APS School Board Meeting February 2026

001Yeah. >> What? >> It's a Did you read this letter? There we go. Hello. Hello. Good evening. Here's my gavl. Um, we'll bring our meeting to order. Thank you for coming. Uh, let us all rise for the pledge of allegiance. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. >> Okay. I'll ask that uh board members review the consent agenda items and let us know if you wish anything pulled. If not, uh we can uh >> I'll make a motion to approve the February 23rd, 2026 regular board meeting agenda as presented. >> All right. >> Support. >> Great. Lots of support. Boy, the board is moving today. Thank you. Any further discussion about the motion to approve

002the meeting agenda? Hearing none. All in favor, raise your hand. Any opposed? Same sign. All right. Motion carried. We have an agenda. Um that brings us to uh our presentation. So >> then I didn't turn my own on. Okay. Thank you Dr. Lassa for letting us uh present today. Uh my name is Romeo Raj. I'm the principal here at the high school. I'll welcome you to the Wildcat Den. Uh we we love the space and we love that you guys can be here to share in it and and and see all that we have to offer here at Alpena High School. Uh but with no further ado, what I want to do is turn it over to our robotics team 550. They are our group uh that is currently uh working to build a robot

003and and and get ready for the season which is going to start in less than a month. And so Danielle McDonald who is a mentor and the on the business side uh called and said could we do a presentation here and it was my turn to present. So I said absolutely uh just because it's great for everybody to see what they do. It's a uh it's a ton of work. They're here. If you drive by in the front oval and you see cars on a Saturday or Sunday, it is typically our robotics crew. Uh our our mentors that are here. uh they're they represent many different factions of of the business community, engineering community, and and they're here equally as much. Uh so I appreciate all that they do to make this program successful, but

004it's really led by the students with the mentors guiding them, and it's a long long-standing tradition. So with no further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Liam and Gabe and Danielle who are going to lead the presentation for you for AHS robotics. So thank you. >> Thanks again for having us. So we are team 5505. The quick history is the original team 5230 was started in 2014 was a resounding success and so we had two sister teams up until four years ago um when kind of just the financial sponsorship and the kid involvement kind of declined a little bit. So to retain our history and our success 5505 is what lives on. Um this is a program designed to really enable our kids to go out and be leaders in our community. Um

005first is a very well-known worldwide organization for robotics and all things STEM. Um it started in 1985 so quite a while ago in uh Pontiac Michigan and like I said now is a worldwide organization. Um it's designed to really be led by the students. Uh so as mentors, we are not building this robot. We're leading and teaching them to use equipment uh learn to CAD. Um these robots are a 10-week project. Uh January 10th, we came in, we got our kickoff of what our new game and challenge for the year was and the kids have to completely design, CAD, build, program the robot within 10 to 12 weeks before their first competition. Um on the flip side to that, there is also a business side to the team. So this is a a full understanding

006of what an organization is and how it operates before they get to the real world. Um so businesses running um all kinds of we have business plans. We work on financials. They learn how to present to both our judges but also in our communities at grant applications and exhibits with uh children and our adults. Um, and so they also work on our fundraising efforts to fund a quite pricey program. So, uh, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Liam. He is a senior on our team this year and has been with us for four years. >> Hey guys, I, uh, went, I sang a little too hard at Winterfest on Saturday, so my voice might tune out a little bit, but this is our robot from last year. As Mrs. McDonald said, we get

007a short 10 or 11 weeks to um plan for the new game that's released, uh design the robot, build it, wire it, program it, test it, and all the while the business team is going heads over head over heels to just fund raise and make sure that we can afford the parts we need and the travel for our team. Um, I'll talk a little bit about my experience uh through our robotics program. I am very fortunate to um have been tossed into a a group of a friend group of mostly seniors going into my freshman year and uh one of them invited me to this robotics team for our first meeting of that year. I was like, I don't know anything about robots. Like, how does that pertain to me at all? And um after

008a while, he convinced me because uh if some of you know, Will Bushy is a very uh uh persuasive person. And I went to the first meeting and I thought maybe I'll give business a try. I did not like that side of the team. It just was not for me. So, I jumped over to mechanical and I didn't know anything. I mean, I could use a screwdriver. I could use a drill, but that was about it. and we have just about every tool you could think of in that room. So, I had a lot of learning to do and we're very fortunate to have, like Mr. said, a great team of mentors who are very welcoming and very thoughtful and incredibly compassionate. And I learned so much in that first year. I mean, it was

009it blew me away. So, I had to stick with it sophomore, junior year. Junior year, I took a few steps back just because of, you know, how busy it gets that year of high school. And um I still learned an incredible amount. And going into this year, we weren't sure if we were going to have a program because we didn't really have a head coach and there were all these questions being raised and I was like, maybe I've learned everything I have about this program. You know, I was like, maybe I've got everything in my brain. And I was wrong. I went to the first meeting of the year and I quickly realized that, you know, we did not have that many people and enrollment has been a problem for us. Um, but went anyways

010and I have learned more in this last year, just these first couple months of the season than I have all of high school. And, you know, as one of the lead designers, it has been an incredibly uh, educational experience that I'm very, very thankful for. And I don't know quite what I'm going to do once I get my engineering degree from whatever school I go to. Uh but I will have so much experience to help guide me in whatever decisions I make. And uh yeah, I owe I owe this program a lot. It it has taught me so much. Um I think that's about I think that covers my spiel. So I'll give it to Gabe here. >> Hi, I'm Gabe Robinson. I'm a 13th year in the early college program and I have been

011doing robotics since I was a junior. So the 2024 and 2025 season, I mostly started out just helping with small projects on the mechanical side. Didn't really know a whole lot. Like Liam, I knew how to use a screwdriver and a drill. Um, but over the past couple years, I've definitely developed a lot more communication, leadership, mechanical, business skills, the whole deal. And I feel like it'll really help me, you know, land jobs, go through higher education, just everything. And I again, like Liam, I owe the program a lot. >> So, we can take some questions a little bit while they kind of show off how last year's robot operates a little bit. Um the ball does get thrown so we apologize if we hit you. We'll try not to. So, but uh I'll let

012them run it around. But does anybody have any questions about the program or first or any questions for the kids in particular? >> And if anybody wants to come up, feel free to come on up so you can see it. You are >> Yes, please. Absolutely. Um, in addition, uh, like Bordage said, we are here, uh, this week, the kids are here in the lab until at least 7 o'clock every night this week, uh, trying to get everything ironed out so we can start programming. So, if there's a break or if you guys are done and want to wander down Dhouse, uh, lower Dhouse is where our lab is. Uh, and anytime we are open, you are more than welcome to come through and and just kind of poke your nose in and ask questions

013and see what they're up to. Go ahead. question. >> Of course, Capeless has a question. >> I'm a plant. How much does the program cost to run for the year? >> That's the million-doll question. So, uh, as you can see, they're they're pretty big pieces of equipment. Um, these are specialized, uh, mechanics. Uh two years ago, we brought a bought a uh brand new drive system that allows us to be more competitive with just the way technology is going. Um so this is about an $80,000 a year program. That includes buying the software to program the parts that needed to be made. Um everything on there has to have replacements because you're going to get you're going to get bumped and and broken around. At competitions, they have to fix that on the on the

014fly. Um and then just the cost of going. So these are three-day competitions when we go uh to both our state qualifications and then state competitions themselves. Um so that's two nights in hotel that's feeding children that's transporting them for three days. So it's it's pretty costly. Um then if they have the honor and the privilege of going to the world's competition that is in Houston. So the last time we went that was seven days on a bus cross country with 23 kids. So that's you know a whole whole another um cost that's above and beyond that 80 grand a year. So, >> so you said at the beginning of the year that there wasn't a lot of students. Do you have now ninth graders that have joined on? >> Yeah. So, this year we

015have nine total students. Um, first says kind of the best number to have to have a successful team that's not burnt out is in uh the ballpark of about 20 kids. So, uh, like the boys said, their hands are in a little bit of everything right now. Um, this year we have just seniors, just freshmen. So, it's going to be interesting for the next couple years because the idea behind first and especially with our team is developing that leadership. So, the seniors teach the juniors, the juniors teach, the sophomores and the freshman come in like there's nothing to do, I can't do, but you're learning, you know, so it's kind of frustrating for the freshman that first year, but this year's an exception for those freshmen. We're like, here you go. Hop right in. Ask

016a question, grab a tool. And so, um, you know, it's a really good program in in that aspect, but, uh, when it's when it's a tiny team, it's an added challenge. So, yeah. So, typically when we're at competitions, these are wireless. They're not hooked up to wires. Um, so he doesn't really like to run tethered very much. Um, when they go to competitions, it is a threeon-ree competition. So, one of the first coined terms is cooperition. So, you are looking to build an alliance with three teams to play three teams, but you don't necessarily want to break those bots. this isn't battlebots and you don't really want to um have that aggressive competition because you might be playing with one of those robots in the next one. So, we go to competitions is 40 matches

017that they play before they get whittleled down to in their rankings to uh enter into finals competitions. So, with that, you know, they learn a lot of that strategy when they're in games, how to work with people that maybe in that last match they were against. Um, so a lot of that grace and forgiveness, making sure that they're good leaders, um, and then strong competitors as well. >> As a team, what would you say the biggest obstacle is this year to overcome? >> This year, the biggest the biggest obstacle is kids. Um, that's the hardest part from an overall team. Uh when we're looking at the actual game itself, there are a lot of repeat elements from prior games if you've watched any of the competitions. Um so one of the things we see quite

018often is a ladder type climb. Well, this year instead of making more monkey bars, it's a straight up climb. So the kids are finding that that's kind of an interesting and very challenging obstacle. um you get ranking points that help you gain um well rankings in the leadership board. Um and some of that is tied directly to that ladder. So, you know, trying to um navigate how to do that best. Apparently, Big Arnold doesn't want to show off today. Can you tell us about the game this year that they're preparing for? Yeah. So, this year it's an interesting game. Um, I enjoyed last year's a lot more. Uh, the theme seemed to fit. So, there are actually three levels of first. There's a Lego League for elementary, there's a tech challenge for the junior high,

019and then there's first robotics for the high school ages. Um, and then the all of them have the same kind of theme. So, this year it's very much around like archaeology, digging and recovery and type um elements. So, one of the um objectives of this match is the ladder climb, which would symbolize climbing out of your digged hole. Um and then the other element is they collect it's about this big foam balls. So, they're collecting their artifacts and bringing them to a collection bin. It's quite tall, so it's almost like a basketball shop. And so the more balls you collect, um, the higher you climb, the more often you climb, you get more ranking points. I do not go to the technical side of the room because noises like that make me uncomfortable. But they

020have a size and a weight requirement that they have to stay in. Um, last year they lowered the weight requirement. They have to stay under 115 pounds. Um, so this is why you'll see some of the holes in the robot. We call it the Swiss cheating effect. So if we don't quite uh meet that, we just kind of drill some strategic holes to bring our weight down. Um, they also have every year they kind of change it just how wide and how long and how tall you can be. So they do put limits on um on that arm reach depending on the game. Those change from year to year. Last year was a coral reef cleanup game. So the idea was to get in there and take the balls, which were algae, out of the

021coral and out of the ocean and put them in the barge to be removed and then take the coral, the PVC, and put it back on the reef. And so that's why you see the elements that we have there. Unfortunately, at uh Brown Trout, we popped all of our LG balls, so we're making do with a smaller ball this year. That lets us that lets us pop this game piece right into it that we would then drop onto a branch after it lifts up. There were about three levels each. It was like a It was a water-based game. So, we were putting like cor on the coral trees. And so, this would go up into the arm and then slide down off onto a branch that was like in a kind of Jshape. And this

022was the most unique part of our robot last year. We didn't really see anybody with anything even remotely similar. And we even won a mechanical award for it at I think it was Ferris. >> We we won a mechanical award at one of our competitions for it. >> Any last questions? Rotate system. So, we do have socials out there. Um, we just put a link out to this year's game reveal, but there's also a game reveal to last year if you kind of dig through the history if you ever wanted to go out and see those. Uh, you can also find them on um, First Inspires uh, YouTube channel. Well, we thank you very much for letting us come and and present to you guys. And like we said, if you ever want to come

023through the lab and see things, you're more than welcome to come on in. >> Thank you. Nice work. Thank you all very much. >> Okay, that brings us to uh public comment. And um in our last regular meeting uh I made a reference to one of our policies uh 0167.3 uh with the intent of making sure that uh public comment uh was not necessar was not uh any any more direct uh and uh inflammatory towards these employees than it needed to be. The policy uh is this. It's uh uh section E of the policy I just referenced. Individuals addressing the board must take into consideration the rules of common courtesy. Public comment should not be used to make personal attacks against a school board member or a school district employee by name. Individuals who have

024concerns or complaints against a board member or employee are encouraged to make that complaint in writing to the superintendent and or board or in a meeting with the superintendent or superintendent's designate. If a citizen wishes to issue a complaint against a specific board member or employee, the member or employee has the right to request a closed meeting to hear the complaint or charge. Section 8A of the Open Meeting Act. So, uh, regarding the recent internet video mocking my attempts to protect our employees and staff because that is the context that some chose to ignore in spite of the fact that I literally said that's what the comments were for and create a civil environment where people can voice their concerns to their school board. I'll say this. Childish videos and cheap outofcontext shots to score

025political points are easy. But you know what's not easy? Creating a safe space which protects our employees from unfair or unsubstantiated attacks while still allowing the public to voice their concerns. Now, this policy is over 20 years old, so long before my time, but I stand by it and I will always remind the public to be civil and respectful towards our employees whenever I feel it's warranted. And I'd like to say thank you for the recent public comment which though challenging showed civility and respect and has allowed the board to investigate the matter without dragging employees names through the mud. Now regarding board members, the policy says public comment should not be used to make personal attacks against a school board member by name. Uh that's a quote and also a quote. If a citizen

026wishes to issue a complaint against a specific board member, the member has the right to request a closed meeting to hear the complaint or charge. So, one might reasonably ask, uh, have I ever been attacked or criticized by name in public comment? Oh, yes. Have I ever attempted to invoke this policy from this chair or any other to suppress unfavorable comments? No. And I didn't attempt to invoke any policy to protect the board back on October 20th when someone got up and after having seen two items on the agenda that were historically about student growth and achievement and then listening to us talk about student growth and achievement for easily over an hour. Yes, this person stood up and claimed that we didn't have anything on the agenda for that meeting about student achievement and

027that we didn't follow up on it. A statement that was patently false. So, a reasonable person might conclude that all I'm looking for is for those making public comment to show civility and respect, especially to each other and our employees, so that this can be a safe space for all to voice their concerns to their board of education, especially since this is what I have actually said in spite of what you might have heard elsewhere. And with that, let us proceed. I'm Yvonne Johnson, a proud Alpena High grad and township resident. I'm the sponsor of the recall of board members Lawson, Costain, and Dazinski. I initiated the recall to put the job performance of these board members on the November ballot. At issue are their decisions to one reject a $150,000 grant to create a

028rain garden at Alpena High. Two, award a paving contract to a higher bidder paying $3600 more for what your senior project manager called a lower grade product. And three, add the radical right Coleman Legal Group as counsel, shopping for lawyers to provide cover for an unnecessary discriminatory potty policy. I also want to hold Costain to account for her pattern of absenteeism, skipping more than onethird of all 2025 board meetings. I take our our kids' education and this recall seriously. So I was appalled when you made snide comments about the recall at the February 16th workshop. Let's talk about civility. At that meeting, IT director Andrew Reinhardt explained bids for the district technology and recommended overlooking the lowest bid because it does not meet the district requirements. Makes perfect sense. When Reinhardt mentioned some other concerns,

029member Hansen said, "Don't worry, they won't use any of your words against you." Lawson chimed in, "At least that's been our experience." And Dinski said, "You can't get recalled, Andy. Those are exact quotes, not taken out of context, but verbatim." And you all had a quite a laugh, too, didn't you, after that. So, your callousness shows disregard for community feedback and the recall, which is actually a fundamental democratic process. It's a safeguard. Your strategic plan calls for increased family, community, and employee engagement, but you ignore or ridicule our input. As recently as your December and January meetings, you discussed your strategic plan and the pillars to boost collaboration, and you likely will again tonight. Yet, you repeatedly belittle those who share our concerns. Passive aggressive comments cloaked as jokes demonstrate that you do not respect

030us, the community you represent. When you took office, you assume the responsibility to serve all our kids and us, even those you don't agree with. Thank you. Hi there. Um, my name is Tabitha Heltzley. I have four girls that go to school within the APF school system and I have had quite an experience. So, I just wanted to come and voice my concerns about a few that I've most recently had and hope that you guys do with what you will with it. Um, first off, I have a child that's in junior high this year. Um, a few months ago, I had found that she had been on YouTube shorts for nearly four hours during school in the classroom for 4 hours. I don't allow YouTube in my house. Those are my rules. Nobody has to

031agree with them and I don't care. I was appalled. I emailed all of the teachers and the principal and explained that this was unacceptable, that my child is very much capable of straight A's, and that in that moment she actually had a D in one of her classes. So, I emailed these teachers and the principal expressing my concerns about this. I received responses from about half of them saying, "Oh, not in my class." The other half, no response. A few days later, a response from the principal saying, "Let me know if this isn't resolved." Fast forward a couple months later, again, I find her misusing her Chromebook. I at this point am very upset because this is just absolute nonsense at this point. And I go in and I address it to get a response

032from the principal stating, "I don't know what they're allowed to access. That's it. When asking if that can be blocked from my child's Chromebook, the response was, "Yeah, we'll get on that." However, the following day, I got a call saying, "Well, in order to block it, it has to be in a 504 plan." Thankfully, your child has one, so we'll add it in. Do you know what it takes to get a 504 plan? You can't just get one of those. That's one. Second one, fourth grade. They're doing a piloting program for math. I have a child that is in fourth grade. She's a very good student. She has failed her last three math tests along with almost 80% of her class. It is a situation, a situation that needs to be looked into. On top

033of all of that, I had to fight for my daughter that's in junior high to have access to a microwave this year that she has had access to since she was in second grade because she has extreme dietary restrictions due to several health situations. We've never had an issue. She was utilizing it, was told she couldn't, then was told she could, and then she was told she couldn't. And it got to the point where they were discussing maybe she should bring a thermos every day or even a crockpot. I don't know why I have to fight to get my children access to a good education, equal availability for a warm meal. Just I just my kids are my everything. >> Thank you very much. My name is Diane O' Conor and I live in Alpena.

034At last month's regular board meeting, I had a question for the board president regarding the Coleman Legal Group. The pretense for reaching out to Coleman Group last spring as stated repeatedly by this board president was to obtain a third opinion on the fair view bathroom policy that board members Dazinski MacArthur Castine and President Lawson were eager to institute. At that time, both Trun Law and the ACLU had submitted opinions that strongly advised against the policy in that it would violate the Michigan Constitution and likely incite a very expensive and prolonged lawsuit. The community was told the reason for reaching out to Coleman was to garner a third opinion. It remains quizzical why a public school board president would be seeking an opinion from an extremist law firm with an anti-public school agenda. But nonetheless, that's

035what transpired. Ultimately, APS signed a contract with Coleman. However, the public was never made aware of Coleman's opinion on the bathroom policy. I would like to thank board president Lawson for eventually responding to my email when I asked what Coleman's opinion was on the bathroom policy. But I was shocked, stunned that the response was, and I quote, "There has never been a formal opinion issued by Coleman on the Fairview bathroom policy." So, in a request for transparency from this board president, I'm asking two questions this evening that I'm hoping will be answered during the board comment time at the end of the meeting. Number the singular reason for reaching out to this particular father and son extremist group. Number two, if Coleman, what why would this be acceptable to this board and to this board

036president? Again, this is a matter of transparency and there are many community members who would appreciate forthright answers to these questions. >> It's come to my attention that for choosing a paving cont no quality asphalt is false. I worked in al asphalt paving for over five years and then in building trades for three decades, excuse me. So, I know a thing or two about asphalt paving. Each application requires a different mixture or recipe. It is not a bottle of ketchup from a grocery store shelf. It's mixed per application. The data you have to the data you do you have that Goodrich has lower quality asphalt? None. But if you want to continue with your charade and putting it in writing for Goodrich to read, tell them that the narrow minopic thinking, some members is more

037worthy of recall than a weak partisan game. US agnostic are playing by trying to recall these board members. Your political theater won't be rewarded. It will be a waste of time and taxpayer money. I encourage you to drop your partisan nonsense and work together for the betterment of the schools, the parents, and the children instead of abusing the the people that have been elected. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. If there's nobody else, we'll proceed with our agenda action items. Uh, first up is the consent agenda. >> I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda items as presented. >> Second from AJ. Uh very good. All right. Um let's have uh show hands uh if you approve the uh uh consent agenda items. Any opposed? Same sign. Motion carries. All right. Uh that

038brings us to additional business requiring board action. Uh the first item would be the uh Chromebook bid proposal. Could you hear that? That's a motion from AJ to uh approve approve the purchase of 320 Chromebooks from Vassid in the amount of $111,920. >> Second from Sarah. All right. discussion. >> If there's no discussion, let's proceed with a roll call vote on this item. >> Member Fritz, >> support. >> Member Minhartt, >> I. >> Member Costane. >> I. >> Member Hansen. >> Hi. >> Member Dazinski. Member MacArthur >> I. >> Member Lawson. >> I All right. Motion carries. Thank you. The next item uh is the -ate bid proposal. Um and uh I'll read the motion. The recommendation is a motion to approve the purchase of the Forinet Forigate 200G next generation firewall protection in five

039years of Foricare Premium and Forigard Unified Threat Protection Services in the amount of $19,427.89. 89 cents. >> I would offer that motion. >> Support. >> All right. Is there any discussion about this motion? >> Hearing none. Let's proceed with a roll call for that too. >> Member Minehart. >> I. >> Member Dazinski. >> Member Hansen. >> Hi. >> Member Costain. >> I. >> Member MacArthur. >> Hi. Member Fritz I. >> Member Lawson >> I. All right, that motion carries. Thank you. That brings us along to the 457B adoption which we discussed last time. >> I'll make a motion to adopt the proposed 457B retirement plan amendment as presented. >> Second. >> All right. Second from AJ. Any discussion? Seeing none, a show of hands for support. Any opposed? Same sign. All right, motion carried. Thank

040you. Uh, next item is the AMAPS lease agreement. We do have uh uh our representative uh uh um here if you want to ask him any questions. >> I I move to approve the sore room renovation project at Ella White School and the associated 10-year lease subject to the following conditions. >> Second. >> Not going to read all. >> All right. Uh, is there any discussion? >> Dave, we had asked about the 10-year thing, the length of that. >> And I talked to Justin about that. Um, you know, they're putting in about $16,000 into a building that they don't own. So, this gives them some security over the the term of the lease. You know, that they're putting they're investing 15 years uh and whittleled it down to 10, which seemed like appropriate uh length.

041Um and and I think Justin reiterated his preference for or desire for a 10-year lease as well. So it far exceeds those 10 years. Um and the program does too. >> Hi. >> Member Hansen. >> Hi. >> Member Costain. Member Fritz. I >> member mine minehart >> I >> member Lawson >> I Okay motion carries thank you all right uh 2026 2027 calendar planning um we had uh discussed a um uh an August 31st date but there had been also um in uh um I think in for some of us there was a question about uh what happens uh you know here we are at this point we're into uh uh having to make up days. I just sort of wanted to open the floor uh to uh uh discuss this issue about that date

042and perhaps superintendent has some remarks off right off the bat or >> Well, before I get to that, Simon, would you able to bump it up a few more degrees? >> Thank you. >> Either we're sitting right underneath the uh the window that's open or >> Thank you. Appreciate it. Uh so I don't have any you know prepared comments. Um I will say that this process we negotiate with the teachers union um on the calendar they've taken this to their uh executive team which approves it which then brings it back for us. I think we we talked briefly at the last meeting. There's lot of entities that we're coordinating with um from the college uh to NESA AMA as well. Um, so we all try to line our start dates. Uh, we being the districts

043of AMA. Um, so that it's easier to schedule, uh, more efficient to schedule because, uh, AMA have staff that go between multiple districts and, uh, as aligned we can be in in those calendar dates, uh, the better it is for them, uh, which then provides better services for students. uh you know talking about moving it up a week in August that would put our staff yet a week in advance of that and then our new teachers would be coming back I think the first full week of August um which you know is pretty early again when you're looking at regional districts what's going on across the state um they typically don't come back and start at that point. Um, on a a personal note, if if family time in summer is is, you know, the

044goal, uh, the week in August, uh, I think is more valuable than going in the week extra week into June. Um, I think it rained until July 1st, uh, this past year. Um, so that, you know, I've people have reached out and shared those those thoughts. Plus too with our employers um you know kids coming back. The state of Michigan I don't know how many years ago um put in that schools had to start after Labor Day um for the tourist industry u so that students could stay employed. So we'd be backing that up yet week beyond where we currently do. Could be a hardship for our employers. Did we uh do we know if uh there's a limit on how much how far back from Labor Day we're allowed to go? >> Well, you

045weren't able to find anything in looking at the law. It just says you have to be off uh if you start before Labor Day, you can't hold school the Friday of Labor Day weekend. >> Any other uh comments or questions from board members on this issue? the uh Yeah, go ahead. >> I I move we approve the 2627 calendar as presented at our workshop support. >> Okay. >> Can I put it out there? I >> Sarah circled it. Uh no opening day off. >> Is that correct? >> In November >> hunting day. >> Yes. >> Yeah, because it's a Sunday I think this year. >> Oh, okay. >> Are these uh the new teacher orientation days? Those are off. Then >> those green one days on this calendar, >> they are for new teachers and

046they're typically the week before staff whether the Thursday, Friday before the the full staff returns. Um, so it's a week in advance of the staff returning the teachers. >> No, October and March. >> Oh, I'm sorry. Say that again. >> No, October and March. Those green days in October and March, those are new teach orientation. So those are off >> the >> No, those are conferences. >> Yeah, >> those are conferences. >> Conferences like PD just for new teachers, beginning teachers, I would assume, right? Is that >> the 18th and the 19th? >> Yeah. >> October and March. They're >> here. Let me give you the rundown here. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So, you have a potential for three days. August 19th, 20th, and 21st is going to be new teacher orientation. and it

047just depends on what we need in the contract. Then we have opening week, which would be the o August 24th through 27th. We're required to have that Friday off. And then um I'm sorry, um that Friday would be off the 31st we would start. And then that would be the starting of schools August 31st, four days that week, four days the following week, and then start full five days September 14th. The green days you see in there, we have October 13th, I'm sorry, October 12th is going to be a PD day and then October 29th and 30th would be um parent teacher conferences with a half day on that Friday. Red days on your calendar are holidays that are off. And then the next PD day would be February 15th and then March 18th and

04819th would be parent teacher conferences again. So there's two green coded days. >> Yeah. >> There's new teacher which is green and then >> dark green is new teacher. >> New teacher orientation is only the very beginning of the school year. >> So parent teacher conferences in October and March. Did we have we have support on that motion, right, AJ? >> Yes. Now, my question is since uh I think some of this is not information that we received at our uh at our workshop because is that right? We were waiting for approval. Uh >> our it was in your email though this weekend, right? >> Yeah. >> Right. Right. But I mean this um um I guess I'm trying to clarify guys your uh your your motion and second. Was that for the August 31st

049start date or for the for all of the uh presentation? >> Just the start date. >> Okay. I would say just for clarity, let's go through the process. Um, if people would like to amend that motion um, just for clarity because I I feel like that was not entirely uh, plain at the beginning of that motion. All right, I'm going to try to I move to amend the motion to state voting for start date or first day of school as August 31st. >> I'll second that. >> Yes. So, we have a motion to amend the original motion to include the August 31st start date uh as the subject of the motion. Discussion on that amendment. Seeing none, all in favor of Sorry, Summer. All in favor of amending that motion, raise your hand. Okay. Any

050opposed? Same sign. Okay. So now that we have an amended motion to vote on, is there any further discussion on the amended motion? All right, seeing none, then uh show of hands uh for support of the motion to set the August 31st start date. Same sign. All right, motion carries. Thank you. All right, now I think we've got a clean slate to go on to the rest of the uh calendar. Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve the 2026 2027 Alpena Public Schools calendar as presented. Support. Is there any further discussion on this motion? >> No. All right. Then all in favor of uh the uh voting yes for the presented calendar, raise your hand. opposed. Same sign. Okay, we have one. Sarah, you were a yes. Monica was a no. Correct. Okay, thank

051you. >> Okay. Uh that brings us then to the safe, warm, dry bid, the summer 2026 package. uh including 06A General Trades administration recommendation is to a motion to award the bid from Clark Contracting Services in the amount of $721,400. >> Yes, >> Tony from Clark is here. If you have any questions or would like any uh questions answered or or any discussion from him, >> um I'll make that motion to award the bid. >> Come on up, Tony. >> Well, do we have a second? >> Second. >> Okay. Second from Sarah. Uh so we have some discussion. Um and would you like your discussion to take the form of a question for Tony? >> Yeah. >> Okay. Uh, I'm not real comfortable, Tony, with >> I'm not real comfortable, Tony, with uh giving a

052award to a company as closely associated with with the people that are overseeing the work. >> Okay. Um what's makes you uncomfortable? >> Your your in your clerk is inspecting Clark services that kind of a close close bond there. So I'm curious how are you going to maintain the integrity of the inspections? >> Yeah, I think that um you know they carry the same name as Clark. They're a subsidiary to Clark Construction Company. Um I feel like we would hold them to almost a higher standard um with them being associated with Clark Construction Company. I've been around the block a long time, Tony, in the construction world. That's that's not generally how it goes. So I'm and I guess my second question would be how closely or how um how is the subsidiary structured as

053far as leadership? >> Yeah. So Clark Contracting Services has its own management and operations separate from Clark Construction Company. We all report up to our CEO, COO, but their side of things are completely separate from Clark Construction Company. >> So, >> they have their own director of operations, >> but there's one CEO. Is that what you >> correct? >> So, the same CEO is of Clark and Clark services. There's just one step. >> Yeah. It branches off to Clark Construction Company, Clark Contracting Services. Wouldn't that be a really big conflict of interest? >> That that's kind of >> I mean if it's the same company doing the inspecting that's doing the work, you know what they're going to say? >> That's where I'm coming from, Monica. >> Yeah. I mean, you're saying inspect the work.

054We're managing it. I mean, inspection side of things. you have an architect, engineers, local municipalities, um are going to do the inspections, do the punch list, do quality control. Um at the end of the day, we are the management team representing the district. Um we're going to hold them to a high standard and um IDI, the architects, the local inspectors will have the same overview as they would any other contractor. I I can't say enough about Clark uh management for sure. Clark Construction has also done work for us and we're pleased with it. Um when you look back at holding our contractors accountable in the last three years, we have a very bad example of where that relationship has not been effective to the point where we had to part ways with our previous uh

055construction management firm. um they were not advocating for the district in our opinion. They were not doing their due diligence. Our staff was carrying a very heavy load in picking up the slack. Um all of that essentially went away when we moved to Clark Construction uh as a a construction management firm. Um you know, Simon, Mary and I have been very pleased uh with every aspect of of working with them. Um, and that's why we brought this recommendation forward. Um, I personally have full faith and confidence in Tony and his team to make sure that the work's done is done properly and uh that history has been it's come in under budget. >> Uh Tony, could you say a little more about uh the involvement of any third parties in this process? Um, so any

056other third parties? I mean, anything that gets, you know, IDI, the architect, engineers are separate entity, too. They're hired direct from the district. Um, we've worked in the last few years here on campuses throughout the district and great to work with. Never had any issues with them. Um, same thing the local municipalities, they do their own, you know, the building inspector, MEPs, mechanical, electrical, plumbing. um they'll do all their own inspections. So, >> further questions from the board? >> Well, I think that the uh the general public needs to know that we got two letters of recommendation. one from Mid Michigan and one from the superintendent of Alona schools who have used Clark and they highly recommended by their work and uh their professionalism. So >> let me be clear, I'm not criticizing Clark Management

057or Clark Construction Services, okay? What I am throwing in the in the air here is them together at this. Okay. Not the work that they have done for for the district. It's the working together that I'm questioning. >> Same here. I I'm not questioning their work or anything like that. I'm just questioning with the construction service and the clerk company, management company. closer to your mind. >> I I I same thing as AJ. I'm just questioning with with two different companies that are the same basically company is what I'm questioning, not how good a quality work they do. >> To to Sarah's uh with the letters of recommendation, I also did talk to Pam over at Hillman uh Community Schools. They used Clark Construction and Clark Construction Services uh in a similar fashion to this,

058and she had nothing but good things to say about them. I didn't get a letter from her, but I did talk to her on the phone for a good while. >> So, Clark services just because I'm not a construction person. When they finish it, let's just say it's plumbing or what else do we have on here? Roofing. Well, >> you'll you'll you're we'll have county inspectors coming in to inspect the work to make sure that it was done properly. Correct. Not your not Clark services. Correct. >> Correct. Yeah. The local building officials will give, you know, their rough inspection. They'll give a final inspection for occupancy. >> Right. So, Okay. Well, and but the Clark Construction, they're only doing the general trades. Then they're subract sub contracting, the roofing, the pling. I understand that. Yeah,

059>> I use the wrong terminology and or not the wrong argument perhaps. It's not the so much the inspecting. It's as you're working in a project and things come up, the management contractor often makes decisions that affect more than one contractor in the job. Let's say for just plain example, Clark Services is supposed to build a wall so that Reamer Plumbing can put the plumbing through it. If there is an issue in the in the design and there is a a battle between the two companies as to how something is going to go, which side is Clark going to side on? Are they going to side with the plumbing contractor or are they going to decide with Clark services who has to build the wall? That's the that's the predicament that they will possibly find

060themselves in. >> And I would suggest that we had many of those issues. Um I can recall a special meeting that we had to have up here in the high school uh over a roofing issue at Vesser under our previous construction management uh firm. um similar if I remember correctly there was you know that yeah it was before Simon um but quality of work was not where uh we wanted it uh and um the management firm wasn't holding the the contractor accountable um to the point where we had to bring them in um and and force them to do it. I I believe the board even voted on it. I think you might have been a part of that. Um, you know, so yeah, lots of things certainly can happen. I I think it's a

061a fair concern, but I would stand on the reputation of my experience, our experience with Clarks thus far. Um, the recommendations from the other organizations and school district, um, you know, that they would they would do the right thing. I've seen them advocate for Alpena public schools and our community in a way that did not occur under our previous construction management fund. >> Simon uh question. So looking at the whole bid package. So Clark Con um contracting services came in at 721,000 and then the next the second apparent low bid uh Graham Construction was 861,000. Have we? Is that correct? I'm looking at Okay. >> Yeah. I don't I don't have >> RAM at all before >> uh we have not. Okay. We we have used Clark Construction Services on prior projects though. >> Okay.

062>> With Wool Gas in our prior >> before we made the switch to Clark Construction Management. So yeah, our next our second bidder was was $40,000 higher than than CCS. >> Is that about 25% Tony? It was I don't have the other numbers in front of me, but >> I don't have the percentage. Yeah, but it's got to be pretty close to that. >> And then the third bidder, they weren't much over Graham. Correct. 20,000. >> 8.929. >> Correct. Yep. Pretty close. >> Okay. So number two and number three came in fairly close and number one is >> quite a ways off. We uh Graham's out of Bay City. Uh Denny's is here local. Yep. And we did post bid obviously Clark Contracting Services and Graham and they did have the complete scope. >> And

063and Clark was happy with their number. >> Yes. >> And they they are local. So that's operating a local office. >> Clark contracting. Mr. Nathaniel, has Clark Construction used these subcontractors before? >> Yes, we've used all the other subcontractors in the past. >> Good work with them. Okay. >> Is it working now? >> Okay. Uh Before we vote, I do want to say I do agree with AJ, but considering the big difference in money, that that's, you know, that will persuade me to go with Clark >> because the difference between the Clark bid and the Graham bid is 139,600. >> Correct. That is quite a large gap. So, >> and between the Denny's bid is 171,525. So, that's that's a lot of money. Okay. So, nothing further. Very robust discussion. Uh, Simon and Mat Tony,

064thank you both. Um, all right. Uh, if there isn't anything further, let's have a roll call. >> Member Hansen. >> I. >> Member Costain. >> Member MacArthur. No >> member Fritz. >> I member Minhart >> I. >> Member Dazinski. >> I. >> Member Lawson >> I. >> Motion carried. >> Thank you. That brings us to uh metal panels. >> Metal panels. Um, I'll make a motion to award the bid from Versatile Roofing Systems in the amount of $253,000. 250 253, $800. >> Support. >> Motion in support. Do we have any discussion on this item? Neither hearing nor seeing any discussion. Uh let's proceed with a roll call vote. >> Member Costain. >> Member MacArthur. >> I. >> Member Fritz. >> I. >> Member Minhart. >> I. >> Member Dazinski. >> I. >> Member Hansen. >>

065I. >> Member Lawson. >> I. Motion carries. Thank you. Uh that brings us to item number three, roofing. I move to award for roofing to versatile loose systems and 598,585 support. >> Okay, we have a motion support on the roofing motion. Any discussion? >> Can you guys just clarify just for people chiming in why there's two different >> bids here for the same company? >> Yeah, they're just uh two different bid packages. Any further discussion or questions? >> All right, hearing none. Let's proceed to the vote. >> Member MacArthur >> I. >> Member Fritz. >> I. >> Member Minehart. >> I. >> Member Dazinski. >> I. >> Member Hansen. >> Hi. >> Member Costain. >> Member Lawson. >> I. Motion carried. Uh that brings us to uh item 4 09A, resilient flooring. >> I'll make

066a motion to award the bid from Stansen Floor Covering and Furniture in the amount of $2,691. >> Second. Okay, we have a motion, a second. Any discussion on the flooring hearing? None. Let's proceed to the vote. >> Member Fritz. >> I. >> Member Minhartt. >> Hi. >> Member Dazinski. >> I. >> Member Hansen. >> Hi. >> Member Costain. >> Member MacArthur. >> I. >> Member Loss. >> I. That vote carries as well. Uh, moving along to painting. >> I move to award the bid from for uh Murray Painting Company in the amount of $13,900. Second. >> Okay, we have a motion and a second on the painting bid. Uh, any discussion? >> Hearing none. Let's do a roll call vote. >> Member Minehardt. >> I. >> Member Dinski. >> Hi. >> Member Hansen. >> Hi.

067>> Member Costain. >> Member MacArthur. >> Hi. >> Member Fritz. >> I. >> Member Lawson. I motion carries. Uh that brings us to 23A HVAC and plumbing. >> I move to award the bid to Rhyr plumbing in the amount of $454,517. >> Support. >> Right. We have a motion support on the HVAC and plumbing. Any discussion? Okay, seeing no uh hands going up or any hearing no discussion, let's proceed with our roll call vote. >> Member Dinski, >> hi. >> Member Hansen, >> hi. >> Member Costain. >> Member MacArthur, >> I. >> Member Fritz, >> I. Member Minehart, >> I. >> Member Lawson, >> I. Motion carries. All right. And our last uh item here in this section uh 26A electrical. >> I'll make a motion to award the bid from Northern Power Electric Service

068Incorporated in the amount of $31,595. >> Second. >> Okay, we have a motion and a second for the electrical bid. Any discussion? >> Hearing none, we'll proceed to the vote. >> Member Hansen. I >> member Costain. >> Member MacArthur. >> Hi, >> member Fritz. >> I >> member Reinhardt. >> Hi, >> member Dazinski. >> Hi, >> member Lawson. >> Hi. That motion carries as well. And that concludes the the big Bit Patrick package stuff. I thank you guys for your input. Appreciate it. Um, that brings us then to new business, human resources. Michelle, you're up. Take it away. We have some new staff. Rebecca Hansen is our relief bus driver. Lynn Bunting is a district float secretary. Reena Graham is a lead custodian. Brianna Cppel is instructional assistant. Andrew Hunter is a new custodian. Erica

069Woodbury is a food service helper. And Jessica Bouvet is an instructional assistant. We did have two resignations um and terminations. a couple um Stacy Cross, Carly Galves, Kathleen Thomas, Brian Gerard, and Patricia Laflur. And then we have some retirements. Robert Lzinski is a bus driver. He's been with us for 15 years. Julie Manning is our secretary at the high school. She's been here for 28 years. And Michelle Isley is our first grade teacher at Besser and she's been here for 32 years. So, thank you to our three staff that have been here for the such a great length of time. Thank you. Any uh questions for Michelle? >> Okay, thank you very much. Um so uh the move to approve the hiring of the professionals after the proper completion of certifications, testing and HR requirements.

070>> Second. >> Okay, we have a motion and uh second. Any discussion? Okay. Uh, hearing none. All in favor of the motion, raise your hand. All right. Any opposed? Same sign. Motion carried. Thank you. Okay. Uh, that brings us to charitable gifts. Sarah. Is it on? We're good. Okay. All right. We have a Great Lakes roof preservation generous gen generously donated pine and oak board and tape measured for the wood wood shopping woodworking shop valued at $1,200 to support the students of Thunder Bay Junior High School. Rachel Brown generously donated popcorn valued at $40 to support the students of Lincoln Elementary. TNL Trucking Incorporation made a generous monetary donation valued at $300 to support the students at of Lincoln Elementary. Dennis and Ruth Babau made a generous monetary donation valued at three $30 to support

071the students of ACES McKini Bento families in transition. The following generously donations were made to support the students of Lincoln Elementary's pancake breakfast and basket raffle. Teresa Honiker donated a Meyer gift card valued at $20. Blair Wit donated an Amazon gift card valued at $75. Alpena of M Walmart of Alpena donated a gift card valued at $100. Flicks go donated two gift cards valued at $20. Big B Coffee donated a gift basket valued at $30. PepsiCo of Alpena donated cans of pop valued at $100. Alpena General Store donated variet variet items from the store and a gift card valued at $25. North Country Candy and Gifts donated gift basket valued at $40. Courtyard Restaurant donated a gift certificate for a large pizza valued at $30. Besser Museum donated five tickets to the museum and planetarium

072valued at $75. Domino Pizza of Alpena donated two gift card certificates valued at $50. Bob's Wool Pen donated eight onehour arcade passes valued at $80. Lasting Expressions donated a gift certificate valued at $30. Laser Team Challenge donated two gift cards valued at $40. Emily Thatcher donated a cure egg coffee maker valued at $40. My recommendation is to accept the gifts listed above with gratitude and thank you to the donors in writing for their generous gifts. I'll make the motion support. >> All right, we have a motion in support to accept the gifts. Uh any discussion? >> Okay. Uh all in favor then of a motion raise your hand. same time. Uh opposed? No. Uh that's a unanimous vote for our gifts. Thank you all very much. Motion carried. Uh we'll proceed then uh to information

073on proposals. Uh we do have one letter uh to read at this time. to whom it may concern. My name is Addison Whisaw and I am a high school senior. Could you speak in high school? >> Could you speak up a little closer to the microphone? Maybe I'm having a little trouble hearing. >> I hope to become a special education teacher once I graduate. But some issues leave me and many others with questions about special education system in Michigan. I have firsthand experience with gaps and inequities in the special education system and I am writing this letter to advocate for better and stronger support of students with disabilities through full funding of the individuals with disabilities education act. IDEA when IDEA was initially passed the federal government promised to cover 40% of the excess cost

074of the educating students with disabilities. Excess cost include therapist, speech, physical and occupational assistive assisted technology such as communication devices and ramps, evaluation, screening fees and medical cost. In Alpena, we are currently given $859,299 per year to fund our special education resources. That is less than 15% of the promised 21 million. Michigan as a state is shorted over 700 million annually for IDEA funds. With 83 counties in Michigan, if 40% 1.4 4 billion were split equally. Each county would get over 716 million annually for special education alone. This is underfunding forces district to pull money from their general education budgets to provide services for their students with disabilities. This reduces resources for all students, general education and special education alike. The pull from the general budget places strain on educators and and support staff, but

075also impacts general education classrooms with larger class sizes, fewer programs, and limited supplies. Not only does this underfunding affect the school system, but it also affects the families of those students. Many students with disabilities require additional support such as added doctor's visit, therapy consultations, and some have even have to make adaptations to their home to better support their children. 41% of families with students with special needs make less than $100,000 a year. Raising a child with special needs often involves significant financial strain with cost estimates to be four times higher than those of a typ typical developing child. Uh potentially exceeding 2 million over a lifetime. Families frequent face a combination of high direct out-of- pocket expenses and indirect cost such as reduced income. This lack of funding also negatively impacts the students who need

076it most. >> And uh perhaps we could finish it next time. Thank you. >> So we we did receive one other letter from a community member, but we're not sure what the connection to Alpena Public Schools is. So I'll be reaching out to get a little more clarification before we read that. >> Thank you. Uh okay, information and or questions from board members. >> Uh we all had got an email about our photographer that we used. Did we look into that at all or were we going to consider what are we going to do with that? >> Yeah. So, uh first off, we don't have photos coming up until fall. So um we have time for uh clarity on the issue. Uh the um this stemmed from what I what I understand is it stemmed

077from a viral post um about uh the a person who uh has a connection in some way to Lifeouch. Um that person was named in the Epstein files. Um, and you know, I'm just reading what I read out there. This individual, I think it's Sean Black, I forget the the last name. He was the CEO of a capital uh venture firm that purchased Shutterfly, the company. Shutterfly is the parent company of Lifeouch, who we use for our school photos. He was appointed the CEO of that investment firm uh back in 2019 after Jeffrey Epstein had already been imprisoned. Um he I believe either resigned or was forced to resign um sometime shortly after that or it might be um somewhere here. So he was the CEO of a company that bought Shutterfly. Shutterfly owns Lifetouch.

078From what I've read from Lifetouch and everything else I can find, there's there's no real connection there. There were no breaches of security. Um, you know, the accusation in the um the viral post is that he had access to all the the photos. Um, nothing I have read suggests that that's actually true. Um, so, uh, the good news is, you know, we don't have photos coming up until the fall. Gives us a little more time to see what the actual facts are, um, and then we can make a decision. Um, I've got three students currently in APS that take pictures and, you know, I can't say that I'm all that concerned about this just because of the distance from Life Touch to Shutterfly to this investment firm and he wasn't there. um or he was

079removed at some point there. So >> yeah, I just I just Googled his name. Uh Leon Black >> and yeah, he owned uh Shutterfly, which owns Life Touch, but he has stepped down from that position in March of 2021 following scrutiny from being in the files. So >> and from what I read too, his dealings with Epstein were around real estate. Again, I can't verify that, but that's just what I >> And we have flagged this for uh uh Dave and I for future meetings. Uh so we will follow up if there's further information. Anything else? Um I will uh actually uh answer the question that was posed during public comment. Um the uh the reason the board has not uh solicited a a uh formal opinion from uh Coleman on that uh bathroom policy

080issue is just the board has not elected to move forward at this time yet with that issue. Uh at such time as as the board chooses to do that. Uh we may uh uh solicit a formal opinion from Coleman on the issue. But right now the uh individual asking the question is asking about something that could but does not yet exist. And really that's all there is to it. So I don't have anything else to say. Uh and then uh just uh because there has been some controversy here and there. Um just so the board knows um from the recall effort to the letters to the editor uh which I believe malign and misrepresent my character and conduct. Um I just want to say I forgive my detractors and I won't let bad feelings interfere

081with the service and leadership that I offer to this board. uh I forgive them and I'm praying for all the best for them and that's where my head is on that issue and I promise to continue to do my very best for this board. So thank you. Anybody else? Anything further? If not that uh concludes our agenda. If you look further you'll see uh we have advanced planning March 9th workshop meeting March 16th regular meeting. Those will be both in the uh Jerry Ledwick boardroom at uh on Gordon Road. uh oh and an annual board workshop on March 23rd. So you can peruse those items for yourselves. At this point I will declare our meeting adjourned and we'll move along to the the uh planning session. So thank you very much. >> For those of

082you that are not sitting at tables, you are more than welcome to uh sit at tables. And who knows, close proximity might warm things up a little bit. just say, >> "Yeah, sure." >> And board members, if you want to head to the tables, too. >> Yes. Go ahead and go to your assigned tables and we'll continue. >> It says at the top. Good. How are you? Thank you. I came in through that door. I don't want to go back. >> Don't want to get back in. >> All right. Thank you. Yeah, we are still working on the uh heat here. So, What's that? Uh, no. >> Hey, Eric Lawson. Beijing. Dr. Lawson. Dr. Lawson, we have this set up as a meeting. So, you have to officially open uh the meeting. Table two. >>

083All right, just grab a a table somewhere. Thanks for coming. Yeah, just to open the meeting. All right. Uh let's call our strategic planning meeting to uh to order and let's all rise for the pledge. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Okay, board members. Uh we uh have a motion here, a recommendation to approve the agenda. Motion. Okay. Uh great from great um motion from Anna and support from Sarah uh for the agenda. Um any discussion? Doesn't look like it. Okay. Okay. Board members, all in favor of uh approving the agenda, raise your hand. That's enough. Uh yeah. Uh okay. So motion motion does carry. Uh we have an

084approved agenda and I'll have a seat and uh let you all take it away. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you very much. >> Welcome. It is uh what what time is it? 7 I can't see 7:06. All right. We would never want to rush a process like this, but we also want to be conscientious of everyone's time. So, I just want to thank everyone for coming. This is the third annual strategic plan summit. If you were at the first one, which was this time of year uh on a Saturday back in 24, raise your hand. Excellent. It's great to see you all coming back. We made a commitment to you that day if you're a member that we would continue to bring you back in this process and communicate with you and hear from

085you uh as we move forward. So really appreciate you uh being a part of this uh for how many of you have been here for all three now? Excellent. Excellent. Appreciate that. Anyone here for the first time? All right, a couple of you second time. All right, excellent. So, we got a good good variety here. So, the idea is that uh back in the first uh strategic plan summit, we talked about uh the strengths and weaknesses of the district and uh from that uh the dis the group produced a list of uh focus areas basically for the administration and the board of education to work from. And over that following year, we worked uh to look at those priorities, strengths, weaknesses, compare it to what we were already doing in the district, what our uh

086recently back then adopted strategic plan had identified and really worked to mesh all of that uh and update it. And so it was officially adopted in August of uh not last year, the previous year. Uh the strategic plan was adopted. And so we've been working hard. If you remember, we had a lengthy uh update last year uh really focusing on just making everyone aware of everything that goes on in uh not only the schools but in the community tied to schools here. This year uh today is going to be a little bit more brief um because we've been uh coming to the board of education meetings and updating on uh progress in the strategic plan. Um, but this will be fairly informal. Uh, so if you have questions or comments, feel free to raise your

087hand. We do have a second microphone somewhere. Does anyone see us? Oh, we got it here. So, if any point you feel like singing or sharing comments, we can uh roam the room and get I'll just leave it here for now. But thanks. All right. So just an overview, our strategic plan has five goal areas. Academics and programs, uh, whole child development, personnel, uh, family and community partnerships, and stewardship. And it's built on a foundation of continuous improvement through data, communication, moni monitoring, and support. And it's a collaborative process. How many of you remember posing for these pictures? Uh, this was our first uh, session there and then last year's. And if we are uh also inclined, we'll grab another picture at the end of tonight uh to add to it. But really do appreciate

088you being part of this uh your input. We've been stressing through our uh each pillar, but really through our family and community partnership. We can't do this without our families and we can't do this without our partnership with our community. So, thank you for being a part of this. Uh it looked good on the slide. It's a little bit small, but uh the great news is a big big piece of progress is that the board adopted uh goals for uh four out of the five uh pillar areas. And uh so in academics and programs, these are long-term goals. So by 2030, uh looking at math and ELA, we are hoping to increase overall proficiency. So in math it's by 15 percentage points and in ELA it's 10 percentage points. And we had lengthy conversations about

089setting that baseline data will come from the 25 so last spring's assessment data uh and benchmark assessment. Uh we have an attendance goal again by 2030. It's to achieve and maintain a chronic absenteeism rate of 10% or less at each building. So, some of our buildings currently are less than 10%, some are greater than 10%. And this goal allows us to keep pushing towards getting all buildings and maintaining a lower than 10% uh chronic absenteeism rate. And chronic ab absenteeism is defined as 10% of the school year. Uh so about 18 days or more in a school year makes a student uh chronically absent. In our personnel, we have an employee engagement goal again by 2030 using the Raymond engagement survey. We're looking to increase the district's mean engagement score to the 50th percentile or

090higher. And we're using the baseline administration of it uh the 3.76 mean score. That was the 26th percentile. So, we're hoping to move from the 26th to the 50th uh by uh 2030. Uh and just I will come back to this I'm pretty sure in my later comments, but we will be administering the Raymond uh the full Q12 survey uh coming up here in the spring. Uh the board is currently working on developing a goal for family and community partnership. A lot of it's been focused on uh two-way communication with the community and just communicating with the community. Um so we're working on that. and then a fiscal and stewardship um fiscal health and transparency goal. So by the end of each fiscal year, the district will maintain an unassigned fund balance of at least

09115% of annual operating expenses. For every year that target is met, the board will increase the minimum fund balance requirement in the board policy by 1% progressing from the current 10% to a maximum of 15%. So currently in our board policy, it says the board will maintain a 10% fund balance. And this would allow us once we each year that we hit that 15%, we increase the policy language um with uh discussion from the board uh from 10% to 11% to 12% up to 15%. Again, we had lengthy conversations about how do we set that? um is it good if the board policy locks you into a higher uh fund balance? Um so after much discussion we came to what we think is a pretty reasonable and fiscally responsible uh goal here. Questions, comments, songs?

092No. Okay. So uh there are many things that we aren't going to talk about today. Uh we've been doing a lot of work um in each of these pillar areas. Uh some of that mo much of that work has come to the board meetings throughout the the school year. Um but the bulk of it is done in the classrooms and in our administrative team meetings, our building meetings and things like that. So really uh we just want to highlight some pieces here. Um and then we'll I'll refer to some other presentations. Um so academics and programs we have a goal statement just a overarching goal statement and so it is to deliver high quality instruction to maximize student achievement. So if you think about that board goal of increasing proficiency how are we going to

093do it? Well the primary driver is focusing on delivering high quality instruction. And I'll touch on a few things later, but I'm going to turn it over to uh Melissa Jerma and John Capless, our two of our secondary coaches. Uh Jenny Polley is the third and she's not able to join us here today. And they are going to talk to you about our secondary curriculum. >> Good evening. Uh, I'm John Capless and uh my uh the other instructional coach just texted to ask how how it went and I let her know that we hadn't started yet. So, just to get you going, we'll try to be brief. Um, this is year 26 for me in the district. And when I was hired, uh, they they the district purchased a book for us. It was The

094First Days of School by Harry and Rosemary Wong. And there was a line in there that that has stuck with me and I've used it with many people. And it's we're not hired to teach whatever we want. We're hired to teach the curriculum. Uh if we want to have a high quality instructional program, uh as our as our goal states, uh it starts with a solid curriculum. So, we're going to give you a quick update on where we're at with um work on the curriculum and it's a little bit of a process. So, typically, uh once curriculum documents are made, they're they're static. There might be some minor changes, edits made, or you might find that you have some gaps and you want to, you know, make some small revisions, but they're pretty static. Um,

095but we've we've we've undergone a essentially curriculum update process. In some cases, it's a rewrite. Um, and and that was really indicated by a couple of things. One is changes at the state level. Um, so for example, the state does update uh the state standards from time to time and our curriculum is derived from the state standards. Um the the most recent update was in uh in the core classes was in uh 2019. That was the social studies standards were updated and you know right after that the district had some serious challenges with uh well co so we were supposed to do that rewrite and that was somewhat put on hold. Uh the second thing that that happened is uh typically curriculum is done in phases. Curriculum work typically doesn't take place during the school

096day. It takes place after school. It takes place during the summer. Um and so it's often done in phases. Um we have had some serious challenges that have forced us to to do a lot of work simultaneously. So one is that we've had some new standards. Standards have been updated uh postcoid created some learning gaps for students. And so what we found was that the curriculum that we had in place, we had to adjust it a little bit because we had gaps that we had to try to fix. Uh there were students who were, you know, had some lost instruction and so that meant some lost skills or content that we had to insert in new places. So we had to do some work there. Uh we've had a lot of staff turnover. Um much

097our teaching staff has turned over dramatically. Um and and we have many new teachers. And then among those new teachers, we have several that came to education through alternative certification. Um they haven't been formally trained as teachers. So the curriculum documents are the foundation and it's really important that we get that right. uh the office of curriculum and instruction along with the building leaders Katie Lee and Romeo goes by one name just like sher you know um everybody knows him but they they they they have uh been very um insistent that we we get this right because it's important to to have good instruction. So we've got a quick timeline here for you. Um, one of the things that the district did was we invested in training for our staff, uh, for the reasons that

098I just described, new staff. Um, curriculum writing isn't necessarily something that you get a lot of time on in your education program. Um, we used, uh, teacher clarity, which is well known to be a great way to make sure that both teachers and students know what the goals are and how to get there. Um and so we invested time in training uh teachers in teacher clarity. The next year we tried to create space for teachers to do some of this work during the school day. So we we continued our teacher clarity training but we also had team time uh which was essentially half day uh increments two-hour increments where staff could get together to take a look at where students were, how our instruction was doing, how we could update it. And all of that

099was rooted in curriculum updates. Um, and then from there, uh, it was piloted with Thunder Bay Junior High students. And the next year, 2023 24, uh, team time shifted over to the high school as well, uh, with a with a real emphasis on updating our curriculum documents. Um, so in addition to the training and the work to update curriculum documents, we also started moving for those who were ahead. As as I said, this happens in phases. Uh so some teams were further ahead than others. Uh we also wanted to work on standard assessment. Standard assessment is important because it gives us a chance to not only tell how the students are doing with our curriculum but also if we have issues helps us sort of fine-tune what we can do to make sure that students

100are on track and improving. Um so we develop standard unit assessments, final exams, things like that. Uh that brings us to 2024-25. Team time continued. curriculum documents were well underway. Um, and standard assessment was being developed at at levels from Thunder Bay all the way through, you know, Kate, sorry, 6 through 12. Um, this work was in progress. If we could uh I'm in charge. There we go. Uh, sorry, was thinking someone else was running the show. Um, this is the timeline for 202526. And you can see that uh we have several items here. The first one is curriculum documents. We uh the building leaders uh with the blessing of the office of curriculum instruction um set an internal deadline of February 1st to have our core curriculum core classes the curriculum documents for our

101core classes completed. Um Dave was gracious enough and he knows how things go in schools to make sure he said he'd like to have that done by June, but we we wanted it to be done a little bit quicker. Um we wanted to make sure that there was space, you know, in case we got behind. So, we are on track to meet we have met that deadline across the board with a couple of exceptions. Economics was a uh a class that's uh you know just got completed. Our our civics and government is uh we have a new teacher so we wanted to have that new teacher have input and they're finishing that up but but we're on track to have everything done. Um, we're working on standard assessment ongoing as you can see, but we

102also had some investment from the district to make sure that our teachers were trained in assessment writing so that they could write high quality uh, summitive assessments. And so the first step was to send the instructional coach team to a conference so that we could make sure that our skills were up to up to date and that we could train the staff. Uh, and out of that we found an expert who we thought was fantastic and someone that Dave had worked with downstate. Um, and we brought her in last a couple weeks ago on on February, it was Friday the 13th, February 13th, the staff was trained uh by Ellen Vorenamp who's from the Michigan Assessment Consortium. Um, and these last dates, uh, essentially, uh, because subs are hard to come by right now, we

103weren't able to do team time this year. And so we've tried to squeeze in both the training and time for teachers to work during professional development time on creating high quality standard assessments. That work's ongoing. We will continue that at our next professional development. a little bit more training in writing good assessments and a little bit more work time so that the the teachers can apply what they've learned in the moment on assessments that are, you know, upcoming or for next year. So, that takes us to our curriculum documents. Um Melissa, you ready to take over? >> Okay. So, um, this is our curriculum template that we have, uh, for all of our subjects so far in the junior high and the high school. Um, some of our curriculum, uh, when we unpacked it initially

104in team time didn't look exactly like this. So, uh, this fall and, uh, during December and January, we've been transitioning some of that work into this template. Uh, so it would all look the same. So we have our subject area, our course and then the state standard and the resource listed um that's being used to teach that standard. The course description obviously will be just at the top of um that that template. Um then we break down the standard into learning intentions which are basically lessonsized chunks of that standard and then into success criteria which is the studentfriendly language that helps the students to reach that learning intention. Okay. Anything else did you want to say? Okay. Okay. So I just wanted to show you how our teachers unpack the standards. So what we do

105is we take the standard you can see at the top there that uh this one's about math and we highlight the verbs and the nouns. So the verbs are the skills that the students need to know and the nouns are the content um that they also need to know. So uh we take those verbs and those nouns and we break those into learning intentions. So those are like a progression of what they should know first and and how it builds. Okay, those are our lessonsized chunks. And then we take um those lessonsized chunks and we say, okay, what are those specific things that students need to know and be able to do to be successful in that learning intention? So those are your I can statements. Anything to add? This is the same slide without

106all of the underlining and highlighting. And this is what would be our published curriculum document when all is said and done. So, as I said, the curriculum is the foundation of the work that teachers do in classrooms every day. Um, it's important for the teachers to be very comfortable with the curriculum and the state standards. This is a roadmap that breaks it down into bite-sized chunks so that the the again the teachers know what they're doing daily and can create um powerful lessons and the students know what their goals are so that they can set goals, self assess, monitor their own learning progress, have that metacognition and and track their own progress. Um it the the success criteria are written in you know studentfriendly language and they they literally and can become the test questions.

107Can I do that? I can statements become can I state questions. Can I do this? Um this these curriculum documents help focus our instruction. Um they also help us identify priority standards uh so that if we do find that we have gaps or we h we have adjustments that need to be made, we can prioritize things. The priority standards are intended to make sure that students have knowledge that will help them later in the same course, next year in the next course. So, algebra, priority standards would be the things that we need in geometry the next year. Um, and we can make sure that those skills, things that were assessed on uh at the state level. Um, and then things that will help you, you know, later on in your education, skills that transfer to

108other courses. The office of curriculum and instruction along with the building leaders prioritize team time. They prioritize training. They prioritize this curriculum work. Um, and you know, again, we're on track to to reach our goals. Dave wanted us to mention just a little bit about the uh standard assessment and what we've been training to do. Um this slide isn't our slide. This is a slide that we borrowed from the presenter. Um but it essentially shows you the types of questions that teachers are asked about their tests. Are you aligned with the state standards and and are you assessing things that match the curriculum, what we're supposed to be teaching? Uh do they do your test questions match the appropriate levels of cognitive demand? Are there are they balanced? And do we have the the equal?

109Like if we spend three days teaching something and one day teaching another, is that correctly represented and balanced on the test? Um, and are there enough assessment items to help us determine mastery? Did the students learn what they were supposed to learn? Just because I taught it doesn't mean the students learned it. We have to confirm that. And if they didn't learn it, we have to we have to adjust and maybe retach. Okay. So that brings us to the activity that the presenter Ellen Voramp did. Um staff essentially brought in a test that was meaningful or important to them that they wanted to work on. They broke it down into standards. They took a look at the specific test items. Were they knowledge? Were they reasoning? Were they skills-based items? Were they performance-based items if

110you're an art teacher or a music teacher? Um and and did they have the appropriate depth of knowledge? um and were they balanced again based on what the priorities are and how much time we spend in instruction. So all of this work is ongoing. Um we're very pleased to say that we feel that this this work um both teacher clarity and curriculum work is going to, you know, lead us toward these goals in the strategic plan and help our students perform better on standardized tests and be more prepared for whatever they want to do after they leave us here um at Alpena Public Schools. So do you want us to take questions or are we good? Well, sure. Let's uh apply some lessons that we've learned working with our administrative team. If you would at

111your table share something that was interesting or, you know, caused you questions or something, just take a moment and talk about what they shared and then we'll have you share out anyone who's willing uh with the whole group and we'll get the microphone to you. Okay. I didn't time myself. How did we do? Okay, good. I didn't time it either. >> Cover everything you needed. Okay, great. couple of That's right. All right. Is there anyone that would like to share or as they say elevate it to the whole group? And if you do, please wait so we get the microphone. That way we have it on the uh recording here. That sounded like a threat. I apologize. Just saying if you talk without the microphone, people watching can't hear. >> I said that I was

112really impressed. I was impressed by several elements of this, but one of the things that I thought was really powerful is to have the teachers in that training to have the teachers bring in an existing test that they were using. And Romeo explained that in fact they went through and actually took the the tests apart piece by piece and then they could scrutinize, okay, this is unbalanced or maybe this needs to be here or maybe it's uh not at a level of knowledge we're not going deep enough. So that was really interesting and I thought valuable. >> My question was more like how is the grade derived? If you're really after mastery, can you really mastery graded like ABC? Is there any conversation about going towards competency? >> The Yes, we've dabbled in the competency

113based grading. uh before I got here. Uh it's been going on for a long time. So you want to add anything to that? Sure. And it I'm just moving away from the mic on the the chance that we'll create feedback. Um, we also simultaneously uh while we're doing the the work with teacher clarity and curriculum, we've also been looking at grades uh and how we generate grades, how we ensure that they're fair and consistent. Um, obviously, you know, you can have multiple different US history teachers here at the high school. Are we are we all presenting the same material? are we creating what are often referred to as common assessments or standard assessments so that we're checking um and and and then part of what Ellen trains the staff to do and what will happen

114in March is what types of questions are you asking so do we have you know multiple choice tests do we have pre-response questions document-based questions do we have performance tasks that show mastery and are they backed by a rubric that's built you know from the learning intentions or more specifically the success criteria area that that would create those competencies. Here in CTE at uh at the high school, um most of the instruction is assessed through specific competencies. Anyone else have something they'd like to share? All right. Well, thank you, John and Melissa. You are free to go somewhere warm. Appreciate you. Um I and I do want to uh jump ahead to one of my slides here. Um that way I don't have to do it when I get to it later. When they talk

115about we've had a turnover in our staff, this is what we're talking about. In 2021, uh, we retired 34 employees that collectively had 897 years of experience. The highest was 45. The average is 26 years in that group. That's a massive amount of institutional knowledge, expert, expertise, experience, and everything that retired. And it was COVID that pushed many of them to retire at that point. Following year you see uh 685 years 27 employees with an average year uh experience of 25. So the interesting thing is the average years of experience through all of these years is pretty consistent and uh went up to 29 years as an average in this most recent. But each year we took a significant chunk of our experienced uh staff that retired uh and were replacing them with um you

116know new teachers. many of them are not only new teachers but new to the field of teaching um which I think they they mentioned alternative pathways and those sorts of things but I always come back to that 897 years of experience retired uh in 21 and then we're still seeing significant uh retirement going there. Nice thing though is a lot of our teachers or many of them I think we have about 30ome uh staff that have retired and have now come back to work for us. Tom stoppa uh did you hear that? >> Yeah. um you know that so it's wonderful that they come back but it just to illustrate that point of you know we have flipped from uh you know a very seasoned experienced staff to a very new um staff. Okay. So

117then continuing on into um the uh academics and programs I will turn it over to Stacy Moors. All right. Hello. Um, I'm just going to give you a quick update on our instructional coaching model. Um, John and Melissa just gave us some great examples of the super important work that our instructional coaches do every day and they're just so valuable. And in addition to that they provide direct support to our teachers through coaching cycles. Um so with our strategic plan in academics and programs um we are charged to develop a instructional coaching model. And so this year we piloted um a student centered coaching model. So that means we focus more on what we want the students to do, how we want their behavior to grow and um their learning to grow rather than um

118focusing on the teacher. Um obviously the the coach and the teacher work together um they co-plan, there's some modeling um and there's lots of collaboration um but we're looking at student data and how we want the students to learn and grow as the focus of these um cycles. So, we're looking forward to having full implement full implementation in the fall. Um, and then we're also looking to grow our capacity and recruiting u more instructional coach staffing. Um, so we're um striving for four secondary instructional coaches and six elementary for the fall. Um, and then going beyond academics and programs, we are also looking into whole child whole child development with our instructional coaching model. Um so this year um we were able to have um some whole child consultants join our team. So we have

119two special education consultants. We have one behavior consultant who's over there at table one. Um and we still have an opening uh to recruit hopefully another consultant in that area. And then we have an early intervening consultant who is a early childhood specialist. And so, um, these folks, um, while they do support academics and programs, their lens is a little bit wider looking at whole child development and really help teachers and teams support complex student needs. So, this could be um, students who have uh, disabilities or students who just have some def deficits with their social emotional growth. Um so um they help coach um teachers and teams in implementing intervention plans um and they provide a lot of comprehensive professional development. So um we're happy to expand our coaching uh team to with the

120consultants to support our whole child development pillar and that's really helped support a progress in our strategic plan in those areas. at the table. All right. Don't want to cut off your conversations. Is there anything that anyone would like to share with the whole group? Sounds like there's some good conversations going on there. I do have to make an announcement to our uh TV audience. We are having battery issues, so we may disappear, but we will all still be here. All right. uh instructional coaching is is critical to what we do. Um and uh you know, as long as I'm superintendent and we have the funding, uh we're going to protect that because of so much of what we just talked about here. Um they are invaluable. Um all we hear is positive feedback from

121them. Uh same with the behavioral coaches and all of that. So um just something we are truly committed to and we are seeing great results coming out of it. Moving on to whole child development uh in our January 12th board meeting uh we went into implementation fidelity visits uh in great detail and then also what we're doing around synergy and behavior data. Those are two main stays of the whole child um uh pillar and um implementation fidelity visits. uh focus on teacher clarity but also um the uh the behavior um and so I'll talk about that in just a second but uh synergy too uh that been a long and if you want to hear all about it you can go back to the January 12th board meeting where we talked about it um it's

122it's been a process to get everyone on board uh aligned with using the same uh coding and verbiage in synergy so that when we pull data from any building in the district around behavior. Um it's accurate and consistent uh data. So a lot of behind the-scenes work there that will let us then make better behav decisions based on our behavior data. Uh so we went into it in in a lot more detail. So I'm going to move on quickly but uh so the other part because at that meeting too we went through the teacher clarity uh visits in great detail. Uh the other part of that is the positive behavior interventions and support. Uh and so when we go into the classroom, uh we've been committing to this process. Uh and um we have 10

123teams of four people. There's administrators, teachers, uh consultants that are on these teams and they go into the classroom and they observe uh looking at teacher clarity for the learning intentions, success criteria, relevance, but also uh looking at the relationships. So, uh, building relationships is one thing we look at, and that's fostering trust and connection through meaningful interactions. And the other piece of that is rules, routines, and procedures. We're looking for consistent structures that guide student behavior and classroom flow. I'm pretty proud of this data point. 522 individual visits to classrooms this year, uh, documented. And each one of those visits was in a group of people that went into classrooms two to three times in that section and then came out and had conversations about instruction. And what we're really focusing on there is,

124you know, creating that shared vision, shared understanding, shared interpretation of what good instruction looks like in a classroom. Because when we're all uh interpreting in the same way, that's where the real power comes in. uh because it means we know we're all on the same page. So 522 individual visits. It's administrators, teachers, and consultants going into our classrooms. And the format is that four people walk in, they record four individual responses and then they talk together to create a collaborative um response for that visit. So you can see there are 149 collaborative visits um visit data points and so we're now at the point in this process this year where we can start to look at the building level and start to you know take a look at the data. We've been collecting baseline data

125u because we have around 25 to 30 visits in each building and that's starting to give us enough data that we can start to see trends and we can have conversations around how we are interpreting the tool what we're seeing in the classrooms. So that's the next step out of that. Um we have three uh um rubric categories uh initial implement uh up to full implementation. And so our gold standard that we're going for is with all of these we're at 100% full implementation every classroom every day. But if you go back to our our strategic plan, it's built on a foundation of continuous improvement. Gold standard is we want this happening every day, every classroom. We're not there yet. We may never get to that point, but that's what we're striving for. So out

126of these 522 uh individual visits combined with the collaborative uh we were at 48.3% full implementation for both building relationships and rules, routines and procedures. That's just a slice of the data that we've collected. Again, there are so many conversations that have been going on in each visit. uh but then at AD staff and our staff meetings we're starting to have those conversations looking at the broader data here to identify trends and then uh take action in response to them. So 48.3 we want to get to 100% um and then the next step is what do we do you know how can we support our staff in getting to that 100%. This is just a breakdown. You can see these are the collaborative responses. So, you're starting to have enough where you can start to,

127you know, see some trends in that data and just aces is obviously very small and uh it's hard to keep coming back into uh the same classroom there. So, one more time, go ahead and have a conversation at your table. What was interesting, surprising questions you have? Hold steady at 4%. Oh no. Did we drop? >> I've been informed that we are at 1% on the video. So, anything anyone like to share with the whole group? Okay. So again, the next steps here are as you look at this, we're starting to have enough data points at each building where their staff can start looking at this information and start to identify trends and start to identify possible responses to the data. Um, we've been holding off on this um because you really can't do much

128with, you know, even at this with 19 visits. We want more visits in the building. Um, because, you know, those 19 visits could be spread across a ELA classroom, a math classroom, social studies, science. Um, so it'd be great to have 19 in each content area. And just so everyone knows, that's as low as we go as far as identifying the visits. It doesn't go to a teacher. It goes to a content level and a building. That's as that's as close as we identify the data because it's not evaluative. It's about looking at how we're implementing this thing. But once we get more and more data, then we can have a little more confidence in what we're seeing and we'll even take a look at is the tool uh designed properly and is it doing

129what we need it to do. Uh but I was steadfast that we had to have more data points before we start talking about these things. All right. So, personnel is our next one and our goal statement is come on up, Michelle. Attract, recruit, retain, and develop highly qualified staff. And I will turn it over to Michelle Vio. >> I get to talk about a privilege that I got to have just recently with our 27L funding. And for those of you that don't know, Mary can explain all the funding and the buckets and all that kind of stuff, but this was money that we got as a district for school year um for this school year. And we had to work together as a team with all five of our unions and our leadership team in

130order to just figure out what we were going to do with this money and how we were going to deal with that. And I just have to say that as we work through this, I could not have been happier, proud to say that we did a great job doing this with all five of our unions. This was something that I don't think we could have done a few years ago as a district and this year we absolutely conquered it and did so well doing it. confidentiality in this was at the utmost because if we left that meeting without a letter of agreement signed then we could not have moved forward because everybody would have been talking about things. The other part of that is is we signed that letter of agreement and everyone kept it

131confidential until we could deal with a few things that we needed to deal with and then roll it rolled it all out as a team so everyone was aware of everything. That doesn't happen every day in a district. I was lucky enough to go to a meeting where there was other people talking about negotiations and what they were going to do and they had unions fighting over this money and who was going to get how much and what was going to happen. Um, and they felt that, you know, certain people didn't deserve part of this. And that was not what happened with our team. Our team immediately came together and decided that it was a unanimous agreement that we were all going to get the same amount of money regardless of whether or not you

132were an administrator or um any of the five unions at did not matter your level. everyone was getting an equal amount. The other thing that came forward too is the district decided that we were not going to take any money out of that money to pay for any of the employer required funds because we have to take out pension and all those other different things. Um and Mary was thankful enough to come up with a different solution to so that we did not back that money back out of that. So that meant that employees got more money out of that 27 L funding that we're going to talk about here. That being said, deciding to spread it all equally was $524,000 approximately that we got as a district. So, we are going to take the

133methodology of dividing it by our May 29th payroll and just dividing it by the total number of employees on payroll at that point in time. We guarantee that staff hired prior to January 19th is going to receive at least $1,000 if they work full-time and 500 if they work under 30 hours. And then we prrated it for those that were only here after second semester to 500 and 250. Depending upon the number of staff that we have, we may have that number go up. So it might be a little bit more than that, but as a minimum, we will make sure that everyone receives these amounts. What we're going to do is use a calculation date of June 10th and notify the unions what that dollar amount looks like based upon the number of employees.

134Our payment date then would be the last day of school. I'm sorry, the last day of school is the calculation date and then our payment date would be the last payroll in the school year. So June 26th and that we are all agreed that everyone has to be employed as of the last day of school. So this prevents anyone taking the money and then resigning. It prevents um all staff issues, turnovers, all of those different types of things. I will say that there were other districts that said we're going to give it spring break or we're going to give it mid year. we're just we just want to hand this money out and be done. And that is not what any of our unions agreed to. And they all understood that this should be something

135that's a benefit to all staff and it should be coming over the summer for everyone so that if you don't get a paycheck over the summer, you have some money coming to you over the summertime as well. So there was a lot of thought that went into this and again the unions all working together was absolutely amazing. So, um, I get to talk about the culture of this and then Dave's going to go a little bit further into the Raymond survey and then how this is going to coordinate with that a little bit >> amongst yourselves and maybe this time we can have someone raise a comment. Do we want to just jump right to it? Does anyone have a question or comment or song? still live. Yes, we are. Okay, fourth times a charm.

136Anyone have anything they'd like to share with the whole group? Tom >> microphone in >> I think that's very important that uh there was this money available because uh I don't think a lot of people realize the work that these people do and all five unions because it takes you know it's just not the uh teachers administrators I mean they're these people that are working in the the aids and bus drivers and custodians and those people are all working very hard very hard and a small bonus is uh uh you know they're going to they're going to appreciate that I believe. >> I agree. Thanks for sharing. >> All right. Uh so then other part of our personnel as we talked about our goal is uh raising the engagement score. Um, so just quickly, Raymond

137does an employee engagement survey. They call it the Q12. It has 12 questions that have been vetted and administered to over six million uh individuals at organizations of every kind. So big three to tech companies to uh they're growing in public schools um and public sectors and things like that. Um and from those 12 they can uh come up assess what they have as their definition of engagement which is a state in which people employees feel passionate about their jobs and are committed to the organization and put discretionary effort into their work. So, we administered that two years ago, did the Q12 and then we administered their pulse survey last uh spring uh I think shortly after the ice storm and um then we just signed a board the board signed a contract with them

138for four years. Um that'll allow us to do a Q12 this year, uh a pulse survey next year, Q12 the following s year, and then finish off uh in 2030 with a uh pulse survey. uh and I shared this with you. Uh long pathway towards um you know as we saw this big turnover and we were seeing staff morale or hearing of staff morale issues um and what could we do to u you know make employees feel valued and appreciated. Um we tried a few things our own Google survey for staff morale but ultimately um landed on the uh Raymond survey um because it was such a trusted tool. Um our first administration two years ago, the engagement opportunities were intentional relationship building with leadership, more in consistent targeted communication, regular and widescale recognition, trust

139building, management support, and then more time with leaders. And uh June 30th uh if you want to go back and watch our uh board meeting, we talked about the pulse surveys uh results at that one. I didn't get the date when we originally went over this, but it is at one of our board meetings. So working from this, our building leaders and department leaders all shared um we shared the data with all of as many of our employees. We didn't have mandatory meetings, but we invited everyone in to come here at their department or their building or wherever it was, what the results were tied to that. And then the administrators and directors then asked the question, what can we do as a staff to improve upon this data? And so we had um goals

140and action steps that were implemented implemented LA two years ago and then we repeated the process uh following the um the pulse survey. And so um same thing with central office administration. We did this uh and from that back in 2425 this communication this appreciation res recognition uh theme uh we did a book study on the five languages of appreciation in the workplace. Um and so if you've read the five languages of love I think that's what it's called. Same authors they just applied it for uh to the workplace. And it was really interesting just to like have that aha moment of number one, you appreciate people the way you typically want to be appreciated. And if you do that and the person you're trying to appreciate is not that type of person for appreciation,

141you may as well not do anything because they're not receiving that appreciation. So, it's really just an interesting self-reflection piece for our administrative team. And we use that too as we talked through the Raymond results about appreciation, recognition and those sorts of things. Now there's no way you can you know remember every single person's um you know language of appreciation but just that understanding of recognizing you know um food is well that's not an official one but that's my language of appreciation and maybe someone else isn't. So as I think I'll bring donuts to make everyone feel wonderful. Some really don't like donuts and they'd rather a cash or just a slap on the back or something. Um, but that helped our administrative team not only interact with each other but also then it bleeds

142down into them working with their staff. From that uh we then moved into the healings and associates uh executive leadership coaching and that is for our administrative team and that is um uh has anyone done that the healings and associates it's the archetypes and the um uh I forget what the other profiles called but it's really again it's a self-reflective piece but the idea is once you know who uh is sitting in your cabinet or your building staff and that uh it helps to improve the communications. And so our goals around this were to cultivate a culture of appreciation by consistently recognizing and supporting students and colleagues through words, time, actions, gestures, and presence. And that comes both from Raymond and the five languages of appreciation in the workplace. And physical touch is one of

143those languages. They were very careful to make it appropriate. uh they really said it's not appropriate for the workplace but a hearty handshake or a slap on the back. So if you're thinking like what kind of book did we read they adjusted appropriately for the workplace archetypes comes from the healings and associates works um and it's so it represents patterns of behavior and traits that leaders embody so this helps leaders understand their natural style strengths and areas of focus. Do I share this or not? I don't know. Anyway, so they have all sorts of different archetypes and you you take an assessment and then they rank your type of architect and my top archetype type archetype was a jester. I like to find humor in things and and so forth. So they had me at

144jester. I I agreed. But again, it really is interesting. and our administrative team talks about what we are and and then it's like you know if you're interacting with someone who is the opposite of who you are we're talking about how you communicate and we see this I see this daily where I send out a message I'm also an intuitive person which is big ideas not a lot of details um and our administrative team is heavily on the detail side so that's why I get these really bizarre looks at me every time I talk in cabinet because they don't know what I'm talking about. They just want me to give them details and I'm just up here saying, "Wouldn't it be great if we did this or that or you know u so you just

145it really changes the way we're interacting with each other. I'm seeing a lot of blank faces so I must be not communicating with you jester." Yeah. But uh so you have these multiple ways and the whole idea behind this is um how do we communicate effectively again around recognition, appreciation but also trust building and uh being an effective leadership team. Then of course we take these learnings out to uh you know their staff and and beyond. Uh we've woven in the strategic plan and professional development in these coaching sessions. We do have one dedicated uh coach, Ben, uh who is very good about going through our strategic plan um looking through our feedback working. We each administrator works as a one-on-one session with them and then we do two 4hour sessions with him as a

146whole group where we apply what we've worked on individually uh and then moving the group forward. And then the administrators really do have free reign in their individual time. and they can work on whatever it is they want to work on with the the coach. And the idea, like I said, is establishing a shared language and learning for our administrative team. The better we communicate, the more aligned our communication is, the better it is for us as a team, which then makes its way down to the teachers, the the support staff, and ultimately the students. It's that time again. Talk amongst yourselves. Choose your words carefully. >> What? All right, I will ask now that people have seen it's not that difficult to share with the whole group. Anybody have anything they want to share

147with the whole group? going once gone. All right. So then our last two areas um two uh goal areas are family and community partnership and stewardship. And I'm putting them together um for tonight's purpose. Uh but they really are all of them are all the pillars are so intertwined. Um but in particular what I'm going to talk about here um they're particularly connected. So uh the goal area or goal statement in family and community partnership is to build and strengthen a trusting relationship with families and partners. And then in stewardship it's to advance and maintain a long-term sustainability plan. So, uh really again we talk about both community and family partnership and uh maintaining uh a long-term plan. Uh most recently was the reimagine our future together. Um we did that back in November, I

148believe. Uh the survey is still on the website and it is still open. Uh so we ask that you um if you haven't already, please go and uh provide us some feedback there. Well, that one looked really good on my computer close up to me. Uh, this is just breaking down the different phases of the King Scott um contract and there's basically a couple of phases and really we realize that we're in multiple phases at one time. um they still have a long way to go with work and they are planning to come back sometime before spring break which is hard to believe is only about three or four weeks away at this point to have another community forum. Um and so this is what we've gathered already. We met with them in January as

149an administrative team to go over uh the survey results that we had so far. So you can see we had 248 responses at that point and uh red and green uh red is what we heard as far as support and so that was equity equity and access across geography. So um and these are statements from that survey. All students should have similar access to high quality of facilities. Strong support in the results maintaining rural schools even matters even with low number. Oh, sorry. I thought I was getting the uh maintaining rural schools matters even with low enrollment. Strong support renovation over and stewardship over new construction. So, they want to use our buildings versus building new. Uh and then there was strong support for repurposing underused buildings uh for the community benefit. And then strong

150support for developmentally appropriate middle school experience. Uh the respondents supported a dedicated middle school 6 through 8 and there was support for K6 schools. Uh what we heard concerns and opposition transportation increases are not viable. So the statement was longer bus riders are longer bus rides are acceptable if they result in better programs and facilities. That was strongly res rejected in the results and transportation is already a stress point for APS families. And then largecale uh reconfiguration is not supported. Uh opposition to 712 campuses, the K2 versus 35 split elementary models and a district 5 through six intermediates intermediate schools. Uh so that's what we've gathered so far. So the next idea is that we come back to the community. um there we met again as an administrative team to go through this and do

151some more activities uh in January and then um we will come back to the community with an updated uh scenarios or plan or ideas or whatever it is uh going forward. So again, if you haven't filled out the survey, please do uh because we are uh using this uh it's part of our pillar of family and community partnerships. Um then uh so we have a couple of other things that are again in stewardship and in family and uh community partnerships. So, I think in January, I can't remember what meeting, we talked about, the safe routes to school survey. And so, that is coming in um the building principles updates this week. It's going out to parents and then they'll do surveys with students and a little tally activity during the week um to see how

152uh people uh get to school, to and from school. Uh so, be on the lookout for that. Um the safe routes to school grant program is basically uh we can gather this information and then we can do a neighborhood study of where are the improvements that we can make to getting to and from our buildings. Um if you walk, if you bike, or if you drive, what can we do to improve it? So maybe it is um sidewalks on Third Street from Junior High back to the subdivisions there. uh crosswalks, dedicated stop sign or um traffic lights on US 23 north and south in front of Hins and Sandborn. Um Lincoln we've talked about there's just a maze of sidewalks or missing sidewalks and no crosswork patterns. That's the kind of stuff that are available

153through this safe routes to school grant, but we have a lot of community work to do ahead of time, gathering survey data and then actually walking the streets and working with the uh city and township and uh road commission. And that's where those partnerships come in. Uh we've already had started conversations with them about those projects. And then we have also our enhancement project survey. Um and that is things that we would like to enhance or improve in the school but they aren't necessary to operate the school. So, uh, wait room, uh, playground equipment, um, and I was I came prepared with a list of other stuff, but just projects again that, uh, we want to would make it even a better, uh, learning environment, but not necessarily, uh, required in order to, uh, offer,

154you know, an education for our students. So, we have that list. Summer's been working very hard. Thank you. Um, then we're going to push this out to the the community this week and it'll essentially have for each building, it'll have a separate link and you go in and you can see what all these projects were uh that were identified. Um, and then you just rank them as far as what priority you feel uh those are. You're welcome to do every single one, but we would ask that if you have students at a particular building, you start there um because we want as vested an interest in uh this as possible. But those will be uh coming out to this week. So, uh stay tuned. and then what we would do with all of that. Uh

155that'll help us kind of start to put together plans of which projects do we want to start moving forward with? Put some money behind and then really uh we have a lot of donors that are interested in supporting the district. But the first question they always ask is how much is the district contributing to this project? And this will give us a a a blueprint to where we can start talking about um you know what money we might be able to was I clear enough might be able to contribute to these projects. And then just this is the last slide folks. So um again with our partnership CTE is having their expo uh is it Wednesday the 25th? Um, I highly encourage you to spread the word about this. Um, this is an amazing event.

156It's a partnership between the business community and our school district and you get a chance to see everything that CTE does, but also how it ties to future careers and the people that are in those careers are actually here um to to meet with you and and talk about uh, you know, your pathway from as early as um, you know, uh, well, nine or 10th grade. But uh we're hoping to move it down into the junior high in the coming years here too. Um but we we meet with the community on a regular basis. There's a CTE advisory committee where business leaders come in. They see what we're doing and they talk about the skills and knowledge and certifications that they need in their employees and how can we help support that that process um

157in the courses that we offer. So, I would highly encourage you to join us on Wednesday 5 to 6:30 p.m. uh down in the CTE wing and please tell everyone about it. Yes, Anna. Yeah, thank you. Open house. You can come and go as you please. So, with that, that is our strategic plan update. Uh I didn't give a chance to talk about the last ones. Would you like to talk about the last ones? I was just noticing a pattern that uh they're having good conversation, but I think that we're probably in pretty good place and we still have battery life. So, if there's if there's any comments or questions that you'd like to share, now is the time. Yeah. when considering like congregating the schools and like consolidating them, how would that decrease busing

158prices? because that was mentioned in like the letters that are published like not the letters but like the um news articles on the Alpena schools website with the survey and it mentions the cost of transportation but how would consolidating schools decrease that? >> I I don't think it would. You know, the hope was that it would and King Scott really did devote a tremendous amount of time and energy to studying our transportation dilemma. Um and ultimately they came away with any scenarios that we talked about would actually exacerbate the the transportation issue. So our greatest challenge is our geography. I this is kind of just like a throwout question. Is there any way to like divide the district and break it in two? >> Sure. >> I don't know if like how that works. >>

159Yeah. Um it would be ch I mean there's always a way to do something but it would be challenging um to so like you have a Alpena High School East and high Alpena High School West. U yeah uh you would have to build a new high school which would be extremely expensive. Um then people get really territorial as we learned from our scenarios over where they go to school and and all of that. Um but one of the options and I'm I am not talking about this as a reality but when you look at consolidation of districts across you know between two districts um that's kind of what you're talking about. I live seven miles from Posen High School and I'm in Alpena schools. Uh, that would be a transportation solution if I only had

160to go seven miles versus 20 into town or how many, Simon? 17 into town. He and I got in an argument. But so, yeah, there there are those kind of options, but that's not something Alpena Public Schools could do on its own. The state would be involved and um we're not there yet. So, >> thank you. questions. All right. Anything else for the good of the order? Truly appreciate you all coming, especially if you've been here three years. And hopefully if you're here your first time or second year, you'll come back again next year because we'll do it the same time and we'll have a lot of data at that point because really we've been building the the steps and the action plans and everything and gathering that baseline data we've been talking about. So

161we will close. I'll let Dr. Lawson close out our official board meeting. And just to be sure, um, is there any public comment? I would not want to be accused of failing to give you an opportunity because there might have been some confusion over just comments and questions about the discussion. Any public comment? All right. Seeing none, then uh, having exhausted our agenda, I will just refer you again to the advanced planning and I will declare our meeting adjourned. Thank you all so much for your participation for coming tonight.