001I'd like to call this meeting to order at 6:30 and everybody please stand for the pledge 5:30. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Amber, would you please note all um board members and admins present? And then um board, you have an agenda in front of you. Thank you. Board, you have an agenda in front of you. Um are there any changes? And if not, may I have a motion to approve the agenda? So move. All in favor say I. I. I. Motion carries. I 50. Um, next up we have reports, community inputs. Do we have anybody? You look for I do. Okay, perfect. Next up, we have business items for
002discussion, safety, safety training for the bus team. So, in our bi-weekly meetings that we have with our transportation team, thanks for being here, gang. Um, we have come to the conversation that we're looking for some safety training for the bus drivers should anything outside of the norm of the drills that they already do. So, like they do fire evacuations. Um, but if and when there was to be some different type of crisis, what would those be and how would we respond in those? And so, we're looking to put something together for back to school professional development for all of our drivers. Um, so that that will be coming. um CPI for all staff update um all staff updated. So CPI is crisis prevention intervention. We have teachers that are trained in that in different levels.
003So I know Sean's trained in that, I'm trained in that. Trace is trained in that. And what that does is it teaches us as professionals to how to deescalate situations, how to respond when a student is maybe in crisis. Um but then there's a other layer too of how to keep them safe, should they get physical or should they be unsafe by aloping or something of that nature. So um we will be looking at that and who needs to be trained and getting everybody trained before back to school on that right now. So just wanted to update you there. 31 and six funding is for like therapy and counseling. So, we have our counselors and our social workers that do their positions, but then let's say we've got a student that we're talking to because
004of a behavior situation and we identify that maybe some supports in the household or some supports um additional to what the school can provide may be necessary. So, we do a referral to our 31N6 therapists who Hillary Deold runs for us. Um, and there's funding for that. There's not a ton of funding for that, but what we identified is that we were letting the we were having the therapists do training and it was taking money away from the kids and they weren't really using the training. So, we are going to a lot that money back to paying for services of the student. So, that's that's a good find there. Safety drive. Oh, we've created a safety a district safety drive. So everything has been like everywhere in different folders and whatnot. So the safety team
005identified it that we needed one space that was safe and not everybody had access to to have our resources in. So that's just another upgrade that we've done. And then community parent perspective and communication. We're really trying to figure out how we're going to share what GA does to maintain safety and be within protocol of CPI training within the reunification process. So, um, I'm coming to you guys first is like what would that look like? What do we think as representatives of the district on what could be communicated to parents to our community around how GA is safe? We did the safety video. We've posted like our different holds or secure modes and things like that. Is that enough? Is that good? Do we need more? Those are the things I'm thinking through right now.
006So, that's our discussion for safety. Does anybody have any questions on that? If you if and when you come up with like ideas about how to promote safety and it's within the realm of things that we have capabilities of doing, I'd love to hear your ideas as a parent. Like what is it that you want to hear or see? Um facilities top needs of the district. So in the weekly report that I sent out on Friday, I gave you Frank's list of I mean it was just a whole it's a raw list. It's like yes, we can analyze it for this this this is this, but more it's more of a catch-all of all the needs that we have and then eventually we're going to have to figure out how we're going to prioritize those
007needs and what funds we want to put towards them going forward. I asked Frank, however, to put together the top priority needs that is in your packet, the last page. Frank, do you mind getting on that mic right there and just talking about him just for a second? Good afternoon everyone. Um yeah, so um I guess we'll do the projects before the construction management uh stuff. So uh just go down the list. I mean roof replacements I think is if not top, it's top two. um you know, it could go real sideways real fast and be real expensive if we're not proactive about um replacing roofs. Um the rest is sort of up to debate. I know high school furniture, especially student desks, is, you know, a big priority for staff and students in this
008building. Um window coverings as well. Uh the majority of the classrooms, high school and primary school, have the old shabby vertical blinds that get twisted and break and fall down and they break and they either don't spin anymore, they don't open and close. Um and window coverings is kind of a sort of a safety security concern as well. Um, this one, the remodel and renovation of spaces. I may maybe I should have put that. That would have been lower on my list, but um I think it'd be more popular um for some potentially remodeling this room, science 221 down the hall, which is basically just a extra junk storage room. Uh right now, um the primary stage, if you ever take a look at that, it'd really be nice to make better use. Yeah, don't
009open that curtain. Uh transportation uh slashmaintenance slash storage facility. I mean, basically what we have now at uh Battle Creek Street is you while still functional and very poor condition. Um and we'd be be looking to something that serves the same purpose only upgraded ideally with more storage capacity for uh extra assets the district has. Um, a lot of that namely would be a lot of the track and field equipment we acquired for the last bond. Um, and then you get into HVAC. I mean, air conditioning, while I you could argue whether or not it's a necessity, it's some it is. Um, so, you know, all that all that equipment is 20 plus years old. I mean, we we dumped a 20 ton of money last year into the primary chiller to have air conditioning
010for the fall. Um, the high school BMS, BMS is the building management system. So, basically all your heating and air conditioning controls are softwarebased. There's no thermostat you can go to and switch from heat to cool. It's all electronic. Well, that software is um it was last updated in 2014, so 10 years ago, and it's no longer supported. Uh, plus the server that it runs on is from 2012, I believe. And it's a major security internet, you know, network um problem for the networking team. So, that'd be a good thing to be upgraded. Um, the rest of them, you know, you can go I'm happy to answer any specific questions you might have, but I don't want to take a ton of time on this. Um, when they redid the middle school, then did they
011when they redid the middle school, did they not do anything with a chiller? They did not. That's that chiller was from '04. When this this building was built, the middle school was remodeled. They installed that chiller at the middle school that bond. Is that building also like on a software system or It is. It was modernized in 2018 on the previous bond. So, it's in good shape. Um, anything else? I just I did get a few questions from the weekly update that when I I I posted in the weekly update the um the list that has a million and 10 things on it. Kind of like when we did our walkthroughs with CMS the very first. Hey, here's Old Mascal. There's a concession stand. These are all things that we know could need attention. I
012think the question is is how are we going to prioritize? don't have that answer yet, but this is from Frank's. Frank's I mean, and I agree. I give a stamp on these are being huge things, too. Old Mascal isn't on here. We do know we need to come up with a plan at some point. Um, when we're talking about, you know, a potential transportation, I'm just giving you my thoughts on how I've thought through this. you know, if we did have to do if we could do another transportation barn, having that maybe here at the high school where it's building four big walls that store athletics, that store the transportation that store everything versus building eight walls and spending more money that way. So, those are just my initial thoughts of how to maximize our
013needs. Um, but again, I don't think we spent a ton of time on what those priorities are yet because I think we're looking for some professional guidance on that, too. And I think part of the bottom would be Yeah, I have a question. I'll just yell. If my memory serves me correctly, when they put when they built the high school in 2000, when they put the roof on it, there was some kind of problem that popped up within three or four years, and I think they ended up redoing the entire thing. Is that correct? Frank, what I'm getting at is that, you know, if you look, we're 25 years out from then, and you know, a 30-year roof really doesn't last 30 years. So, it's not surprising that this one needs another one in spite
014of the fact that that may have happened if I'm correct. And I'm not sure cuz I don't remember they they renovated the what's used to be the high school and now the elementary the same time. And I don't know if they did that roof, you know, back in 2000 or 20 or 20 or three was whenever was done. Do you know cuz I don't think they ever did the entire roof. I think they fixed what was wrong. Yeah. So, um, I came on in 2018 here. Uh, so I wasn't around for the initial several years. From what I'm told, the the gym roof was just problem after problem from day one. Also, this section of roof that's above us right now, this roof um was really bad. Uh, especially with ice dams and stuff like
015that. So, this section above us was replaced in 2018 as part of the that bond project as well as the gym roof. um the main gym roof. So, those are the two sections of roof here at the high school that have been redone since it was original to the best of my knowledge. Thank you, Frank. Any questions on Frank's list? Okay. Um next thing is on our agenda we have construction management interviews. Also in the weekly update, I gave a overview, if you will, of what we're going to do. It's actually in my superintendent report for the board meeting, too, because I want to make sure the community knows that. Um, but we held construction management interviews on Thursday and Friday with three different organizations or three different management companies. We had Miller Davis, we
016had Elite, and then we had Triangle. Um, interviews were roughly an hour, hour and 15 minutes. Um, they lasted about that long. We It was a It was fun to get more comfortable as we did the first one and then the second and the third. Um, well, I think we learned a ton. I want to just say thank you for those of you that were able to be here. I know everybody has a different schedule and whatnot. things couldn't work out. But it was invaluable to have board members at the table with us being able to ask questions and not have it just be on our shoulders, you know, during the day there. Um, what else with that? We went through and so there's I'm going to say this twice tonight, so just forgive me,
017but we went through and looked at a measuring tool that Tower Pinkster gave us. Looks a little something like this. And what we did is we rated each company in a couple different pillars. So by cost, by value, by all these different measures. I can read them off in a minute. And then we gave one to five ratings for one way to measure it. Then we said, okay, we could didn't have one through five and we just had one, two, and three. You couldn't give the same to each one. You have to rate it. Both of those tools came back the exact same based off of those five people I think that we had that rated that. We do still have to get other people's values too. We'll do that in our next um session.
018Another thing that we did is we put together a table of what are the positives of each construction management and then what are the negatives and then what are some of those bonus things that we weren't maybe looking for that really spoke to us throughout the interviews. Anybody else want to add real quick to experience from the construction management interviews? I think they were very insightful. So, just reiterating what you said. Yep. So, we looked at do they have 12 K12 experience? What's their workload like? Are they able to take on more work? Are they local or are they farther away? What was the um what's the cost in budget management that they've experienced? And then how have they stuck to that? We also looked at the fee proposal and then the interview itself. So
019we have a timeline of um talking about it today at today's board meeting and then also getting a special meeting together to really make a decision so then we can offer out anything more with construction management interviews. Um yeah uh so the construction manager rule will be vital in the pre-bond planning helping us uh not only to prioritize our needs and wants uh but also the main big thing is to put costs estimates to those um these companies are involved in construction you know day in day out week after week year after year they're going to have a much better ability to get a reasonable accurate estimate for I mean what's this roof going to cost? Um you know in in reality it's not going to get done for a year and a few months
020right even if you know we start planning uh in November. So they have the ability to forecast those costs uh more accurately and um and help us when we get some numbers next to this list is going to help us select our priorities. Can I ask one more question about his little list because I saw at the bottom here that there's the food service high school cooler and freezer update. Is that something that would actually go on the bond or is that something that could be taken out of the food service budget? I know we took when we bought a freezer. Was it the freezer for the middle school? It came out of food service budget because they had such a excessive. Yeah. And so that's that was my only other question for this one
021is that's something that could be under the food service budget. Okay. It certainly could. I don't know where their budget's at. Okay. question for um what is it called on there? Uh it's just called high school cooler and freezer update. Cooler. Thank you. Yeah. The main reason that's on there, just so everyone's aware, is the refrigerant in those systems is old R22 that's no longer manufactured. So, uh the cost per pound just keeps going up and up and up and eventually it'll never be available. So, this is hard to believe that this building is still old. Okay, that was facilities. I think we're good there. We're going to have a lot more discussion around CM stuff later, but um transportation discussion. Thank you. Do I need to stay for the later today? Oh, I think
022you No, thank you. Transportation. So, we have our van policy. So, the uh committee Well, we had the vans and we didn't have a policy for the vans. So we discussed in um our policy committee that we needed to create one. So we futed around we were going to create one as a team and then we said you know what let's go to the experts. They run the auxilio has um protocols for policy for vehicles and whatnot. So we asked them to help partner with us on that. They've created the van policy. The policy committee for the board read it. We went over a few little details. I did get some feedback from some of you through the last when I um put it in the last one and then we need to get it
023to Nola which he Chris Rice did too many papers here. Hold on these. So it's uh we're doing our first reading for school van usage. So do they have that Amber? Do they have this puzz in the regular packet? Okay. So, a couple let me just give you overview of some of the fe some of the feedback that was in there for authorized users which I know we've had a lot of conversation on. That's going to be only authorized employees or volunteers designated by the school district may operate the van. So, is there any conversation or clarification on questions for that? Because employees or volunteers can really I think that does cover it. That could be parents, that could be board members, that could be teachers because they're employees. Good. Okay. Just seeking clarity. And
024then authorized passengers, registered GA students, and only students contact or connected to a school activity. So, we really discussed how I did bring up the um situation to let's say this summer I have a bunch of teachers going up to Grand Rapids and rather than paying them all mileage, would it be financially responsible to say, "Okay, why don't you all jump in the van and we just have the van go up there so that we're not paying that mileage, but we're using the van because it's not needed for students or routes." Um, so I think the only thing that the committee suggests was that or otherwise otherwise or otherwise authorized by the superintendent for a reason. Fair, but it wouldn't be a priority over students. Well, yeah, she would authorize it. Do we have students
025that like go to other schools that would be in the vans potentially? Like you know how we like do loop services or what have you? Are you talking about like in the summertime? Well, no. a Kazoo student that hops in the bus on the way to Nors or whatever. We do hub busing. I don't think we've done hub bands. Yeah, we have students that go to Parchment. They come to GA, we take them and bring them over to Parchment for their services and then go and pick them up and bring them back here. So, that's a good that's a good question. Yeah, they're still I guess in our eyes mind they're still considered GA. Mhm. Because they're technically they're GA. They're just getting their service outside. Yeah. They're getting their services. Okay. I understand. But
026like if we were like if we were to go to Camy and drop off some kids there and there were two climax kids, let's say, and it worked for us to hub that out. Actually, the superintendents have been having conversation just about how could we network more together because it's just so individualized. Um, so yeah, I'm not sure. Okay. Oh, or I didn't know like when we had the emergency too, I think you guys did use the vans to go help the trailer parks like just situations like that. But if you put otherwise Yeah. then that would be good. I remember getting that call when I was in that van. Okay. Okay. Um, let's see. So, I I you this will be our first reading tonight. So, just giving you the prelude of this is
027what it's going to this is the conversation for a little bit later. And then so, thank you to the G for thanks to Jess and Lynette and Miranda for being able to help create that to get us started. Yeah, Miranda did most of it. Basically all she did was just take it from like what was already there at on the different pages and just tried to create just one instead of don't right. Yeah. So currently to the transportation team and if you guys want to step in and chat at any point right here um that we're creating our communication plan for back to school. So, our hope, our outcome for the back to school for transportation is to have the smoothest first two weeks of bus routes that we possibly can. So, we're backwards designing
028first day of school transportation and when do you have to submit your information? When will we send out your communication to that? When are we going to do our practice routes and so on. So, we are going to be starting in early August and I think that's going to ruffle a little feathers because I think parents wait till the last minute. But in order to create those first two weeks to be super safe and smooth, there is going to be a lot of communication about you have to have your forms in. You have to have them updated in order to get transportation so that we can make it as smooth on everybody else doing their job right. Well, we did talk about like if a kid is already at an established route and it's easy
029to just throw them on last minute, we could do that, but to reroute those in the first two weeks is just too messy. So, we're working on that what that plan is. I have our art teacher working on a bus costume right now so we can do a few videos like Lynette, you didn't know you were going to wear that, did you? Absolutely. All right. Um, so that's really it on transportation. Um any questions on any of the things with safety facility and transportation that you guys have? All right. Anything from you guys? All right. We are good to go then and then we are done with this unless there's any other questions. I take it there's no public participation. I have fan questions. Am I allowed to come ask? Yeah, you can just put
030your name down on that. Okay. You can do that afterwards. I'll ask. Okay. I have two questions. You don't have to answer them. I'm sorry. Yeah, we can't answer. She'll go back. She's violent. Okay. So, when I have two questions you can answer me later, whatever. um our high school furniture and Frank's list cuz I didn't hear that but I don't know if it was on there. It could have been. I just didn't see it cuz stressing about these kids fitting these desks. Um and my other question was is it so like the van situation is very stressful for me, right? Because for special ed I've been like advocating about these vans for like eight years. If how long have you guys been on this board, you all know. And then now it's time, but
031now I can't use it. So it's very frustrating to me. Um because I thought that was part of the reason that we were getting them was it so that we would be able to use them. Um I know that they come and pick us up in a bus and whatever to do stuff, but that's not like serving all of our purposes, but like when we go on our trips, the the vans are are booked Monday through Friday. So I can't even say like, "Hey, we have these field trips coming up. I want to be able to take the kids and go and that like so are we going to have a better plan for like it not like the bus costs more money to take four kids like right I have four students in a
032full-size bus driving around town. That seems to me like more money than me driving them in a van to go do what we're supposed to do. Maybe I'm not good at math. Not super true, but I'm kind of good at math. But I can't drive a bus. So, I mean, I can, but I wouldn't let me drive that. But, so anyways, that's my question. Like, when we're thinking about this for next year, because this was a huge thing for us this year to be able to have the freedom to go, they got taken away and it was a lot and it is frustrating and it's hurtful to the kids and I just feel like we can no longer do what we plan to do with them. And like when we have our big trip coming,
033I have to like ask. It's just I just don't think it's I just don't I don't know. I just don't like the way it's worked out because I just feel like we kind of got shafted and we were part of I thought the reason not the whole reason, not solely for us. I'm not saying that, but as part of the Well, thank you very much for your comments. And special ed's fully funded. Everyone matters. So we should be able to drive the van, too. Um, do we have any comments from the board? Superintendent, I'll just lay out some flat facts. We um, and Teresa and I have talked, so we've we've already had this conversation. Um, but we at the beginning of the school year, the buses were not being or the vans weren't routed,
034just FYI, and then they got routed. And so I think that is where we've got some conflict right now. Um, and then anything else for me for superintendent comments? Happy St. Patrick's Day. That's all I have. We'll adjourn this meeting at 5:57. We have 3 minutes until our next meeting.