001started here good evening everyone this is a regular meeting of the ferndale board of education being held monday february 22nd 2021 it's being held in accordance with the michigan department of health and human services orders allowing meetings to be held virtually the meeting is called to order at 702 pm roll call miss shepard elterk here hunt here abraham here latash here odano odano president davidson here thank you thank you agenda item 1.2 the pledge of allegiance i will lead us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america into the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all that takes us to agenda item 1.3 the approval of the agenda do any board members have any adjustments they would
002like to make to the agenda all right see none the agenda is approved as it is that brings us to agenda items to the ferndale student representatives is kai walker with us tonight from ferndale high school i don't think that she is is uh jada with us from ferndale high school i don't think jaina is with us either um all right let's move uh to university high school with janae with us this evening i thought i had seen her earlier when i was flipping through yeah i see her there um she saw him mute i'm not sure if she's uh trying to unmute but i see her there also janae won't be able to present and she asked me to take her place tonight oh wonderfully thank you jazlyn all right thanks jess no problem
003good evening everybody my name is jasmine kohls i am the the junior representative for university high school and here are the uhs announcements basketball is back to our varsity and joining varsity teams although spectators are limited it is good to have sports again especially for our seniors who are graduating in just a few more months the rest of the basketball games for the month are home games this wednesday and friday are the boys junior varsity and varsity basketball games this wednesday the 24th there is also a virtual meeting from 6 to 7 pm based on family financial planning and support this friday at 6 pm uhs student council is holding a black history month movie night at 6 00 pm this year's movie is selma this month we are also holding a black voices writing
004competition all entries for our competition are due by friday the 26th the first prize is a 50 gift card all forms of writing are accepted we are also holding for our student union this friday we are passing out donations of coats and clothing for the homeless and other families within our school district and miss thomas which is one of our teachers are holding a virtual sat camp friday february 5th and we have another upcoming sat camp this friday 9 a.m to 11 a.m um c2 pipeline which is accepting new students continues its regular programming of virtual meetings at 2 30 via zoom today they had an activity based on photography tomorrow they are focusing on career-based information wednesdays the students are doing a fashion engineering activity and friday they are doing a survival activity majority
005of our programs and clubs are making the most of the virtual towns we are currently in such as the national honor society newspaper club and art club our clubs are still taking place virtually every monday 3pm and the members of the club even have the opportunity to enter their artwork into a virtual art museum for other students to see and that is the end of our announcements if you have any questions please let me know thank you thanks jaclyn thank you jazlyn it's wonderful to hear about everything happening at uhs that will um take us to agenda item three the presentation of the superintendent superintendents excellence awards well good evening everyone uh this month we have two recipients um of the award and i'm going to read a few words of each of their nomination
006forms their nominator is here as well their teacher so we'll give them a moment after i speak to to say a few words and then we'll give the student a a moment to say anything that they would like to share as well our first recipient this month is miss morgan hill she was nominated by miss harris morgan is a student at ferndale upper elementary school and here's what miss harris has to say about morgan morgan is determined to do well in school she comes to classmates early she stays late and one of her most significant factors and her achievement is her perseverance morgan works her hardest she's determined in everything she does and always goes above and beyond by attending extra sessions this is my favorite line of the submission morgan is a talented songbird
007and miss harris you'll explain that to us a little bit in a moment morgan is a sweet student she's always the last to leave she's always though the student who wishes everyone a good goodbye on the way out of virtual class morgan you've done great work uh this semester in a really difficult situation we appreciate all your hard work and all you do to make ferndale a wonderful place uh to work and be a part of and all of your efforts one day are gonna ensure that you achieve all the goals that you set for yourself we're so proud of you and it's with extreme pleasure to give you this award on behalf of the district so congratulations and then miss harris anything you'd like to add please uh i i think it was was
008said in the in the uh the document but she it morgan you know this you are the little engine that that tries and tries and tries and your attitude is your most defining feature um i also want to add that since we i sent in the documentation that we got our standardized testing scores back and morgan has made a year's growth in the time that she started with me in august until till now so we know that she's just going to continue to do better and better things so congratulations you deserve it morgan there'll be something um for you in the mail your award uh later this week so look out for that and they'll have a you know a small token of our appreciation as well thank you anything you'd like to say no
009you're good all right well congratulations again all right our next recipient uh this month is mr david felkner he is a student at tcec and was nominated by miss erica bauer i'm going to share again a few words from his submission from miss bowers submission on his behalf david is an exceptional student not only does he have near perfect attendance to every meet but he is highly engaged during the entire class hour he asks questions communicates with other students and turns in quality work he makes discussion possible in a virtual format because he is always willing to participate and interact with both me and his peers every once in a while you meet a student who is able to add cohesiveness and value to a class above and beyond the normal duties of a student
010he brings a smile to the classroom and a can-do attitude to every meet david is an integral part of making my virtual classroom a success he is genuine hard-working and an outstanding role model at tcec david we're so proud of you and the value that you add not only for yourself but for your classmates and for your teachers at tcec we're a community of learners and we appreciate everything you do to enrich the classroom experience and just enrich our our school experience reading we can't be more proud of you and and wish you continued success on your educational journey ms barr anything you'd like to add because that was a wonderful submission yeah i've had david now all year and he really is an exceptional student i've worked with him one-on-one he's really vocal he
011makes it feel like we're not online i really appreciate it um it kind of gets the class going so he's doing a great job and i'm very lucky to have him in class thank you ms bauer you're welcome david anything you'd like to share with us thank you for um the whole ferndale um organization and things for um accepting me to do this and all that and appreciate my mom for putting in school and miss um grant miss linda grant everybody and my whole family so thank you well it's our pr it's our pleasure to serve you david and we are extremely happy that you're finding success with us and we're going to be here with you along your journey and uh your award also will be coming in the mail and and thank you
012for all you do to make uh ferndale a wonderful place keep keep going all right okay appreciate you take care congratulations morgan and david uh we're really uh fortunate to have you as part of our school community in ferndale that brings us along to agenda item four the eagle of the month dr bazi would you like to take this away yes yeah uh again this is our eagle of the month this is for our staff member that we'd like to highlight each month uh for going above and beyond and just embodying the values and the the mission of ferndale public schools this month's recipient is ms kirsten riley who is our social worker at uhs she was nominated by mr david gardner and i'm going to share a few words from from his submission miss
013riley has worked hard for uhs students and families she started as our school social worker last year and established strong relationships with our students she has continued to establish and develop relationships in spite of not being able to see students in person miss riley has created a suicide ideolation tool that will be implemented district-wide to support students in crisis and provide staff with clear protocols she has also reached out to families in need and provided meals and other supplies for the holiday season she is currently coordinating support for multiple families and teaming up with the uhs parent-teacher organization to expand the scope of work miss riley is first and foremost an advocate for kids and family she has everything you wish for in a social worker so i was really excited to see this nomination
014because in the short time we've we've had miss riley i think it's someone that everyone district knows of everyone has interacted with her know her in some way whether it's at the central office level or at a building level and that type of impact especially during during a pandemic years is not easy also i've i've heard from staff and families her willingness to go above and beyond uh for our students and for staff has has been without you know without fail and so we appreciate all you do for our students it's it's certainly visible and it's certainly having profound impact so congratulations um for the award and then david if anything you'd like to add um i'd just like to add um that mrs reilly is definitely an advocate for our families and uh for
015our kids uh she sees the need she addresses it she reaches out for help um she's really just driven to do everything that she can in her power even if she can't get any help like i actually have to make sure i say mrs riley you need any help with this like i have to force myself on her because she's just that determined so i'm just really grateful to have her on our team uh she really fits the uhs way and i just want to say congratulations mrs reilly [Music] miss riley if you'd like to say anything yes thank you so much mr gardner i am i'm just so excited to be a part of uhs and it could be my second year it could be my 50th year i mean my motivation is not
016going away the families are like my own families this is my drive comes from my compassion and my understanding of what our families need and this is going to be a continued effort and i appreciate mr gardner and mrs patterson and the uhs pto for supporting me and of course the district supporting me and helping me with the initiatives that i determine based on the need of our families and that's what it comes down to i want our families to feel connected to the school and feel connected to the district and that's what drives me because i want the district to make those connections with our families and if i have to be the advocate if i have to be the gateway to that that's that's what i'm here for so i'll continue my efforts
017and i appreciate it thank you thank you thank you so much congratulations again thank you thank you miss riley we're really happy that you're part of the ferndale community and i'm working so tired tirelessly to meet our students needs thank you that will bring us to agenda item five the building presentation this month from tcec mr carl corey good evening uh everybody thank you for having me um i'd first like to say thank you um for the opportunity to speak uh about tri-county tonight i'm humbled to be a part of such a great group and on behalf of tcec um we would like to take this opportunity to thank the the school board and the superintendent's office for their support uh over the last year as we all know um you know the coveted pandemic
018has not been uh an easy road for all of us but um you know with with the support um and guidance and leadership from the school board uh and the superintendent's office we we here at tcec are thankful uh for that so um and we look forward to to moving ahead uh i'm working with everybody to successfully bring students back and then move on so with that said um the you know pcc strives to continue uh academic growth for student success uh innovative approaches to attracting students and providing 21st century uh to continue uh to lead our local region and program is is our goal here at tcec so we're going to talk about some of those few things tonight uh and please at any point in time if anybody has any questions um or
019comments um feel free to um just chime in at any time you don't have to necessarily wait to the end if something you know inspires you so uh dr banzi if we could go on to the next slide uh just kind of an overview snapshot of tcec i know a lot of people necessarily aren't familiar um with our day-to-day or some of our logistics um so looking at you know first and foremost our enrollment uh 359 pupils 456 adults if we had this conversation in july um i don't know if i would have been so confident in those type of numbers um but looking at that now you know over you know halfway through the year is a real testament to our staff um teachers and academic advisors on building that relationship with students to
020be able to retain so many students and also our program to attracting more so 359 and 456 is you know a total of 815 students is well beyond what i thought we would be doing this pandemic so it's nice to see that um and you know we approximate about another 100 adult students to enroll with our program for the remainder of the academic school year ahead uh of course completion uh currently we're at 1638 courses compared to last year 1495 so you know 143 classes or so increases is nice to see um it's even nicer when you start looking at you know the educational environment all around metro detroit and student participation and how big of a struggle that is for many districts and schools um but you know here at tcec we were prepared
021for such a thing um you know having a virtual program a hybrid program dedicated staff really goes again to show you our students dedication to the program as well as our staffs again 39 graduates a small increase from last year this time was 31 again a testament to our students and staff working hard um more you know recent uh responses for our survey returned to school uh 86 of our students responded which again from from my chair is a very impressive number looking at sometimes the difficulty we have communicating with some students whether it's the you know working multiple jobs or taking care of family members or changing phone numbers etc have such a great response a high response of 86 percent uh is encouraging uh in which you know 58 of those um have
022chosen the hybrid model to come back to return to school uh and 251 will remain virtual so um very very pleased to see that uh and again our funding sources again unique from your traditional schools uh you know tcec has has multiple uh four funding sources uh main ones the workforce initiative or wioa uh the section 107 both of those are adult ed grants that we receive yearly uh through our application process uh of course our title one uh for local support of our at-risk students and population and of course our general budget and then what we'll talk about bit later is additional grants and opportunities we here at tcec have gone out to um find and help with the funding sources and uh the ability to implement programming for our students that not only
023attracts them to our building but more importantly prepares them for the real world and and secondary schools and things of that nature so next slide looking at our big rocks in no particular order teaching and learning in a blended model school climate and culture um and post-secondary in in career preparation um for teaching and learning um we have the ability to have small groups and our one-on-one um instruction and intervention through mostly our title program a variety of learning approaches as you would expect an alternative school in adult education looking to reach students in an alternative way is key and i think we were very successful with doing that we'll point that out a little bit later professional learning focus student discourse again looking at those variety of approaches in the classroom student discourse is
024something that this year we've really focused on um to get students involved in the class to participate uh again in a non-traditional way to be a part of the conversation um to be a part of the lesson uh opposed to just listening and learning and taking notes but actually be involved school climate and culture again very big especially the sel many of our students come to us with with some emotional um you know obstacles uh and some educational hurdles that we work together with to create an environment for our students to feel comfortable um restorative practices have been very successful for us um and getting to know the students and having our circles uh even virtually still very impactful uh staff team building and positive relationships uh are also big components of our uh program
025here uh our staff has come a long way though over the last few years on building that culture not just for ourselves as employees but also for our students i think working together as a as a staff um whether it is through middle equities whether it's through open schools uh taking advantage of those opportunities learning and building really has improved the culture um and climate of our program which i believe leads into the classroom virtually or in person and students i think respond to that um and then again our relationships uh with our students and families um is big for our success and retain retention of students post-secondary uh education and exploration uh and professional certificate program really i think that's our claim to fame and what separates us from other programs um in the
026area uh other districts and i think that's really what um we can hang our hat on and say that we we can offer something to our students in addition to just a high school uh education and diploma preparing them for the real world um getting them educated but also trained in specific fields high demand fields that um will provide opportunity um for a career or job to help support themselves their families and really go from there so um those are all significant things and again doing those with our partners a program like ours being a community program with our adults and our alternative students having those partnerships to um build and be able to influence what we're able to provide our students goes a long way uh kind of make things easy lots of you
027know some things can be confusing for a lot of people this flow chart that we have here um that really working with midwest really helps us and others understand where we are in relationship to the district's strategic plan um and really kind of gives a good visual aid to those who are learning our program to see what are our uh our initiatives and our goals tonight we're going to just focus on three although i'd love to spend all the time talking about all of these but um you know for empowerment we're going to look at community outreach and excellence we're going to look at career pathways and again for environment we'll look at our funding sources and program opportunities in empowerment objectives educator community and all programs and opportunity offering with ferndale public schools uh
028first and foremost are advertising i think this is big um for us because our advertising is honest and it's it's true um and we are able to communicate and uh you know provide the community with you know who we are at as a school um you know bill good and jason nelman do an excellent job working with us here on on the advertisement end of things um and i you know i'm glad to hear that bill will be sticking around a little bit longer um so and jason of course uh with with his insight so advertisement a local presentation this has been a little bit difficult obviously over the the last year but really being a part of the community whether it's faith-based organizations k-8 schools around our local community getting in there spreading the
029word so people know who we are and what opportunities they have our expanded learning opportunities uh and building community partners again uh things like michigan works uh we have a new location in pontiac um this year uh the state came to us and said there was an opportunity uh for the pontiac michigan works to have a partner um we were honored to be uh thought of and we were happily uh took on that task and and have moved forward with that and great things that lie ahead um but again those community partners working with them uh really is a double end resource whether we are able to work with students and refer them to those local agencies and vice versa those agencies knowing who we are and referring students to us uh the implementation of
030a career education again the med search servpro et cetera we'll talk about that a little bit in a second but again preparing students um for for a professional future that they can uh in a high demand area that they can participate in provide for themselves their families and put their education to use as well as their skills and then community outreach again a little bit difficult over the the past year but again something we are very proud of here our beautification of school grounds last year we formed committees um one of those is the beautification committee who has done a great job inside and out of the school and being a part of the community and making sure the gardens have fresh flowers and plants and the hallways are decorated so kudos to the beautification
031committee hosting local community programs has also been very big in the past and we look forward to doing that again in the future where students and families have an opportunity once a month to come to the building and uh have access to resources whether it is medical screenings employment virtual um job fairs etc uh again looking forward to doing that in the future excellence make certain that all students are placed in programs based on their interests and readiness levels that provide equitable opportunities for achievement and growth really looking at our career pathways our career coordinator and counselors do excellent job not only providing resources for our students and families but also working with them on you know getting resumes or applications to whether it is a career professional job or just a job an hourly
032job whatever the student is looking for um at their point in life where they're at uh meeting them where they are getting them ready for work uh forced readiness skills um it goes a long way with who we are as a program also the opportunities that you can see and again working with such big players like med certs and servpro and of course michigan works um again looking at expanding on our professional certificate program um but currently our healthcare medical and dental assistants i.t skilled trades mitigation such really speaks to our partnership in the community high demand areas and always looking at that and staying on top of the workforce in the metro detroit area and where our students would have an opportunity to join or their interests may be so regular surveys of our
033students and families of what's interesting them and what career paths that they would like to see that we can provide for them an environment maintaining fiscal responsibility now typically i'm not one to talk finances i usually leave that up to nancy and definitely if my wife was here fiscal responsibility would not be something that she would say is uh you know something i rise to but luckily we do have a strong central office and finance department nancy and and the team do a really great job working with us but what we like to do here at tcec is look at our funding sources but also try to find additional sources that we can do to add additional programming and again give the flexibility to the district to work within the budget to provide opportunity across
034the the district so looking at regional assistance grant oakland schools um that was a recent grant that we received for you know just over ten thousand dollars uh that's part of being um a csi school that we work with open schools on not only improving the educational implementation of programming but also with our staff and development of um you know high quality professional development learning community uh deferred section 107 um we had the opportunity to apply for additional funds as i mentioned previously uh 107 is our grant that we receive for adult education but there's an opportunity every year for deferred funds these are funds that weren't spent by local districts in region 10 which we are part of which is basically oakland county uh some wayne county schools um that was unspent from the
035year previous so the dis the region provides an opportunity for schools to apply for those grants which we've done uh and accumulating over 200 thousand dollars for this year additional funding with that pontiac program that we discussed earlier uh you know with another hundred and fourteen thousand uh and that program also giving us the opportunity to not only reach a different part of the community we didn't really get to in northern oakland county um but it'll give us that um window to communicate with that local community of who we are and attracting students that we would be able to use that facility as a satellite for not only our adult but our people students as well and then something i'm really um you know excited to talk about is our future for frontliners um the
036state and federal government provided an opportunity for adult students 18 and up who were a frontliner over the past year and they enroll in our school here there's you know we have 16 to 32. um if students by enrolling get a 500 uh future for frontline and reimbursement to the district so right now with the number of students we have it's 16 000. now if any of those students are to graduate in the calendar year in the school year there's an additional 500 which would potentially give us 32 thousand dollars for the district to use in a general fund source so as we try to promote that program it's still on um and i believe in the future they'll continue to do such a thing um so really getting students enrolled here who are part
037of the front line not only for us but for them as well in creating those opportunities also new this year carl can i stop you for a second could you just explain what frontliners means yes of course uh frontliners um anybody that is in um a workforce whether it is a medical workforce um construction hospitality restaurant um servers uh cooks anybody that is still going to a physical employment um over the course of the last year during the pandemic so if anybody listening to this or knows anybody that is a frontliner um and they're looking for a still high school education uh if they enroll here at ferndale um yes the district receives that 500 for their enrollment but they also themselves will receive funds and grant opportunities to help pay for um secondary you
038know post-secondary schools or a training program if they want to continue on in the field that they're in so again anybody that's um involved with frontline work whether it's medical food service and etc construction thank you integrated english literacy or ielce again last year if you recall we had the conversation we expanded our esl program from approximately 40 students to you know roughly 160. um we were on the trajectory to keep growing that program over 200 but again with the pandemic it kind of um curb things for a minute but we still have our relationships with our local organizations the the pontiac location as mentioned uh the ferndale free methodist church saint mary's church immaculate conception in madison heights born um so we still have those relationships um we're still providing our esl students education
039virtually of course uh we look forward to having them back into a physical building eventually so we can also continue to grow our esl program but that extra 32 thousand dollars for ielce is specifically for those esl students who are looking to not only get their education their citizenship but also their career and professional development and then 23a is our relationship we have with uh graduation alliance this is something we've had in the district for quite some time last year's number was approximately 18 and these are students through graduation alliance that unfortunately through tcec they get dropped whether through count or lack of participation um we have an opportunity to still educate those students through our district and that's their graduation alliance um and that again provides uh you know some funding there for us
040to use as a district on however we would like to see uh it just saw and things on some points of pride that we have here um you know tcec well-organized and dedicated staff i i don't you know i'm sure you can probably hear this from every principal who gives a presentation but uh as far as the staff goes i don't know if there's a staff that is dedicated to our students and educational process is ours as you can see with our enrollment our participation our course completions graduation rates etc have all continued to go up over the course of the last three to four years and i anticipate that continues to grow and moving that needle um so our staff kudos to them um we're committed to continuous improvement you know we're never satisfied
041with with where we are we always have the idea that there's room for improvement whether it's professionally educationally however that is with our students so in having that mentality i think again relates to the students and leads into the classroom where students are able to pick up that type of philosophy and approach to their own life and education love for education and our students um you know this is not an easy job as you all know um and for our staff to stick around for the years that they have and dedicated to our students and the relationships that you see with with our students and staff is something i haven't seen in any other program in my time and of course focused on fun um let's not forget who we are uh is here to
042educate students but also doing it in a way that is fun um and enjoy our our time here together as as students staff co-workers etc um so we always try to have a little bit of fun and encourage students to have fun themselves and i think that keeps us unique and entertaining as a program and it's enjoy to come to work every day i can tell you that from my end having such a great group of people and students really really makes the work go by and makes you really want to get involved on a daily basis so basically concludes our presentation i'm happy to answer any questions for anybody who would like any more information on tcec you can go to our website go tcec.com answer some questions there you can contact myself for
043miss walters as you see or you can contact our enrollment secretaries um or any of our advisors if you'd like to talk to them so all of the resources there go tcec and we're happy to answer or help anybody um in any way that we come so again thank you to the school board and dr bazi for giving me the opportunity to speak on behalf of tcec i'm looking forward to our return to school getting back in the building on a regular basis with our students and providing them with the resources love and compassion that they want and need um and get out of the house for a minute so thank you any questions i'll be happy to answer okay well carl thank you though i we really appreciate how you've um you and miss
044walters have really taken the strategic plan and the work that we've done with midwest equity and really intertwined it into the work that you're doing um you guys continue to be innovative in terms of um how we deliver instruction how we engage students enrollment all of the things that that are important aspects of your work so we appreciate that even in a in a pandemic year we've been able to to rely on your steady leadership thank you yeah i just want to reiterate we we really appreciate the um the model that dcec is it's a model uh well-regarded school for high school students that haven't had success in regular schools as well as adults seeking to finish their diplomas it's a really fantastic uh part of our district that really valued part thank you we're
045honored to be a part of it thank you that will uh take us to agenda item 6 the march 2020 bond update all right this evening we'll be sharing a bond update as in our action items we'll be asking the board to approve two of our bids as it relates to the the march 2020 bond work this evening we have um a couple of our architects from from gmb doris gross and tom van der grind we also i saw we have our superintendent for construction andy birch from clark construction as well and jamie style meyer our director of operations and facility will help us go through with it just to give you a little bit of update we we did we we've been doing a lot of work as it relates to fecc the early
046childhood center ferndale upper as we have major renovations going on this summer in those buildings as well as the new elementary design process so we're going to go through and provide the board an update we did share this update with the citizens bond committee who who helped us uh pass the the bond in march uh we did a little bit more of a detailed presentation to them for the sake of time this one's a little bit scaled back uh but we'll give you a good idea of the process we've taken and kind of where we're at leading up to this point so as we head into the fecc renovations i'm going to hand it off uh to doris from gmb yeah good evening everyone um so here's just a quick overview of over the construction
047documents that we have completed for the summer construction work for fecc so the scope of work for fecc includes a secure entry vestibule we also renovated the the or were going to renovate the new main office including a health room and then uh some staff offices off of the media center also a new conference room or renovations to the the conference room and a relocation of the swing and the ball pit in the gross motor area to a new space as well as some playground renovations so what you see here is the floor plan of the facc the blue shaded areas are all the areas that will receive some form of renovation so right near the main entrance is a secure entry vestibule we're adding a second set of doors and that will allow visitors
048to go through the front office check in with the receptionist and then go into the school across from that off office area is the renovated conference room there are also some renovations in the staff lounge new floor finishes new casework and then the yellow shaded areas are the new offices so there are two larger offices and then a smaller office and then up above is that gross motor area so this is what the front office will look like new reception desk with you know natural wood finish look and then also an abstract fern detail embedded into the reception desk with the ferndale logo behind the the desk on that green wall and then some sealing element a nice wood ceiling also included is a seating area and some new finishes throughout if you want to
049move on to the next slide doors i just wanted to mention too if you want to go back a slide they're expanding the windows there so that the receptionist will have a better view of the people coming into the front doors yep thanks for mentioning that yeah visibility is is a great feature here that adds another layer of security so that the receptions will will see who approaches the building yeah one of the things we're doing in this project is we are actually um we're moving like doris had mentioned the gross motor skills room which is currently in room 14. we're moving that into room nine which currently is a storage slash staff work room we're creating a new work room which was the old uh district mdf the technology head-end room uh which is
050really unused at this point i know they they have a lot of storage and stuff in there so we're repurposing that room uh you can see there the a135 on the drawing into the new work room and then we're moving the ball pit and the swing into the classroom uh behind it so we're creating a new special needs motor skills classroom but the exciting part of that is this building is really up to capacity there was no way to add any additions and by moving the work room here and the gross motor skills room here and creating those new small offices that is going to free up rooms 14 and 15 to be used as an expansion classroom really at minimal additional cost and it is going to be actually one of the largest rooms
051in the in the building which is exciting because now we'll have some added capacity with very little cost next slide please and i know we've talked about this at length but i just wanted to mention we are renovating the entire playground at fecc this summer that will be provided by using sinking fund money um we're pretty excited we've actually already received all the equipment uh and then the work will begin in uh as you know as soon as the kids are out in the summer but it's uh it's very exciting we're getting all new play structures we are getting as you can see there there's that large shaded area which is actually going to have a whole music classroom underneath it and tables and seating so actually it'll be like an outdoor classroom area which
052we're excited about another nice feature of this and it's hard to see on this drawing but we're actually going to have trike paths that encircle all of the play structures all the way around that whole playground so it'll give the kids a lot of exercise and mobility uh which is a very exciting part of that project so uh moving over to fuel and the renovations that we're doing there this summer um so the scope of work at fuel includes also a new um secured entry vestibule as well as a new entry canopy again a new main office and and health room as well as new playground equipment and then some roofing improvements so on this slide you see the the floor plan again the blue shaded areas are all the renovated areas the yellow ones
053are flooring replacement and then there's also some mechanical replacement in each of the classrooms getting new mechanical units and then the the main renovation area is the front office and then the the art room and the classroom over to the the right in that image so here's a rendering of the new entry canopy we're actually raising the canopy to allow for more natural daylight and just better visibility the interior organization of the the office includes relocation of the existing principal office and kind of swapping that out with the reception area so that that the receptionist is is closer to the main entry and has the visibility uh to the exterior of the building and can see who approaches the building here's a night shot of the ren of the new canopy with with lighting underneath
054and then a new logo the ferndale logo on the facade of that the media center this is the interior view of the the lobby area that secure entry vestibule or just past that vestibule with some acoustic suspended ceiling clouds and this is the reception desk very similar to ecc we wanted to establish some kind of a theme throughout but yet still be a little bit different so that the feature wall and the the ceiling is slightly different um but again it has a seating area and and just it's right up against the window for for the visibility here's a different view of the entry area and then we're also doing some playground renovations and i guess the exciting part here and and i'll jamie talk to this but um the students got to vote on
055their uh favorite playground structure that they wanted to see yeah gmb put together this slide and katie sent it out to all the students in the building and they voted on the mobius climbers so that's actually a structure that's going in and uh throughout the bond we're going to do this wherever we can to try and involve the the public as much as we can on some of these design decisions so it's pretty exciting and i heard from some of the children that said they were excited to vote and they're you know we're anxious to see that equipment go in this summer so this takes us to the new lower elementary design process that that we've that we've been really since the bond passed back back in march we we've put together an elementary design
056team made up of of course the the principal miss diana keith as well as different teachers administrators architects who have really up until this point helped us through the process of designing spaces which we'll we'll get a little bit into as we get through the the rest of the presentation this design team went to a number of elementary schools here are all the ones that that we have visited to kind of get inspiration and really to understand size and space and number of students in building and flow of building and learning spaces and different features that we were able to see in different tours that that we went to so this process although very long uh was well worth it i do believe that it got us to a point where we as a team
057were comfortable with the space options that we selected for each of the you know each of the different spaces within the elementary school this uh design team will help us continue as we can you know as we continue to design out the space um the first part that we've completed is really assigning square footage to the different spaces that we have and now we'll start getting into uh putting this puzzle together as we continue so i'm gonna if i can comment on that yeah yeah it's all yours if i can comment on the tours a little bit i'm gonna just comment just a little bit on that list yet um we're at a milestone right now um we've got basically the the program completed which is the space program of the of the new elementary
058and we're going to show you a piece of that here towards the end um a little bit of background noise here okay um so the process we went through the first thing we did with your design team was went through a 21st century education kind of a concepts and trends presentation and looked at the things that are out there right now as it relates to newer newer facilities and then your group helped kind of prioritize the things we were looking for which helped us find some you know which schools would go and look at about half the schools we went to were very much about educational concepts the first component then as donya said we went back to some tours later in the process to kind of verify some of the space sizes so your
059group felt comfortable with some of the sizes of the things we were selecting intentionally these are all very different schools to show us different kinds of ways people are are providing 21st century education from that we then started meeting with your team and went through developing those priorities to develop this program which you're going to see a little piece of it at the end so the next slide what we have is is we're showing you there are three unique we're highlighting basically three unique parts of the program in this building um just for the sake of time the first one is an extended learning area this is an example of when you see here and the extended learning area is is a concept very common in some of the newer facilities where you have a
060non-assigned educational space that helps organize classrooms around it it allows for the classroom to expand for more room when it needs it especially for group work and certain project things are happening it also promotes the teaming concept of classrooms to be able to team together and developing a sense of community amongst the classrooms it's also another another feature of it is it helps to break down the scale of a building a skilling gets large especially with younger children you try to work to break the scale down so this space lets you organize the classrooms around it we're going to organize them by grade level to create neighborhoods for educational work uh basically a small learning community that helps that feel like a smaller uh community for for each child in the in the classrooms there's
061some neuroscience studies too that say it's very helpful to let students have a space immediately accessible from the classroom that's a different environment to to work on some of their learning those different environments stimulate the brain differently with the same kind of content so it helps educationally uh very much so so we have a few images of those this is an example in midland of their elementary that we saw the classrooms are on either side they had to actually roll up garage door style windows that opened that let the classrooms expand into there the next photo i think is of uh one an elementary went to in madawan a little larger scaled wing but again you see some areas where there's hard surface for wet messy dirty work and then soft surface for some group
062work collaboration classrooms again organized around this space i think the next image is of a fitzgerald school westview elementary again just a little different take on it but a space outside the classrooms could come into this one was a little more formal um in terms of the seating layout the next piece a unique component number two is the breakout spaces and they're typically associated in the extended learning area so there's these small rooms like you're seeing here that allow for small group work when you need a little acoustical privacy but they also allow an area for staff to use to bring students in when they need some focused assistance with the students and some staff members again located in typically in the extended learning area this was an example we saw at the midland school
063the next slides are showing um the last unique thing i guess we're going to show you in terms of images today is a kind of a mud room concept and we're going to have two classrooms sharing a mud room similar to this where the cubbies are are located there for their locker storage kind of component and then restroom facilities and some storage as well in there these spaces have access to the outside classrooms on either side are sharing this so again two classrooms to one of these one of its main functions is it really cleans up and contains the wet and dirty area kind of stuff that's that's a part of what the kids bring in and then it also pulls the lockers out of the corridor which lets those extended learning areas you saw
064earlier and those images occur if the hallways are full of lockers the learning that happens in those spaces between classrooms doesn't work as well it's very limited so this concept lets us pull those lockers out of there making the center of the building much more usable for educational kind of kind of spaces all right so just a couple of highlighted a few highlighted differences between our current ferndale lower and the new ferndale lower currently our ferndale lower sits at about 54 000 square feet uh the new oh sorry the new acre the new building will be at about 90 000 square feet we currently have about 3.5 acres at our current site uh hopefully if we once we are able to get the deed restricted lifted we'll have about 11 acres at the new site
065if not we will still have seven acres at the casa site which is still um you know hopefully we'll get the 11. um at the current ferndale lower we have a gymatorium again no separate cafeteria gym or gym and and the new one will have a very spacious cafeteria and gem that can be multi-use spaces currently in our k2 building we do not have bathrooms inside the classrooms here not only will we have larger classrooms but we'll have mud rooms and restrooms in the classroom that will be tucked away we have as you know we have very limited parking and very difficult traffic flow at the current site and at the new building we'll have those extended learning spaces uh that we currently don't have in in the current building so some significant improvements really
066we are we are looking to um build a building that can last another 100 years as as the current ferndale lower did did the district well um so a lot of a lot of improvements some other highlighted [Music] things to note is currently our average classroom size is about 700 square feet they're roughly 660 to 740 now we do have our newer classrooms that were built as an addition that are that are at 11.75 um but that that is that's the exception they're only the a few newer classrooms our current music spaces is 693 feet and that will get a significant upgrade it'll be well over a thousand square feet in in the new building our new media center i'm sorry our current media center is at about 1840 square feet and um that will
067be well over i forget the number exam exactly but that will be significantly larger similarly with the art classroom um our current gym is a as it is about 4 300 square feet our new gym will be at 5600 square feet again no flexible space no stem maker space which these are all spaces that we will be addressing once the new building is is completed i'll hand it off to you for the programming side all right you'll be able to open it up hopefully so what we're going to show you is a few just a few sheets of this but what this is is a program of of the new elementary so what it is is it's a program of all the spaces in the building and the educational goals and concepts that your your
068design team wants to implement what it lists basically the document in its entirety is basically quantity quality and relationships so it's the quantity of spaces what are all the spaces in the building how big are they the types of them then the quality sort of details and functions of those spaces and then relationships which spaces should be next to each other which spaces should not be next to each other those kind of things that's the entirety of the document but that's a huge milestone that tells us we've gotten uh the spaces or the puzzle pieces as dania talked about ready to go then we'll be moving into the next phase which is schematic design so this first sheet you're looking at here is basically a table of contents of all the spaces um in the
069bigger buckets it doesn't list all the tiny spaces within those but all the spaces in the building so the first one on the top those first three are the classroom spaces the multi-use learning environments there are separate square footage allocations for the kindergarten spaces those are a little bit larger than the first and second grade classrooms then the first and second grade classrooms are listed there and what you're seeing is program square footage that's the total square footage for those components uh teaching stations is the ts listed there that comes on down to the total square footage at the bottom after the classrooms is the extended learning areas that's some of the photos we showed you those those spaces that help organize the the neighborhoods within those are the group areas and those breakout spaces
070which are identified in more detail in other sheets behind here the next grouping in there are some of the specials in the building there's special education component has self-contained classrooms resource rooms sensory rooms etc other components for the for the students then a separate art room separate music space then the media center is designed as a learning commons very heavily project based space has a computer component a computer commons component and a stem room component to it in terms of that whole uh media center number which is the four thousand square foot this down he was showing you earlier you have about eighteen hundred in your existing building this whole suite will be around four thousand the next piece is the physical education primarily the gym there and that is a standalone gym which is
071a big difference you have gym and cafeteria sharing a space right now this would be a separate one for that physical education space after that are some staff support work rooms and offices for all the staff distributed throughout the building the administration piece lists the main office the secure entry component food service is the dedicated cafeterias uh server and kitchen miscellaneous is primarily mechanical electrical rooms and janitorial kinds of things that total you can see the program total is around 90 000 square feet that's our target we're shooting for the next sheet below is a master plan of uh three additional teaching stations so we're trying to be at least cognizant if we add some teaching stations um the design will show the original plan and then where would one more classroom go for each
072neighborhood for that's what that that master plan piece is the next sheet i'm gonna touch on very very briefly there's some design criteria on the top there there's some story things i think are maybe important for you to hear um you know the team has gone through we've decided that the design is important to reduce uh student perceived scale of the facility that's that neighborhood concept it's very helpful for young children to not feel that they're in a large building for trying to break down that scale also trying to design to promote collaborative learning with multiple size venues and resources and then they're designed to enhance individualized learning providing those unique things that individual students need that is different and everybody's different and what they might need the last one i'll highlight on there is
073just being sensitive to young learners that their design should be different for young children as it relates to to older children even the next sheet we're going to show you i think is a couple sheets we can skip this one danya and we're going to go past the kindergarten sheet and we're going to stop at the first and second grade one which is right there and what we have is is this is the space program for the first and second grade kindergarten sorry first and second grade classrooms kindergarten is very similar they're just a little larger rooms at the kindergarten uh what you're seeing here is basically the top piece below single use multi-use classroom is those four components a primary activity area the soft area cave area for the students the teacher desk the
074general storage component that all four of those together are basically what you might see as a traditional classroom those add up as different spaces it's important we're trying to create zones in that area that's helpful for the children as well that total as you can see is 945 square feet that compares to what daniel was telling in your existing building is you know like 650 to 740 is the largest classrooms you have so it's quite a bit larger in terms of the the classroom space the piece below that line there's going to be a restroom cubby and mud room those are the pieces that go together to create those those mud room kind of things that are similar to the slides you saw that we showed you earlier so that total goes along with each
075of those classrooms um and so that's a total of about 1250 square feet per classroom in terms of the classroom space and some of the resources that help them they're they're being designed to be paired so that those mud rooms are shared between two different classrooms so you can see this pretty substantial difference in square footage there to what you have right now and that's pretty consistent along the board with the other spaces that we're not trying to go into everyone tonight the next sheet on there shows a little bit of uh of that idea of the relationships and this is the relationships of how that's going to be organized the two blue spaces show uh two individual classrooms and they're going to be designed where those cubbies and that that mud room piece is
076in the middle with the restrooms that serve each one of those classrooms and so that resource is a space that is is where direct teaming can happen between those two classrooms so they can pass in and out of those two classrooms through that space they can do some fun things directly between those two classrooms sharing that resource in the center and then those also have direct outdoor access so they can come and go from playground activities etc right into that that wet mud area and then that whole circle around the outside that dash circle is showing you that grade level neighborhood and we're going to create that area around that extended learning area that provides that teaming where all the classrooms can come to that extended learning area and do teaming amongst any one of
077the classrooms in that grade level so that kind of gives you an understanding of how it's going to be laid out with those classrooms and then replicated for a neighborhood for first grade one for second grade and one for kindergarten that's a little bit of a whirlwind there for you but that's um one example of the relationships that we're developing with your design team and how spaces work together and we have those for all of the spaces in the building but this is a pretty important one and kind of a unique feature for your classrooms i think that was it dania for this this piece you're gonna go through yeah we wanted to provide you an update of where we were up until this point as as we look for approval for the bids at
078ferndale upper and the early childhood center so we thought was a good time to provide an overall update with regards to all three projects that we're working on questions the master plan future phase is that something that we're doing as a what we would possibly currently build or that's a talk of we would build something and then this would be the ability to build on later the second yeah okay it's like 20 years down the line 10 years down the line did we was there any thinking of if there was a need for one additional classroom and and how we could build this building in a way that would be easy to add on so like at ferndale upper very easy to add on the classroom if we ever needed to and we you could
079easily do that via sinking fund you might not necessarily need a you know an enormous bond but again it's just planning for the unknown i think it looks really good lots of good um thoughts going into it from kids point of view i like the um voting getting the kids involved in that give them something to be engaged with during ovid i like the mobius strip we'll give it a go once it's installed i'll go over there and fly around and break a hip or something break it in other questions oh one other thing jamie the vestibules beautiful good you like the fern i the stylized ferns classy classic doris and tom were listening well it's it's beautiful and i've got sorry just one more that i didn't think about when we had the previous
080meeting the vegetable vestibules now how are they differing from the current vestibules that we have now in terms of like from a safety standpoint so currently we don't have secured vestibules in terms of having a double set of doors so if i come to the office and i walk in once i'm let in i have access to the full building so with the secured vestibule you have a two you have two sets of doors to where when they come in they have to feed through the the office now let's say somebody walks in and like something outrageous like they're holding a gun the secretary will have the ability to lock the office as well as the second set of doors there'll be that ability to lock them in the vestibule um which you know would
081slow down hopefully uh you know somebody who would think this way so again right now we only have one set of doors and we don't have the ability to control who can enter in the office or not or who can get through the second set of doors it's a good question the other thing i wanted to mention is the glass that separates that new secure vestibule from the office will be school guard glass which you cannot bust through that's good and we are we're spending um we're also spending some efforts especially at fuel to relocate some things so that the people at the front desk have a better view of the parking lot where people are approaching the building because they don't have that great view right now um and that's a that's one of
082the things in terms of security kind of things that are recommended is so you can see maybe an issue that's developing before it comes to your front door so we're reorganizing that they have a better view of that and then like diana said once they get to the door they can't when you buzz them in they don't have access to the schools they have to come directly into your office check in with you before you even then buzz them into the school which that you do not have now thank you appreciate it all right well thank you for that presentation and all the work that's being done they will uh move us to agenda item seven the uh the resolution for the irs closing agreement uh discussion all right we have uh meg hackett from
083true in law who is who is going to help us uh take us through this i apologize that we did not have the opportunity to discuss this like at a committee as a whole but um time is of the essence and i wanted meg to come on and explain this because even though she's explained it to me two or three times uh it's irs ors and i i need an attorney to help walk us through this so meg i'll pull up the resolution and and you can tell me move up or down and just direct the traffic okay thank you um although i have to object having following your exciting tcec program and then you have all these wonderful building renovations and i'm like okay i'm going to talk to you about tax treatment of
084ire of contribution so i i just want to note that donya placement on the agenda i'm sorry i wanted to make sure that we didn't have make you wait till the very end but i i'm sorry all right okay so yeah we'll just go right to the resolution there okay and uh good well all right there we go okay the situation we have here is that back in 2012 the michigan public school employee retirement systems act was amended to require additional three percent retiree health care contributions and the issue that arose was how do we treat these for tax purposes are these income for federal income tax purposes are these wages for fica purposes and unfortunately since about 2012 the internal revenue service has variously treated them on occasions stating that they were subject to
085tax other times saying that they were not subject to tax so that's where these whereas clauses are discussing we get to whereas clause 6 and in an effort to or see rather in an effort to obtain a system-wide determination from the irs the office of retirement services which administers mipsers the ors requested that the irs issue a private letter ruling simply stating definitively these are exempt from income tax they're exempt from fica tax this dragged on for an interminable period of time the irs declined to issue such a private letter ruling uh but they finally agreed uh in late december or at least that's when school districts were notified as explained in this paragraph e they agreed to enter into a closing agreement relative to these payments and that closing agreement would set forth that
086the retiree health care contributions are exempt from federal income and fica taxes and it would be a determinative as to districts that participate in the closing agreement so rather than having a system-wide pronouncement we have an agreement that districts need to sign on to if they wish to rely upon that agreement as determinative of the treatment of these contributions so as we look at paragraph g here the proposed closing agreement has not yet been finalized that's one of the wrinkles that you face as board members so instead of instead of me being in a position to say to you we've reviewed the closing agreement we've discussed it with tax counsel here's what it says here's what it means all we have at this point is a letter from the internal revenue service to office of
087retirement service council which is a gentleman named alan wilke from daikoma gasset stating that this closing agreement will have three paragraphs three operative paragraphs two of them will speak to tax treatment that this is not income and therefore not subject to income tax not wages and not subject to fica tax the third of the operative paragraphs has to do with the responsibility of districts that withheld tax to issue corrected w-2s so that overpaid tax can be refunded i've been advised that ferndale did not subject these payments to tax so you treated them as exempt you treated them the way the irs is stating that they ought be treated there'd be no overpaid tax to be refunded so really only two of those three paragraphs should be operative as to you because the third has to
088do with recovery of overpaid taxes which does not apply to you so the closing agreement paragraphs don't set any kind of a time limit on the period that the irs is agreeing to treat these funds um as tax exempt but there is a separate document so you've got it right dania we're at h there so there's a separate document an irs form 2848 which is effectively a power of attorney document that would authorize attorney wilke to sign the closing agreement once finalized on behalf of any districts that determine to join in the closing agreement for reasons that have not been explained that irs form 2848 includes the periods tax years 2013 to 2026. we have asked whether or not it's the intention of the irs to revisit the tax treatment of these contributions after tax
089year 2026 uh ors has advised that that is not the irs's intent but they have also not explained then why we have a 2026 end date on the closing agreement um but that is so that is yet another wrinkle so what the irs letter said to the ors was any michigan school district that wishes to obtain the closing agreement and be able to rely upon that document as dispositive as to tax treatment has to execute the form 2848 authorizing alan wilke to sign the closing agreement on their behalf and submit a three thousand dollar user fee the user fee office of retirement services has agreed to pay from mipser's funds so that is not something that would come directly from the district it would it would come through office of retirement services from the mipsers
090funds and then only those districts that our signatories can expressly rely upon the agreement so i think we can kind of zip along here donya we just explained some of the issues with questions that have not been answered through through the back and forth so okay let's go right back up if we could to right there okay so this form 2848 um alan wilk is an attorney and he is representing office of retirement services and one named district that had sought the private letter ruling um ors and alan wilk are taking the position that alan wilk is just acting as a signatory for districts that he's not acting as your council and advising you whether to sign or not while that's true he is going to be the only person who actually gets a chance
091to see the closing agreement before it's signed our firm hasn't been at the negotiating table we haven't seen the closing agreement it's going to be finalized between alan wilke and the iirs and he would be the signatory on your behalf for that reason we've recommended that if boards wish to sign on to this agreement that you do so through a resolution which is why we prepared this resolution because when you get to the whereas clauses or i'm sorry when you get to the now therefore be it resolved clauses we speak to the authority of alan wilke to sign on your behalf only if the closing agreement that the irs presents to him comports with the assumptions and understandings that you've been led to believe up till now because you will not be given an opportunity
092to review the document before he were to sign on your behalf so originally office of retirement services had set a february 5th deadline for these forms to be signed and submitted but there were so many questions submitted that they moved the deadline back to march 1st there are still many unanswered questions but for those districts that may need to seek refunds of overpaid taxes it really needs to get resolved because april will be another deadline in terms of periods of limitation expiring so let's see where we're at here this really has to do with the refunds dania so op and q don't apply significantly to your district so your administration has performed its due diligence and as explained in that paragraph t based on its due diligence you've determined that you've treated the three percent
093contributions as exempt from both federal income tax and fica tax dating back to 2010 that you have no um protective filings or other action that you need to take to recover overpaid taxes because there haven't been any so what these now therefore clauses provide if you determine to do so is that you you're stating that you're relying upon the communications that you've received from ors and indirectly from attorney wilke through ors to determine that it's in the best interest of the district to conclusively resolve at least through the federal tax status of these three percent contributions and then paragraph two authorizes and delegates authority to the superintendent to execute the irs form 2848 authorizing wilk to sign the closing agreement once finalized provided that and these are the critical paragraphs we've put in provided that
094that agreement complies with law provided that it contains the three operative paragraphs that are detailed above and no other provisions that are adverse to your district provided that it covers at least the 2013 to 2026 tax years and um and uh that it doesn't impair any protective claims as to those districts that have such protective plane uh claims and that it's conditioned on ors making that three thousand dollar payment that there's not any payment directly due from you and then the third uh paragraph here uh directs the superintendent to add language to the form 2848 state there's already language where the signer is saying i certify that i have the authority to sign this to execute this form on behalf of the taxpayer but then we're going to add the language as set forth in
095the attached resolution adopted by the taxpayers governing board at a public meeting on held on february 22nd 2021 so that even though that form is being executed it's being executed in conjunction with a resolution making clear that you're not just giving a blank check to have any closing agreement presented signed but only a closing agreement that actually comports with the information currently available to you and then the resolution would direct the superintendent to forward that signed resolution along with the signed irs form 2848 to the address provided by ors so i'm sure that's completely clear and that you have no questions but i will answer any questions that you may have i like looking at the swings better right as did i but that was riveting thank you riveting was the word that came to
096my mind as well so i think and meg please correct me if i over simplify this okay always treated the payment as exempt from taxes so um that's why we really thought that at first we thought we don't need to sign this like we've never used it no one's going to be trying to get funds back but it's almost like give me three thousand dollars for your password and then i'll give you your password so to ensure that our employees don't nobody comes back and says well we've changed our determination you owe us taxes on those years since 2012 right or however far they can go back you owe us money on this because you that was exempt and we've now determined it not to be exempt so it's almost one of those things where
097you know meg said though do do i do we really believe that the irs is going to administer the tax code two different ways so if you paid the 3000 we're not going to come after you but if you didn't pay the 3 000 we're not going to come after you right probably not but we don't know so it's not like me taking a personal risk with my own finances that's taking a risk with district employees where it's almost like to make it go away you pay the 3000 and you sign the agreement so ultimately meg said this is a board decision so this is the one i get to say here but ultimately if you ask me deep down what do i believe i would probably say we sign the agreement pay the 3
098000 and ensure that it can't come back onto our employees but it is a really peculiar thing we're signing something we don't have a closing agreement but that's why we have meg tying the resolution to the facts stated in the in the resolution so that if something comes back you know ludicrous we can come to true and say hey this isn't what we agreed to so it's a very peculiar case but it's one of those things that doesn't feel good because i don't really want to pay the 3000 um because even when they say the mixers those are our savings those are employees who didn't hit the 10-year mark left the profession it's money we've paid in as a district it's it's our funds so they're just using our savings to to make us pay
099it but saying oh it's not impacting you in this fiscal year but what is the proposed um purpose i mean that's what i was thinking what what are they saying is the three thousand dollars administrative fees is it to pay for somebody doing some work wait what sorry but the way meg described it we we as ferndale public schools wouldn't be paying the 3 000. ors is going to pay the three thousand dollars mipsters it's it's it's still our money sarah it's like i left teaching profession after five years we we pay in a portion of the employees mixer rates right and the employee pays a portion of their mips or rates so if they leave and cash out there's that money that we paid in we should be getting that back so they have
100a pot that that continues to grow it's like they're holding on to our own money but yes we won't feel it in terms of our our financial accounting this fiscal year but we're not writing a check no we're not writing a check but make no mistake that's ferndale public schools is money it's just like not getting money that but money that we would never get back no you do get back you can use some of those costs to pay your mipsers rate right it was just a weird thing when it happened to teachers and that money sat in limbo for a long time that was when we were paying money we were paying towards health care or towards yeah towards the health care without it being a choice right they said do you want the
101choice to pay the three percent to keep your health care when you retire right we got the money back for those years but the only thing illegal was they didn't ask us if they just asked us then they could so you know most of us are still paying that three percent exactly yeah but i just don't understand what that 3 000 it's like oh that that it's called a it's called a user fee and it's it's assessed by the irs uh because in theory the irs is issuing a determination that is benefiting uh particular taxpayers not taxpayers as a whole and ordinarily you may have businesses on occasion will request a closing agreement from the irs on a a nuanced tax issue that's specific to them and that they may have to pay a thirty
102thousand dollar fee to get that because you're using irs attorneys and others to develop that document here they agreed to a reduced per reporting unit rate but it could still be a very large rate depending on how many of the 700 plus reporting units in the retirement system sign on to this so it's every school district that's doing who goes along with this is putting out three thousand dollars right it's each of their school districts community colleges some of the universities um still have not many but some still some still do so all of the reporting units that wish to make sense to do it and that's where you're caught between a a rock and a hard place because um i mean i i don't specialize in in tax law right but i i have
103heard from from tax counsel and i've heard from auditors statements that actually lead to different conclusions on the one hand they'll say irs would have a very difficult time justifying treating similarly situated taxpayers dollars differently when they're coming from the same pots going into the same pots for the same purposes that would be a real uphill climb for irs to treat folks differently but the fact of the matter is that for a number of years the res irs has treated folks yeah so you've got you know that's kind of cold comfort to say well that that shouldn't happen um and then on the other hand you've got this closing agreement that says it can only be relied upon by those that are signatories to it so you're looking at it going as a district you're
104saying we have treated this as tax exempt for since at least 2010 we're going on you know 11 years of treating this as tax exempt and nothing adverse has happened to us why should we sign on and that that's a justifiable position to take but on the other hand um as donya explained it's it's an insurance policy it's basically allowing you to know that the irs isn't going to go back x number of years um at least through 2026 and probably beyond uh and question your employees tax liability or and and question your fica employer fica tax liability so it it's basically an insurance policy and and i can imagine boards landing on either side of that equation saying i'm not paying for that or that's a small price to pay to know that this
105is done for a while and and that's why it really is a board decision so if we look at it as an insurance policy that's potentially the way to make that bitter pill easier to swallow yeah and i would have to think that if we didn't sign it and if for some reason the irs did say hey y'all didn't sign up for this one so we're going to treat it the exact opposite way that you did we would probably be spending a lot more than three thousand dollars to correct that at that time right i guess i think that i think that's right and that's basically donya and i when we were talking about it we said this is one of those situations where the likelihood of the irs taking a different position on this
106seems infinitesimally small but if they do the challenge to you and your employees is is quite great and so that's you've been you've been put between a rock and a hard place but i do like all the provisions in the resolution that protect us if the agreement does not say what they say it's going to say well that's all we could figure to do for you we thought how can you how can we possibly i mean districts were asking us he said if we do this you know could you put together a resolution authorizing this and i thought i can't put together a resolution that says sure we authorize this person to sign a site unseen a document so we tried to think through what what are the the limitations on that and if for
107some reason the closing agreements that we haven't seen that only this attorney is going to see if it happens to be different from what we have currently seen like for the resolution we would allow him to sign for us on is is it just done at that point like he's going to see it on the last date that there is to sign it and that's all that there is or do we think there's any chance of being able to see it if it is different i guess i see yeah we all what we've been told at this point is that districts will will not have an opportunity to see the agreement before it is signed so what we're trying to do is create an escape hatch that basically says you know alan wilk you are
108authorized to sign this on our behalf provided it is what you said it was going to be now if if he is presented with something different and yet still feels that it is something that most of the districts might have an interest in signing uh i i suppose the possibility exists that it would be put out again for some kind of review and consideration by boards but i this has been such a bizarre process that and and what you're being presented with is such a bizarre arrangement that i can't even speculate as to what might what might occur but what we're saying in the resolution is you're not authorized to sign something different than what you told us you were requesting permission to sign well any other questions or comments thank you meg i followed
109it better than i thought it would give you never given that run-up i i'm glad to hear that thanks meg you're welcome okay thank you all and i can sign off here yeah you're all good yes okay take good care everyone yep you too bye-bye uh that brings us to agenda item 8 public comment this is the time for public participation in the board of education meeting the board of education intends for the public to have many opportunities to address the board and administration of the school district through emails phone calls face-to-face meetings public hearings and other meetings we welcome individual and group input into the important issues that confront our schools this is a an open school board meeting open to the public we want to provide fair and impartial guidelines for participation as
110required by the open meetings act and to encourage transparency and equal treatment for everyone in attendance we also recognize that an effective meeting facilitates better decisions and promotes openness by allowing more people to stay for the full length of the meeting to meet these uh goals please note we ask that you identify yourself um when you begin to speak and um you will have up to three minutes to address the board on agenda items uh or on items either on the agenda or not on the agenda and uh secretary hart will give you a warning if you are approaching uh the three minute limit on public comment um public comments will end at the close of this part of the agenda in the event that the number of people wishing to comment requires longer than
11130 minutes public comment will be temporarily postponed and will be added to the end of the meeting to give people a chance to speak complaints about staff should be made outside of board meetings and should follow the applicable board policy please contact the superintendent's office if you have any questions regarding this item the board cannot respond to public complaints about employees uh cannot respond to complaints about employees in public this is meant to promote fairness to the staff person and the complainant and lastly the ferndale public schools community acts with great civility toward one another please help us to maintain that tradition during public comment so if you'd like to uh comment tonight addressing the board please unmute yourself and introduce yourself and you'll have the opportunity charlie would like to speak go ahead hi
112charlie hi everybody uh hi my name is charlie cavall i'm our county commissioner uh so i was talking to not commissioner school board member sarah l turk over the weekend about coveted things and it it dawned on us that maybe it would be helpful to come and just officially say hello to everybody and let you know of some resources that are available including my cell phone number to everyone on the board and also following the meeting and anyone else please call me um so with that in mind can i do three things real quick which are to talk about where we've been up to now recovered talk about school relevant info regarding kovid and then uh give a couple of ways to stay in the loop okay so uh where we've been up to now
113uh oakland county well michigan gets about 160 000 doses of covered vaccine a week and then a chunk of that comes to oakland county thus far we've gotten 270 almost 271 000 doses of vaccine and that comes to oakland through two different channels that's through private systems like saint joe's ascension mclaren henry ford and beaumont as well as walgreens cvs with long-term care facilities and then it also comes through oak gov which works with myers and rite aid and working on and there are five oak of locations where you can get vaccinated so there have been 210 000 private doses received in oakland county there have been just about including this week's number sixty thousand oak gov doses of vaccine received um oak gov if you go to the michigan dashboard for covid is the
114only green county in michigan everyone else is red or yellow we're really proud of that part of that is due to the the the measurement there is one talking about our ability on the uptick uh or the uptake of the social vulnerability index so this index is like a thing that's been evolving as the vaccine has been rolled out because we've been seeing disparities so oakland county is doing well compared to other places in making sure that social vulnerability is included in how vaccine is distributed and ministered through government channels that's not to speak to private channels and then second got 30 seconds wow all right uh call me um would love to talk more about vaccine and how you can find answers if you don't feel like you're getting them also regarding schools fourteen
115thousand school personnel are in line to be vaccinated in oakland county nine thousand have yet to be given an appointment for the vaccine there's a phone scam out there don't give anyone your phone your financial information if they say they're calling from the government about the vaccine call me at too quick for 248-807-4347 what do you want secretary hart you're uh you're welcome to email the school board charlie that information thank you also questions there are emails i send out at least twice a week to elected officials but i've not been sending those out to you all about uh covet stuff do you want me to start including you all certainly great sure um and uh mr president i think if we wanted to um at any future meeting if um mr cavallo wants to
116do uh presentations you know outside of public comment um i'm sure you and dr bazi would be happy to put him on the agenda for a little bit yes we could accommodate that in the agenda let me know when you want me i'd be happy to come any time thank you mr cavall uh can you hear me this is maurice tullos for the fva president go ahead maurice uh so happy to be at the meeting and see all the wonderful work that's happening in our district and also happy to not have anything to say about the return to learn plan or vaccinations or anything like that so our updates are mostly positive we have been doing a pledge amongst the teachers to see if they would commit to spending at least fifty dollars a month
117at local businesses in farndale um and and within the boundaries of our school district understanding that a lot of small businesses have been under great duress during this time and we've had about 60 people take the pledge and what we do to incentivize participation is raffle off four 25 gift cards to local businesses um each month from the names of the people who've taken the pledge so we're excited to do what we can to support the small businesses normally we would have union socials or get-togethers at different venues and obviously we haven't been able to do that so the other good news is we are working on the calendar with the district and we are pretty close to done i think we just have a few last things to button up and it's a two-year
118calendar which is exciting um amidst all the uh i'll say turmoil and just uncertainty uncertainty is a better word of this year i think it'll be really nice for the parent staff and community to have a two-year calendar for the the school year and we also start bargaining this upcoming wednesday uh so in two two days and we're excited it's always a difficult process because we we all care about students and and education and what's best for our district but sometimes we see it from different perspectives but uh the two cents i'll let right now is i think the the buildings and the work we're doing to to renovate our physical spaces is great and we know that the teachers and staff are the ones who bring those spaces to life and really make them
119work for our students so at least from our perspective we hope through bargaining to achieve some long-term commitments to invest in our staff so they'll be here for the long term and and can make those spaces do everything that we hope they will so thank you and look forward to a safe return to learn in the next few weeks thank you thank you mr telus ford would anybody else like to address the board this evening hi everyone hello my name is rachel um i have a child at ferndale lower um i just wanted to kind of touch base with the board and forgive me on the agenda it's a little unclear it mentions public comment later in the return to learning um agenda item so i'm not sure if this comment would be better or
120saved for later but anyway i'll just go ahead in case because it's getting kind of late anyway um i just want to make it clear i i'm a parent that um would have loved for my child to be in person probably from the beginning of the year based on the numbers [Music] i know things were a little you know unclear at that time as we got into the winner and numbers started to go up i would have been understanding of bringing them back bringing them home and doing something virtually so i do feel like we we had a lot of missed opportunity that we could have been in person i will say now it was just with the plan that we have it's it's super unfortunate um the surveys i haven't felt have been effective
121no one really asked if we were willing to switch teachers if it meant that we could have had a more thorough longer plan to get the kids in by longer i mean more time actually in person with the primary schedule we're looking at 2 hours and 45 minutes monday tuesday thursday friday 2 hours and 15 minutes on wednesdays that's all we're getting in person um and we all know that that's not going to look like what the kids really want and also a big thing that um i want the board to be aware of is the class that my child has been in all year now the children that are going in person and the children that are going virtually they're never going to be together again there's four half days for the rest of
122the year and that is the only time those children are going to be together so for a district that really you know promotes and i think often does a very good job of being mindful of children's social and emotional learning i think that is such a huge mess so so now come monday when we start our you know it's kind of like a new class i don't know her her classmates you know are going to be who's staying who's going um and it's very unfortunate we're staying home even though i want her very much to be in person um this plan just it just doesn't work doesn't work for us and i don't think it works for a lot of family so i really hope that you know even though we don't have much time
123left this year that you really try to put some thought into maybe a better plan for these kids not just for me and my family so thank you for your time thank you rachel is there anybody else that would like to address the board all right we will uh we will close public comment and move on to uh section 9 on the agenda the consent agenda uh agenda item 9.1 the request to approve the minutes of the regular meeting from january 25th 2021 9.2 the request to approve the minutes of the special meeting february 1st 2021 9.3 the request to approve bills and accounts for the month of january 9.4 the request to approve resignations and new hires and 9.5 the request to approve the head start director's report are there any uh consent agenda
124items that board members would like to remove from the consent agenda seeing none is there a motion to move the consent agenda i move moved by jackie is there a second second seconded by anna we'll call miss shepherd eltarck yeah heart yes abraham yes latash yes o'donnell yes president davidson yes thank you thank you with six yes votes the consent agenda is approved that will move us to uh section 10 of the agenda the action agenda items 10.1 the extended covet 19 learning plan february reconfirmation hearing johanna i'm going to hand it off to you okay so this is the last month where our return to learning plan says the same thing that it said last month this is for february you'll see the original approved e-call plan as well as all of the public
125comments from the previous meeting um two-way interaction rates um [Music] i'm not sure why those uh why the last two aren't in there she has them in the document danya they were in there um they were a little higher than that um so maybe maybe that came that was pulled before she finished them off for the yeah it was probably when the link i downloaded and attached it yeah um so um but the the last two weeks i believe were slightly higher than the first two weeks um as always around any kind of a break we always have a dip in attendance so um martin luther king weekend was was in there um so that always affects our attendance um and then uh next month we'll bring the new ecall plan which will have um
126the approved uh plan from the from the previous meeting um for the roomies and zunis so that's it all right um [Music] is there a motion to approve item 10.1 the extended coven 19 learning plan move moved by anna second seconded by jim any uh questions or discussion i guess i'm just one question um and i never i guess really realized it so we're going to approve in march the learning plan for what is already in place as of the time we have our meeting is that correct okay no it's not like i had a ahead of time basically um what these e-call plans are is each month the state requires us to go over with the board what the current learning plan is for that month so in march we'll go over the current
127learning plan for what we were doing in march and then we post we post them in in um the sepi system which is a an online housing like a clearinghouse so each month we go in and they ask us you know what percentage of students are in school what percentage of students are at home we fill that out and it's by whatever the current month is i don't know if that answered the question yep no that totally answers it so it's what we're currently doing not what is the plan to do they want to know what's the actualizing right now okay thank you i appreciate it roll call miss shepherd heart yes abraham yes latash yes madonna yes delterk yeah president davidson yes thank you thank you with six yes votes the extended coven 19
128learning plan february for february um is passed that brings us to agenda item 10.2 the request to approve the for the food service equipment purchase for fecc and fuel nancy sorry coming okay we're not it's okay i am sorry i can't see this there's the dog i'm sorry um so we have we have been working to upgrade um a lot of our food service equipment um two buildings um we've been noticing or we're having issues with right now especially with the type of meals that we're preparing um we have to bag up and separate by each individual meal meaning lunch and breakfast and we have to be able to store these meals to temperature some of the equipment we have at fecc and at upper elementary the equipment is not large enough um and it's
129old so um at fecc we're actually using um a residential refrigerator freezer unit and that really is not the type of equipment that we should have in that building so we are recommending um for fecc that we purchase a new commercial two-door refrigerator freezer um and then at upper elementary we are requesting um we're recommending that we purchase two pieces of equipment um a stand-up one door commercial refrigerator and a stand-up um one one door commercial refrigerator freezer um we have received three quotes on these and our lowest quote was from stafford smith um we have purchased for uh equipment from them before and have been very pleased um this is the lowest of our three quotes and uh the three pieces of equipment would be uh purchasing for a total of 19 19 seventeen
130dollars um and we would be using um because we need this equipment to house um the meals that were um serving during this covid period um we're going to be able to charge this equipment to the new coveted funds that we've been allocated so does anyone have any questions i just got one sorry that i didn't realize it's showing on there that when they install the refrigerators they're also going to remove the existing refrigerators so are we like throwing them away yes we will be yes we will not be keeping them no no um the equipment that we have it's it's old um this is not something it's nothing like it couldn't be used like in a teacher's lounge or anything like that no okay no we have um those types of things in in
131those areas and um the age of this equipment this isn't something that we want to keep um so we just we want to dispose of it okay um is there a motion to approve the food service equipment purchase i'll move moved by jen second and seconded by anna any other uh questions or comments before we vote roll call miss shepherd ibrahim yes latash yes o'donnell yes that's hurt yeah hearts yes president davidson yes thank you thank you with 60s votes the um request for food service equipment purchase is approved that brings us to agenda item 10.3 the request to approve the march 2020 bond project bids for fecc and fuel i just wanted to mention i know dania had mentioned some of them earlier but uh we do have uh andy birch on online with
132us tonight uh andy is going to be our project manager from clark construction through the duration of our entire bond so andy if you wanted to say hi hi everyone hey good good to hear you uh so anyways andy will be here in case we have any questions but this is uh for the first batch of uh work in our bond projects and uh you know as the architect went over before it's the work at fecc and fuel uh we had 19 bid categories um andy had put the bid packages together and lumped the work for both buildings together uh similar trades so that we could get some economies of scale um so we out of the 19 bid categories uh the total um the total uh contract was uh or total war recommendation is
133five points or five million seven hundred ninety thousand eight hundred sixty nine dollars we had a bond budget of six million four hundred ninety two thousand eight hundred fifty dollars so this uh this group of projects is actually under the bond budget by over seven hundred thousand dollars uh so we're asking for approval of these contracts to begin work this summer uh this work will be completed at the end of this summer break just one thing i wanted to add sorry um we we are under budget on this project but we already um we're currently working on the the fitness area at the you know at the ferndale high school so when we set targets you know back in march again a lot of it is based on you know theoreticals and then when we
134actually get into the design and engineering things change so uh that that seven thousand seven hundred thousand is is probably mostly spoken for as things will will shift between bond projects but this is still capturing all of the [Music] all of the things that we stated we do within the bond work is being done with the addition of of two alternate projects that were even included in the original um you know specifically mentioned in their in the original so we'll see things go plus and minus and and um obviously we want to hit it as close to the target as possible but um i just want to make clear that that 700 000 is is going to be spoken for very quickly most likely yeah and just to mention we did have a whole series
135of alternates that gmb and clark put together uh in case you know we did go over budget but for any reason on this project but the two that we did select we felt like we couldn't go back later and do these and the one was a new fire alarm system at fecc um to do that office renovation we have to tear out the existing panel and that panel is original with the building and it's old and outdated so we felt like now was the time to get the new system in and then the other thing is the gas piping on the roof at fuel because we are replacing the entire roof system uh it would be very hard to work around that existing piping and it's in bad shape so now is the time to
136do it so we felt like those two options were not we weren't able to do those in the future so those are included in the pricing questions i appreciate um you know when things come under because we know the other things are going to come in over so um sounds good um and so is there a motion to approve the uh march 2020 bond project bids for fecc and fuel i move moved by jackie consecuted by sarah uh roll call miss shepard latosh yes o'donnell yes l turk yes heart yes abraham yes president davidson yes thank you thank you with six yes votes the uh march 2020 bond projects project bids are approved that brings us to agenda item 10.4 the request to approve the masb board of directors region 8 candidate selection well my
137hope is the board has a easy decision attend packet is um is are the candidates for uh the board of directors for our region um sandra duque our board vice president is running for that position and again this is this is one i will leave to the board but her candidacy information is right here i'm pretty sure we can do this uh i move that the board cassettes vote for sandra dukey for region 8. uh standard uh there's a motion for sandra dukey to be uh in in seconded by anna i don't think we have a lot of discussion yay sandra you adore sandra no one better i mean i would i would say anne and i were both on the oakland county school board meeting when the other candidates spoke and there are a
138lot of very good candidates but i think by far sandra would be the best representative for our district so yeah definitely definitely the best choice i think for us she has a lot of um attributes a lot of skills that the other districts also need yep i suppose we can share her a little bit a little well she's she's got enough to spread around she's got some bandwidth yes yeah yeah um she's yeah she's uh incredible asset to our board and uh the rest of the state will be fortunate if they'll be you know they'll be able to share her wisdom sharing her wisdom they may get a little shaken at times but that's good for them too everybody needs to be a little shook sometimes yep roll call miss shepherd o'donnell yes elterc yeah
139heart yes abraham yes natash yes president davidson yes thank you thank you uh with six yes votes sandra dukey is uh approved as the candidate um supported by the ferndale public schools for the maasb board of directors region 8. that brings us to agenda item 10.5 the request to approve the resolution to permit school boards to meet in person so go ahead oh no go on i'm sorry i did i didn't know if you're waiting for me or not i can't see um why don't you go ahead and speak to it uh dr buzzy okay uh this resolution comes to us from uh masb thank you sarah for for passing uh this along this resolution is meant to help us lobby for the allowance of in-person meetings to continue with with the governor urging schools
140to return some form of in-person learning march first we feel that boards should have the ability to be able to meet in person if they if they so choose currently we are under i'm in order not to meet in person up until march 31st and we we really believe that if we are asking students and families to return to in-person learning that board meetings should also return in person there are certain things that can't be replicated by by being virtual um whereas in person uh meetings have have a different dynamic and we are urging mdhhs as other many you know as many other districts are also urging them um to allow us to have that choice uh to meet virtually so if this is uh approved we'll send this on to masb as well as
141our legislative aide david randalls at schools to let them know this is this is the district's position questions comments concerns i think this is a great idea i i feel a little odd um encouraging families kids to go back to school and yet holding ourselves apart and saying oh no we can't do that i don't i don't understand the governor's position on that but um i think that we should be doing this going back is there a motion to approve the resolution to permit school boards to meet in person and seconded by anna roll call miss shepherd elterc yes heart yes abraham yes natash yes o'donnell yes president davidson yes thank you thank you with six yes votes the uh resolution to permit school boards to meet in person is approved that brings us to
142agenda item 10.6 the request to approve the irs closing agreement uh clag closing agreement one one seven eight nine seven one nine resolution yeah i think i think we discussed this at length if there's anything else let me know we've discussed this at length yes i moved to approve uh moved by anna i second and seconded by jim roll call miss shepherd heart yes abraham yes latash yes o'donnell yes belter yeah president davidson yes thank you thank you with six yes votes the request to approve the irs closing agreement resolution is passed it's approved that brings us to uh section 11 on the agenda informational items 11.1 the budget to actual report my favorite my favorite report every month that nancy does a phenomenal job at preparing again this tells us kind of where our
143spending is at this point in time as it as it compares to last year this year we have about fifty one point three three percent remaining as opposed to last year about fifty two point um eight percent fifty five eight percent um remaining again the variance uh is explained as you can see some line items have great variance in terms of no notation a b c there's two c's but um i'm sure one was left over from last month but basically explains the deviation from those um and we are still on track in terms of our spending our budget looks um you know it looks i looks good through the end of the year in terms of where we've projected that we will be and uh no unexpected costs so far we are still waiting
144on um the release of our covid dollars uh we still have have moved forward with hiring a of sanitation specialists and in other positions um with the understanding that those dollars will come as soon as um you know the political football game is over so we're proceeding with caution but still staffing and filling in positions that we know are needed as students and staff return to in person but again nothing um out of the ordinary on this month's report tanya the c's um it's the same explanation for two different variances that's why there's two c's oh okay i appreciate the explanation thank you nancy sure all right questions all right all right that takes us to uh 12 consideration of any pulled consent agenda items of which there were none agenda item 13 uh the
145next board meeting is a special board meeting committee of the whole scheduled for march 8 2021 and agenda item 14 the next regular board meeting is scheduled for march 15th 2021 and that brings us to the eagles points of pride or comments for this month's meeting i guess i can start i just want to wish everyone the best of luck um on the 1st the 8th and the 15th i know it's going to be a big transition for all of our students and our families and our teachers and our principals and administrators i know it's not a perfect solution for everyone but it's a huge shift for everyone involved in the district and i just wish everyone the best of luck and we'll all get through this i'll go next i just want to say
146i appreciate all the teachers and staff for um the hard work that everyone has done virtually and for preparing to go back to the building next month and shout out to all the teachers and staff who've been able to get vaccinated and hopefully if you haven't you'll be able to get in line soon to get that done um i'd like to um see i'd like to thank i guess that's the right word i'd like to thank sandra dukey um introducing her 21 days of um the anti-racism challenge that she brought to the um oakland county school board association's diversity equity and inclusion subcommittee and um i'm not sure how many people accepted that challenge or took part in it um i did and it was um i haven't done every single day of it in
147order um but i've done a lot of it and it has been very eye-opening it's been very gratifying um and i would probably never have done it without um her encouragement i'm hoping that she's able to bring that to the entire oakland county school board association um in the future but as somebody said earlier we have a treasure in on our school board and so i just want to say thank you to sandra even though she's not here today that's all um i want to express my uh uh support uh for what anna just said i just uh really appreciated that um 21 day challenge uh even though those sorts of things always take me uh in this case probably about 42 days to do right but um you know this is somebody that's i'm
148somebody that's still working on my college reading list the things that i never got around to reading when they were assigned so that was 30 years ago but uh if there's some really good things in there and uh they are uh timeless so even if you haven't gotten through them all please do uh pick them up and good stuff practice um i'm going to do one i was able to attend this weekend a meeting with the royal oak townships true through reconciliation a project they've been working on for the past year um to do more the history of what royal oak township uh or where a little charter township used to be and how it's changed um and the one this weekend was specifically in regards to ferndale so a lot about ferndale schools and
149the history of the district and a lot of things that i had no idea about ferndale school district um i learned so i really appreciate that project what they're doing um and really want to say part of why our family stayed in ferndale and what drew us to ferndale where a lot of the changes that were going on in the district as our kids just started to enter the school with the consolidation and making brenda lower and ferndale upper and what we did there and just that i appreciate all the work that i know a lot of you were a part of with the school board then and a lot of the staff and administration and all the teachers that were a part of that because i think it has changed the way that the
150district is and for a positive um and not that we have made all the changes we need to but that it moved us in the right direction so just wanted to say thank you to everybody that worked on that um and continuing to move us in a more positive direction as a school district and if you want to get a part like join and be a part of it at all it's an amazing thing to learn about if you haven't yet so well i i would like to um shares my point in pride share as my point of pride this evening that uh similar to um what's been said i am um it's really remarkable all the work that's gone into leading up to the district's um move to hybrid education soon and um i
151am uh of course hoping for good um energy and um hoping everything positive um as that rolls out i also wanted to mention i can't remember which detroit uh daily it was this morning whether it was the news of the free press but one of them is listing the uh frienddale uh men's basketball team as ranked 10th in the state um they're off to a great start and i've caught a few minutes here and there on facebook live um and uh they're fun to watch and i'm hoping to catch some more soon i just um you know i have a few shout outs uh you know one is it relates to athletic uh sean butler has has done a great job at uh getting wrestling and winter athletics um including basketball underway the kids are
152doing well um enjoying the practices and he's doing everything him and his staff to obviously keep our students and staff safe but it has been really nice to see our kids competing and and being with one another so i i hope our our good fortune continues but he's done a phenomenal job and he's been at work morning night most days uh the next thing is to to diana keith and and katie jeffrey all of my all of the administrators have had are doing a phenomenal job at planning for return to in person but their buildings are are the first to go and and they really have really sent out um wonderful communication have set up great scheduling and really are working with their staff in a collaborative way um to be ready for that week
153back that that we start on march 1st and i i know they've been working around the clock through break um so of course their staff is is assisting them and that wouldn't be possible without them but miss jeffrey and miss keefe are certainly doing a phenomenal job at the elementary level all right thank you all um is there a motion to go into closed session to discuss the superintendent evaluation mid-year check-in i'll move like i moved by jen and seconded by jim i guess we usually vote on that don't we yeah needs to be roll call yes roll call miss shepherd abraham yes latash yes o'donnell yes elsark yeah hearts yes president davidson yes thank you thank you with six yes votes we will move into closed session to discuss the superintendent evaluation good night
154everyone um put the adjournment time for me please yes thank you have a good one thank you