Foundation held their annual fundraising event they're a non-profit that benefits our school district all the proceeds from that go to individual grants that are given to classroom teachers for some of the projects and their in what
140they do in the rooms just a quick reminder school is not in session tomorrow flexible professional development day many of our schools have waived this day to another date on the calendar so we may not have many people in our buildings tomorrow the District staff will be at work unless they're taking some time off we'll be taking care of some business and also daylight savings times begins this weekend so be sure to Spring your clocks forward thank you madam chair thank you Mr Turner that brings us to our information proposals and Communications is there any information that any board members would like to share at this time anybody anyone anyone well I know you do are you going to let it okay we'll go ahead well it doesn't look like anyone wants to talk uh
141well I will communicate that the uh the the budget committee has been um as mentioned earlier in the meeting I'm working on a variety of things and I just wanted to say I appreciate Linda and Lisa and the other people that work in the accounting office trying to account for this size of the district is very very tough and then project man all kinds of things how much people's properties worth how much we're going to collect in vehicle tax how many students are going to be what the legislature is going to do I mean all these things get projected and drafted into the budget it's very difficult so I just want to say hats off to them for the work that they do they they have a a level of institutional knowledge that's unmatched in
142my opinion um the second thing real quick we at an earlier item that we mentioned Revenue and I'm going to throw this out there if we wanted to find a revenue Source we should consider building a indoor archery range they archery I don't know if anyone's ever looked at the archery returns for some of these teams they make an enormous amount of money there's Long Branch man Steeplechase New Haven Cooper Ryle gray Boone Bally Shannon campers Connor middle and high Urban Beck and I think I'm missing a couple in Boone County that now have archery teams that produce again an enormous amount of Revenue that they put back into their archery programs it's so much revenue that some of the teams have offered to build the building themselves um that's no lie with money that
143they raise so there's other districts like Oldham County that have produced these types of facilities they're used for a variety of things not just indoor archery but it's something to consider if you're looking for a revenue source that would far far outpace the amount of Revenue that the previous item on our agenda recommended that we would raise um and then the third thing I have is a statement of my own that is not the board statement it is in regard to house bill 50 and Senate bill 50. this is there are two bills that um many of our local cities I see a council member from Florence here with us the union has rejected these made resolutions and I don't think we are doing anything like that but me Jesse Parks Board member and is
144in opposition to house bill 50 this would require board members people that work in the water district conservation and other offices to run in partisan elections what does that mean exactly for me it means that all of a sudden we would have to raise an enormous amount of money from well like vendors and people and we would immediately become in my opinion partisans that are after partisan politics and we see some of that in our meetings this board and other boards and councils and the conservation board and all these other boards they are not political things we manage money here it's not a left or a right or a d or an r or anything like that and it should never be that this is public education there isn't a partisan hint to it there
145shouldn't be anyway and I hope not only that if we run primaries it is an enormous waste of taxpayer money to run two different elections for a job that pays nothing that frankly most people don't care for the work that you do anyway I mean just be honest and it's again another way as we said as I said earlier it's another way to harm public education by making these positions every four years a partisan race where I have to go out to the local concrete company and asked that I ran in a state representative race the money that you get is from partisan interest with lobbying efforts and all of a sudden there's people sitting on boards across the state that are beholden to software companies window companies scoreboard companies gym floor companies because they
146all gave you know theoretically would give donations to these campaigns it's not good it's not good for the state of Kentucky I think local cities were removed from that from one of the bills is that correct um if I'm not mistaken house bill 50 . so they were successful in their effort to not become partisan races um and again here in Boone County let's just call it what it is here in Boone County the last wave of people that were elected to the state legislature beat members of their own party so it's not like you're gonna get this whole new crop of folks we're just going to be running in primaries all the time spending a bunch of money and I I for one didn't raise any money to be on this job and I
147don't care to go out and talk to vendors and other special interests to be on this board so who's going to do it for free when all we do is approve budgets and some other important stuff but um anyway that's that's my my rant about House Bill 50. if anyone cares about the same issue I recommend that you call senator schickel um Marine Proctor Steve Rollins um what's that Kim Banta Steve Doan um Savannah yeah Savannah Maddox and um tell them that you don't aren't not interested in partisan politics when it comes to your kid because that's what it comes down to is our children will be managed by partisan Boards of Education and that sounds and smells like gridlock to me I want to tag on to that because the if that bill passes
148there's a lot of members of boards of Education across the state that are federal and state employees if that passes they're done they can't serve anymore which means it's an automatic turnover most like well not most likely it would be and I agree with you know everything that Jesse says in regards to what it takes to to run a campaign and for this particular position it's majority completely self-funded and you get nothing um so it's it's going to be an additional expense that it's not fair to ask foreign I have always said politics do not belong in education only what belongs in education is doing what's right for kids and sometimes partisan politics gets in the way of that um not saying I mean I registered to vote when I was 18 I voted in
149pretty much every election since then 20 years ago but you know voted in 20 years worth of Elections we'll just let that one slide but um the um the concern that I have is the the trend that we've seen over the last couple of years for what's going on at the national level to trickle down into the local level and everyone assumes that the horror story that they heard on the the news about what happened in a classroom 3000 miles away is going on in the school district and that it's just not the case um have I said are we perfect no we're not but this is still Boone County we're still a family-oriented mostly conservative area that believes in our schools and that our schools should be open to all and that everyone in
150our schools from whatever Walk of Life they come from deserve a quality public education and we're known for providing that and for bickering to be come down to a political ideology as opposed to is this good for kids or is this not good for kids and and it's it's just an attack on public education I firmly believe that school boards have been the target all along because we tend to not be political when we sit here we may be political outside of here because I support causes and candidates that that follow my beliefs and values but I also when I sit here I'm about Boone County students first and what's right for them and how do we have to get there and and politics gets in the way of that sometimes people get more caught
151up in their political ideology than realizing that you know we can have an influx of 250 students that are refugees that come in here that never been in structured school have language barriers have poverty barriers and that's what our Focus needs to be is getting those kids equipped for a future in my mind the greatest country in the earth in the world um yeah 50 needs to go away and the only way it can go away is if people say we want our school boards focused on kids and not politics I think the other thing that um is missed too is that we're we're pretty much governed by the legislation legislator not the legislations but that we're governed by the general assembly and state so there's already that partisan influence we don't need anymore archery
152facility telling you well I I I've looking at Mrs best we have a facilities committee meeting coming up March the 28th um if we can make a note to kind of have a conversation about that as as part of our facility plan oh we already have that it's on top of the district office it's the best kept secret in Boone County and I'll say on a positive note thinking about how our facilities can impact kiddos I spend a lot of time sitting outside of Cooper High School's turf field so we have our first season rivals in their second season of Lacrosse Cooper has 30 males on the men's lacrosse team roster and I think we have 16 or 18 females so we watch baseball track lacrosse boys and girls across the number of kids that
153hang out at our turf fields every single day we are giving them opportunities that are going to change their lives so Mr Parks I may not disagree with your archery range because those small decisions can make huge impacts on the number of kids they can actually get involved in things so I'm excited to see lacrosse getting into our schools my niece her husband served in the Coast Guard and her when her son became old enough to play sports living they never knew where they were going to be living but wherever they went they had lacrosse and that became his sport um and um you just don't hear about it that much here you know so I'm excited that we're having the ability to add that other opportunity for more students to get involved um I
154do want to put in another plug for anyone listening out there that is Philip philanthropic the philanthropic in nature um Jones Middle School Mr Sullivan has started a Cadet Corps there that I mentioned before he's former military as well created this group at Jones to give kids an opportunity they've never had before based upon military background structure of you know discipline leadership teamwork collaboration a sense of belonging to a group they are still trying to um gather uniforms for the cadets so that they have that cohesiveness there I think the for a completely outfitted uniform it's like a hundred and fifty dollars rounded um if you have a business or a group or um anything that is looking to help make a difference in some kids lives that would really be a lifelong impact consider
155reaching out to Mr Sullivan at Dunns Middle School about the Cadet Corps and their need for uniforms and March 21st Collins is having a multicultural evening event if anyone wants to head over to the school I think it starts at 5 30. um now 21st um and they had asked me to be there you know to be available for the board so good excuse to leave work early and head on over to Collins so if anyone's free that evening come over and check out that event at Collins it starts at 5 30 I believe I can maybe it goes to like 7 or 7 30. 21st yes March 21st does anyone have anything else any other information to share one final plug for the archery building [Laughter] well Miracle of all miracles having no closed
156executive session this evening um yeah I'll get home before midnight tonight maybe I would entertain a motion to adjourn motion Dr Brown second Mrs wolf all in favor aye any opposed We Stand adjourn will call to order the Finance Corporation of the Boone County Schools that's why I do it fast people get up and leave um call um please let the record reflect all board members are still present Mr Turner approval amendments and financial statements thank you madam chair I recommend the board approved the minutes of the February 9 2023 Corporation meeting and financial statements as presented we have a recommendation do I have a motion motion motion Ms wolf do I have a second second second Dr Brown any questions hearing no questions all in favor of approval of the minutes and financial statements
157please say aye aye they said I any opposed hearing none motion carries with no other business before the Financial Corporation do I hear a motion to adjourn motion Mrs wolf is there a second second Dr Brown I'll give her that one since she was paying attention all in favor uh any opposed hearing none We Stand adjourned thank you everyone