Richmond Community Schools Board of Education Meeting on November 14, 2022

001[Music] good evening the regular meeting of the Richmond Board of Education will come to order please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance 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 [Music] and Sherry our mission statement please at Richmond Community Schools we provide a quality education that empowers students to be successful in a global Community thank you our roll call Candace here Sandy here Dad here Angela here Danielle here Margaret here and I'm here we have a quan thank you for we approve our agenda we need to make uh two changes we are going to be removing Item B under the presentation the human growth and development and that will be at our next

002meeting and we are adding in the place of that be the proposals we have two proposals for overnight extended student trips so I am looking for a motion for the amended agenda so moved to have support support Angel yes thank you um any discussions no just to make note that the reason we're moving it to the next meeting is that our presenter is ill thank you Margaret yep um all those in favor opposed motion carries I'm looking for an approval for the consent agenda so moved excuse me do I have support support thank you um any discussion Mr Walmsley we do we have a couple of resignations retirements uh Mr Burke rajino was dean of students will be taking on his new position on the 28th of November Christoph a teacher at the high school

003she was here with us for about a year and I was going to the Danica Bay and then James travano due to his work schedule he can no longer do the JV baseball coach we will have a recommendation to you I believe on the next board meeting that was replacing uh new hires I see uh I don't see Cardinal blue here she's the media center paraprofessional we have Laurie Del Monte a bus driver who's starting the the training I do see Jennifer Morello she is the candidate for the middle school principals as well you want to say anything or I I just wanted to say thank you so much for this opportunity I really looking forward to um a Blue Devil I'm really excited about uh joining your team thank you um Mr moral just

004says in in your backup has experienced as a principal currently in another District as well as many years of teaching experience um in that same district Mary Beth musket a preschool eight I don't believe she's here Nicholas Novak was hired as a custodian Matthew Ray is an interim bowling coach the current bowling coach is on leaves so this will be just for this year and then we have a child care Aid position Jenny Wheatley there's some appointments that they've already been hired by the district Brandi Canaday she is currently as hired as the district as a lunchroom supervisor she will now be the three-year-old preschool aide Sydney Gianna Cola probably picture the name so I apologize uh she was a former three or three year old preschool aide she will now be the gsrp preschool

005Aid and we're into Zagat Zagat excuse me she was a former gsrp teacher she's moving to the third grade teacher position opening Mrs Walters who has that position has moved to the title one position so I had no nothing brought to my attention regarding the minutes from the regular meeting on the 24th or the special meeting on the third and I know questions that were asked regarding the claims and accounts that are in the attachments that's it anybody have any questions for Mr Walmsley uh yeah just one so um with this new bus driver hired we now have two bus drivers in training uh the one that was in training left to go to was a smart Susie SMART Bus um less than part of the presentation so I'm going to go over the extensive

006training what they have to go through I guess once started we hired and they went to a Smart training okay so then now we've just kind of replaced that training at this point okay anybody else okay all those in favor aye aye opposed motion carries okay on to our presentations our first one this evening is our fiscal year 2022 audit here with us tonight is Jennifer Watkins from Yo and yo so I'm going to turn it over to her you do have the packet that she did pass out to you it was also in your packages before the weekend it's just a different presentation yes thank you thank you for having me as he said I'm trying to proactive I am the partner on the job for Richmond schools audits I have been doing schools

007for almost 16 years and I serve as leader of our education team um for you and y'all was kind of our Niche that we do in the whole state of Michigan and I sit on MDES committees those 1022 group and the reference group so I really enjoy school districts but I will say this year has been a tough year to get School District audits out but you'll see that throughout the report this was a clean year for you um but we will we will show you guys that you did receive three reports altogether you received a large audit report that's your financial statement you will also receive the single audit report that's over your federal dollars and then this is just kind of a summary on the presentation format if you guys have any questions

008as I go through you can stop me or I'm happy to take any at the end or anything if you have a question you can always call or email me I'm first with responsibilities with the audit the district is responsible for the preparation of the financial statement and we really show the distinction between what is the district responsible for and what is the auditor responsible for with the district having to deal with what's the policies procedures the internal controls the monitoring what's going on at the district to get to those numbers and then the auditor is really that third party look to give you an independent look at the numbers and the internal controls and your system the next slide goes over your opinion kind of the audit results you did receive an unmodified opinion

009which I always say unmodified to me doesn't sound like it should but it's a clean opinion that's what you need to perceive that's what MD requires you to have um overall what it means is that your financial statements are free from any material in a statement more on audit results no findings overall so no material weaknesses no significant deficiencies no material non-compliance no fraud or abuse was noted so um overall very good there you also receive a governance letter every year and there's a lot of items in there that go over a lengthy detail of new standards and a lot of accounting jargon but it also covers some of this that we put a summary on that we had no disagreements with management no difficulties in performing the audit something to that in fact if

010they can find documentation or we just could not get information um timely but we would like to know that as before we had no uncorrected misstatements and no significant audit adjustments so all of those basically say a good clean audit um you don't want significant audit adjustments that also leads to a material weakness which you definitely don't want to have we did have one management comment this year which is very common this year um I have it probably about 90 of my districts is what it's called is net cash resources for the Food Service funds and basically USDA has compliance requirements and they only allow you to have three months of expenditures and cash in your food service fund at home any one time they really only look at your ends because that's when you're

011audited but what they do is they work with you first we have a spend down plan for that food service fund and due to the increased in reimbursements and then allowing on free lunch for everyone and with the fact that it was very hard to get some items for the Food Service fund it's just been kind of Statewide an issue this year next slide to go over the single audit now this is over your federal dollars um you are considered a low-risk Oddity which means we have to cover 20 of your federal dollars um you can see at the bottom of the slide we actually covered 70 this year so as a tough year all around um because we had so many extra programs as well and they were dealing with so many new compliance

012requirements with the um which it says meets audited the education stabilization fund most people know that as Esser or year dollars um but there was probably on maybe 10 new grants that fell into that there was a lot of new grants each one had small changes small different compliance requirements so a lot of work on both the auditor and the business office um to get those done but overall with a single audit we had no findings there everything was fine um and then all of our testing we had no material not compliance so overall good report for single audit we did also with that with all the additional federal dollars we also implemented two new standards this year one for Lisa's Gatsby 87 and Gatsby 99 but I won't bore you with the details just

013a little bit more work um they've been coming for a long time and they were delayed to covid so this year they got implemented and they already have new ones for next year so they just keep me in business I guess the next slide goes over a little bit of kind of the audit procedures just to give you more of an idea of pen and start to finish what we do but a lot of it is based on your internal controls so to see kind of for every maybe dollar that comes into the district or goes out what process does it go through what segregation of Duties you have what monitoring you have in place and we checked all of that to then decide what's your risk assessment and then to your procedures based on

014that risk assessment we also bought Midway through on this list we always do something that's unpredictable I always say I've been doing it for 16 years Tammy's been doing it for a few years as well um but they know a lot of what we're going to ask we ask for bankrupts we asked for fantastic asset things so we always try to put something new in there every year that's a little different now on to the numbers these are at least most of the number of graphs um and graphs are Snippets out of your audit report so you do have these um kind of a more detailed faction in the larger report um you have the different buns the ones that are labeled are what we call major funds and then all the others together are

015non-major funds and there's a calculation we do to come up with that general fund is always a major fund but you can see you had total I asked that of 13.3 million for the total year the majority of that is in cash and Investments of about 9 million I'm combined and then the remainder largest portion isn't due from other governmental units this is a snapshot as of June 30th so whatever would do to you for a cost receivable mostly stay day for July and August um and then some federal dollars that was due back to you as of June 30th is what is included in that 3.5 million and the next slide goes over your liabilities on some deferred inflows of resources and then all your fund balances so total liabilities for the district was

016about 4.6 million um and again Snapchat as of 6 30 so your largest categories being accounts payable majority of which is being spent for the 2020 capital projects funds for things that were being worked down but not get paid and then your summer pay for um teachers salaries things like that deferred inflows of resources on available Revenue that was due to the 60-day rule sober Avenue that you had not received yet um kind of by Labor Day that's what's there the 420 000 and then your funds balances I always say kind of from the top to the bottom is the most restricted to the least restriction so overall you can see about 8.3 million in fund balance um 2.6 of that is for non major governmental funds which is all restricted or committed so restricted

017for Food Service funds other Capital project funds or Student Activity funds um and then you had 3.7 left in the 2020 capital projects funds and for General funds if you're ENT fund balance was 1.7 million and we'll give you some ratios on General funds in just a minute the next slide gives you a budget to actual so the original budget that you approved as a board final budget and then your actual um variance final budget was budgeted to have an increased fund balance of 55 000 your actual increase was about 500 or 495 000 um you can also see your difference so your variance per budget um expenditures must be under budget that is the state requirement from the accounting manual and the uba guidance so that always really has to be a negative number

018or you would be in trouble with the state um and also with the federal grants that were in this year the difference kind of netted together your overall net difference is about two percent which is very low um the grants are a different year ends than your school district and your budgeted for in total because that is what Michigan Department of Education likes to see so we like to keep them happy next couple slides are just some graphs these are based on General funds only you can see total State dollars I'm really state and local together that makes up your foundation allowance um that per pupil dollar amount that you're getting from the state of Michigan and then this year federal dollars did go up quite a bit I'm at the percentage base for um

019in total so that right the percent of that 12 is federal the next slide is over here expuniture supporting services and instruction kind of just like to show that see how much of your total by function is spent in those two areas and that's about nine to five percent again that's only General funds so 95 ton instruction and support and services [Music] and the same expenses but shown in a little bit different way um these are by object code so the same amounts but one was by function this is by object total salaries 44 and employee benefits 30 for a total of 74 and then purchase services at 12 which probably about eight to nine percent of that is also um employees or people and what people cost okay just a reminder on the board

020but this is last year's budget so that purchase service we've been having our custodial cost in there next year that will drop because we have mint house and then we come employee a couple Trend analysis um this is 10-year for an enrollment Trend so your total ftes from 2013 to 2022 I'm 22 ending at about 1500 students and the next slide is another Trend um and I actually made this one the 15th year because we were ending it at 2013 and that was a low year for foundation allowance and I remember slides being up here um years ago where are your foundation allowance was a lot more than 6 900 so I thought this was kind of a better or showing you know kind of where your foundation allowance has been um and in the

021last few years it has increased but obviously if you take it as a percent compared to things like your retirement and your UA L costs and things like that it hasn't been going on but the same percent which is you can see by this correct then the next slide one more term analysis this is your general funds balance um the green line is your total fund balance for General funds the blue line is any unassigned portion that is left um they're all pretty close though most of your general fund is unassigned and you can see for 2022 both at 1.7 million and then you can see since basically 2000 and really since 2014 you guys have been moving that upward and then a couple percentages to go over bug balance is the percentage of unrestricted

022Revenue the state looks at that number they want to make sure that's about five percent so in those years where the fund balance was um a little bit lower around 800 000 it was below that five percent Mark they want to make sure that it's always above that last year was a guy in 0.5 percent this year it's up to 12.15 percent um and then in previous years they were always focused on fund balance as a percent of expenditures and probably as a board you look at that as well for 2022 it was 9.4 and um 21 7.4 so both up just a little over two percent and that is all I have I will say I thank you to the team I know it was tough on the business office as I said this

023year um I know a lot of schools that have the eye audits but other firm had a lot of trouble getting their audit out for your audit was done and on time and to the states and no findings so a good clean report for you and I'm happy to take any questions when I was going through the total documents or looking through it there was something about the you made two recommendations or two suggestions to the district or something like that was in one of the documents the one suggestion I know of and I'd have to go back and look but it's the net cash resources so we call the management comment or suggestion um right it's considered non-compliance but we don't consider it to be a finding okay so our suggestion is which um

024the state will be aware of it when they get the report and Tamlin was already aware of it but it's just to work with um the state to come down on that and I don't think there was another one but I'm not positive about that there was there might have been two last year maybe one this year okay thank you you're welcome so that's your the Food Service yeah and so we've already started just the board knows a plan to bring that down um we're looking at evaluation of the equipment that wasn't covered on the bond that maybe at some point we need to purchase and replace it because this would be our opportunity to do among other things but yeah the state's pretty lenient with that they just want you to spend it on

025Food Service obviously and I don't want districts waiting I think eight months for tables so some of it was timing and just issues with those thank you thank you thank you no I just wanted to say thank you to Tammy in the business office every year our audit is tip top shape and it's because of Tammy and the people that work in the office um and so we appreciate that Timmy very much Tammy makes my job very easy because she's uh millions of dollars and always looked into the district in the future so I know the fun balance may seem like a lot but as we've talked with this table what we're putting in over time we have positions that are currently Grant funded that will be phasing out which will clear raise some of

026those expenses which we bring that fund balance down we also have some positions that weren't filled that are now filled so um flow of the local budget process but does that have to do with the savings we put away too like for the football field and that type of stuff in that total fund balance you'll see on the one slide I'll show us it up here the restricted yeah um this is the one right here Tammy the capital project or the one 500 000. yeah so in that is some of the football field that we put away the copies the the buses the um laptops the computers all this stuff that we've been slowly putting away so that when it's time for replacement the dollar should be there so that for example and the reality

027is it's taken a really long time that the comments she made that wrote down since 2014 our fund balance has been moving upward that's huge and that has taken us a very long time as a board in the district to get to that point to have fun balance it's a lot there was a time when that just didn't hit exist I really like that so jump in but they used to recommend 15. mspo and mde and they really stopped putting that number out there but that's kind of the number they gave and then what's you know how much you need not to borrow but you'd be surprised I think that and I don't know off the top of my head it's probably 20 days of expenditures um if you put it into the look of

028you know how much it went for the year and this year with all those after dollars many districts have gone to the 20-25 this year um so when I say over five percent that's that's the very lowest end that you want to get to because then you start getting financial distress from the States you want to always keep you know some cushion in there right and you always want to hope that you don't have numbers that in 2013 you had seventy two hundred and four dollars per student and it's 2022 and oh we only have 8 700 and every year you never know how much money you're going to get so that that that doesn't help things either when you're trying to create a budget and run a school district or take away correct because

029that has happened too over the years consistently I'd like the number to the student s that is a really good you know where we're at where we're going I'm thinking wow our numbers have definitely gone up so that's a good thing and I would just say that the actions of this board in the previous board what you saw here tonight is fiscally sound from the district from the perspective of if you ever go for a bond in the future or refinance bonds they're looking at enrollment they're looking at your fund balance they're looking how stable is the district are you we are in a very good spot as a district to get very good rates if we as we go into the future anybody else have any other questions thank you again thank you okay

030our next presentation will be the proposal for our overnight extended student trips so let's start with uh come on up we'll start with you Josh and we'll have a trip in your packet for Traverse City Mr presidents our varsity basketball coach so if you could tell us a little bit this is your first time coming up here is it so tell us tell us a little bit about your trip all right I'm Josh grobanon I'm the boys basketball coach um first I want to thank Mr lonsley and Mr friend for getting me on to the agenda a little short notice on our departed December 2nd at lunch hopefully um coming back December 4th you paid for the trip already from our basketball our outside basketball outcome um there will be four-door room all the coaches

031from my staff which if you've ever been to a game we have a lot of coaches so we'll have proper supervisions there are bad times and bad checks playing against two top-notch programs and Cadillac and Traverse City and St Francis um and it's a great opportunity for our kids because there's plenty of kids on my team especially that have left our area so we're going to go to Traverse City which is really a nice area um it's great for building um Team chemistry and um some of our kids are possibly college for college-bound so it's a great opportunity to show them what it's like to travel and uh perform the next day that is all I have these questions anybody have any questions yep um did I catch if if a child can't go um

032for financial reasons the the program will take care of it based on fundraising right so that's not that's not a problem at all and did it say in here that maybe not everybody will go it's it's a is it a um that's that's whatever's using if you can't go for whatever reason okay okay that was my question anybody else have one on the board I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm not looking at a calendar so the second and the third are they weekdays are they missing school for those days the missing half a day on Friday okay are we checking rates or anything yep it said it's set in there okay how he does it okay any other questions for the coach okay we'll be voting on it at our next meeting thank you can we

033just I mean we are voting at it at our next meeting because that's how we do it with presentation and then but the meeting is the 28th and they're leaving on the second so I just if we if we all feel that we're good with it at least he knows that it's it's he can continue to plan this trip yeah does anybody have a concern officially vote on it does anyone have a concern no I do not I do not okay thank you I appreciate it you're welcome [Music] along that same presentation we have uh Brandon day a wrestling coach um this trip he's been up here before it seems to be an annual trip so I'll turn it over to Mr Dave thank you um we have three trips uh the only one that

034would uh require the kids missing school is December 16th we're wrestling the 2018 tournament defines College in Defiance Ohio um we have another trip uh for it was says all of that in your in your notes we actually got the Olivet coach to come to Noodle threw up so we won't be we won't be leaving the six will just be the seven so the kids will not miss school that week and we'll do our recruiting thing with with that coach at the tournament that that Saturday and then uh uh January 21st is the roll tournament on several Dash unite teams and again we won't miss who will leave Friday we wrestle Friday night and we'll leave Friday night from where we're competing at to go to to little high school so um all three events

035are great opportunities for our kids um I'll give you example the fines last year the competition was so great Kevin mckernan who ended up being state champion Force Russell 10 matches and finish three and seven at that tournament at a minor win the State title so great opportunity for our kids um great environment team building like coach president my entire staff will be there so we'll have tons of chaperones no lights out time early early wake up times all that stuff so um it's a great opportunity all through for our kids and it's kind of showcase our program and our community and our schools any questions I guess for God looks good thank you very much I just want to say you know to miss mashad and Mr OMSI watching that presentation is the person

036who's lived here 21 years he taught here 21 years I remember the articles that said schools on the rocks and stuff and our fund balance was was not good so as a parent first awesome awesome job extremely thankful that we're going to the direction we're going so I know you guys are a huge part of that so thank you thank you thank you okay our next presentation on our agenda is our 2023 student athletic handbook revisions so there are two handbooks one is a student athlete that Mr attorney will be presenting the second item is the coaches normally this is done either prior to school or in the June time frame with the changeover in personnel and some of the things that have come up since the start of school we felt it was important

037to bring it to your time to solve for three dollars yeah so um I went through both of the the handbooks and after each one I met with Miss Sabo and Miss borwick at the high school as well um I actually shared the documents with them they put their comments in it we debriefed after so there's feedback from them in here there's feedback for me a lot of the things that were the revisions that we're going to make our um some things that either we've we've seen in my time as athletic director or especially with the coaching handbook a lot of the things I saw as a coach and now seeing it through the other lens so if you've got questions on anything or why A Change Is was made feel free I can I

038can kind of explain some of the backstory I know so I'm starting with the student athlete handbook you're going to see a lot of highlighting where we just change numbers um there's a lot where it you'll simply just the athletic director that's where it used to say dean of students when the two positions are rolled into one so the first revision takes place on Page Six um this revision right here just adds some language about the no credit policy so if a if a student receives no credit um based on their absences in a class there was some confusion about the word passing versus no credit this just Nails it down puts it in there no credit is the same as failing if they receive no credit for a class or immediately academically ineligible um

039the next revision down there in section A again that just says if they receive no credit they need to in the summer make up those classes as well as well as the alongside the ones that they received less than 60 in traditionally so Preston can I ask real quick on that one so if they receive no credit in a class they're academic let's say it's August all right it's June yep so are they eligible if they take summer school correct as soon as their summer school credit is recorded in PowerSchool they are academically eligible thank you um this next one down here um is for the students to take online classes what I saw in some of my time as a coach is and Miss Vashon I'm sure you you know exactly where I'm going

040with this those kids will wait to the last minute on these classes um now in Michigan virtual and Edgenuity they give a number called the actual grade and what that is is they take the pacing guide the pacing of where they should be in the class along with the percentages they've gotten in the assignments up to that point and it gives you a grade like you'd have in a traditional class before that the only number you got was your percent completion um so a kid could be on track but have a 43 because all the points are loaded in the back um what this does is it causes those kids with online classes to stay on their online work um and it it gives them some motivation instead of saying I'm just going to wait

041on my online class till the end so um what they'll do is and I'll work with the online learning coordinator each week to get that great updated in PowerSchool as if it were a traditional grade and as somebody that worked in that position as well I can show Mr Howell how to do that stuff um the next one the awards the forty dollars that was a change the mhsaa made I think it was an inflation based thing it used to be 25 what does that mean so that's if I give a kid a trophy uh let's say a kid wins a wrestling tournament and I give them a trophy that trophy can't be worth more than forty dollars oh the school district correct giving them oh okay yes all right that's not how I went

042thank you okay yes so okay yep most of the time we're given medals that are worth like 250 right right um the that one right there the change from will to may we give the coach that one was to give some coaches some flexibility if we've got a problem with a kid in missing classes and if there's a way we can instead of throwing I don't want to say throwing them away but removing the kid from the team if there's a way we can keep them on the team and go about another way of correcting that um that absence Behavior it gives the coach that flexibility if they want to get rid of them after three unexcused absences they are allowed to do that so next one um the consequences when when we got to

043when we got to a point where we had to implement some of this it got kind of hairy because we got a decimal point we got like a half contest and we were trying to figure out how a half contest would work because like for football it's easy half a contest you set out the first half but if we got to say a wrestling tournament or a volleyball meet where you're playing a different number of games how do we Define that that breaking point or if it's a third of a game how do we divide a game into a third so what this does is it just rounds into the nearest whole contest so if we take the total number of games in the season divided by 25 round them to the nearest one could

044go up could go down to the nearest whole number um the other thing it did too was in in talking with Ms Naples Warwick we had students that had to miss half the end of their their consequence was half a game and what it resulted in was a kid on the on the bench or on the sidelines and then the second half there allowed to play um so if we got to that half game it would just round up to the next full game um and I in my opinion it said a little bit better message about these consequences and your your actions have consequences um and instead of having you on the sideline for half a game you just you sit back in so um that was there for the first and the second

045offense because both of those have some percentages with it and I'll just add to that from my perspective it creates more consistency of how we're implementing that across Sports rather than well 2.4 let's go down to two for you but 2.4 is right three let's do it so trying to create consistency with the different sports I like when things fit in like straight lines and right angles but he's learning that does not always yeah um the next one this line right here we uh proposed to have removed says the responsibility of the student athlete to report any in-school formal informal or formal violations of the student code of conduct to the desert means superintendent um that gets reported to me anyways through my meetings with Miss Warwick and Ms davo um so it takes away

046the student having to report it it just gets reported through Administration so so you're saying you you want to take that out there should be a straps through yes and I believe that was it for the student athlete code conduct any questions all right coaches and again a lot of these things came from things I've either seen now in my short tenure as athletic director or things I saw as a coach that I would want to see from the other side so I'll put my name in there and update them here um first one okay I'm going to call this the biggest kid on the team running the ball in Middle School it just puts in there that Middle School coaches should be encourage to when they look at a kid work with the varsity

047coaches on where do we think this kid will play what position they may be the biggest kid in eighth grade doesn't mean they're going to be the biggest kid when they get to high school so working on where these kids should be placed in their positions so that when they get to The Varsity level they've got more experience in those positions now our can things change sure but it it puts a little bit more of the focus from the Middle School level on getting the kids ready for when they make varsity so encouraging those coaches to work with the varsity put them in the best position for later on sure okay I isn't the idea of Middle School coaches are supposed to be aligned with the varsity coach it's the Varsity Sport so why do

048we have to put that in the handbook if I'm a middle school coach coaching volleyball isn't the varsity coach kind of overseen because it's my program yeah and that's that was the the goal behind this was to to widen that scope of how should the Middle School coaches and varsity coaches be interacting instead of just hey these are the kind of drills to run these are the things we should do hey let's take that another step let's look at the kids we have and where do we think they'll project out on varsity to give them a little more time developing in that position okay but when we're saying Middle School coaches are encouraged to work yeah again encouraged means it would be a really good idea if you did but if it's if the sport

049is the VAR and the varsity coaches responsible or in charge of if you will program one right yes so I just have a problem with this paragraph with the encouraged encourage because I just think that should we use a stronger like a stronger why here are required I I'm just I I'm just throwing it out there if if the varsity coach is responsible for the for the sport then they're responsible all the way through yeah I agree and but if no one else thinks so I'm just the one saying it happening right now no I'm I just the idea with this was looking looking down the road and and I think a lot of our coaches do a very good job and a lot of the programs I've worked with our coaches do a good

050job of this is when we get and there's some programs that have seen some turnover in coaches and trying to establish that as a department-wide mindset of this is how we're running all of our programs where our Middle School is the foundation for our high school middle school time and I love how it says up there winning is not the primary goal again getting the kids ready to play what they're going to play or where they might play when they get to Varsity getting a longer timetable with them for development so it's just a reminder for those like you said if there's turnover in the Middle School coaches then it's just to let them know that that's the requirement yes that's the expectation yes yeah are expected yeah that's not an expectation that's not what

051that paragraph says maybe are expected to work with the varsity okay um okay yeah uh next one um this one just adds that date in there as a reminder April 15th is a standard date the mhsa uses for one physical being good for a school year needs to be after April 15th um and I think the the athletic department I think that said dean of students before the emergency info sheet this just takes what used to be used to be able to hard copy emergency form and makes a family ID which is our online collection of that information now um and it expels out how the coaches will be sent a link that they can access all of that emergency information as a coach I did have to use it one time and it was

052very helpful as I took a kid yes so if a family can't or doesn't have access that's what the next paragraph they can turn in the hard copy paperwork the hard copy paperwork a lot of that is if a kid goes and gets a physical then that's a situation where I can bring them in and they could fill it out at the school yeah okay yep yeah a lot of kids bring in a hard copy of their physical we scan it put it okay yeah team roster just changed dean of students to athletic department we also have the ability of the central office with the community leads and okay Sarah who would do that too okay um some language about volunteer coaches um about how they are valuable resources explains the um ichat that they

053must have that on file before they're allowed to begin coaching most of our programs do utilize some sort of store some form of volunteer coaches yes you're just going to love all my questions it's okay um this one are we what what if this what happens if this doesn't happen what if we've got people that are coming in helping um Sports and they haven't they don't have the ichat they don't have all of that right and that's a situation where they're not allowed to be around the kids like if I find out a person is working with the kids in a volunteer coach fashion and doesn't have nine chat that's a conversation I have with the coaches about they are not allowed to be around kids and unless they have eye chats so it's the

054responsibility of whoever the the varsity coach is yes if it okay can I think there's something in here too I don't know if it's in this but it's in my meetings where I send the coaches a OneDrive file now that has a Excel sheet with their roster and they list out their assistant coaches and then I can verify if they have a child okay yep okay thank you um the student athlete handbook and supplemental rules the zero tolerance policy it just put in there that it's a 24 7 365 policy so things that happen over Labor Day or the summer if they come back can come back um the next one the athletic director I think that was a dean of students change school email um reminded to the coaches that they need to be

055using their school email for all communication with student athletes parents and anything athletically related yep is this is this real I mean yeah yeah I'm cleaning some of that up okay that was my question because there's all kinds of different ways so this is the only way that we're going to communicate yep and that gets hammered in each of our preseason meetings and I've reset quite a few passwords okay already so so they can communicate by their phones no only well email oh I didn't I didn't read it like that oh wait a minute because some coaches do use their phone to communicate just with the kids or they use their mind but I mean any emails they get sent to me I've told coaches I will not send anything anymore to any personal emails

056it's all got to go to your school got it so that's where you're looking at Yep this is more A View to the coach right or okay I mean if they're if they're emailing with other teams or if they've got things they're sending out via email it's got to be on that school school email okay but it's saying that our communication with student athletes parents happens through their school email account that's why they can't have a reminder anymore that's well that's right right yeah this section is just regarding the emails we will clarify yeah and bring it back to you I didn't think about that okay okay yeah um the the big part with the email was that second spot there um that eligibility and attendance reports will be sent through that email OneDrive program

057files which is all of those rosters end of the season reports itineraries will be um shared through OneDrive through their school email and it's a responsibility that coach check the email daily so um game and practice schedules during the previous Seasons that means if it's a winter sport submit that practice schedule to me during the fall so that we can get that into the fmx facility use system and then we all know who's in what gym when so the coaches put them in the system yeah after we sit down we have a meeting about it can we we make sure that they've got the they're going to be reserving and it gets approved through our approval process by um so I know that a coach doesn't say oh yeah yeah I'm going to do this

058time and then all of a sudden there's a different time it shows up so so what happens if a Coach like let's let's say there's like an extended season for I don't know if you go to districts or something and so then they want to add practices yeah to that schedule like is this something that happens they have to have like that like fire no no no we can we can work as the the post season goes on um a lot of those coaches just roll their regular schedule um and the way the the post seasons are set up for the fall and the winter is there's not a lot of overlap gym gym usage-wise okay um like fall Sports we've run into Middle School girls basketball well nobody uses the Middle School gym during

059the during the uh fall winter sports um would run into a bit of a dead period between spring and winter Okay so um and that's as they get going and postings and those are conversations I can have approaches as we go so um practice facilities that's just a change again in title um this is some verbiage about keeping our facilities clean um in a good working order and instilling a sense of school pride and responsibility in the student athletes that um and then all of my coaches meetings I encourage the coaches to foreign when it comes to clean up and maintaining the facilities and figure out a system to have the kids do that and then once they take some onus of it then there's there's less mess that gets made because they know they're

060the ones that have to clean it up so good luck we're working on it that's a tough one um this right here takes off the pay to play privilege about working off pay to play that came around with the change in the pay to play System the setup [Music] um internal accounts that was just a change of a bunch of titles eligibility forms that one's for students who are new there's some forms they have to get out so the coaches will communicate to me who those those kids are that are new to the district so that we can make sure that they're eligible according to the mhsaa rules ratings are good uh preseason coaches meetings putting some verbiage in there about attendance with those um and if they're unable to attend receiving prior approval and

061scheduling an alternate meeting sometimes this pops up especially with some postseason meetings or I've had coaches that have had to miss it because they have their Regional coaches association meeting and we've been able to set that up and also encouraging volunteer coaches to be there so that they have an idea of how the department runs in Seasons run this preseason parent meeting um this is something that I've I've kind of Taken and added a little bit to I've encouraged coaches to have their parent meeting right after our District parent meeting so um previously it was just hey parents come in athletic director gets up their talks everybody goes home half an hour later um now we've got some coaches especially in the fall some some coaches took advantage of it of I get a classroom

062I there's a slide at the end says hey if you're in any of these Sports these are the parent meetings will be for parents that have got a split time or coaches that don't have their parent meeting that day they provide me with an information sheet that I can make copies for and parents can just grab the ones they need on their way through and it has the date and time of the location of their parent meeting if they're not doing to get that day contact information first day of practice practice times and any other important information from that parent meeting so if they can't be there they can have a sheet for it um encouraging coaches to conduct their meeting immediately after the district meeting and then sending those dates to me if they're

063not doing it that day so that I can have that up on the slide as well so we had especially in the fall some of the some teams I know volleyball did it golf did it tennis did it right after the meeting and they said the turnout was pretty good so saves your parents would drive up to the school um transfer students again this is um we're in a ninth and 12th grade student transfers to the district coach is communicating that to me so that I can make sure that they are eligible and then that's the mhsa a little slogan about transfers when in doubt send them out so if we had a kid that that comes in mid-season don't play him the next day let me figure out if he's eligible so um problem

064or situation occurs that was just a change in title again and then a change in title for first aid um this one academic checks coaches will be notified through their District email um and then talking the process for the academic ineligibility form and telling coaches that as soon as that kid becomes eligible I will contact them usually through a text message we'll just say hey coach so-and-so is good and they go okay so um this one the the strike through there um oh sorry there's a strength through up top too about not dressing for games when they're ineligible um I want to take that out of there because I think it is important that the kids are with their team and they're there supporting them um there's some coaches that if they're the kid is

065really struggling in school they may hold them out of certain trips or travel um like the the overnight trips a lot of kids if they're struggling academically don't go on those trips but if it's a game on a Wednesday night in croslex um I would like kids to be able to go there and support their team kind of give them a little more motivation to get their their stuff squared away the only concern I have with that yeah is academics needs to be number one correct so when you're allowing them to go then I I don't know I think they should have their academics caught up or academics done or something because maybe they should be home doing homework or or whatever and that's that's my only concern with that one yeah I like this

066change I agree because I agree I think that it's incentive that I'm dressing and going I totally agree with what you're saying like I feel like that encourages them to get their stuff their act together you bring their homework with them well and they do this I mean you can see a lot of kids I don't know if that'll encourage them I just I don't think it will but that's my experience I would tell you some of the changes this year to have that philosophy about academic first is done the the weekly eligibility check it's being consistently checked and checked and the the idea of the online courses no longer need to sit and now instead of about six classes I'm only going to worry about five you've got to worry about all six and

067stay focused on that um I think some of the pieces we put in place hopefully will address that that's our that's our intent yeah yeah and I mean if it's a if it's a kid that's that's really really struck my mic that can be a counter and this doesn't bar us from being able to do that it doesn't say that they're not allowed to not go well that's why you you cross it out because it says they may not so to me yeah we could leave that sentence in there because we're not saying they cannot right so just a thought when you take a look at it okay we have to stress that academics has to be enough absolutely we have to um this one here too um the the recommendation that practices shouldn't be

068anything over two hours there's some coaches that there's a lot of practices I put the onus on the coaches that they're the expert in their sport um I'm not going to tell coach presnell the best way to coach a basketball practice because I never play basketball um I just when I read that I was like I I don't necessarily agree with that um I do agree that there are some times where different lengths of practices are effective I know that um with Cheerleading Coach Mathis There's days that they go they go pretty long because they've got stuff that they're they're covering and they're getting after I know wrestling there were days we went longer we went longer than two hours pretty consistently but it was it was structured pretty well I don't think it's the

069the number of hours that get put in I think it's what's in those hours so I didn't want to coaches to feel like they were pigeon holed into a certain way of running practice um the snow days or inclement weather this is kind of the please don't text me before you so um and this is a conversation Mr Walmsley and I have had he outlined that um so just don't text me before noon when I haven't had a chance to talk to Mr Walmsley so that's just solidifying our practice using Mr Reiner the previous athletic director we would have a conversation around noon saying are the roads safe to even have kids right they couldn't come to school why is it safe for them to come to practice so we reevaluate the situation at that

070time yep and I believe um and usually what gets communicated in those those conversations too is it's varsity only the kids can be penalized if they can't get there and it's only during the time period that we figure the roads are cleared by then usually if it's a back-to-back snow day it's a no-go because that means a little time's good so um this one I just added the and team members are responsible for picking up all trash in their team areas after practice or contest putting that bonus on the kids as well adding the or weight room down there um because again we don't want kids unsupervised especially in the weight room um the the sports report that is um if anybody's read she used to work for um Bluewater Healthy Living her name's Callie

071Newberry she actually does probably the best reporting on our Sports in the area in terms of bee wax Sports so I just added that in there too with our traditional newspapers um announcement um just the approval by the athletic director dean of students or principal um approval I think that was just that principle before injuries just a title change um concussions adding some verbiage in here about when a student athlete is suspected of having a concussion it needs to be reported to me there are forms the mhsa has us fill out and follow-up forms and that's what the second paragraph talks about um we fill out usually when there's a kid that has a concussion I have a conversation with the coach we fill out that head injury report together so we have all the

072information um and then we inform the kid and their parents bought the protocol and the return to play policies and the return to play form that they need to have filled out as well um I think Ms Zabo did some grammar for me um this one put some language in here too about volunteer coaches we do enjoy or we do see the value of volunteer coaches but also letting our coaches know that there should be a or there will be a coach on staff paid coach around the kids at all time not leaving them with volunteer coaches or graduate assistants I guess that would fall under volunteer coaches as well but that's the hey try not to be the last coach to leave because the last one to leave always gets stuck watching the kids

073till their parents get their parents pick them up so I'm putting that onus on our contracted coaches I have a question sure do The Graduate assistants also have to are they required for an itat yeah okay um and I think that graduate assistance term was in there before I got to this I think we could just leave it within I think you could yes okay so we'll take that or graduate assistance operator um coaching where's that one that was in red was that supposed to be supposed to be blue no okay sorry um coaches are responsible for riding the bus to away events with the students um making sure that the bus is supervised um building use um I think that was the old facility use form that was in that spot so we just

074changed it to fmx um some language in there about exterior doors not being propped open um this causes issues for the HVAC system it's also a security concern because people see a door that's wide open with our new system um ray lynn my secretary does an awesome job of taking practice schedules and program grabbing them into the door system so the doors remain unlocked just like the old school style the coach taking the key and rolling it so it just pulls open now we can do it from our system and then we don't have to worry about a coach for getting to roll it on their way out um so not propping doors um more change to just athletic director um this this clause in here um was something that has been past practice and

075been one of those things that we've we've communicated between coaches and an athletic director if there's a reason why a coach would not be able to ride the bus if they needed their car there for some reason um just putting in that the they must arrange for another coach to ride the bus with the team um in in the past it's been needing your car there and Kate or a coach coming from something that was unforeseen or they couldn't avoid or that they need their car there in case of an emergency in case something happens um giving the flexibility with that but again that needs to be arranged with me in advance and we need to make sure that that bus is supervised but doesn't that counter that's what you said earlier um in regards

076to a coach actually being present with the students at all times it says on there they must arrange for another code this one it says they must arrange from another coach so could it be an assistant yes or yep so this this just means yes okay what this just means is every coach doesn't have to be on the bus if it's something that's arranged beforehand okay because of some extenuating circumstance the bottom line is we do not want to bust a kid with the transportation driver has to monitor them their their eyes should be on the road check uh it should be they must arrange for another coach only ride to ride the bus or something I was a science teacher my uh specialty I have to get I have to talk to Sable about

077that dude that got past her she missed it I don't know um I think they took him Etc collection of equipment putting in there kind of giving student athletes another bit of motivation to get their stuff taken care of that they won't be receive their postseason Awards until their equipment's collected give me your football helmet before I give you your varsity letter and making sure that if equipment is lost that that fees added to their PowerSchool account and we're working with coaches on developing an inventory sheet that works for for each of the sports so that we can as a department using that OneDrive make sure we know what's in our storage rooms and what we may need to replace down the road so and then that's the inventory sheet um and some more changes

078in title there I think that's the rest of the pages just title changes got the strike in there we're taking it out yeah oh yeah so um the All-State plaques that's those are the old gold plaques that we used to have down by the gym and we've run out of space for them so um there are things that we're working on in order to honor those students in a different way that doesn't take up the entire hallway so I'm just striking that from the handbook the other aspect on this one is the athletic boosters are their own 501c3 organization so we really can't think what they spend their dollars on as they are their own supporters um but there will be a plan coming to you I believe we're planning in January about a um

079a different way we recognize because we are running out of space for all the awards and recognitions so we'll come to the board and we were playing in January um Varsity Awards again this is done through their OneDrive there's a form they fill out so that when we go to make their Awards we've got a pretty the fall knock on wood it went pretty slick so I'm just making sure that that's all the One Drive Preston there's another tiger it's my fingers one word ahead of where they should be uh summer camps um so this was a lot of stuff that um some policies that were communicated last year towards the summer and making sure that our coaches know before we start scheduling anything these are going to be the expectations with summer camps um

080the first part encouraging coaches to schedule team camps building team chemistry building that skill development keeping the kids active also keeping in mind that we want to prioritize kids being able to play more than one sport so the The Proposal is for coaches to submit their dates for their camps by April 15th um and then have them reviewed by me to eliminate any overlapping so football and basketball have a camp on the same day that gives me two weeks to say Josh and Sean hey which of you can how can we adjust this how can we move this so that the kids can do both um and then giving them approval by April 30th so it gives me that two weeks before they start advertising anything and we go whoa whoa whoa that's the same

081day as the other camp um after April 30th then they can start getting their stuff out um because I know some coaches like to beat the rush of camps and try to get everybody to sign up for their camp for um if they're doing a a camp with another group um putting in there that we if they're they're traveling or they're staying somewhere overnight they need to have the overnight trip request um and present that to the board even if it's a summer camp we need to make sure that we've got that on file and by doing that in April looking at that in April that gives us plenty of time before most of those camps in June and July um come up um some guidelines about using District facilities for camps making sure that

082money flows through team internal accounts if we're using District facilities not using non-district organizations for the collection of that money um looking at having team camps between the week after school gets out and the end of July it's really the only the that's that summer period um that most most team camps do occur in if you don't see many team camps in August um and even if we didn't do it in August that starts to get into fall sport practices and then we're we're taking away multi-sport opportunities um if we if we are fortunate enough to have any summer food programs encouraging coaches to schedule their camps around those I know that's up in the air but putting some verbiage in there to encourage coaches to take advantage of that um yeah under summer team

083camps that fourth line where it starts in an effort to allow student athletes that sentence doesn't make sense oh yeah where was I going with that I don't know I think you're talking about as many sporting opportunities that they can as they can into attend as many camps but I think you gotta fix that yeah that's gotta get cleaned up that's why we do this yep yep that's why are we doing this all right yeah I'll clean that language up for you um looking at camps being Monday through Thursday um because a lot of the district um the custodians work Monday through Thursday in the summer so if they are Fridays or weekends they won't have custodial coverage um so um and it allows for some traveling too on weekends with parents and whatnot um

084multi-day camps um not having kids stay overnight um and this was something that we'd already the only one that did an overnight camp in the past was the wrestling team where kids would stay at the school and for the most part it went smoothly but just eliminating that that variable because we'd already talked um back in the spring about or the summer about just saying hey you know if you're going to come to our camp here's the hotel if it's over a couple days here's the hotels that are available um with their kids that live locally they could just travel back to their their homes for those um and then not using the food service areas during the summer for camps unless it's part of the district and the summer food program um so making

085sure that we're in compliance with all the health department codes youth camps some of this is similar to the summer team camps but these are the camps that teams would run for younger groups great way to build enthusiasm for the sport build numbers we encourage coaches to have one Youth Camp over the summer and I think a lot of a lot of teams took advantage of that and again a lot of the utilizing the facilities there scheduling on the week after school gets out through the end of July and the the approval process for that helps to only put one Camp per week so that all these these little kids that don't know what they're going to play when they become teenagers can go to soccer camp and they can go to football camp and

086they can go to basketball camp so again encouraging that multi-sport participation um uh where are we at scheduling camps between 8 30 and 11. um time to take advantage of summer food programs again Monday through Thursday for camps and again any Monday collected for these youth camps I know a lot of teams use these as fundraisers making sure that flows through team internal accounts if we're utilizing District facilities and not using outside organizations for that foreign type changes page 23. um adding the verbiage in there about parent-teacher conferences um because this pops up twice a year planning practices around the conference schedule if the coach is a district or a School employee so if it's a teacher in the school and they coach a sport they're still expected to be at parent-teacher conferences if they

087have a contest that day however they are they should notify the building principal and myself I would know because I've got the schedule but um notifying the building principle I'm not going to be here I've got this game on this day and then notifying parents that would want to schedule a conference during that time and making alternative Arrangements um scheduling there are some coaches that like to have a pretty heavy hand in their schedule and seeking out different levels of competition so encouraging them to do that but then bringing that back to me so that I know what games are being scheduled so that I don't book something and then all these two coaches already set a game up for this day and then there's a scheduling conflict um volunteers um putting some verbiage in

088there Bob volunteers being essential to contest management all coaches should share the sign up link post it on the school website each season we make a new one with a tab for each sport volunteers have been hard to come by this year so we've been doing our best um different different ways offering them team gear or athletic passes but working with the coaching staff and the athletic directors to cover those positions if we can't find volunteers for the the positions we need to just get the game running ticket takers score keepers scoreboard Etc and then encouraging coaches to come up with ways of thanking these volunteers for their their time emergency assistance um just putting in there the verbiage about family ID just type in that's a title change that's it um I'm sorry I

089go back all the way back to the student line um yeah I was going to save all my stuff to the end and then I realized it was a lot so oh yeah but um what page are we looking at so I'm well I'm not even I'm not on it I think it was at the and it was one about the students not having to report their um because you've already got that report from the building administrators yeah that's for INS that one was for in school stuff yeah so um like I don't give you the harm in them having to report it to their coaches I think that that just gives them like a little sense of accountability for their actions um so like I don't believe it like is there a reason why

090we're taking that out like is that becoming like much of an issue or no it was really the idea that one came up in my my conversation with Miss Sabo and Miss Warwick about how um School in school formal and informal offenses get communicated right directly communicated anyway but I think that if the if the student has to tell their coach well this this right here just has them telling me Oh they yeah it just says the designee of the suit which would be the that okay okay all right gotcha so okay the other piece is if you don't if they don't then like happens yeah okay yeah because I mean then it goes into well did they tell them or did they not and it just kind of okay all right fair enough I

091would venture to say to any student that gets in trouble they're gonna have to face their coach and tell them right we've had a couple of these pop up already and usually the the conversation goes in school offense they meet with the principal or the dean that I usually get brought in on those and then I let the coach know right after that meeting gets done if there's consequences that are being levied okay guys so yeah I would just think that some of them are probably a little more leery of sharing that information with the coach than they are even their parents oh oh it gets to the coach yeah it does so hey does anyone have any other comments suggestions thank you thank you our next item on the agenda is a transportation update

092we have our transportation director Susie and our dispatcher Lori who are going to come up here part of this presentation is we've had as you know some some Communications whether it's a Podium emails just transportation and it's no secret we are in need of bus drivers drive any District I think there's one in Macomb County that isn't hiring drivers at the moment but Susie will explain that so here's Susie our transportation director so I can turn over to you what's your number no there you go okay it's all the steps so you can see all the steps for a new driver coming in it's a long process the first one is after I interview them I send a recommendation if they want to move forward and they go forward to see Jamie for the ichat

093and the background check for the fingerprinting and hiring paperwork we are having them come in so while we're waiting for all the paperwork they're going to come in and they the driver we have currently now is studying the CDL manual and just getting an idea of the boss the pre-trip getting familiar riding on the bus obviously they're not driving until they have their tip so she made her appointment for the Secretary of State like for next week because they have or tests that they have to pass before they can start driving so at least now it helps the new driver coming in to see the bus and understands when they're reading the material and memorizing and it seems to be working because she seems very gung-ho now and very moving pretty fast for the next

094step and I already registered her for her class in January she has to do that less for the beginner bus driver which is at the end but those spots fill up and they only do them every 90 days and she can't drive until she has the class she can drive on route as long as like I'm with her or another driver yeah so then after the Secretary of State then they do the Clearinghouse and once that comes back that's a query that's run through for the driving record anybody that holds a CDL they go for their pre-employment physical and then they start their actual training driving the boss learning all the skills that they need for when they go for the road test and then the class at MISD or Wayne Reese of whoever has

095availability for the class at the time we need it so from start to finish depending on each driver is different how fast they learn off everything and they catch on and we know they're ready for the road test because I don't send them to get tested until I know their arms are confident and they know everything and they're comfortable with being behind the wheel of the boss it could take two months so now you see when somebody comes in and their interviews they can get deterred and say oh you know I don't have that much time they want something they want a job now they want a job now so once Tammy suggested bringing them in and doing everything while they're waiting maybe we'll grab their attention and they're starting they might not get paid

096right away by documenting their hours and they'll get paid once they're cleared but they're logging their hours so they're coming in learning that manual going out on the bus learn in the ins and outs why they're going waiting to go into Secretary of State so sometimes they come in and they have to wait like three weeks before everything's cleared and they lose interest and go somewhere else so are they not being so they're not being paid while training no what we do is you're looking up here we have we're basically paying almost everything prior to that okay if you look at it we are the only thing they have to they pay is the initial permit seventy dollars for a new driver the board policy as every employee pays their fingerprint so when you look

097at the district will reimburse that licensing cost when the process completed we document the hours so we will have them pay training okay it could be 40 to 50 hours when you're looking at that we will pay for the road test 100 the first time if they need a second time to take take it and pay 50 if they need a third time to take it we say 25. after that we don't know so so we are the training is being paid it's just being paid after everything's done one one thing once they can be a driver and we're issuing all all the payment for it right it's great for all the paperwork so once they're on the payroll then they can start you know swiping in and out right now I'm just having to

098write down the time when she comes in we're logging it while I'm there she's coming 8 to 11 which is like her training period and you know okay we're trying this so we don't lose another one because it takes a while to get all the steps to actually start trying to get behind the wheel which we used to do we'd see them in two three weeks and sometimes they don't come back because they end up doing something else because because this is ours so right it's trying to keep them in until they get their first paycheck how long does it take it's just their first paycheck oh it takes a month a good month yeah and that's if you fly through all the classes and you're just right okay so when did you start this

099Initiative for the paid training is that something new we've done great we've done patreon I always logged them but they don't get it until they've completed everything and well you used to wait until the everything was clear they had their tip then they would actually come in and start getting paid so but that could take depending on that person and how fast they go and get their tip and do all the paperwork at four months you're saying it could take well it just depends yeah as soon as you're cleared as soon as you are you know on the payroll system Angela will you know put that your hours so far that you worked into pay so you'll start getting a paycheck faster than waiting so she had all the paperwork and then coming in and

100starting the process yes and it seems like it's helping me because she's already like excited so excited and ready to take her test so the 40 to 50 hours of training in the bus yard we're doing that yes we are we are trainers that we we have our drivers our trainers and we're doing that in-house yes so then the the course that's only offered every 90 days so where who and this is Courtesy Driving School no this am I reading this or that's where they do the road test so the MISD only offers that every 90 days and everyone in this County can't find bus drivers and we're only offering courses every 90 days that interesting yeah yeah it's I asked her and she said I mean when they get a high demand who'd you

101talk to Teresa yukina no Katie Oh Katie Howard okay but we have offered with you they go down to Wayne recent we will pay the mileage for them but that's only every 90 days so you I can come in and I dwell this but I could still wait another 90 days before I can even right and then those classes fill up so as soon as as I know I kind of get a timeline in my head like I talked to her today they have a session in January I already saved her a spot because they only take up to say 30 students in the class so I already reserved our spot but she has to have her road test done so I'm we're aiming for the end of the summer for the road test and

102that she's already registered first she'll get her bus driver class so then that way she's ready to roll on the road by the end of January and I can bring that route back that's the plan but you have to have everything in a certain order and so her other I'm sorry go ahead if somebody already has a CDL does it translate into bus driving then they just have to take it if they have the endorsements now if they have a CDL and only say you need the bus card they can go in and take the bus and then we can just train them for that so yeah it does move a lot quicker but if you have somebody that is coming from nothing it takes a lot longer if you like when we get somebody

103that comes in CDL or coming from a different District or whatever reason may be because then we just have to train them for what we do what we want to in our district are the other districts doing the training as well because they potentially get trained with us and decide to take that training done elsewhere and make more money is that oh they could all the time well we get them trained they're on site and the route's only four hours and they go to another District which is an eight hour ride and that's that's part we take that chance right is there something in their contract where if they leave before 90 days they have to reimburse us for that testing that we're paying for no there's nothing in I know some districts have that

104they were if they say no they have to work a whole school year but we don't have dinners because that might be an incentive too I mean if you could on the front end start paying them right straight away and then once they get that certificate if they were to leave then they have to reimburse or you hold their last pay or whatever too that way they could start getting paid sooner for their time so this is so as you all know the turtle route is the one where bring it back when we have this new driver trained and ready and this is the count for all the buses so we have two two buses that have no families on the waitlist which we're getting another one on the cat starting starting tomorrow today this

105afternoon a new student so we you can see our buses are that's why we had to start the wait list because but we're doing counts every two weeks I have all the drivers re-evaluate their accounts but then the students haven't wrote in families in two weeks we call them and see if they're going to utilize fosting at that and take them off and that way we can get the spots ourselves so far it's gone pretty smooth we've had a few upset parents but most of them are very understanding and know the situation we're in and have been very buses have 77 students some of these buses has 97 students and then there's six families on this waiting list for this bus that has only 77 students so they're all 77 passengers these are like who

106are registered what obviously they're not all writing at once that's why we're not editing responsible okay if for some reason they outro yeah we would be hurting in trouble that's why we're not adding no more just right we're taking a chance I see absences yeah absences Sports some only ride Monday Wednesday Friday somewhere Tuesday Thursday so right I get that okay that's I just wanted you to see kind of what we have on the routes and why we're not adding no more and then I get on the wait list because in the beginning of the year I decided I didn't want to use Transportation but now I've changed my mind that's how I get on the wait list because I didn't opt to do transportation in the first place is that right yes or a

107family moves in families move out right okay and all like everybody that was registered at the end of the school year we kept them all on the route okay and in the beginning all the drivers call All Families still you know going to utilize Transportation then we had the new families that came in okay so we'll be doing the count right after Thanksgiving because we just did it last week and we were able to add a few so we'll be doing okay that Monday we'll come to account week and then we call if anybody signs open up did we know our height I know we checked it one time do we have more high school kids riding than yeah High School not so much a lot of our Riders are in elementary and middle schoolers

108so this new driver is going to be a whole another bus on there yes that's the plan we're gonna we're actually already building the routes when she starts driving we're going to have her as she's practicing and going out on the road we're going to have her drive around so she gets familiar with the area and doing student stops and turnarounds we forget well that's perfect because that'll be right so she can drive and practice so the goal will be to eliminate there will be no wait list right forever should not be any weightless because we're going to be taking students off each one of the buses Turtle we put turtle dispersed about four buses so that's going to open up we already have how many materials 60. so okay well we should have a

109wait list and that'll make a lot of families happy and students because they won't be crammed hopefully for me to see in all their seats right so it's not going to be full because the counts have gone up and we could use another driver in another route but this is going to help tremendously bringing the turtle back so are we still made this probably a question for Mr arms like are we so we are still looking for another driver our goal is to have every bus driver fill in one in the office at any given time so if there's an absence or field trips or so forth that's our goal okay so our goal is to hire two more bus drivers besides this one that started training right okay yeah because she drives the cat

110route she's splits between that and Debbie because Debbie drives a New Haven as well and I'm the backup and she's a song okay so we try to have it where we're both not on the road but like this week we're both on the road a couple days at the same time so then we rely on Larry emergency and so one of us gets back so that's the plan this might sound silly but if we were to purchase a shorter bus is it still the same type of Licensing and accreditations to drive even better okay yeah but in reality you never want to buy a shorter bus you want the biggest bus you can get forever finding drivers for that level of um licensing if that's the issue or you know right not they still need

111the bus endorsement passenger so what is the earliest that kids get on the bus and what's the latest they get dropped out on some buses 6 30. 6 a.m 4 15 4 20. we had to push our times off because we're having more stops adding more stops yeah I know my kids were on the campus and they got off at four oh okay I'm back in the day back yeah there yeah I would say because I force plus is the last usually to come in and she's usually coming in by like 4 35 so she's out there though she's out double enrollment right Palms road so she's got things wrong and just as a point we have we are obligated to provide transportation for some of our parochial students and it's just more of a

112point of reference I don't know if people knew that but it's just I asked you to put the number of students that we transferred so that's in that count yeah so part of this one is looking at well how do we compare with other districts So currently so we're well our raise just went up for 1983 to 2042 and then if you were making 2120 up to 21.84 starting on November 11th they get paid training nine paid holidays five personal days and their driver's license reimbursement still looking for drivers and we have a two-tiered system because when we began 14 we as bus drivers retired or left we brought them back to a third party company and 15 or 16 I don't remember the exact year we brought all of our drivers back in house

113and we negotiated that contract so we have a two-tiered system I believe at that point it was like 1450 they were making yes that's when I started yeah so we have been slowly chipping away so if you remember those two numbers 2042 and 2184 that's what our current drivers make so now let's see how we compare with some other districts so our made us 1701 paying up to 23.13. they basically have the same their two-tier paid training the nine holidays three personal days and 10 sick days and they're still looking for drivers as well Anchor Bay is the only one that's not looking for drivers they're looking just for Subs but they are three tiers so they hit the hours the benefits uh 10 paid holidays six days Lance Cruise 1834 paying up to 1912.

11410 personal time today's qualification days then if they don't take any unpaid taken time taken and full benefits for full seven and a half hour days oh yeah no they're supposed to be something else in there I think they got a little Kickback if they didn't take any time off they got a extra large check they get cut off New Haven is three-tier system they're still looking for drivers they're paying 17 up to 22. they get benefits with six hours so most of their drivers are all eligible for benefits because they have the three-tier system so they get the hours right away it's 12 personal time off days unlimited paid snow days and Romeo is 18 up to 20. benefits medical benefits after 30 days 12 leave days it's heavy and holidays and they are

115still looking for drivers MISD is they're pretty good they're only looking for Subs but their starting pay is 20 up to 23.50 and their substitutes are 19.50 an hour so it's kind of the ballpark around us compare the rates where we're hurting is drivers still get benefits and for like four or four and a half hour day so where they can go down the road and get a six hour day benefits it's hard to compete with since we're only a one-tier system and most of them are two and three tier that are all around us so that's all so what does that leave us as Susie has talked about all of our most our neighbor districts have tiered systems which that alone will allow for more hours in a day so we could be paying

116them the exact same amount but if I'm only getting four hours here and every six chances six hours or eight hours and I have no vested interest in in here then it's I'm going with it we're probably I'm going to make the most money our future challenges is finding drivers you've probably heard me say for at least five years probably more that has been our major challenge as you saw the the proposal or the community audit presentation our enrollment keeps going up when you have enrollment that goes up you have more ridership okay later on I'll present to you what we submitted for our audited numbers our Romans going up again so what are our challenges we can either continue looking for drivers and still facing the challenge of not providing enough hours to maintain

117drivers or we could be again having the conversation about a two-tiered bus system if you're gonna go to a two-tier bus system again don't put this this isn't gospel or the stone I'm just given as an example but High School Middle School may start at 7 30. by the time the buses leave here go back out into this District which is a 40 square mile district and pick up the elementary kids you're probably talking an hour between start time so Elementary wouldn't be able to start until probably 8 30 which is putting them out of school at our current rate at 3 30 in the afternoon and 2 31st in this example you have to challenge it if you have the challenges for parents whose high school kids being picked up and now you have

118the elementary school child at home or vice versa in the afternoon the watching you know we could which could increase they are child care right that is a child care it's one of the highest in the area it's 1545 per hour um and so it's a challenge that we'd have to have more staff in child care if you did a two-tiered bus system you could probably say easily your payroll your material the number of tires you're going to need is going to double number of oil changes you're going to need is going to double payroll if you're now going for four hours to six to eight hours your payroll is going to double going to a six to eight hour position now qualifies for benefits even if you just did single subscriber benefit backend 8000

1198 000 is a hard cap multiplied by ten drivers there's eighty thousand dollars just in a health care increase cost there alone so even though it may sound just get more drivers because we have the buses it's finding drivers in that balanced number we have looked at we've had drivers who've gone in and done custodial for part of the time and and helped up to try to give them out food service part of the time we are as creative as possible but this becomes our challenge as our numbers go up we need to look at ridership right now the ridership is if you live within a mile more than a mile from the district basically you're eligible for transportation if you expand that mile radius to a mile and a quarter you're reducing the number

120of eligible drivers to reduce the number on the buses but now you're increasing the burden on parents to get their child to school so it's a it's a domino effect whatever decision is made is going to create two three four other dominoes falling within the organization so our goal here was for you to think about it we're doing everything we can to recruit drivers get them in here we have an excellent Fleet you know with the with the constant renewal of buses that we've been going through with two outstanding mechanics I haven't even talked about if one of them ever retires finding a mechanic nowadays is not an easy task we already partnered with New Haven where Susie is halftime director in New Haven halftime the director of Richmond we already Service New Haven buses

121by having two mechanics here to help offset some of the costs so we've been pretty creative these are just future challenges so I'm sure at an upcoming meeting we're going to have to have some more conversation in terms of if you want to look at a two-tiered system we'll be we'll need to bring you back to more definitive numbers and what would that look like from pickup times drop-offs Etc we'd have plenty of room offered not more hours we kept the one-tier position but did offer health insurance do you think that would keep people because either way if we did two-tier we'd have to do the health insurance right they will be hitting the hours so what if we decided to just offer health insurance with our current system I mean you're here the frontliner

122you're hearing things so like yeah what is what is the big thing like is that what did they want what would they like to see insurance is always the number one question okay okay for Yelp interviewers that come in do you offer you know health insurance site once you know you have the six hour day for a school year then yes you're eligible but you have to wait a whole school year so so you could either opt if that's something you want to look at as a board and we can bring you those costs you can either start it immediately or you could do the measurement period which is what we do with um all of our contracts that have part-time employees which are primarily a pair of pros and second job um it's a

123measuring period before they they get benefits what does that mean 90 days um it's usually as a 12-month look back Tammy or the insurance package yeah so if you hired someone right now under our current system and they averaged the 30 hours or more when that average Falls they really wouldn't get it until next year their current system they aren't it's based on the Affordable Care and a measurement period yeah they'd be willing to do other another job to equate to the 30 hours if they're only working 20. some are yeah some do they have in the pastorial like right now because we're so short we're actually everyone's happy because covering the bulkhead runs right we have a couple special ed rods yeah and with field trips Russia came from pretty so right now it

124ain't an issue because we're sure we're covering all this midday stuff between New Haven and Richmond but we're keeping a movement and and if we do the summer program again you could have some some employees who may choose not to work but we do that the ones that would want them yes with young kids they are the ones that were seeking on some schools and it worked out we had two doubts and then a third one came in I specialize so yeah they were happy with us three of them working and they didn't have to go find a you know some job so Susie did a lot of research on other districts frasers 1794 all the twenty dollars and nine cents uh it's sort of what roseville's 1851 to 1976 South Lake 1745 to 1954

125Warren Khan foreign excuse me 1982 to 2150 so our rates are at the high end it's the hours of the hours and the insurance that's the two the only way to to get the hours is to right now look at a two-tensive system okay okay have we ever thought about doing an activity bus now I know we we've talked about this in the past when I was first on the board I think we brought it up when we're talking about Transportation but an activity bus that would maybe run all athletes or students that were in after school curricular activities and then the bus would run maybe at like take everybody home around seven o'clock-ish type scenario like it would be a late run because it would be everybody from here and then would be a

126few I mean you might need one or two buses for our whole District when I was in Lance Cruz in high school they offered activity buses for all athletes of an after-school curricular and I think it would help improve some of our Sports and activities for those that can participate and be here and then maybe also increase hours for some but I know we're on the shorthand of bus drivers at the moment but right maybe future planning yes it's an interesting concept because we do have a lot of students that are here after school and do not have necessarily a ride home for after a practice or an academic club and so forth or even Lego Club robotics I mean there's lots that's interesting it's interesting guy that would then I'm in love for some

127other hours so I'll look into it and say it's a conversation on some of the logistics that would entail any other questions thank you thank you thank you very much thank you okay our next item on our agenda is our Pagan structures it's on the that laptop do you have it on that laptop absolutely thank you fun stuff so I'm not I'm sorry I'm not gonna lie I strategically placed this this one because I knew Renee and Mrs Barrett were going to be very excited about it so hopefully some of the other news That's so exciting um the Staples I'll turn it over to you and Mrs Baron okay well thank you um I'm here with the wonderful Miss Barrett tonight to talk to you guys about pagan Cooperative learning it's something that it's all

128over our Facebook page about students using Pagan structures so I just thought that you should do a presentation to kind of Enlighten everybody as to what this is and what our district goal is for this um their tagline is it's all about engagement so a fun fact about engagements that's what I do right I bring the fun facts um the number one link to academic success is student engagement so there's two things right getting them here right and then of course what are we doing with students when they are here how to how do we optimize the most out of those opportunities while they're here in class and Kagan is one of the most world-renowned um learning cooperatively structures that there is in history so what is a Kagan structure you can see that they're

129just situations that organize the interaction of students with each other it is not content specific so these structures can be used literally with anything from Ela all the way to CTE and culinary any grade it doesn't matter they are just kind of those Frameworks or behaviors that students do to be able to interact with the content you can see that they have their seven key components of what they do you see part of that as class building team building social skills basic principles teams and of course that having that structure and that framework for learning you can what does the research say about Cooperative learning um of course you can see that all of these can be related to Cooperative learning um to your tutoring self-concepts them being able to have productive discourse in class

130reducing anxiety small group learning and so on and so forth and what the effect size is and what the average percentile gain of student achievement is with those areas so this was a fun study here over to the left this was actually a ninth grade science class where they did the traditional Baseline um question and answer what comes to my mind is that scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off where you have that teacher in front of the classroom and he's yelling off all these you know different facts anybody anybody and the kids are just like no they're not having it that even though they're they're there in attendance they're not really there and engaged in the content therefore the effect size of learning isn't quite where it could be so that's what comes to my

131mind here you see the Baseline of just standard I'm gonna pose a question and I'm going to call on students to have their hand raised you could see that nht would stand for the numbered heads together was brought into that ninth grade science classroom you see the student proficiency level Skyrocket for fun they went back down to the standard question answering type you see the scores go down and then for fun let's see if it's really connected and sure enough it it does so you can see the traditional way to ask questions and then of course using Kagan structures where the engagement rate jumps all the way from one single student answering the question to possibly having 50 of all students engaging and talking about the concept and then the other 50 percent actually engage

132in the listening with that concept so there's a hundred percent engagement from every single person in the room not just the students that opt into asking the question or answering the questions cake instructors is what what's so interesting you can really be used as a classroom management tool as well as an instructional practice so you can see the Pagan structures research says decreased disruptive behavior I love the last one right these are called like pies you know your positive interdependence your individual accountability equal participation you don't have one person will wait we all remember group projects where this yeah you regretted that because one person did all the work and you know so equal participation was huge um and of course structures are fun they are management tools they're there for that social aspect employers

133are looking for graduates that have high communication skills and Kagan definitely delivers that foreign there are 200 Pagan structures available so we're not going to go into all of them but very popular ones that we've tried using in the district here and like I said this was a K-12 initiative but just a few of them and I'm going to turn it over to miss Barrett got some teacher quotes about using Katie in the classroom this year so thank you so yes and Doc Hagan's been super it's been exciting um you know Diana is super important to professionals and we get so excited about it but I get even more excited when I can look at the kids and watch them really be engaged and see that on their faces and see you know how they're

134feeling so I did put out a little email and some of the teachers they get back with me and I'll just let you read them but um some of them they're very excited about the stand up hand up pair up and that's that's a really good structure the kids love it they are quickly meeting new partners all the time so it's not just um your best friend they've got to go across a room you know and uh Miss Dorsey she talked about just how it has improved their staying on tasks with subject matter so they're not just talking about things off task they're actually talking about what they're supposed to be talking about which is wonderful and and um Mrs Durst from Steen she loves it too so no matter what area you're teaching and

135like this Staples said it's across the curriculum everything works with Pagan so um and the kids love it so and then this is another one that you put in right we have some quotes from our high school teachers that also love it you can actually see the stand up pair up so once again you see it at an elementary level and you can actually see it being used at the high school level as well as quiz quiz trade which is being able to have that peer tutoring as well more teacher quotes about how they are loving integrating this into the classroom yes and I think everybody has embraced it especially in the elementary I know and I think all buildings but um it just it makes it easy and fun so you know you're you

136become more of a facilitator as the teacher and the kids are the coach and the leader and a lot of accountability for the students which is wonderful and then this was just a quote that I talked about um just about how strong that relationship building Hagen is and just that accountability is so important and we used to say we don't want logs or Hogs you don't want the kid that always answers or the kid that never answers and it kind of does away with all of that and they're they are assigned jobs depending on the structure there are some different jobs so it works out great when you think about it guaranteed learning for all students you think all students are engaged and are part of the conversation um like the spirit said it's not

137just pairing up running across the room to be with your friend it's everyone they're always being mixed up so you're always being introduced to someone new in a different perspective as well but of course let's hear it from the kids right because they're the ones doing it so let's hear what they have to say about it yes so you know uh Kagan has a lot of built-in compliments but you can make up your own compliments so we all know in this world it's hard to always uh there's not enough kindness let's face it so uh cake and you actually compliment your team members every time you do a cake and structure so it's really powerful and um some of the kids they just you see their self-esteem Bloom through that um Charlotte she mentioned they're

138learning at the same time as teaching somebody else Chloe thought that you learn more about yourself which I thought was really insightful you know um and then it's definitely fun and you're not just writing on paper so it's it's much more engaging but yet you're learning and then a little Levi thought his was great when he said um when people say nice things to me it encourages me to do more nice things so I thought that was really powerful and I love Caden because he's going to be a politician you know it compliments if we're doing Pagan so I said you're right on there and then uh Brantley he just um he gets really problem people compliment so a lot of our kids don't get enough compliments so it's a great strategy so coming off

139of years where our students had to be En Rose and certain feet away from each other I thought it was very important this year to come back and say what does what do we want learning to really look like here at Richmond um so we had a pagan professional come to each building to run Pagan professional development for two full days at every building you can see across the board involved in the full days of training they each got to have their own books they got to have their their own training materials with everything and it was just a lot of fun at those trainings and then of course throughout the school years just so far you can see its implementation here at the elementary level at the middle school in high school as well

140that for what is a high school class does anybody have any questions about bacon I don't have any questions but I was just looking at the pyramid and the jobs on anything they're so positive and think like I can just see the kids like everyone feels like they're part of it like they all have a job and a purpose and the encourager is the one I love the most I'd love to see them it's um it goes or Blends in real well with our classroom instruction that works because most of the staff I don't know about all of them we had that training through the ISD and this just to me what it gave us I've had this training it gave you the methods as a teacher and you talked about um you know having

141the students lead it if you look at their teacher evaluation the Highly Effective Teacher is the one who is really just sitting back and letting the kids lead the classroom and Kagan strategies doesn't you need you guys really if you haven't seen this in place you need to go sit into a kindergarten classroom and watch this happen it is amazing and you need to go sit at a high school level it is really I I at a high school level kind of knew it and saw it but when I saw the little kids I was thinking oh we're not going to get our little kids to do this it's absolutely happening and it's just really really neat to see the changes there we had um a teacher in the beginning of the year arranged their

142room a certain way and literally after Pagan said nope I'm changing it I'm together but that little shapes and stuff on the corners so we're really seeing it and um Even in our art class oh yeah up here at the high school right right so I'm curious um as to like how it would address probably older since but I guess maybe all of them um that have like anxieties regarding pairing up dating groups um there's some special needs students that we just partner so maybe they're a second number three and they're they're maybe not vocalizing their thoughts but they're part of the team and then you just scaffold as much support as you need depending on the students um but the goal is is to get kids out of their shell a little bit so

143you start with team building you start with real easy you know your favorite color you're doing you know a structure using just personal information everybody can answer yeah confident level and then you get into content once they're coming okay and if you think about the traditional way of asking and answering questions in a classroom I would much rather share what I thought about this with my partner and have that discourse rather than raise my hand and allow everyone in the class to hear it maybe not have it be so so if your group is accountable for an answer there's way less pressure for an individual who may have that kind of anxiety right sure Plus in that group structure you have jobs so maybe if I'm not one who likes to speak out my job

144might be the the Note Taker and then we have someone in the group who will speak out for our group but we're all sharing inside of that group great thank you very much I was very happy to see that we were doing this thank you because it's really good I think it will be interesting it feels like it's a positive mental health as well yeah it could really promote some of that it's like you get a chance to really need to go see it really explore it's really cool okay thank you our next item on our agenda is our Michigan Association of school boards fall conference San Angelo I know you are going to lead that conversation yes um we went um I guess it was what about uh that's the end of last month

145we attended uh four four members uh Sandy Mrs Fortuna board member Fortuna board member Sutton and board member Cunningham and I attended the masb annual leadership conference and we all of us took some classes and some workshops that were offered a few of them we took together and a few of them we took on our own and we've all completed a few slides to just go over and share with what our major takeaways were from the conference and what we wanted to bring back and share with the board so I will start here with the first slide I was I attended the workshop that addressed guiding public schools for increasing academic achievement and a few of the takeaways I took home was to work on engaging our parents to work with students at home we

146could maybe post signs and encourage parental involvement in some kind of science post throughout where parents may see them and the use of Community Resources such as local libraries or a Tutoring Club to maybe have our school or the district somehow pair up or you know reach out and see if we can maybe get some parents to meet up beyond the school students to demonstrate knowledge in the real world which I know we do many field trips and they're based on the curriculum that they're learning but if maybe we could look at some way we could also take them we don't know we do the manufacturing day for the high school maybe there's some things we can think of for the middle school and the elementary that would be more Hands-On learning field trips um

147I also one of the main things they said and to uh make sure we will be increasing academic is to have Community input in our district strategic planning meaning that all of our community will have buy-in and our parents will know maybe what it is we as a district are looking for too and also put in some weight on what they might want to see us do and then hopefully it'll get them more on board to help our students you know then their children succeed of course increase in classroom budgets we've already discussed that as a board we know that of course would increase you know help our academic achievement um I also would like to see and um maybe incorporate a little more our District strategic planning in our agenda and how our actions

148as a board and reflect our district strategic planning and then also I know we already do um the marches reading month which I love I think that's great how we have staff and parents and even local community members come and read to our students I was wondering if that was something maybe we could look to incorporate you know K-12 pre-k through 12 to maybe you know I don't know how odd it would be to have maybe a local community member or local representative come read to a high school student or something along those lines and just still promoting that reading and then the mission visions and goal statement posted at every meeting I know we have our mission which is included in our agenda and maybe the that could also just the mission visions and

149goals could be also included in every agenda just as something we just keep rolling to for a reminder to us as we're going the main thing that I took away is 75 of each meeting's agenda should be about students if we want to increase our academic achievement um I would like to say that but I don't feel offhand I did a little bit of research but not enough but I would like to maybe do an agenda evaluation to see if we really are spending 75 percent of our agendas you know focusing on our students okay and then the next slide so the next class I took was a great class it was moving from self-care to We Care we as a board we need to you know remind ourselves to let our teacher and our

150staff and our students and our community know that we do care we all care as a board for you but we also want to All Care together we're all one team together so connection with others and team activities I know last year for um appreciations staff appreciation we did all try to go to a baseball game I think that is a great idea and to continue something like that we also need to mass allow our teachers needs as a substitute teacher I know currently as far as our lunch periods there's not enough time for for a teacher to eat lunch and freshen up before getting back to it and of course our prep the prep time and other things like that I don't know if there's something we could do more to make sure that

151we are meeting our teachers needs so that they are ready to take on our children and then also um something I think is very important in our district is for our staff and all of us to hold each other accountable when we hear one another gossiping about one another or gossiping about students we can maybe you know easily nudge or remind let's please not do that and you know or just not engage and try to remember that we're here to build up and talk more about the positive stuff and then another thing that I think we as parents and Guardians need to remember is the staff in the front office is there to help the students and to help us but when we come in with late lunches late kids late students we are breaking

152up their day and when we come in acting entitled and not thankful you know and appreciative for what they're doing I think we as parents need to remember that many of the staff are going above and beyond for our students and our children that we can't do for them and just as a parent we need to nudge for that and that's coming from a parent's point of view as well and then um the next class I took was the creating a team of eight which is us up here the board including the superintendent um one of the good takeaways I had that many other districts also do is is make a community budget guide once a year once a year we would maybe give out something to this community that would include the budget guy

153the chain Authority so that our community members would know who to report to as far as you would start with your teacher administrator then superintendent or athletic director however would you go and then also I feel that we as board members need to maybe remember our chain of the command uh we should be trying to communicate to our board president whenever possible and then our superintendent if need be I was wondering if maybe also some of us could try to if the board president is unavailable maybe also contact a fellow board member that you think may have any kind of information on that and also the board president and superintendent could possibly meet monthly with each board member we were in a class where they said that the superintendent and the president met for two

154hours each month with each board member so that we're not I'm not asking that but there is quite a few lots of communication going out there um and I do I think both our president and our superintendent are very they they communicate very well with me however it is more of a reaching out basis maybe if we penciled something in or you two had a rolling schedule I mean just something to think about these are all suggestions nothing you know no critiques necessarily and then another great takeaway was that they do have some districts have a PTO PTA booster Council we're board members possibly even the superintendent will attend all PTA and PTO events and our meetings not events and just be there as a sounding board and also have some board member talking points

155meaning what is it that if you're going into a middle school PTA what is it that they may want from the board or what they might want to know and then we'd have talking points that we would go in so that we as a board knew what that representative would be saying you wouldn't just be going in there with your own personal agenda you'd be going in as a board member right on behalf of the board and then also I think um and I do say this a little bit later and I think many of us have talked about it up here that have gone to that as um we need to do a board evaluation for us as board members and um to share what we are working on to improve ourselves individually there

156are things I'm constantly working on to improve me myself and my communication skills a few of us uh board members while we were at the conference realized that we have a tendency to interrupt we were all working on that it was very you know difficult from time to time when you are very passionate about ideas but that is something I'm working on and I think that's something we could all kind of come together and be vulnerable with one another and and maybe even give feedback if we see what maybe possibly somebody else should work on and then my last slide excuse me um this one uh that was the my actual CBA course and this one's a little more in depth than some of the the workshops that we attend this was on the district

157strategic planning and goal setting um I have uh looked um I think I've seen two different District strategic plannings over the last few years I haven't been able to find a current one that I've seen I think I'm not sure if it's posted on our website I thought it was at one time it was looking but I would like to review our current District plan as a board and then also review the Michigan continuous Improvement plan the mykip which I guess we are supposed to kind of use the mykip as a guidance to plan do our district plan so I would like to maybe as a board be able to look at both of them and see how they compare and then also compare the district our district plans to the building plans to each

158individual building planks you have a building plan for our elementary or middle school and our high school and see how that falls in there and then also if we do decide to redo any kind of I know we already have one going but if we decided to do more do more input into our district strategic planning to maybe make a stakeholder meeting with board staff and students and community members and administrators to get their buy-in and then also to maybe just if something a little less you know that isn't so much of a stakeholder meeting being that we've already I've been in the process of our plan to maybe just do a community survey or student survey to see where where people what people are thinking at the moment um I'm not sure I think

159our Visa plan I think it might have had two goals was it I'm not sure how many goals we had placed in our district plan but uh so set five goals to complete in two years and then we as a board would adapt adopt the goals on the agenda and then create measurable timelines and build it into the agendas kind of like we do with our bond updates and such and then um with all this it would help the district stay on track through board and staff Overture I think as a board member I feel like I know what I as a board member would like to have seen and what we discuss up here but an overall of where we should all be going as a district I think would be great if we

160were all in the same board and kind of knew a little more about that but um I know that it's going to talk a lot of we'll take a lot to talk about this and then the next uh Workshop I was able to attend was the lgbtq Plus and it was a very interesting Workshop to see the perspective on how our students from that Community you know have to travel and deal with in the education system I took away from there that maybe we should do a school climate survey see how our students feel to make sure that they're feeling respected and you know not any bullying or any of those things and have a safe person to go to save somebody safe to go to in our district and an adult and then also

161I think that uh they had discussed that how there should be maybe a reproductive health education to look into that maybe for some of our I know I would I don't want to say sex education because I'm thinking more of the biology of it all in our Middle School maybe and upper middle school maybe seventh eighth graders to kind of evaluate some of our education in that way and then another thing that I would really like to look into is the diversity equity and inclusion advisory committee and then we could also make a diversity equity and inclusion statement as a board so that we can be able to stand behind that and feel as a district and as a board how we want everybody to feel included and then the last session that I was

162able to attend was a General Session which the seven lenses of ethical leadership which was a very interesting presentation and I also got a book that goes in a little in depth and I would like to use maybe that process for a board self-evaluation when we talk about that in the future and I know there's a lot of this to take in and I'm sure the other three candidates or three floor members are going to go uh probably as long as I am um I think that maybe we would need a workshop you know that we could all get together and talk about many of these ideas so that we can really dive deep into them and also maybe get some uh some copies of our district plans and such so that we could do

163some research beforehand and with that I will leave it over to board member Fortuna who will dive into the southern lenses a little just a little bit because I didn't actually do the workshop I just this was like an opening uh like speech or whatever that was done uh prior to that I I didn't the time the actual Workshop um that Angela did but um basically you know um what does it mean to do the right thing in a global society and then the seven lines is um that we should be looking through the board you know listed here you know profit law of character people communities planet and uh the greater good um you know basically uh to kind of guide us I think to see the whole picture because you can't if you're

164just looking at one thing um you know if you're just looking at the legalities of something you know obviously you don't see it as clearly unless you're kind of looking through all of these seven lenses um it's really all I have on that the next Workshop that I attended which was just a short one um was our students are asking for help social emotional support for our district so this um this session was only about this one was a shorter one like I said and we did a lot of interesting things with Legos um uh yeah if you'd be surprised what some people could come up with with that but um there were a basically this was a more like I don't want to say a sales pitch because that's not that I'm even advertisement

165for Michigan cares um and the um Suite 360 program that they have which is a web-based program um and the lessons include you know for both for students parents uh teachers you know um to have Smart teaches them to have Smart conversations about uh about the the children and today's toughest challenges there are lessons um like you know just a few examples but there's a ton of them lessons that are available like I said for teachers students and parents regarding mental health and depression respect racial tolerance study skills self management academic success College Prep lgbtq um and there's just a ton there's just so much so much uh that they can do and I don't know if there is a cost I believe that there might be a cost Associated to that um but something

166to look into that's fun this one that um Workshop that I attended was uh creating a team of eight so helpful strategies to form a cohesive superintendent board relationship this session was um uh now this one oh you know what this is one I took we took I took with Angela and Kenya sorry um and it was presented by superintendent and a board president that all worked together um so this was actually just the shorter one I apologize basically communication is key um but they did talk about meeting um about meeting [Music] foreign I'm sorry um I'm talking about one that I know I think I think because you did a slide for that I apologize no but you can still go on because okay yes yes of course okay so um but it basic

167basically just having a very open door policy and I I just I guess Angela did say in regards to um maybe not a two-hour meeting but more meetings um regard with the superintendent and the or the board president along with other board members um to talk about things and whatnot quick question said let the plane land when appropriate yeah what did they say I was just so this is okay so this is I'm sorry I didn't I didn't have a slide for the last part that I spoke about I apologize but this one was looking at the board meetings um and that's that's where it says that but um there's there is basically 12 characteristics uh of an effective board meeting and I wrote them there and you can read that yourself [Music] I was

168just curious what they were saying well they say like planning they mean uh I guess like like finish it like don't go on and on and on about something like that it's playing the plane got it I think it's a movie well to be honest with you but there was some good yeah now now um I I mean I did get the most out of this meeting and I like I said if you go over the 12 characteristics of the of an effective board and there's also a handout for this one as well um this is one where I unfortunately I couldn't give to everybody um so we just had to like we have to share um I have the whole thing too okay they gave it I begged for it they gave it to

169me so like the consensus has has that so like this is the thing that I did uh like a consensus it's important that consensus has been reached when you believe when you believe that um you understand somebody else's point of view they understand yours whether or not they agree with the concept or whatnot you know they support it because it was reached openly and fairly so and I think I think what that is is it kind of goes to the scientific method here where if you you vote on conviction and not emotion uh remember individual Choice mutual respect once the vote has been taken it's a board policy so like we all should support it at that point um you know I thought both of that was important in that particular meeting now now um

170we also went through in this particular session they went through some causes of poor decision making and they listed Seven Things um regarding that and that would be you know framing the wrong question or framing I'm sorry framing the question wrong not taking enough time acting Under Pressure acting on poor information letting emotions get out of hand and failing to consider consequences failing to admit mistakes or adjust to changing circumstances so some takeaways that I have um in regards to all of the stuff that I took was um I feel like we need to educate the public a bit more on what a board member's responsibility is um in regards to what a superintendent does and in that packet um Regard in that packet of the effective meetings it does kind of list the differences

171of what a board member does and what you know the superintendent does and like some some some districts have like pamphlets that they leave out on the table so that we have our agenda out on the tables they have pamphlets and that was the other example that I left for you guys it's like a trifold and it just kind of helps I think everybody know I guess you know what Lane you're supposed to be in I don't know um but I feel like that that might be helpful to have out there for the public as well as the agenda um now not that I'm saying I want to adapt any of these things like Angela also said but just some ideas to think some things to think about I guess um so some some boards

172make everyone that's going to speak um and public comment sign in 15 minutes prior to the starting of the meeting some boards only allow public comment on agenda items and then other other boards also um allow only so many individuals to speak at one certain topic I'm not saying that we should do any of those things um just some things to think about and I don't know you know everybody else knows that other school districts may do it differently than we do um but I believe it will be very helpful to have quarterly meetings with the superintendent um to discuss issues or things that we would be looking at during his evaluation um that way there's no surprises for anybody for the board members or or the superintendent make sure that we're all on the

173same page we can go over you know what we think is working as well as what we're doing well and also we can discuss areas of opportunity at that point again so there's no surprises at the end it would be really I would really like to get I would really like to get a um of the board packet um earlier than we do um because I feel like it doesn't if getting it on Friday doesn't allow us enough time to thoroughly go through all this information especially if we have weekend plans um it just it's it's uh I I think important for us to get a little bit earlier so we can go through especially when we have a lot of presentations it's hard to get through all that information it also would allow us

174time to ask questions um regarding some things if we had questions just think at least it is and possibly reorganize it reorganize its order I mean for example going back to public kind of thing I like to hear from everybody uh but maybe if and I know the public might not like this but if it were at the end it might be better the reason why I said and the only reason why I say that is because I do think that sometimes they get the impre you know the general public gets the impression that when it's interest from the board that we should be commenting on what they already talked about you know at this same meeting and that's you know not how it is like I take it back I process it you know

175what I mean I ask questions and then come back to the next meeting with um with my uh responses to that I guess I'm not sure you know that they're aware of that so um I also learned about a book that I guess some other board members did read Robert's Rule of Order um so I'm going to be I still haven't okay I have not read that and I seem very interested I'm very interested to read that but um I also just think that we need to bring some positivity back to this uh board to these meetings uh like what I'm just curious like what happened to the true blue moment we used to do what happened to students doing some demonstrations some of the clubs groups that kind of thing and um students leading

176Us in the pledge and also um also just wondering about getting a student representative back on the board I think that those would be some positive things um that you know we should maybe bring back to the board that's it thank you okay next so for my um obviously I'm new on the board so I took the um 101 um protective CBA 101 curriculum and instruction and the first thing that I noticed was the creating a vision what is a vision we must have an annual Workshop to create our vision as a board for the year which I'm excited I know we always do and so I'm excited for that one that time comes in January the outcome of this Workshop would be to create a collaborated vision for the year as a board and

177be sure that our policies align with this Vision also give the direction to the superintendent as to what we are looking for when it comes to new hires employee retention Etc in order to maximize a prosperous outcome for this Vision we will also need Community involvement so what types of interactions do we have with the mayor the city council parks and rack Chambers of Commerce rotary Lions Club Public Library community churches I feel that we we should build on that if we don't have that yet or a lot of it um and what uh the other what come up with ways to show kind of what what member Fortuna was saying show appreciation to the community promote involvement all around um like bringing in I know that went a few years back I was brought

178in to receive an award from you guys for my participation with the PTO and I still have that so something some other things to do to encourage more parental involvement in the community into the school so um setting long-term goals and short-term goals create goals and have these documented somewhere to review especially for the newcomers the newcomers that way they can see what the vision has been recently and they will have a better understanding as to the why when making decisions it's easy to get confused being new on the board we must also do periodic evaluations on these to have a better chance at seeing results so um keep going um and this some of this stuff is repetitive to um when Angela was saying too um should have do we have a facility committee

179who is our current facility committee and they recommend that we they should be meeting every other month um we should have a curriculum committee I know that we already have somebody in charge of that but it also which would also include the Personnel obviously responsible for the grants applications also being that the grants are tied to certain curriculums and that would be implemented um allocate adequate resources for professional learning that works and provide the Educators with the tools needed to implement the strategies that they choose to use so it's not just creating the curriculum but making sure that they have all the tools that they need to implement it in the classroom so maybe hearing more from the teachers what their personal needs are or whomever represents them to us communication with the teachers is

180key to knowing what their needs are we must also have formal and informal Communications with them to show our values and focus we are shaping for our district provide instructional coaching um we must be sure that overall culture promotes for highly trained motivated effective collaborative administrators teachers and staff in order to create conditions for success I feel like that's a very important statement um that I would like to see us also kind of look at our um our main commitment when we have that meeting to what our goals are um in January for our ethics Workshop um which is the next one so the ethics um the board will will be evaluated by the people for what we do ethics in general the board will be evaluated by the people for what we do but

181they will trust us on why we do it so we must be more transparent with the why that was one of the classes that I took so some other things that they had talked about was were the board meeting processes how were we how were we responding or not responding to the Public's comments when they present concerns to the board at the meetings I feel the board should know how the concerns are being handled are we taking the time to respond to all inquiries um other things that we could possibly change are the seat the way that we're seating sitting to make it more comfortable more of a board room setting the agenda lineup we can also look at um and then also um coming up with a mission statement that aligns with all of

182our vision when we get our all our new board members on here um talk about that or we could create monthly newsletters also kind of like part of the board is that there yeah and similar to what Sandy had made with that trifold because I think we took that same class they talked about that having our mission statement the hierarchy in which everyone should be going to when with their concerns because I feel like sometimes they jump ship they jump over teachers and nonetheless um then creating working principles for the whole board goal to create a culture of trust respect and reliability reliability create a code of conduct and self-board evaluations also create expectations of the board president things that we can talk about the board will show leadership skills and have the ability to

183work together breakdown of trust is huge in order to Be an Effective board must wipe the Slate clean in order to move on disagree and private and praise in public that's their key statement um discuss ways to show appreciation to the teachers discuss who is on the hiring committee do we have a retention policy and or the procedures for that and then when we decide our vision is an attempt to articulate what he desired future would look like it stretches the imagination and motivates people to think what is in what is possible um I think that's these are all just things a lot this was 101 so a lot of this you guys have already I know this is repetitive for some of you but yeah thank you Candace yeah all right I have the

184last couple and I'm a math teacher so I don't talk a lot and I don't put a lot on my side so I'll keep it short and sweet my classes are the same way um so the very first thing I went to um was the keynote speaker on Saturday was this gentleman named Alex Sheen and his organization is because I said I would and it revolves around the fact that his father was diagnosed with cancer and he had made promises to his father and once his father passed he wanted to continue and withhold and uphold those promises that he said he would um in the fact that in today's culture a lot of times we say oh yeah I'll try to make it to that meeting or I'll try to you know attend your basketball

185game tonight but you you should be making promises that you will don't use the word try we all make promises constantly like I said yes I'll be there sure no problem and then just forget about it um so what do we really do we but do we really mean what we're saying what's the impact of a broken promise and what happens to a life what happens to the purpose person you promised when you don't honor that promise or when you do honor that promise and how does that make them feel holding yourself accountable because like he said his dad isn't here anymore but he's still holding himself accountable to um do it because he told him he would you know and um so it was probably not the it was a great 8 A.M presentation

186but I was in tears 90 of the time it was a great presentation um so what does it mean to live with honor was kind of the overall message going on there is self-control having self-control compassion for others contemplation honesty accountability sacrifice and hope for the future and then I just threw up a couple little cards basically what he would do is create a little business card size thing and all it said on the entire thing on both sides just a blank sheet of paper business card that said because I said I would and asks you or when he does these presentations and things just write a promise that you would make and the reason is because I said I would and it turned into a thing where you would come back and get the

187card when you fulfilled that promise to somebody but over the time it's evolved into the fact that for one example was to use it a woman said that she would not text or answer phone calls when she was driving and because I said I would and so every time she got into the car she took that little note card and she put it over the face of her phone as it was sitting in her car so when she went to grab it she would see that reminder you know that it because I said I would because whatever had happened within her family you know that made that conscious decision so that was really cool um that was a great one-hour presentation I actually bought ended up buying his book and it kind of as I've

188been reading through it it's basically his present he summarized the book in his presentation so it's a really good really good book um so I have that if anybody is interested in looking at it um but then I attended just like um Angela and Candace the lgbtq plus school board members talking about sex and gender I love their slide about the fact that sex education my actually my second certification my minor is school health so I'm certified to teach school health as well is math but thankfully I've never had to um but it's more than just the birds and the bees you know we think of the school health and sex education is sex and their graphic on the screen to be blunt was it's more than just a banana and a condom you know

189sex education is about the whole gamut when I was teaching seventh grade and I had to teach it it was teaching kids went to take a shower how often to take a shower how to brush your teeth and I looked at these other teachers like you really want me to teach a seventh grader how to brush their teeth and you you'd be surprised so you know it's more than just the whole concept of sex it's a bigger perspective and I think over time things have changed and the curriculum has changed and I think a lot of community members like that was the education I went through you know but it's changed over time and it's not just that anymore um so it's important for people to realize that and I said at the last meeting

190um I feel like we need an Advisory Board and we talked about this too within our district to re-examine our sex education program because it is just a simple abstinence only but that's only a portion of what sex education is these days it's not just let's talk about the birds and the bees um because we're really not fulfilling our mission that Sherry reads at the beginning of you know our meeting each time that students for students to be successful in a global Community we're not we're only teaching on this small portion and if we want we don't have to support it or we don't have to like it but we're not setting them up that when they go out into the real world and they experience that and there's just like a deer in headlights

191ironically opening days tomorrow but they're not like a deer in headlights they're just they're not surprised by it they actually have some you know education of what's going on in the world around them they just need to have that exposure um and then the last one I went to was when school board meetings are Battlefield staying student focused in the midst of Chaos again these these presenters they spoke regarding how they restructured their board meetings they had they put public comment at the beginning and also at the end and I think we I think it was Sandy you mentioned it um they put it somebody mentioned it put it at the beginning so that community members could address items that were on the agenda so like the presentations that we were talking about or that

192type of thing ahead of time so that we had those thoughts in the back of our minds and then they had it at the end as like a you could put in a general comment or there was another District that had It reversed at the beginning they had comments that were just general like we have it towards the end and then at the end they had comments the public could comment again about the regarding the presentations and their thoughts and input you know regarding those presentations that were given um and then the one District also created an app I know we do a really good job with um social media and having the principals and the teachers make posts on a daily basis but this school had created an app and the goal of it

193was to engage community members grandparents Aunts Uncles who are in the community but didn't necessarily um they weren't a direct stakeholder they didn't have students in the thing but you know they might still be interested in knowing what the football scores were for the night or knowing you know when the next tennis match is or when the next volleyball game is so it gave them and I put like little snippets on there of their app um but just gave them kind of a news feed a place to go and one thing they said the biggest feedback they got from it was they liked the feedback is that parents and stakeholders liked that push notification so it you know how it comes up and it says oh there's a you know reminder there's a game tonight

194or something like that so or this was the score of the game last night and it got the community more involved in their in the district and then again they were dealing with the same issues of sex education lgbtq plus and the whole books and which books should be in the schools in which books aren't um and just the big takeaway was you know it's important to have those advisory boards set up to be able to get the input of all stakeholders that's my two cents thank you I know that several board members approached me about possibly we have a workshop so we can take a look at what was presented tonight and pull some things out of there like Angela said I don't believe we can do everything that you guys sure saw or

195witnessed or whatever but maybe we take a look at it and say what's important to us as a district where do we want to go what would we like to do so I'm going to work with Mr Walmsley here we'll set up a date somewhere coming up here that we can have a meeting if that's okay with the board or a workshop just to take a look at the information that was presented this evening well and maybe some other ideas I know um we'll remember kelto and zooby and yourself did not attend you may have some as well with that along you know at least some of these there's some like each one of our headers are kind of I think it's committees um the diversity and inclusion and the advisory boards mental health so

196I mean it's only in the end where it sounds like a lot I think it was really less than maybe 10 items than if you you know the other board members also felt like [Music] okay wait a minute where's my card I'm gonna make a promise I am going to um you know like the the whole sex education and that piece we're gonna do that presentation tonight so hopefully we'll have that at the next meeting and we can take a look at what does the district have and where do we want to go with what we're currently doing I like the verbiage growth and development I think that is better than seeing sex education okay I mean I like that it would incorporate possibly what they're experiencing as they're going through puberty and also the

197hygiene I think that was on our agenda yeah I like that it says that yeah that terminology is good too yeah no it's not as misleading I feel like well education it means one thing in a lot of people's minds right and it's not just that anymore okay any other questions from anybody on the board about the presentation I'd like to thank the four of you that attended and sharing what you brought back there's I think there's some good ideas in it that I was looking at that I'd like to see us implement thank you Angela for putting that together yes you're welcome thank you for everybody for contributing I think it's excited to be talking about these kinds of things now so good thank you for all your input okay we're gonna move on

198Mr Walmsley a bond update please progress continues on the baseball and that softball field more and more of the supplies and materials are starting to arrive the fencing began arriving for the softball field to complete that project the fencing that was damaged in the Windstorm and the baseball Varsity Field will also be replaced we're actually taking the opportunity to change a little bit of the fence line so it's more of a consistent sort of there's the same radius if you will from one plate so we will make some of those changes but the biggest one that we have been finalizing is next year summer of 2023 um construction plan and you can see on the campus this will be our final summer work for the 2019 Bond it actually is done in three phases phase

199one which you will see down here is the Middle School roundabout the middle school parking lot and this area behind the Middle School along the back that will begin when school literally when school gets out on June 8th it is projected to be done mid-july everything is contingent on the weather if we're dealing with the outside here if you recall um summer we opened uh after we did all the renovations we had 21 days of outdoor weather that we could not work outside so it's almost a month of a month of work phase two will be the road by the library which will go down and be the the two lanes in front of the Middle School the new bus lane that was added they actually extended in there and they'll cut back to fill

200in the two lanes that will be phase two that will begin July 11th and should finish on August 11th approximately a month they take it this field which is located will be closed most of the summer because of no access the road up by the new student parking lot will be closed off over here by the bus garage so all students summer activities will have to park in the front parking lot there will be no parking along here the only access for here would be for the garbage dumpster to pick up the dumpsters but this will be closed off the site work for the small parking lot that is over by the baseball field will begin on June 6th this is a new parking lot in the big scheme of things so it will take

201a little longer this is there's approximately the 12 parking spots that will be in there half of them are handicapped the other half are not with the more handicap you make the less parking spots you have because you have to have that lane for Van the striped in between two handicap spots for Van access any larger this parking lot being any larger it would increase the cost cost significantly because we'd have to vote retention Bays uh retention basins in the ground Etc so right now this will all run off of the water will just run off into the the grass in the area around it so primarily the entrance to the campus will be at Lee you know getting in off of that road in and out of the district so for the community members

202that cut through the district this summer be very easy to cut through the district the board office will obviously is still in operation all summer so when this phase is working the board office will be parking up here and then we'll be coordinating buzzers and letting people into the building through the main office and um getting back to the back of the building for if they need to do business and then vice versa when this gets closed off this parking lot should be open you'll see all of this then would complete the entire Bond project over a Ford this is a four summer project that we do questions I'll just I'll just leave this we've been working with Preston regarding summer camps and tentative schedules and so forth to coordinate where people will be in

203Access for everybody's safety so that's awesome thank you I would just like to say it looks amazing out there I've been driving through the district I have a big smile on my face I have a kid at the elementary two boys at the high school so I'm lucky enough to be able to make the full and it's amazing and I thank all of you parents staff community members for putting up with it it's really going to be amazing and my my children hopefully my grandchildren we'll be able to benefits yep and thanks to you for execute I will say this our our timing in this community's timing is perfect as we hit we got everything in our most of our supplies before pricing increases and so forth I know um Jerry for Market made a

204comment last summer that if you were planning on building a new gymnasium it was at least a 12-month lead time just to get the steal for the so it's time to work out so that's all I have for the mind okay next item on our agenda is public comments since the last meeting I received several emails one from a faculty member about the lack of lighting on the road on the west side of the district so are we that Road's being redone but there's nothing in line no lights yet on it they're um yes um that road currently does not have any lighting along there actually drove from the middle school or down that road to get here today and I did notice it is pretty dark along that road so just something maybe we

205can we have extra Bond money maybe we can look at it another I received another email from a parent about her daughter's teacher and the district procedures another from a parent expressing concern about our teachers leaving and superintendent concerns and threats these were all forwarded on to Mr Walmsley and he did reply back to these parents I received an email from a Community member asked me about our teachers starting salary and the superintendent's contract I was able to respond to their questions I directed them to our website where you can find both our teachers salary and our superintendent's contract I they asked about our neighboring districts starting pay for their teachers we are actually higher than our start our neighbor that people have been talking about publicly so anyway I was able to answer those

206questions and they seem satisfied that's all that I've received at this time any member of the public May address the board please sign in and state your name you will have three minutes to address the board are there any public comments but sign in first [Music] my name is Brian wise I was a bus driver here in the district from the fall of 2006 until December of 2020. and recently I was in Africa and I returned and certain church members and people in the community were saying are you hearing what's going on in our community I said I didn't know what was going on and so I appreciate the folks who put everything on YouTube so that you can watch through so I did I watched through all of the recent board meetings and uh

207lo and behold my name comes up in one of the board meetings and with all of the things going on I thought well um let me explain because I I did resign in December of 2020. but that's because our associate pastor took a call in New York and he took a church there I had a wife in nursing school and she was completing that I had a daughter in nursing school she Was preparing for a wedding and all of these post coveted and everything going on and as bus drivers we're delivering food it completely changed the schedule and so when my time came to an end uh it wasn't in person and so I did get to connect with many parents some of you I've driven your kids in this room and I know it's

208Christmas time and the pressure is heavy to return to driving uh even tonight I'm going to miss all of my Christmas uh Tim Horton gift cards and all the beautiful things that kids are doing but I just wanted to clarify that I enjoyed my time serving with all of the supervisors all over the bus drivers for all of those years and I I drove long enough in the district to take from preschool to graduation and various superintendents various supervisors who retired and went to other locations and so I just wanted to clarify because I didn't really get that opportunity with um even with the with the bus because we were if we were in a time of shutdown when that when that came about so but then I also have some thoughts as as a

209pastor in our community as a concern my love for this community um School District train me and other bus drivers you guys were exposed to some of that this evening and then they expected us they expected me to operate that bus exactly how we were trained exactly how the owner operator manual if that bus called for diesel fuel we were not allowed to put something we felt because it was closer and it's cold outside in Michigan and the gas station is right over here and I can get over there and put that in because I feel that we were expected to operate that bus for the safety of every student entrusted to us and everyone else on the road exactly how we were trained exactly how we were trained and let me tell you never

210was I never was I allowed to operate according to the feelings of the kids on the bus because at times they felt it was appropriate to to write things on the back of seats at times they had all kinds of ideas of what they thought was appropriate and they learned otherwise that that was not appropriate so my question would be would the school board and I want you to think about these things with the school board and administration want bus drivers to carry out their responsibilities according to how they were trained account according to how that manual States for that bus or how they feel and I have a lot of miles under my belt of driving and this board never said do what you feel do what your training was always the expectation and

211I've watched these recent board meetings I'm a son I have a brother of Two Sisters I'm a husband I have three daughters so like a representative I'm a girl dad and I love being a girl dad I have an amazing wife and I serve and most of my life has been connected with serving children and serving parents in this community I want to make a positive difference I don't want to just add it to the noise and I know that there have been many people who have come and they've stood here and they're frustrated and they're upset and I know that you have a very immense responsibility that is entrusted in this world that we live in but I'm concerned about the protection of our children and my staff children I'm talking about all of

212our children and I believe that true kindness should be shown to every single person because every single person is made in the image of God I know that someone made the bus because the bus is there we bear the image of our creator or Made In His Image and this is why every single child no matter what they deal with no matter what they struggle with they have intrinsic value but if we if we abandon the Creator's design then what happens to that intrinsic value thank you he safely drove my chest for many years as I think about how we're created the worth that's given to each one of us and then you think about students today I was just in the chapel meeting with our local EMS Chief and police chief what they're dealing

213with all the time what's been expressed even from here is how many people and students feel little to no worth foreign spoken here in this podium people of Faith they have said clergy as if they represent Jesus so they brought Jesus into the conversation here so my question is well then what did Jesus who is the creator and the sustainer of everyone and everything what did he do and what did he say Jesus taught his followers to love their enemies not just their friends or people they agreed with and then he demonstrated what divine looks like so in John chapter 4 Jesus sat down with at the well and he loved the woman at the well that woman had a broken life he knew that she knew that but he called her out of a

214life of sin Jesus at another occasion stunned all of the religious leaders with a broader woman caught in adultery noticed there's no man there they brought the woman they they threw her down naked in the dirt before Jesus and they wanted him to condemn her and he was the only sinless one that actually could have been done and then but what did he do he said he was not the first if you're without sin you go ahead and throw the first stone and then Jesus stooped down to her level began to brighten the dirt they all left one by one the oldest of the youngest and Jesus asked her a question where are your accusers and then he said this and neither do I condemn thee go and sin no more so he called her

215just like the woman of the well out of a light of sin that was the most loving Matthew 19 Jesus revealed the Creator's plan for home for marriage for family we've been talking about this this board the oversight I served on that as far as I know I'm still on that committee it just hasn't met in quite a few years that I know of that the Master's plan has always been grounded in Genesis 2. you've been talking about it tonight First Command given be fruitful and multiply that requires a male and female this was true it still is true this was loving and it still is the most loving perspective no matter what we think so would anyone really claim that they are wiser or more loving than the Lord Jesus Christ now I have

216a little confusion about our student handbook here in the student handbook it forbids cameras and videos to be utilized in the bathrooms and locker rooms where all students and staff page 58 quote have a reasonable expectation of price quote have a reasonable expectational press end quote now this rule is explained let's clarify the reason is to prevent it says on that same page to protect against crimes including quote child pornography end quote so does the recent policy the change in policy comply with that promise to all students and staff members okay I think you can have someone signing here for you okay thank you foreign mental images are stored in the mind for a lifetime and perhaps this is why privacy a reasonable expectation of privacy has traditionally traditionally been in place when it comes

217to privacy and locker rooms and restrooms now some stated the potential risk of this new approach and there's great danger that might happen but I would say the danger may have very little to do with this debate because really danger can happen anywhere I want you to think about this I already told you I'm a girl that my daughters they don't share the bathroom they don't use the bathroom with me they're not afraid of me they want their privacy it's just inappropriate they have matured they have grown up they don't want to be in the bathroom with me what are we doing here to allow our daughters a reasonable expectation of privacy now I'll tell you much of my enjoyment while driving for Richmond schools it came from building and maintaining really great relationships with

218children and parents in our community I will tell you this most of the most of my stops on the Moose bus and they were working hard at that table to try to get me to come back most of my stops I said hello to parents every morning if there was ever conflict or something I had a relationship with those parents and that's what still abides even to this day so board members let me ask you the question and this would apply to all faculty and staff all coaches do you believe that it's your role to support parents or to supplant them support them or supplant them I am committed to pray for school the faculty and staff the administration the students in our community I love this community I have served quite a few years

219in this community I am ready and willing to help and so is my church it's not my church is the Lord's church and that's where I serve we're ready to help anyone who's been affected by sin full disclosure I'm not looking down my nose at anyone I'm not better than anyone else the worst thing you know about me I guarantee you isn't the worst thing about me God knows me inside and out and yet he loves me and he's forgiven me he has changed me he is changing me that the love of God that's been talked about from this Podium the love of God is not a permissive or pampering love it's a perfecting love and I want you to please don't forget that it's a perfect woman he's going somewhere so I urge you

220and if it's not close do not choose to do in this moment what might seem to be Progressive and popular even with all of the workshops but instead choose to do what is right and what is righteous because we're all accountable for our decisions and Jesus said to whom much is given much is required and there is a coming judgment and we'll all give accounts to our creator one day that's why it matters that I would give account to a supervisor and give account to parents and give accounts on the board because it matters it's for a good and right and righteous reason so with that I thank you for your time I thank you for the extra time giving to me I thank you for your service and I thank you for choosing to

221act to do what is right for that I think in advance thank you [Applause] do we have any other public comments foreign Garcia and I have a question about the buses um I believe we are on the horse bus we have Road bus one day this year um the bus comes way too early and drops off too late and my children tell me that there are four students to a seat so I'm not sure what the bus rules are or how many children should be on a bus or a seat to be safe I do know that in my car they are in their seatbelts and they are safe so I guess I'm inquiring um what the bus rules actually are for how many students are on the bus particularly perceived um I did not

222plan on speaking tonight I know that we have a lot of parents asking about private bathrooms rather than maybe a little handicapped I don't know what is it sorry divider there you go um and I haven't heard anything or anyone talk about plans or changes in schools um I do remember hearing that they said that they have been this has been going on for seven years I would assume that if it was going on for seven years that there would have been a plan for our taxpayers money for something to be done so I'm waiting and waiting and waiting to hear about them thank you we have our public comments thank you Bob got back again um I just wanted to thank the board members who went to the lgbtq portion of that and I

223hope that you are trying to learn and grow and understand and and also the mental health aspect um I just don't think some people realize how hard it is for these kids and I know thankfully my two kids who went to the school were LGBT when we're not picked on probably the one wasn't out at the time they were picked on I know personally of kids who were who were bullied who were and it's not even that long ago and I happen to know for a fact the trans student is and I just hope that you're you were when by going or trying to learn and grow and understand a little bit and um so I wanted to thank you I'm hoping that was the reason you did it so I'm just coming up here

224again to thank you for trying to to do better by the kids so thank you very much that's all I have to say thank you thank you and the other public comments being no other comments we will move on our next item on our agenda is our superintendent and legislative update thank you um I'm going to start with legislative update um there really isn't any other than the results of the election um regardless of of which party or what line you voted on um moving forward in Michigan we have a very different legislative and Governor to work with at least for the next two years before the next election my hope is that all of those elected officials that are now in office or will take office January 1. will be Pro public schools for

225many years there have been legislative and governors who have not even provided enough revenue for schools to maintain cost of living and increases so we've heard multiple times with this board table year over year the money is there in the school aid package it's just a matter of How It's allocated so my hope is that people will do the right thing for to support public education and less about partisan politics at the county level uh just to update the county millage for the special ed facility and bond Improvement if you did not hear pass with the 70.5 percent vote Yes this is as well as the county public support Transportation receiving the Macomb County public transportation village with a 65.5 fiance vote both of those we've talked about in the previous board meeting so they

226are good for Richmond students they're good for Richmond schools so I thank the voters for them just a reminder board on December 6th is the dinner m a m c s b a Macomb County Schools boards association dinner media on December 6th in Las Cruces if you're planning on going if you could let me know I just have a circle so I can RSVP for the district if you are planning on um because with the holiday coming up Thanksgiving is going to be a tight time frame um let's look at District updates at Lee Elementary School this was provided by Mrs manguni they are doing an elementary penny wars through November 22nd all the procedures I think is is really remarkable for what they're trying to do uh we'll we'll go towards making sure at

227least every child that Lee Elementary School has dollars to spend at the Santa shop so that nobody feels not welcomed and not able to for whatever Financial reason so if you got extra quarters that has more to the pot or takes more away in the competition please send them in because it is for a good cause every child will have an opportunity to participate in Sandwich Shop even something as little that can have a detrimental effect on a student who just doesn't have the resources as you heard from Mrs Staples the staff has been doing professional development they had a great day last Tuesday where they learned the new Amplified or they did the next phase in the Amplified science curriculum so it was pretty exciting to be part of that and actually watch it

228that day Mr Gibson from the preschool reports that they will have their Thanksgiving feast for preschool students a week from today on Monday November 21st the fall preschool social which is Tuesday November 22nd will be 3 to 4 30 in the cafeteria all the preschool families are invited Mr Gibson will be reading a Thanksgiving story a little cider and donuts we'll be served there'll be a fun craft for parents to complete with their family another activity of trying to build that preschool Community Preschool also had their professional development date almost two weeks ago November 4th they talked about topics such as the curriculum upcoming events including licensing requirements going through that process literacy curriculum the computer programs that they're working on and that that in the preschool division the fall social which I just talked

229about the Christmas program which is 10 will be scheduled for Monday December 19th Mr burkemeyer reports that the middle school they had an outstanding Veterans Day celebration and I want to thank the staff who pulled that together with the students if you didn't get a chance check out the YouTube video it is very remarkable what they pulled together each year to help our students understand and recognize and honor our veterans I know it's a lot of hard work they were busy that that week before hanging up things and putting things in place they did a remarkable job the National Junior Honor Society had their rake and run last week is always a great activity puts a lot of smiles on the seniors houses when they come bring the leads and go Etc also the Middle

230School staff in high school also had their professional development Day Middle School spent the day analyzing data coming up with some strategies to help students become more proficient on the M stuff he was disable happened to be at the middle or High School excuse me professional development that day they focused on a developing a common vision for the high school that they can make it's used to support their decisions building in community diverse Learners who thrive in an ever-changing world world is their focus and vision this will help them guide their practices and make decisions in what they expect in each of the classrooms the second quarter challenge begins at the high school basically each grade level is competing with each other's other grade levels to have the best attendance second quarter from absences and

231tardies to reduce that number there's been an ongoing effort that we reduce our attendance rate or reduce our absenteeism rates I think you heard last year the the number of students that missed in that amount of instructional time that equates to you know checking students out five ten minutes here over the course of the the year or basically half day here adds up and it's a lot of lost instructional time at the end the grade that has the best attendance will be able to choose their reward from bagels and donuts in the morning either Sunday maybe a pizza party or there's some other creative ideas that they might have but the goal is that students need to be in attendance in order to have academic success so that would be looking forward to that at

232the high school academic student supports are starting at the high school two-week academic student support groups have begun running and will run for six weeks students will be meeting weekly to discuss study skills checking in on their grades and working with the counselor for additional academic supports in order to improve their overall grade so it's a new Focus or another Focus that Mrs Zabo Mrs bullwinker are focusing on at the high school the CT fall advisory boards are in effect November 10th as the teacher Cadet the 16th is the TV and broadcasting culinary arts is coming up on the 29th this is these are required boards or meetings that they have to have it's twice a year they have to evidently have it where they bring in not only the teachers but also students representatives

233from the industry to talk about how they can improve the program where the program's going Etc this year we have our theater program that it started back so if you have not heard this coming Friday and Saturday and Sunday are their performance of puff it's a program or a theatrical performance or theater performance on if you're a Harry Potter fan it deals in that Realm of the world or real Realm of the storyline I think this leg is an opening night for puff or seven increasingly eventful years at a certain School of magic and Magic again seven o'clock on Friday seven o'clock on Saturday with a 2 p.m show on Sunday so if you can make it please uh please take an opportunity to stop it and see our theater students we have submitted our

234application to be part of the rich city of Richmond's Santa parade on December 3rd if you would like to participate meet at Lee Elementary School an invitation will go out to the staff last year we had several years we've been doing this but we'll decorate a bus in lights and so forth so um throughout the night it leads the parade and then ultimately the tree lighting ceremony in downtown well you can ride the bus on that one yeah um the stable turned over to you to give you an update on what's Happening correctly all right um six through 12 fine teachers had Next Generation science standard training through a consultant at the MISD so that was really wonderful to have all six week 12 teachers together in one room to talk about the Continuum of

235learning and Science High School had our we had our second math professional learning on math standards our district Improvement team had our second meeting already in our district of improvement student support meeting has already occurred as well once again the fall preschool social is coming up on November 22nd um and fun fact Richmond is like making history in a really cool way so I found out I got an email asking to do an interview for momentum magazine because of our computer programming video game class so during the interview the the interviewer actually stops and says I want you to know Richmond was actually the inspiration for this entire article and I was like what tell me more so she was like the editor was apparently they were brainstorming idea she goes man that video game

236class at Richmond is really cool we should do a whole series on really unique classes being offered throughout McComb so um we were interviewed and talked about with Ms compo all the great things that are happening happening in that class so we um have an article coming out mid-December in momentum magazine about us being very forward thinking in our in our CT programs so thank you thank you very nice and then I'll just finish I have um there was some information that's been shared or has gotten to back to me and it's some misinformation I would just like to clarify um I know Mr news came up and spoke at the last uh it was the last Board of me and he talked about increasing the number of vacation days that I had in the

237contract and it he was um but it was kind of taken aback by it from that I just want to clarify I have not had increases in vacation days what I believe he was talking about excuse me Buzz the forward increase the number of holidays I get to match the existing office staff which I had fewer than another 12 month employees so at one point I don't remember what year it was several years ago the board matched me to what other 12 month employees have so if that's what he was having I just want to clarify on the number of vacation days has stayed the same since 2014. the other one that I want to just clarify is there was a statement that was posted regarding what I believe was a former teacher who stated

238that her principal I think it was her former administrator is the way it was read stated that as a district I only allowed three highly effective teachers per building I just want to clarify first of all I don't have any role in the evaluation process my role as a superintendent is to make sure it is done with Fidelity and that is consistency do I sit down with the administrators in in May and say okay who are you going to who do you feel is highly effective who you feel is highly absolutely because my role is to make sure the the consistent measure is applied at all grade levels um just so the board has this I went back to um this is a breakdown of the highly effective by building um since 2014 which is

239before I got here but it was starting there you can see that in 2014 there were zero zero highly effective in the district I arrived July 1st to 14 that first year we had infidelity in uh in the way we applied observations in all buildings in communication with the Union every year it was best to make sure everybody had a fair evaluation when everybody was given effective that year because when all things are equal we do look and see you already know according to the estate statute so that year was in order for you to create some Fidelity and some consistency you'll see in June of 16 uh June 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 and up the last year of June there's 28 highly effective so that statement is incorrect so I'd be

240more than happy if anybody has a question I'll get you the information what what I what I guess I don't say bothers me but it really does bother me is when people make statements that are inaccurate um because they don't have the information that's always my goal with this board is to make sure you have the information you need to make a decision um so I just wanted to clarify that another statement that was made um that um I'm going kind of by hearsay because I didn't get the whole capture because I can't find it anymore I got part of it on a screenshot that was sent to me but I can't find the rest of the post on the post it was that Richmond only is the only District that evaluates their teachers um

241each year so we all know the legislators have gotten into the mix of schools when they should know that should be a locally controlled decision and what the legislators have also done is they've taken the ability to bargain this stuff away from our employees and all employees such as the teacher so the legislators passed a Michigan school code 380 1249 and this is all about evaluation who evaluates them and you're going to notice in here that it is a superintendent's job to make sure the evaluation is done correctly consistently and the administrators are trained in the evaluation model which our administrators just went through four almost 40 hours of training but if you look in the law there it is this isn't Brian Walmsley this is state law that says the performance and evaluation system

242must provide that if a teacher is rated highly effective on consecutive ending the annual end of the year evaluation this on on three excuse me three consecutive the district may choose to only have the uh the evaluation done by by annual basis so if you've got three consecutive only at that point can the district saying yes or no if we're going to do an evaluation each year it also talks about if you're an ineffective teacher so I guess all of the statements that we've put in place I know one of my first year in the names of staff that have left since I've been here there were staff that are left here because I had to implement the Affordable Care Act you know there were staff who would consider part-time and their hours got changed

243to five hours and 75 minutes a day um it's it's most of the time it's laws that are being presented that we have to implement so I just want to just to clarify it's not my intent to um you know call them out I did use Mr news today and so I apologize if you found offensive I just wanted to clarify Miss vashona mentioned you can find all this stuff on the on the website you want to see my contract it's on the website there's no no secret regarding that the last thing I will leave you with is we talked about enrollment we talked about either budget presentation tonight or on a presentation that showed over the last several years our enrollment has continued to go up um there's actually a board member who asked

244the question I think it was new about enrolling how many students have we lost in game we have that every year but we net more students gaining than we do uh leaving so this is for the board and for the listening audience this will give you our fall enrollment what we submitted to the county our board budgeted that we were 11 ft's up and I gotta remember we're doing a bloody count we're doing 90 of your fall account 10 of your uh February account you mix them together but if I look at last October October 6 2021 at the very bottom we had 15 1529.93 ft's is what we submitted October 5th 2022 we submitted 15 1588.03 that is a 58.1 percent increase from the previous year that's not our total ft because you got

245to take 90 of that and 10 of the the February count but um it does show we are in an upward Trend so the comments we made during the transportation proposal or the presentation those are serious issues that we're going to have to begin talking about addressing of how we're going to maintain that's 58 more kids if you just look at roughly if you equate that to head count more kids that are now in our district than were here previously from from last October that's more ridership that's more food service that's more classroom space which we've addressed with adding teachers um is more of everything it's more space physically in the in the room buildings that means less classroom spaces are going to be available which is getting the whole long term we talked about

246strategic plans uh in 2027 this board is going to have to make a decision on going back to this community potentially to do a no increase Bond and what those dollars will do is be able to put the addition on the middle school because there's not many classrooms left when you look at the high school there's not many classrooms left that we may need to have addition on here that's the next phase of the long term if we continue in this path which I'm hopeful we are because this is a huge turnaround for our community it speaks volumes to um one of the first things that Miss stapled on this that era sorry uh Staples uh mentioned about the biggest impact that we'll have for uh that will address student achievement is relationships that is

247the biggest student feels valued in their class and they feel like their teacher cares about them they're going to produce and you know it speaks volumes with people choosing Richard moving into Richmond of our staff of our community and what our community has to offer so with that I have no other thank you next item on our agenda is our items of interest from the board you can just start with you tonight I'm sorry I forget something I'm sorry um the correction of the statement on the you want me to speak about them yeah at the last board meeting there was a gentleman I believe his name was Benjamin he came up and said that there was a violation of campaign Finance Rules by board member telto working with Mr board member Rashon I contacted

248our attorney I sent the video clips from both meetings um the attorney came back and said there was no violation as a board you are policy making um board and that is your role to advocate for individuals who are policy makers and that's exactly what happens so um we I did look into it for the board there was no um our attorney there was no violations so for future we can talk about who we want to vote you could talk about you candidates to be pro-public schools you could talk about candidates who are giving facts um but but saying do not vote for this person or vote for this that crosses the line you can talk about these candidates this is their platform you make the decision as a public okay now you guys have

249a different view I'm Just for future I'm taking this opportunity to absolutely and you guys haven't hated on the facts you guys have a different statement because you're elected officials than I do so just as a point of clarification because I'm I'm Not Elected okay that's all I have no sorry thank you okay thank you thanks um just a couple things um first of all again I want to thank Angela again for putting together that presentation that's true um and then also I also wanted to just talk about the veteran celebration at the middle school because it really was quite beautiful and choking I wasn't able to go but my husband um was able to record it and proud moment for me because my daughter was in the choir and the band and she was

250running back and forth between instrument and singing and so it was definitely a beautiful thing um the other thing I wanted to say thank you to everybody who voted for me for the school board I'm very happy to be a part of the community and help make decisions for the next six years I'm excited about it I think I get to take a little break for a month or so right as soon as it becomes soon yeah once the district receives certified results um because you're switching positions term wise you're going to go off till January and whoever is the right and successful writing campaign only three on the ballot for that position to fill your vacancy and the remaining term so thank you to everyone for that um I think I'm going to kind

251of I don't know if this is allowed but since this was on part of our topic with I'm not going to respond to Mrs Brockett only because we did already talk about the lgtbq class that we took so I just wanted her to know that I did take the class because I wanted to educate and and for the record it was standing room and sitting room it was very obvious that this is a key Topic in our state right now so it it was very informative and I think that the biggest piece that came out of it for all three of us was regarding this growth and development sex ed class and educating all of that there's a lot of educating that that can be done with that curriculum if we implement it and so

252I just wanted to um talk about that because it was already on our topic tonight so I am and that might yeah that's it Cindy sure um I uh uh we last meeting there were a lot of people last couple meetings there's been a lot of people that come up to the podium and they have um very negative things to say in regards to the work environment here at Richardson Community Schools I just kind of would like to address those a little bit um I've heard a lot of people come up here and speak for other individuals um but the thing is nobody has come forward themselves to speak uh regarding any any toxic current work environment and um I I don't want to say this wrong but I'm not I'm not concerned about what

253happened prior um in the prior formal complaint that was made against Mr Walmsley in 2019 and we're concerned about right now in the future um I haven't seen a resonation letter come across me at all that uh indicates a toxic work environment or any issues regarding that at all um so uh you know I just I just would like to say how how are we as a board to know that there's an issue um if none of those things and there's there's nothing like that being brought forward to us you know nothing with any any substantial proof or anything I've also heard that individuals are afraid to speak up um because they're afraid of some kind of retaliation and um again the resignation letters that I've seen since I've been back on the board none

254of them speak to any of those issues happening um I would think if you're resigning that you wouldn't necessarily be afraid to speak because you're no longer going to be here um additionally I just would like to say that we do have policy and play that prevents any type of retaliation um when when you do speed up and like I said they're they're um they're very well may be an issue I'm not saying that there's not I don't I don't work here um but we can't do anything if we don't have any any kind of proof what what we do what we can do is if we notice that there's an issue or we don't like the way something's being done um we can address that with the superintendent at the evaluation um now I

255just like here are some here are just some some facts I think that maybe the public is not aware of um you know I don't know if you know or you don't know but Mr Walmsley has very little interaction with teachers in the buildings his Rea and his interactions are mainly with the administrators um he's only been involved in a handful of teacher disciplinary actions and this was prior to us having an HR person uh there's just there's only been just a few people uh fired from the district since Mr wampsley came on so you know this includes all staff so I'm just again I I'm not I'm not quite sure where the fear is uh fear of coming forward is coming from then um I was also going to say a bit about how

256the evaluations work but Mr rumbly already did that so I don't reiterate that um but I'm not sure also if if if if everybody knows but Mr Robinson is pretty involved in this community um in this District he's a member of Alliance Club he's a member of the Rotary Club he's always a big help to Sandy's kids he meets with the Richmond Education Foundation is a huge help and uh to the foundation in raising money to give scholarships to students many grants for teachers and summer camps for students these are just a few things that I do know about um I mean I didn't talk to him and ask him about any of those things those are just things that I know him that I've seen um so there's no doubt in my mind He

257does care about the students here and He does care about this District mm-hmm I also would like to say that um there's been a lot like I said there's been a lot of negativity um a lot of negative things regarding the district it's leadership and even coaches teachers there are two social media Outlets out there that I know of um that you know go on and on about how Richmond Community Schools are are so bad and uh what we're what we're doing so wrong uh which I can't I honestly cannot believe uh why anyone would participate in making your community look bad in any kind of ways it's absolutely mind-boggling to me uh I'm I'm not in any way shape before I'm trying to say that we should ignore issues I just don't believe putting

258them those issues on social media is good for anybody especially the students for the Richmond Community Schools here are some positive things that are happening here in our district we're looking for we're looking to approve raises for the food service and professionals tonight we are living we're looking to reward all employees with pay increases due to additional funds the high school theater program is putting on a play uh November 18th 9th to the 20th which Mr walsley already to talk about so two things he still must Thunder on um uh the band scored a first division reading this year in Ms boa the employer and band went to Cedar Point this year the girls probably about team Advanced to the district finals this year the boys soccer team was second in the League this year

259these are just a few positive things that um that I think that we should be showcasing about our district but lastly I just want to um just on a little bit lighter of a note I when I was in kindergarten I went to a Santa shop and I just this is just a funny memory of mine I purchased my dad a um a key a key chain that said dad right and it was a it flipped out and it was a knife so not only did I have a knife in school but also um I purchased it from the school Center that ages me at all Angela [Music] go ahead she called you um I don't have much except for to congratulate canvas Cunningham and Danielle Sutton and Sandra Fortuna I'm excited to go forward

260working as a team with all of us I'll be sad to not see board member zubi next year but I still got a few meetings together right I just want to congratulate you ladies and and I know it's not official yet but I didn't want to congratulate you okay awesome yes we do now um yeah I forgot what I was going to talk about no but one question I did have the email Mr walsley about um was regarding specials was one of my concerns at the elementary school um and I know he said well it was something that Miss ARA would have to Stables sorry looking through um but I know she wasn't here prior to copen so I'm not sure if she knows that it changed during covid um but it was a big

261concern of mine and just talking with other parents who were in kindergarten and talking with teachers um well Jackson's teacher I should say because they had computers for the first whatever six or eight weeks of school and now they never have computers again for the rest of the school years my understanding and now they're on to steam and then they have Steam for X number of weeks and then it disappears so I don't know that that's something that should stay around I mean it makes sense for for virtual but does that make sense back in our traditional setting now that we're back because my we don't have a computer at home I have my work computer but Jackson doesn't ever get on a computer so now he's not going to get on a computer anytime

262between now and the end of the school year and he's going to be expected to do nwea and use a mouse and operate that computer but he's not getting any exposure to it besides you know phones and tablets which is not even close to equipment so my question or maybe look into what if we can go back obviously we can't I don't know that we could do it now but is it something we can look into going back to quote-unquote traditional specials going on so that was one thing I emailed about in the last couple weeks and the traditional is once a week yeah yeah yeah or how it was before yeah music the same day each week I don't know if I cannot go and comment on that but I feel there's a hole

263like that would be a good mental health piece as well because I feel music and art and those could be therapeutic and to be able to experience that once a week rather than yes it's tough I understand the Staffing situation and and to be able to get through curriculum I do understand that that's also easier sometimes for for our teachers but I I'm looking from the students that's all again good yep thanks um I I believe it was Mr Trend who gave us the email about these shirts so I wanted to give a shout out to him because it's um it's nice when we can get included in that kind of stuff so that we can do things to support our students families staff whatever so thank you for that for allowing us to purchase

264these and help the fact off family um and I just um just for my fellow board members I know that there were some of you that didn't like the fact that we had to spend time and money on the um investigation of me and my actions at the board meeting and I get it because I agree with you um but I immediately said to Deb after that meeting go ahead and investigate me just go ahead and put it out there I fairly certain I've done nothing wrong but I think it's good to be transparent when someone who doesn't even live in our community decides to come in and attack our community I think we have to respond to it I'm sorry that it cost us money to do it but I think it's important for

265the Integrity of this board that when misinformation or just political Ridiculousness comes about that were transparent so thank you for that anything else nope okay Sherry um I just wanted to thank Tammy for all the work on the audit I'm sure that's a lot of work you in your office in the Staples um just everything you do for the district and all the positivities and great things you bring um and just I wanted to thank or congratulate the people that want to get on board soon so thank you so thank you I'm not always right okay oh um I just have a few things um talking about taking my thunder Sandy did it I'm sorry no that's okay I agree that this district is doing a lot of positive activities teaching the whole Kagan training

266and the fact that our teachers are doing it um we need to be putting that out there because there is some great things going on in this district and Sandy just listed some of them I won't repeat them but I think we need to be putting that out there if you look at our district Facebook page and I want to personally thank and Durst Christina Walla and Jennifer Cara they are posting regularly on the district Facebook so you can see what is going on and you can see what's happening with pictures and some explanations again there are some very positive very good things that are happening in the district um I too want to congratulate Sandy and Candace I look forward to working with you over the next whatever I don't know I have four

267years left though but I look forward to working with both of you as we move forward um and Danielle I'm sorry already been working with her yeah well yeah I forgot I'm sorry and I apologize you're right see all three of you were on it so I I do look forward to working with all three of you um I do want to bring just something up real quick uh Danielle did mention that she was concerned that I might have violated the open meetings act um I did take a look at our open meetings act book that we got or everyone should have received if you um go to page 15 at the bottom it does explain that we can this is what it reads um a school board member May individually contact other members of

268the board in an effort to persuade them to vote a particular way without violating the open meetings act as long as no decisions are made during the discussions and the discussions are not a deliberate attempt to avoid Oma um I did also contact Katie who is who we work with for the board and she pretty much stated the same thing um you make canvas other board members to see how they would vote on an issue or discuss any issues and again it says for the same thing as long as you are not deliberately attempting to avoid the open meeting sex so I just wanted to share that with you you know it's kind of an educational piece for us so um I didn't I didn't violate it but I just wanted to make sure that

269everybody was aware of that um and I think that was my last I just wanna I'm sorry I don't know if I can piggyback on that okay um just wanted to ask you so I I sent the email um asking asking you a question in regards to investigations into board members um and I just I just want to be clear so in the future the practice will be to vote on whether or not correct board member should be investigated because it does cost so if someone brings something up from the board I will then ask the board do we want to investigate or not okay so I will get your approval same thing if anything is stated out in the audience I will then come back to the board and ask do we want to

270investigate or not that way we can decide if we want to spend that money on attorney cost or not thank you okay can I question just one thing yeah so once you get your four of seven I mean is it standard that you would then still inform the other three that that conversation took place and that that has now been a decision just because you've received your four because I mean you stop calling everybody no no okay no yes I know that I have I I mean when I'm doing it as a president I will talk to all board members or and or receive an email and in your instance you stated at the meeting that you wanted one so I knew where you were okay where you stood okay our next item on the

271agenda [Music] is our action items I am looking for a motion for the approval of an amendment to contract between Richmond Community Schools Board of Education and the food service employees and move to accept the recommendation of the superintendent and approve the letter of agreement to amend the contract with the food service employees as outlined in the attached documentation do I have support support do I have any discussion that's reiterate real quickly this is for the direction the board gave me I met with the food service Union um you're going to see the food the educational Care Professionals coming up just so the board knows we do have a letter of agreement with the teachers for their off schedule payment I am working with the administrators to solidify that and we're very close with secretary

272so I'm chipping each group away on the list so and this comes out of our conversation as a board with the with our budget and how much better we've done that's that's where all of this is coming from and this now puts the minimum standard in Richmond is equal position as a minimum standard any other questions all those in favor I opposed motion carries I'm looking for the emotion for the approval of an amendment in a contract between Richmond Community Schools Board of Education and the teamsters state county and Municipal Workers Local 214 for our educational paraprofessionals I have motion to accept the recommendation of the superintendent and approve the letter of agreement to amend the contract between Richmond Community Schools Board of Education and Teamster state county and Municipal Workers Local 214 educational paraprofessionals

273as outlined in the attached documentation support thank you any discussion I just wanted to make sure the board of you a second document that was in your packet there was an error um and it's on page two of the 500 retention bonus that was in their contract whether it's approved for last minute I had in the wrong area so the second one just corrected the right year for that foreign [Music] I just want to say that this is probably this is the last time I'm going to be able to vote on this because my daughter's fiance was recently hired by the district professional but they're not officially married until January or December 31st so okay okay all those in favor aye aye opposed motion carries being known for their business the board will adjourn at

27411 o'clock [Music] thank you