Portage Public Schools Board of Education Committee of the Whole Work Session - February 10, 2025

001this meeting of the board of education is now called to order please stand and join us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and welcome and we'll get started by approving our agenda are there any changes to the agenda as printed very good then is there a motion page two please president V I move that the Board of Education approve the agenda as printed thank you Terry's our second second thank you all in favor please say I I opposed motion carries we'll uh proceed with our agenda as presented and go right to the superintendent's report Mark oh thank you Randy we have uh several items

002that uh we'd like to uh report on today and the first is just to uh uh out of respect of some staff members times we have uh Chelsea White Oak is here to talk about a proposed trip that the uh uh that she wants to do and I'll let Chelsea explain what she's doing and then uh we can take it from there thank you hi everybody um I am representing team music um in BS Northern High School today so choir band and Orchestra would be combining to take a trip to Ireland in June of 2026 the purpose is to have students playing singing um experiencing other culture um without a language barrier so that's why it's Ireland and not say Italy um and and we will be touring around Ireland several different locations as well

003as performing in several different old churches different venues along with some fun things like getting to uh partake in some of their what's called Gay games um touring some museums there as well as um going to the Cliffs of Moore uh just a really jam-packed itinerary we're using Bob Rogers travel which has been used pretty um abundantly with the music program for the past couple of years um mostly we just want students to experiencing something bigger than themselves and we decided that we wanted to do all of us so we can hopefully have a better turnout within students um and then also combine for like a final number in each of our performances while we're there has there been any trips to Ireland recently um the last trip would have been in okay I thought

004it was great how they broke down the financials so that if kids really wanted to go they could get a job and kind of pay an increments versus asking for a whole amount at once so that makes it accessible to everybody and that's yeah we um wanted to start early so that would give take some burden off of our families and students uh we do have some fundraisers planned um as soon as this is approved some you know can drive some sponsorships that will be asking for to also lessen the burden on our families um I will say that the trip has to have at least 50 participants in order for us to go um if we don't hit that 50 then I might be coming to you with a different trip in mind you

005said 50 5 Z 5 Z 5 okay 5 Z yes assuming based on current feedback from students that looks very achievable to hit the 50 it does look very achievable at this moment in time yes yeah it sounds like it could be lifechanging for yeah yes that's our goal hopefully any other questions for me while I'm here I just thank you for your willingness to put this together for our students it's great thank you absolutely thanks for hearing me today I appreciate you all right and next we have uh Bond project update Edwards thank you superintendent v as well as supporters Public Schools Board of Education uh starting our pres uh in terms of our presentation tonight Central Elementary School uh the carpet has been installed and most of the learning Studios or the class

006rooms uh in some areas of the school the painters will be painting their second or final coat wall protection is being installed throughout the school sound panels and acoustical spray are also being installed throughout the school and then the electrical work of piping conduit and pulling wires continue throughout the building over at ha Hill last week the staff at H Hill were able to tour their new school uh the event was well attended by the staff the vast majority of the staff um participated including support staff members uh they were overwhelmingly impressed with the progress of the construction uh many of them were speechless and were amazed at the amount of space available they often remarked that the building is much larger than what they had anticipated also at ha Hill things like the cooler

007and freezer have been installed in the kitchen additional casework have been delivered and installed in the learning Studios and as well the electrical work of piping conduit and pulling wires contined throughout the building um at the next board meeting I would like to defer my report to a group of fourth graders at ha Hill they had an opportunity to tour the school with us not with the teachers uh but with Dr jinius and me and they've put together a fascinating presentation that I think you'll enjoy at the upcoming board meeting I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have in terms of the construction the tour was so great yes thank you for enthusiasm was amazing it was just great job great job and right Johnny yeah it was great and then um several

008of the teachers um commented you know we just have to make it through June and then we'll be in air conditioning like yeah plus last week that wasn't an issue not an issue it's not an issue it's only an issue for a little bit at the beginning and end of the school year but people don't forget the hot days yes thank you very much thank you thank you John the the third item I've asked uh Tracy uh speaker gimer to to come up and just uh make a few clarifying uh comments about uh the presentation that we had at last meeting there were um there were some uh I will call it unfortunate uh headlines uh uh slant to the information that was presented that caused a lot of concern and kind of misrepresented the

009direction that that we're headed in with these proposed changes so I want to have Tracy uh just clarify that for our listeners and for the community and the board absolutely good evening uh following our recent board meeting where we propos curricular updates to our human growth and development curriculum we have received inquiries from some families regarding the proposed six GR grade lesson on the harmful impacts of pornography a poorly worded headline generated some significant attention and it is clear from many of these inquiries that not all individuals fully read the article detailing The Proposal so I want to provide some clarity today for years our high school health teachers have included a lesson on the harmful impacts of pornography however student feedback consistently indicated that that information came way too late today's educational landscape has

010changed a great deal nearly all middle school students have personal cell phones which can provide unrestricted internet access making it very easy for a young student to unintentionally encounter inappropriate content a 2023 study by Robin man States most kids today are exposed to porn by age 13 with 75% of males and 70% of females ages 13 through 17 having viewed porn furthermore 53% of boys and 39% of girls believe that pornography is a realistic depiction of sex based on the student feedback we received we collaborated with Chris mchina who's the founder of protect young eyes to develop an age appropriate lesson for sixth graders this was done in the spring of 2022 this lesson was designed to equip students with some Knowledge and Skills to respond appropriately when they encounter inappropriate content online to be

011very clear the lesson does not include or show pornography instead it focuses on helping students understand that not everything they see online is real it explains the link between pornography and violence against women and pornography and human trafficking and it provides students with guidance on what they should do if they come across inappropriate content the objective with our curriculum is to be proactive and try to safeguard students in a very complex Digital World avoiding these topics can create confusion and shame making it essential for training Educators to provide clear factual guidance to help students navigate those digital spaces we trust that our teachers will deliver that instruction effectively we also respect that parents understand their children's needs best and if this lesson is approved as required by law with our human growth and development curriculum

012parents will always have the option of reviewing the lesson with their child's teacher and then deciding if they would like to have their child opt out of the lesson I want to remind you that it went through a very rigorous review process uh that took place over two years this included multiple presentations to our curriculum instruction Council as well as our human growth and development subcommittee which is composed of parents students medical professionals and clergy members and then finally we had three public hearings where we collected some feedback from parents and then made some adjustments to those plans this was a very comprehensive process we wanted to be sure that that lesson was developmentally appropriate and we believe that students deserve accurate age appropriate information from a trusted and trained adult rather than relying on

013peers or the internet for guidance I appreciate your uh listening and understanding and the comments from from families as we work through this process uh the input is valued and important as we work to deliver the best possible curriculum and education for our Portage students thank you any questions from board members this is on the uh consent agenda to for approval and uh so if there's any questions that was a good time well I mean just to say when I saw the headline uh just my my heart sunk mhm um and so this just this further emphasis and kind of getting us all grounded really appreciate it yes I I will say was a parent approaching sixth grade that at first I was like ah no no but I'm also realistic that not every other

014parent is as um restrictive with online access as I am with my family and knowing that that's out there it's the best thing we can do for our children all the children thank you you I said it last time last meeting but again I really appreciate how you took the parent comments because I saw some of that before and after and I had concerns with consistency before and that was cleared up from what I saw um two weeks ago and I really appreciate you taking the time to do so thank you appreciate your feedback thanks Tracy and thank you to your colleagues who also uh spent a good bit of time on this this over the last couple years absolutely I appreciate Annie and Emily 100% thank you very much for your work appreciate it

015so the last thing I I want to mention is uh last Friday we had a professional development day in the district and where our teachers uh spent their day at the northern campus for the most part uh engaged in a lot of activities and you know planning for that is is something that happens a long time in advance of that event but uh it was a great day of activities people were very engaged hopefully learn something that they can back take back in the classroom or do some self-reflection on and uh so I want to thank all the participants plus all of the folks who were involved behind the scenes in planning for a day I mean taking you know 500 600 staff members and organizing it in a way that works for everybody and

016finding the spaces takes a lot of work so uh uh a big appreciation to all those who were involved in the planning of that that's all I have for uh updates very good sir thank you uh we'll move to our comments and Communications section does anyone wish to address the board this evening I have a couple of people uh Sarah not is our first Speaker tonight welcome hello hi I am SAR I'm the the art teacher at page Northern oh my God Mary Lou long time no see one of two art teachers at Northern and I'm here on behalf of the Union tonight for your fun and uh fun stories for the evening um giving cat Frank a break from what I think has been many many board meeting presentations so I have some comments

017here that have been shared from union members throughout the district um stories that we're proud of things that have been happening that have been um enjoyable here so from all over um five link leaders came into do the Icebreaker and present a lesson on Stress Management at the principal's meeting on a student day off so many thanks go out to link crew advisers from Portage Central Nikki Smith an albertis Adam schanel Rob Brown and Shannon Skippers nobody needs stress relief more than principles um recently this one's from me recently when talking to a couple of my IB students um it became clear to me that I had no idea this was going on um Jason Frank the IB coordinator here and I believe others in the IB program as well have been working to get

018legislation pushed through that would force universities and colleges to more equally honor IB credits for college credits so this would encourage um universities that have sort of an upturned nose and you know like our our system our way our starting classes to be more Equitable and it sounds like it would also make it more Equitable between SL level and HL level ID classes so very cool even cooler too was the um there was there was this is a teenage girl there was pride in her voice talking about legislation from one of her teachers and those three things don't normally go in a sentence together so was very cool um just this past week actually on Friday Katie penish from Northern High School received the mea's 2025 human rights Excellence award for diversity equity and inclusion

019for her work on the free store at Portage Northern um this is a really big award and something that the district can be very proud to be able to share about one of its staff members um both the paa and the MEA grateful for all of the work that she's done at Norther creating and supporting A system that has a positive impact on all of our students um just this past week as well the art show at the Portage District Library was uninstalled this is all buildings who are able in the district elementary through secondary and just doing the math the other day I realized that our first show was in 2016 so barring the you know covid years I think it was two years off we've been doing this K12 art exhibition at The

020District Library for eight years now um and it gets really excellent foot traffic it's usually right around the holidays gives families a chance to see the um kind of their their students artwork highlighted a little bit but also it is very lick it's a lot less work for the art teachers than we're used to um the library really really supports us and has started even asking for us to come back so I don't even reach out to them anymore they're like hey hey so you coming back you we're gonna see you in January I'm like yes yes it's good um we also have a really long like an awesome report here from Amberly Amberly is going strong with extra clubs that they offer outside of school hours um these include the Amberly run Club a

021dance club ski and snowboarding club and disc golf club Amberly also had a huge turnout this year for their Battle of the books teams with many teachers and parents supporting that as well the Amberly run Club is offered in the fall for students first through 5ifth to practice their running schools after school for or running skills after school for twice a week they were on stretching endurance and perseverance the Amberly dance club is twice a year for third through fifth graders students practice multiple different styles of dance and then perform their dances for Amberly students and families the Amberly ski and snowboarding Club is offered for all grade levels they meet at Timber Ridge once a week during the winter months to practice their skills and confidence at skiing or snowboarding the disc golf club

022is offered twice a year for fourth and fifth graders to learn the sport Amberly has a course set up at site for them to practice twice a week and they have a tournament at the end and battle of the books at Amberly is offered obviously with many different elementaries here in Portage but they uh they highlighted that staff and parents lead the team as each team reads six books and then has a friendly competition to see who can answer the most correct uh questions about those six books um all of these clubs take extra work and support from the Amberly staff to make them possible and in the meantime students are learning great new skills and talents that they can take with them for years to come so nice little report from Amberly as well

023and of course I welcome questions I don't know if you have questions about Battle of the books I'm a high school teacher I don't know anything about it but I'm here for you let me know um I thought I would end too with so these are wonderful positive uplifting stories I'll just give a very I think what a wonderful example of working with teenagers is like so the other day we all I teach visual art I allow students to use their headphones to listen to music that that's my personal preference as a practicing Artist as well I'll listen to music while I create um I I hear like a little tiny audio like I can hear maybe somebody turn their music on but forgot to put their headphones in you know just enough time to

024look around and kind of say like what's somebody maybe forgot something here then it stops like oh okay we we got it we got it starts up again goes away again little repeats like this and I'm like okay this is unusual so I start kind of walking around the room looking from student to student come to a 15-year-old boy got his earbuds stuffed up his nose and every time he opens his mouth comes out and every time he shuts his mouth the music go so there's the the inside of teaching High School place of life I thought I would offer for some L thank you guys feel free to reach remedy that situation reached over and went like this F he didn't listen to music anymore then thank you sah yes our next speaker is

025Dan Clark did I get that right very close it's dagy okay dagy clerk thank you um okay so the first thing I wanted to do is I wanted to say thank you to Tracy and her team I think that when you're trying to impact positive change in a community it can be a really big challenge you know in trying to push a giant initiative through and my typical thinking is when somebody's trying to make positive change in the community it's usually for the better um and so of course my heart also sunk when I saw the headlines come through the various news outlets about pornography and talked to sixth graders so what I tried to do is I was like okay I'm going to really dig into this and research and understand where this is

026coming from and what is being proposed and how this lesson is going to positively impact our kids and so that was really my goal going into this and as kind of like a discovery like how does this all work like what's the change supposed to be um and what I found as I was trying to find that information is I I was like I felt like I was just hit with so many roadblocks in the pursuit of understanding what this curriculum change is about um I reviewed the human growth and development presentation from the April meeting in 2024 which I think was maybe the first time that this was it was the first time I found that it was mentioned in the meeting minutes for the curriculum instruction and it referenced that hey there's more

027information in slides 7 through 16 but those slides 7 through 16 which had this additional information were not published so I submitted a request to get access to the slides and that request was denied um then I requested to or I'm sorry then I wanted to review the meeting minutes from the the other meetings that were noted uh because I think that um as Tracy said that there were three additional public hearings none of those public hearings the meeting minutes any agenda information anything like that was available and accessible for parents in the community online um I called to ask where the meeting minutes were posted because on portage's website for the curriculum in instruction Council the last meeting minute update had been June of 2024 and none of and while there was a folder

028for meeting minutes for 24 to 25 that meeting folder was empty um and nothing was published the most recent date that it showed online as far as when the next meeting is going to occur was also June of 2024 so um I emailed questions I called and I spoke with um a very kind individual who said that she could answer all my questions but at that time I was I was trying to figure out what my questions really were right I just wanted to kind of see the presentation and understand what the information was and um so what I ended up doing is I I sent an email with some some basic questions that I'd run across and she was very responsive very quickly and said hey I forwarded your email to the committee who

029will be able to answer these questions in more detail and I have not yet received a response so um Tracy actually answered two of the questions that I had in the email when she came up here today to speak but like my goal in this is I'm not really looking to be reassured by a committee that hey no everything is fine trust us we've done all of this research I would like to actually see the information for myself and then make my own decision and then decide if I want to come up here and say hey I think this is an amazing way to go well in which case I you probably wouldn't have to see me again or if I have to come up here and say hey wait have we considered this um

030will parents have the ability to see this curriculum in advance um are we going to you know part of it is also if your kid is maybe not at that developmental level but they're going to be included in this presentation as a parent you may want an opportunity to have a base level discussion with them before they walk into a situation like this and so all of those things and that information that I'm sure is very well thought out and it sounds like a lot of efforts were made to try to get parent feedback and understand how that's all going to go but that's not accessible right now at all so I don't know if I have comments because the information isn't there and I don't know if I think that this is a great

031way for Portage schools to go which I love Portage I'm heavily involved in the you know in the school itself um but I can't find the information to determine if I have a comment or if I can then say yes we've done another great thing as a district and so I guess what what I'd be looking my my request is that I would ask that the council hold off on this vote to see if it gets put into the curriculum until that information is made accessible to parents concern parents online it is my request is not necessarily it's not out of line it does state in the um open meetings Act of the um 1976 PA 267 I can read mlc 15261 it does say that these meeting minutes should and agendas should be posted

032online uh for state government in advance the the meeting minutes should be approved and posted well within the time frame that they have been keep in mind we're talking about um meetings from June 2024 was the last update the meetings minutes from September of 2024 were just posted on Friday after I called and even in those meeting minutes they weren't comprehensive so they didn't tell me any information about what the proposed changes are or what we should be expecting as parents and so I guess that would be my that would be my ask out of this presentation thank you thank you appreciate your comments thank you you okay there any comments by board trustees this evening well Harry Potter was outstanding if you haven't seen it you go um it will knock your socks off

033as usual for usual Portage Central so um very cool very cool I would uh Randy I just say I will once again thank my colleagu for the extra time and the retreat and yes um important stuff um may be a little boring and we did spend some time arguing over the meaning of a word um but time will SP because it's a really important word so thank you all anyone else okay uh we'll move to uh our consent agenda which is on H page 23 and we have um meeting minutes and the HD HGD curricular changes approval of board meeting minutes from January 27th 20 2025 policy governance Retreat and regular meeting and the February 4th 2025 special meeting and then that the Board of Education approved the changes to the human growth and development

034curriculum at Portage Public Schools as presented does anybody wish to take anything off the consent agenda this evening Mr President um I want to ask a quick question of the superintendent Mark is is there any chance that we're not in compliant with the postings I'm just I'm asking to be careful about this I'm I'm not familiar with all the details to be able to answer that I have no reason to believe that we have not been but uh you know I heard the speaker like you did so I don't I can't answer your question this is in referal to the um cic the curriculum instruction committee meetings or I don't know what minutes were being referred to okay because I did look at the current year in the past and they yeah a couple months

035ago and did not see any current um postings in there but I didn't know if that's because there weren't meetings or because they weren't posted I don't know September is posted the meeting in October was cancelled and we didn't have a meeting in November or December so the most recent cic meeting was about two weeks ago maybe a virtual meeting very short um to just talk about some I don't know what you yeah so um that's that's all there is so the only one missing was September and it is posted as the speaker mentioned but it was just posted okay I will not object okay anyone else okay very good uh the consent agenda is therefore approved as presented and we'll now move to page 33 which is Assurance of District performance we have a

036monitoring report 1.5 there's a motion on page 33 Please Mr President I move that the Board of Education accept monitoring report 1.5 NS as a reasonable interpretation and evidence of comp thank you is there a second second thank you so this is a uh um one of the standard monitory reports that comes on ends this is minor report 1.5 and uh basically the information has been unchanged uh other than the the some of the data that we present the interpretations are all the same uh this report really speaks to the board's desire that um our students behave ethically that they have respect for individual differences and also respect for cultures other than their own so we've the the report is presented uh in those three sections uh the one section on student behavior is probably

037a little more quantifiable than the others so I'm going to you know let Dr Pasco Just sh share some of the information that we look at around ethical behavior um we do not have benchmarks for what our expectations are um but we like to see the trends of our students and what they're doing and and I think this will show some of the uh the data that we collect locally and that's also available uh through some of the uh uh reporting sites that uh we get our information and share information with so Dr P all right good evening superintendent bang and trustees like Mar said tonight I'll present the data connected to the ethical Behavior portion of Mr 1.5 so we'll look at attendance um packet some data on violent crime bullying expulsion illegal substance

038possession and Theft so we'll just highlight some of the uh the tables and charts that are in your packet might not show up as great on the slide deck but you have them in your monitoring report so the first one's chronically absent uh students consider Le chronically absent when he or she has missed 10% or more of the possible school days during the scheduled school year this data is directly pulled from my school data so PPS chronically absent data has steadily declined down to 16 .5% in 2024 that's a change from a high of 26.2% during the co years um so we've had two consecutive school years showing a declining Trend but again like a lot of our data we're still not back to the pre pandemic numbers but you can kind of see where

039we fall um as of the last year I'm looking at attendance so this is the average daily attendance rate for all students K12 again this is coming directly out of my school data so PPS ATT tendance has increased to 93.7 2% in 2024 from a low of 88.8 2% during Co again two consecutive school years of data trending in the right direction we're trying to get back to kind of that 95% uh Mark as you see kind of on on average there the previous years prior to co um that we've seen in the past but we're trending in the right direction there in terms of attendance uh victims of violent crime so this data tracks the number of students have been victims of violent violent criminal offenses on school property or at a school sponsored

040event so these are official written complaints that either get submitted to our Administration or our sro's um or to school officials and again this gets reported to my school data as well so we've typically had a very low number of students less than half a percent who have been victims of violent crime so in 2024 PPS had 0.14% of students that were victims of violent crime so that was 12 students and that's down from .16 uh 6% 14 students in 2023 so these would be um sexual assaults or physical attacks that would get report as an example um bullying data so this incompasses uh written verbal or physical Acts or any electronic communication uh such as like cyber bullying that's intended or that a reasonable person would know is likely to car uh cause harm

041to one or more pupils either directly or indirectly so we've always had less than 2% of students with bullying offenses we did have an increase in bullying to 1.48% so that was 129 students reported in 2024 from 86% which was 74 students in 2023 but we continue to work with our building leaders to ensure we're consistent with offense codes we've done a lot of work um through Skyward to make sure that we're consistent across the board and we've mentioned that in previous reports in terms of how they're interpreting the handbook so we may see just an improvement of accuracy in terms of how the appropriate labels are put on the a of misconduct so it could contribute to the slight increase but that was the last two years of comparison um expulsions so total expulsions

042that represents the number of students have been expelled from school 180 days or more again this is all data from my school data uh we take every effort um to look at restorative practices and long term suspension rather than expel students um PPS expel one student in 2024 that's down from three students in 2023 so Barb and I work closely on overseeing the due process hearings in the district and we rarely see offenses that would lead us to a potential decision of recommending aulion uh to superintendent bank for a student um those would be things like dangerous weapons arson criminal sexual conduct or Bond threats or threats of terrorism and again rarely in the eight years that Barbara and I have been working together with the due process here is we rarely see kids uh

043cross that threshold so that's why you see such a low number of expulsions in PPS a legal uh substance possession um that's the distribution possession or use of illegal drugs or the inappropriate distribution possession or use of prescription drugs on school property or at school sponsored event um the source is National Center for Education statistics that's NC es for the state or uh for for the nation and then Skyward is our PPS data in blue again we've had a tip typically a very low number of students less than 1% with uh legal possession so in 2024 we had 47% that was 41 students um that was down from 73 63 students in 2023 um and these reports were based on a collected data from Public School principles based off of their response on a questionnaire

044so one had got sent out electronically and then a later down the collection window they uh sent schools a paper form as well um so this represented I believe 4,800 US public schools um that was conducted again through an online uh questionnaire and in a paper form so these reports were published every two years you can see from 16 to 2022 and then that ended in 22 so we won't have any further data to collect um I believe the NC es uh has stopped collecting that but you can kind of see from what data we do have the comparison there so again pretty pretty low numbers uh for the size of the district and then lastly an incident of theft uh is one that occurs on school property or School sponsored event that's uh taking

045items worth over $10 without personal confrontation again that's coming from NC for the national stats and our own data for PPS and Skyward um again we've typically very low numbers uh less than half a percent committing theft in The District in 2024 um we had 31% that was 20 stud 27 students that was up from 0.24% 21 students in 2023 so that's a kind of a summary of the data that you have in your packet and uh Mr galen's also here to join me he's going to present a little bit more on the Staffing piece of this report can I ask you a couple questions yeah go ahead Terry so um are there any things that you can point to that would say like in 2021 there were six thefts and in 2024 there are

04627 that's that even though 27 isn't a big number it's a significant increase or um the same on uh illegal possession if you go back to 2021 it's like skyrocketed and now it's coming down but there are thing are there things you can point to that would say this is why this is happening or it's random or well I mean we we witnessed the spike in a legal substance position firsthand coming out of Co y um you know we work closely obviously with our SRO of the porter Public Safety department um I think a part of that is just the availability of what's out there with the shops within the community um and I know that uh Porter Public Safety department is monitoring you know those businesses to make sure that they're being sold to

047the appropriate people and not being passed into our into our community and into our schools so I think without a doubt that's contributed just the availability for the legal substance possession i' have to ask uh our administrative team around the theft piece to see you know why we saw even though it's a small number it's still a spike it is you know it's an increase um I don't I don't have an answer personally I'd have to kind of connect with the administrative team to see if they've if they've seen anything in particular or maybe it's you know is there a specific item that folks you know were wanted to take from from someone else um I just I haven't dug in into that to to point a finger but the illegal substance possession that's something

048that Barb and I have seen the due process hearings coming out of Co and I'm glad to actually see that come down because I was quite concerned there for a couple years um but knowing that that's you know trending down that's that's a good side so my other question is about chronically absent so what do you do with these chronically absent people I know that email are sent I know paper letters are sent um but in cases that I am personally aware of the parents don't read those and they could give a rip if their kid is in school so so what do we do I was working with a student last year that missed 50 days of school in one semester and so how are we being proactive to address that um I know

049the building level teams including counselors and school SES um engagement specialists at elementary I know they try to work directly with the family to make that connection and bridge the gap between school and home and really figure out what's going on with that student what's going on with that family as we all know that we have a lot of wonderful resources in Porters Public Schools so it's a matter of finding out what do they need that we can provide um to help put them in a better spot um proactively uh this Wednesday we have all of our assistant principles our meeting is going to be over at kesa we're going to be listening to a Tru Andy and attendance presentation from Paulbrook who's a education consultant so they're going to get that information he's also

050going to talk about strategies to address exactly what you just talked about Terry and we're going to have that same individual come in on February 20th in this room here as we have our principal's meeting and they'll get that Intimate Presentation right here and we'll be able to kind of talk about our own data and learn from you know some folks at kri said to see what are the strategies amongst the county that we can apply to those situations particularly The Chronic absenteeism because like you said 50 days in one semester is significant in terms of loss and instructional time and how that plays into mr11 in our in our student achievement so sure and we know that studies will show that kids who are in school perform if they're out of school they don't

051so I know we've got some strategies going on but we we need to continue to learn more so hopefully over this next couple weeks we'll walk away from the presentations with couple more tools that we can apply to help uh get that number down thank you yes thanks for the questions kimly can you remind me real quick approximately not necessarily exact approximately how many days would a student need to be absent to be considered chronically absent you said about 10% so that's 18 1800 so they can hit it you know oh yeah relatively quick you know depending on what's happening uh or anything that's impacting the family um Al so important that to keep that connection to home in school to really understand what's going on with you know each of our students and how

052we can best support you know the family as a whole thanks right Mr Dyan be and before BR no go ahead Michael that's you're all set no I just before uh makes his comments because the the chart that shows the the Staffing and the students is really not part of the report it's it's added on as informational item but I do want to mention that uh regarding uh the other two uh areas that we report on which is we don't measure is respect for people or for for individuals and for cultures other than their own we do a lot of work through our clubs uh getting students into spaces where they can have conversations with with those who are different than they are uh in any number of different ways um I know that our

053media Specialists our Librarians work hard to uh uh to have a collection in their libraries of materials that expose students to other cultures and uh many of our schools host activities so in the report are some of those things that we uh uh we focus on it's by no means an exhaustive list but an example of some of the things happening um I know that there are new things developing uh there are some things happening at West Middle School with some uh uh some mentoring programs bringing in individuals uh Johnny Edwards is involved with an initiative at North Northern High School with with um you know supporting our our young people getting them to see and hear success stories uh from from individuals who uh um you know may not be thought of as as

054successful by many of our students so um we just try to expose our students to as much as possible including trying to work towards getting having a Workforce that represents our student body which is a huge task and uh I guess that's where the segue to Brad is about you know some of that information that you have here yeah so actually page 46 in your board packet actually has the graphs and and this information here we talking about but just to emphasize the the importance of some of our ongoing programs such as our grow our own program and those those types of activities we're really trying to diversify our faculty and our staff to make to make it more reflective of our student body this is not an overnight project so um I hire anywhere

055from 20 to 35 teachers a year out of 500 plus teachers a year so it takes a long time to be able to kind of steer that ship but it is something that we are very conscious of but also making sure because we want the best we want people who are well certified well experienced in their in their fields and that's something that we look at and I think as we all know and all of us who have had kids go through the system we're very good at doing that as well but this is something that we constantly look at so um but comparison over the last two years I mean we have managed to again shift in a positive direction so our our student body of course is believe and I don't have the

056student student numbers right here in front of me but about 77% white whereas our staff right now is 92.4% white so again we're still not as reflective with the student body as we are or reflective in the staff as we are with the student body but is something that we are looking at constantly and making small steps along the way as we keep going so that's why we feel like this information while not part of 1.5 is still important information for you as a board to have and we update it each year so I work with Melissa O'Keefe in our curriculum instruction office she is able to track the student numbers and then we're actually required every other year to submit our our data for staff to the federal government so that that happens did

057not happen this year so it'll be next year and they look at it at a snapshot in time so basically the first payroll in October I take a snapshot and they look at not only what overall we do but also what are new hires so anyone hired from July July 1st to September 30 look at as well so that's a report that we run every other year um through our system and and it gets filed on What's called the eo5 which is one of the other fun little forms that me and my team get to do and get that filed on an ongoing basis so something that we look at constantly and um sometimes I have to try to cheat with the eo5 to get it to run in the off years like this year

058because it only opens up every other year so I have to try to manually manipulate that data to get the numbers here for you so so thank you Brad and you know Brad didn't mention it but kudos to his department for uh for really jumping on the uh grow your own program and I know we've identified and self-identified some folks that uh uh that are interested in teaching becoming teachers so um we really are are are working hard on that and and as well as uh trying to find ways to encourage uh people to go into the field of Education I mean that's the the universities are still challenged with producing enough teachers especially teachers of color so U that's uh that's something we're trying to you know to at least impact on a local

059basis through the grow your own programs any questions mark I mean I just want to say um thank you for taking a little timeout and giving us a little extra back background on those two graphs it's important it's I know it's hard work um appreciate you just letting us know that it's important and and you're working on it and I mean I look at the at the number and I think when I started it on the board it was like 96 or 97% so I mean it's it's moving um actually I went back and looked at the first time I put the data together was in 2015 and it was 97.1% okay thank you you're welcome thanks bradk you any other comments or questions is about the monitor rep all those in favor of approving

0601.5 please say I iOS the motion passes the monitoring report's approved thank you for a good report you're welcome our next monitoring report is on page 48 monitoring report 2.4 Financial Planning and budgeting is there a motion please than president I move to the board of education to accept monitoring report 2.4 Financial planning budgeting as a reasonable interpretation and evidence of compliance and policy thank you m is there a second second thank you Terry mark this is a much much shorter report and uh again an annual report that that basically deals with three issues one is making sure that the end of the year fund balance is above 7% that we're not borrowing money to meet our payroll obligations are uh and uh and that we have uh cash flow in place to meet payroll

061and vendor obligations so this uh is an assurance of the different ways that we do that um our fund balance that the board approved in June uh anticipates that we'll have an end of the year unassigned fund balance of 12.44% which is well above that uh 7% Mark um and you'll get an update uh on that as we do budget revisions and planning for that uh as well but um it I based on what I know right now it's not going to deviate very much from what we have have there um and the uh the only other thing uh that I point out is uh you're asking us not to budget any less for board prerogatives uh that you did last year into this year uh things such as uh uh paying for the audit

062um your professional development through the different workshops that are available to you owner linkage activities uh board development like we uh did earlier through uh uh through Gary and uh work we do at Retreats uh legal expenses are all budgeted in there uh so that we make sure that those costs are covered so um and anything else that might come along like your superintendent search process will will cost a little bit that um we're making uh adjustments in a budget for that as well I made sure that was in there I I did didn't want to give any wrong Impressions so happy to answer any questions uh on that report but again a very um basic report provided annually and hopefully our that makes some sense to our newest board members any questions for Mark

063here's the organization met expectations all those in favor of approving man report 2 point four please say I I opposed uh the motion passes the monitoring report is approved and now we're moving to our first action item on page 55 to approve the changes to District Graphics tagline and vision statement is there a motion Please Mr President I move that the Board of Education approve changes to the district Graphics tagline and vision statement as presented thank you Mark is there a second second thank you any discussion any any comments well I I tried to capture as much as I could in the memo to you in the cover memo that this has been uh really a a lengthy process that was spurred by the uh in part by the uh uh the communications audit that

064we entered into a couple of years ago and one of those recommendations is that we take a look at our our branding how we come across um reestablish some some Focus so that people know uh as much from the district from our graphics and from our vision statement and that so I think we've been bringing the board members along uh since last fall with some of the work that that that has been going and and it seems to be have been well received uh the only piece that we we didn't spend a lot of time on is the merging of the two statements that exist um the the vision statement that has been around for some time that was developed kind of uh kind of in the earli years when I got here with between

065the board Administration and then the more recent aspirational statement that was put together uh by our district values team with a lot of input from students and staff and from the community uh so those two statements even though they they read somewhat differently I think have much the similar intent behind it and through our audit um and through the work we were doing with rebranding it it seemed like there was some confusion as to what is what and so the recommendation uh was made that we we look at combining those two into one statement and so I've uh provided in the uh in the memo what we had um what we uh in both of those and what it looks like as a merge statement and you'll see there's very uh very little difference uh

066by adopting the aspirational statement for the most part um and then the biggest change the biggest visible change is the tagline U moving from the future learn here to every student every future which is Incorporated in the uh the new vision statement and will be the tagline as was presented by uh Michelle and uh Rick Chambers uh at the last meeting so we're we're excited about this our our goal is to begin the the preparation work uh so that we can roll this out for next uh fall for the start of the school year so some of that will be happening this summer yet um we don't see it as any kind of a financial impact for the district uh the only signage that we have is the signage that's on our building at the

067administration building and there's really no plans to change that it doesn't it doesn't contain a tagline it just has Portage Public Schools so there's no uh we had we're not in a hurry to change anything if if at all and uh uh everything else that we use that we would be using this on is pretty much electronic IC and so it's just a matter of changing the uh um changing what we have we will be developing style guides and everything that goes with it so that we're consistent in how we apply this uh across the district so I think some neat changes and we're looking forward to to incorporating this in our Communications questions are my colleagues comfortable with approving the vision statement I was going to ask the same question um I just so

068I just have to admit this got by me um and I I thought we were approving the graphics and so that's where my brain went but um but we are approving a approving a vision statement which is a pretty big deal and we really haven't talked about it as a board right um so I'm trying to process it really quickly um my preference would be to process it slowly um but I don't want to be the skunk at the Garden Party um because my big thing is that the word exceptional is in there that there's that says you know we have high expectations here so with that word in there I'm okay um but I'm I'm just checking with my colleagues to see if if you are are okay too I wouldn't blame it if

069somebody said hey let's uh um let's just all give this a little more review time from a truste perspective I would like some more review time the word that that I was like why isn't that still in there was the word learning learning is there not in we've got lifelong learning lifelong learning um not not in the lifelong learning yeah but I was like so yeah the word exceptional is the is the word that was really uh kept from the original vision statement and incorporated into the work of the uh of the district values team um but I guess of of all of the pieces this is probably the one that could be held off on the longest um uh does reside outside of the uh governance uh policies I and uh I I remember

070when Gary does the presentation of around policy governance uh he he makes a point of saying mission and vision reside outside of that so but I certainly understand with the board's involvement in the previous statement that you may want some more time on it I don't think there's anything uh Critical with that uh that needs to be approved this evening we would like the remaining pieces of that approved if uh if you uh would consider that if you have still have hesitancy on this Vision I am 100% comfortable with everything else if we want to discuss the vision statement um as a whole board let's go ahead and and approve everything else is that the way everybody is leaning yeah I just want to ask Michelle is there any um reason why we is I

071I'm not sure what work that you're planning coming up is there any reason why no I think as long as we you know I'd love to have it in place before summer so that we could because it is in in our um course it's on the website it's we'll be changing the graphics for the district extra and it's always on there so you know those places I mean we don't put it on our letter head or anything like that so we certainly could move forward with the the work switching things over um without it but also you know the the um the big posters we have up in in all the schools will ultimately redo those and everything so we'll definitely want to have it um but it wouldn't be critical to do it tonight

072um but the other stuff would be nice to be able to get going on because we do have um you know the um The Branding guides and all those things to to we're close on those but you know we have some final tweaks based on you know happens here is that we want more time on this yeah if if any of my colleagues feel that way I can certainly go there I mean I'm look I see nothing it's not a there's nothing think egregious yeah and and I would not invite my colleagues to wsmith frankly including me um it's just a uh a process of I mean this statement comes at the top of the pyramid um and we hang out at the top of the pyramid and um yeah so the only thing I

073you know I would say is um that we did receive a lot of input into the aspirational statement as it was you know developed in in in terms of you know students were pulled staff members were pulled the community parents all provided input and then when uh when Rick was looking at the different documents he took a stab at how these statements might look so we had several different variations to uh to work off of and and in that process that was all merged into something that you know at least from my perspective maintains the same type of you know level of vision that the board had before um so I just say that for what it's worth yeah I would say I would have more comfortable I would be more comfortable just excluding it

074tonight giving me a chance to compare it to the old one and just yeah um and I will not word Smith a word was discouraged my colleagues okay who made that motion move remember that's a good thing did you make the motion to I did oh Mark did yeah could you withdraw the motion I withdraw the motion to approve the changes to the district Graphics no the vision statement withdraw the approval to the vision statement as presented but approve graphics and taglines you just want to amend your motion original motion to exclude vision statement from the motion em and then Emily second second okay all those in favor of approving the new motion please say I I I opposed uh the motion is approved and we'll now move to our first discussion item which is

075the 2425 budget amendments welcome Paula welcome Sammy good evening Board of Ed and superintendent beang tonight myself and Sammy Stevens will present to you the highlights from the First Amendment to the general fund for the 24 school year I just want to take the board back to last June June of 2024 because not everybody in this room was here at our budget hearing that we had last June so I always like to start to bring you back to where the preliminary budget started and the assumptions that we we took into play so that you can see where we went from preliminary to the amendment so um in June uh we have to make assumptions because the legislator legislator haven't passed their state aid package but we're required by law to pass our preliminary budget um

076by the end of June so assumptions are made I made an assumption that we would build our budget on a $217 foundation allowance increase so we were budgeting at 9,825 per student we also are uh paid through State a based on our enrollment so I looked at our enrollment data and budgeted down 96 students at that time because our preliminary enrollment was looking low and um as we met on the 24th the EXP expenditure number that I brought to the board that night showed expenditures exceeding revenues by the amount of 2 million 32,35 a lot of things are unknown at the time that a preliminary budget is put into into place and that's why we amend twice through the year we had unsettled contracts with our pea group the education office Personnel Group and with

077our bus drivers and um at the time that I put together the preliminary budget we left the retirement rate unchanged but there's more to come on that topic as as we get into the presentation so three days later after pooling an all night session the legislators uh passed their state aid package and it's it was unlike anything that I've ever seen before um they did not give us a foundation increase we are still f at the same level we received for 23 24 so we need to keep that in mind for the next year's budget because they have two years to catch us up for but they spent a lot of time in the retirement area they made a lot of changes and rather not to bore everyone just know that a lot of the

078changes happened in the retirement area and we're reflecting it in the budget such as uh the U rate piece of retirement was reduced so that's both a revenue and an expenditure that runs through our budget it has a net effect of zero on the bottom line but it's something that the state gives us in our state aid payment we turn around and pay it back to them um they gave us in lie of the foundation increase a new categorical called 147 A4 excuse me y 147 A4 in lie of the foundation increase and um they C called it a Myer's cost offset so we're receiving money on a categorical R state aid status report instead of an increase in our foundation allowance very interesting to but couple good things did happen through this package they

079continued the 22 a District transportation cost they continued the enrollment stabilization funding um which reimburses districts for a portion of their lost enrollment year-over-year because a lot of districts are seeing declining enrollment across the state and they continued the free um breakfast and lunch offerings which which I feel is a huge benefit to our students one thing that wasn't so great and the first outcome was the 31aa funding that's also known as the mental health and safety categorical that was slashed by 91% in the preliminary budget and the legislators came along later in the fall early winter and they passed a supplemental package to give us additional 31aa funding but they didn't make it immediate effect so we're not going to see that increase until probably March um and it's still a significantly less dollar

080amount than what we received for 20324 but at least there's some funding there so I just want to take a moment moment to show the board that this is a history of of our Blended enrollment this is what comes through on our state aid status report that we are paid on from Michigan Department of Ed It's a combination of 10% of the spring count and 90% of the corresponding fall count and a cross fiscal year so it's 10% of February's 20 February 24 count date and 90% of October 2024's count date and these are our actual numbers where we actually landed after our October count day even though I budgeted to be down the 96 students we ended up being down about nine students so I was way off on my enrollment number but I

081only could use the data that I had at the time to build the budget and we saw a spike in um enrollment in like the kindergarten area those numbers were low at the time of the preliminary budget but they put some changes in effect for what parents had to do in order for their children to be able to enroll in kindergarten so it took longer for those steps to happen for us to reflect that in our enrollment numbers so but you can notice that our enrollment still has not come back to where we were at prepandemic level so to touch on the highlights of what we actually did in this first amendment Sammy and I are going to go over the revenues and expenditures with you and and and show you at the end you

082know where we end up overall but basically we comb through everything in the budget to do this amendment so um obviously I'm GNA base I'm gonna adjust our revenues based on our actual enrollment and I did that I adjusted our property tax revenue based on changes in taxable value but keep in mind any local money that we collect through property tax revenue the state takes that off on their side when they pay us our state aid payment so just because our property tax revenue goes up it just means the state has to give us less money um I adjusted everything that changed with the retirement with the UA with the creation of the new categorical um that's going to be interesting to see how that plays out in future budgets I also updated our special

083education categorical 51c that one lag that one lags a few months that's actually last year's 2324 adjustment where the state makes us whole on their portion of what they're required to pay us for special education costs and so I factor that in usually don't see that until the February state aid payment but I made the calculation and um put it into the amendment now so because it was significant enough so also for revenues we uh looked at all the federal Awards and we made those actual so that includes our title grants those were updated to our 2024 25 award amounts plus the carryover for TW from 2324 we're allowed to carry over the funds that we aren that we don't use which is very fortunate um also updated all the covid-19 funding um which sunsetted

084on 9:30 of 24 um that has been a big project for us as a district as you all know um with all of that money that has come through but there are only three sources remaining as of 9:30 and that was sr3 11t and the American Rescue plan act uh mckin vento funding which helped our mckin vento students um and we were fortunate enough to be able to spend all of that money in Fall as a district um a lot of it we used to be able to legally supplant the general fund to create the committed fundings that we that we talk about in our allocated uh fund balance we also made adjustments to the kesa millages um that the district receives the first one is that special education millage uh there was a slight

085decrease to that but that's due to us receiving more money from the state so de so um tesa's millage and the state special education funding they work hand inand they go kesa goes down the state goes up and vice versa uh we also adj adjusted the enhanc millage that we received from Hara um there was a slight increase in that and that's due to the enrollment being up from what we adopted at so the next one is just a visual of your revenues um and just to kind of touch on these major points so the local sources um that's up about 1.7% from your preliminary budget a lot of that's due to the property taxes which is 57% of that local Revenue um and the other big piece is those two uh Mill that we

086receive from kesa State sources is down a little bit from your preliminary budget it's down by 1.75% um as Paula has mentioned at preliminary budget we had uh adopted that increase in Foundation allowance but we didn't end up getting it which was very odd um and I would have to agree with Paula and I hope that's the only time that I ever see that in my career um but we also saw in retrospect we saw decreases in our normal retirement categories along with the addition of the new one the 147 A4 to replace not receiving a foundation allowance increase um we also made adjustments to the other state categoricals such as 31aa and the 22l district Transportation federal sources again includes the title grants and covid funding that has now sunsetted and is done um

087title funding is approximately 60% of that current current federal funding so next year at this time that Federal sources will be a little bit less not a whole lot I did the math it's about uh $600,000 of that was the covid funding in that Federal sources and then those incoming transfers that 142,000 that's um our food group indirect and then sale of school property which we sold some school buses and some other um items from maintenance that relates to that Revenue moving on to expenses uh we spend a lot of time in the expense area and the revenue but the expense area is I mean for our district so um there's over 6,000 accounts that we look at individually almost each budget amendment so we analyze each salary account um which then comes in and

088analyze we analyze the B The Benefit Accounts as well um when you have just over 600 accounts and then you add Benefit Accounts to every single one of those that makes for a lot of accounts and a lot of numbers um we adjusted that UA rate um and we also adjusted the contract settlements for all those open groups that Paula had mentioned uh we made insurance rates to actual when we adopt that preliminary budget there's a lot of unknowns the insurance rates for January through June being one of them um and we were able to adjust those to actual um we also sit with all the Departments and talk about how things are going where things like where expenses are down where we need to add some more money and we make those adjustments um

089we've updated the state and federal categorical expenses um and that includes the addition of 147 C2 which for those of you that were on the board a couple of years ago that was supposed to be a one-time funding in 2223 but they conveniently reintroduced that this year um so there's not going to be a big Sway in the retirement like we had seen that year but it's going to help kind of make retirement look I want to say more normal with that drop um and then we had the intentional addition of the purchase of a zero turn lawn mower and three vans which will be brought to you later this evening for um discussion um and that's to help bring down the surplus of the fund balance at 6:30 the next one is a visual

090representation very similar to the one of the revenues um this is broken out by object code and it is the ual representation of the major categories page in your packet um salaries and benefits is down from the preliminary budget a lot of that is due to that drop in retirement um while it isn't in and an out it still affects our expenses um and we also adopted our fringe benefits at a higher rate than what actually came in so we made those actual as I had mentioned purchase Services that's up from preliminary a lot of that is due to um an increase in counseling cost for our from that's funded by 31 and6 so we bring in third party counselors to work with our students um Janine uh the ESI department handles that and is

091doing a phenomenal job at getting our students the services that they need um it also the purchase service also includes subbing costs um like we had mentioned it's really hard at the beginning of the year to really grasp what's going to happen um so right now is the time that we kind of look at our solving cost and kind of be able to um gauge where we're headed in the year for that um supplies and materials that's up as well um when we're looking at it that's primarily because of grant funding that we're receiving um mainly from the state uh 35j was one that we received and that was for PD curriculum and um supplies and we purchased some novels out of that we purchased calculators from 11t um and we made adjustments to Building

092Supply budgets that included their adjustment due to their fall enrollment as well as their carryover from the previous year because of sore the next one breaks it down by function code which is page one of your monthly board report um it's this one is very similar to a report that's created by mde with our FID data the FID is a report that we for our new board members the FID is a report that we have to uh submit November 1st of every year um after our audit is complete for the mde to just make sure that everything is in line with the district um as you can see instructional Services is our biggest chunk that's $73 million of our budget um and these are expenses directly related to the school so Elementary School midd highs

093um at risk and special education costs are also in there along with Title One expenses the pupil support section is our next largest and that's 11.2 million this includes expenses like our school sites our guidance counselors engagement Specialists PT and OT expenses um speech path cost how monitors launch playground so those who really work with the students and then the next largest piece would be our operations and maintenance which is $10.7 million um and that's you know our electric our water our sewage um heating costs custodial snow removal technology repair costs fall in that area um and it also includes uh expenses like our sro's this next slide um takes into consideration our actual ending results from the 2324 school year the monitoring report that Mark brought you to um took an estimate of the

094percentage of unassigned fund balance that that he had because at that point in time it's not an actual number because he's asking at the time that we adopted the preliminary budget so and when we when we actually closed out the year last summer revenues did exceed expenditures but included in that excess amount were committed funds that the district set aside for before and after school funding and it it the end result was uh total un assigned fund balances a percentage of expenditures was 17.39% which is well above the required 7% that the board has um set the amendment that we're bringing you this evening still shows um an excess of expenditures over revenues slightly higher than the preliminary budget but I want to point out a couple things that are happening on that expenditure side

095included in that expenditure number is approximately $564,000 of committed related expenditures that that piece of those expenditures have their own fund balance that they're taken from and then just under $300,000 of onetime capital outlay that we that we are implementing through the budget for the Vans and the zero turn lawnmower so tonight taking into account if every Revenue dollar is received and every expenditure dollar is spent which we will still amend this again in June and then we'll wait to see what actually comes in at final projected unassigned fund balance is set at 15.53% and this is an estimate it's purely an estimate we have a final number at the time that we close the books in June of this year over the summer so it's it's customary for me to share this information with

096the board so that you can see what happens to the unassigned fund balance as a percentage of expenditures here is in case you're a visual person for the for a graph you can see the history of actual unassigned fund balance percentages as reflected here and then the estimate of what what the unassigned fund balance would be be based on the amendment tonight in your board packet that we're asking you to approve in two weeks and with that we'd be happy to answer any questions that the board may have or I think you did too good a job I don't know if anybody has a question as always I appreciate your attention to detail with this Paul I'm I'm vaguely remembering it might have been last spring or the spring before but you had said that

097the fund balance was going to go maybe go through a kind of a natural cycle where it was going to come back down and is is that maybe kind of what we're seeing um no we're still way above seven so it's like well good there but is that just kind of like a where you could see where our spending would was going to go and we're we're we're intentionally trying to do that and we also keep in mind we did not um know with all those federal onetime funds we didn't put long-term cost in there you know to to so that people other districts were experiencing funding Cliffs for doing that and we did not do that here so our our intentional use of those funds has also caused us to to put other funds

098in place to help the students longer than the duration of what we could have used the federal funds for so but yes we are working towards trying to level out that that for fund balance percentage I remember I mean chatting with my colleagues here and we were all very aware of what happened in an arbor um and they got out and they made long-term commitments on on onetime funding and it took a year or two and they hit the cliff and it was painful so appreciate the the stewardship that you all be shown Paul has done a and Sammy have done an excellent job in trying to rightsize everything so that we're not you know we're not putting money into fund bals that you know that we could be spending on students and so we're

099we're kind of doing a midcourse adjustment here try to make that happen so so then I have one more technical question um you know so last year's increase right it wasn't in the foundation allowance it was helping us out with our expenses on retirement did you ever take what we saved on retirement and divide it by pupil and just try to convert that you want to know what our I would love to know where that came out because I happened to have calculated that that was the first thing was it like two 3% or was it uh it was approximately $360 359 per pupil is what it's it's showing when I take the categorical divided by the Blended enrollment so it's it was actually higher than what I built the preliminary on but then keep

100in mind they take away money in other places too and I think it's going to get very very creative when I read the executive budget that the governor put out and how things are going to shift around and yeah it's going to be stay tuned it's about it's about to get real fun yeah that had a generous percentage but I think a number of those expenditures weren't necessarily going to land with us right so well we will see we will wait and that's May and June yeah well the the basically the money we got there wasn't baked into the found ation allowance which is you know would have created a new starting point for this year so it's it's not I think they tried to paint it as a equivalent to the increase in the

101foundation allowance but it doesn't have the same net uh result for us each district actually ended up receiving a different dollar amount you know what I mean so it was in it was not consistent funding um across the state and I know that the Governor has worked hard to level that funding when she came into office because some of us some some districts were out of formula districts on their funding and so she's she's done a lot to make everybody funded at the same level but I feel that what ended up happening through the legislative process this past summer was unequal not not the same across districts is that because every District's retire retiree situation is different it was based on the the composite of the people at the district in salary and retirement cost

102I didn't even take the time to learn about how all of that was calculated um I was anxious just to see the number com through on the state aid status report finally because it took a few months for it to drop I mean we were running the the the beginning of the school year without said categorical for a little while just an easy question um on the rate adjustments I don't know what UA in a brief so basic uh do you know what U I would gladly look that up for you I just know it as a a a a sling term of UA and that's what we call it because there's there's your basic retirement rate and then there's the UA rate component and so it's two rates added together that we have to

103push through the budget has to do with three re it is it is retirement it's a component of the retirement and I can look up what UA stands for well that's all I needed to know and UA is an in and an out so we get the revenue for it and we push it right back out so like we make payments to the state every month based like what we get on the state aid status report is exactly what we pay out to or so and once everything is funded at a certain level like the I feel that the UA is going to decrease and decrease and decrease and I hope at one point in time in a perfect world it would go away have it's the unfunded Actuarial acrude liability well I liked your

104explanation than thanks I didn't bring my phone with me or else I would have Googled it up here any other question thank you very much thank you our next discussion item is Van purchase recommendation is pretty minor to your previous uh when compared to your previous uh discussion I am recommending at the Board of Education approve the purchas of three 10 passenger vans from taer Fort LLC and paa Michigan for a total of $ 23,91606 [Music] have uh you know extended running boards for safe safe entry and exit uh we have all-wheel drive obviously for our road conditions high mount rear cameras for enhanced visibility and um at this point now we have some vans that we don't actually use at all and we have certain vans that we only drive within a c certain

105radius so these three new Vans would uh sub would help our Fleet substantially uh we went through a competitive VI press process and taper Ford of paw paa was our best uh bid that met all of our specifications and we've included the B tab for you as well one of the things I do like is uh we currently have eight passenger vans and these new on will be 10 passenger vans uh we have some limitations on the maximum number of people we can put in a van by law so we would be moving from our traditional 8 to 10 and I'll be happy to answer any questions any questions for JN very good sir thank you be there again for the northern parcel offer I'm going to ask uh Ryan Ryder who was the realator

106from birkshire halfway to join me in the event there are some specific questions that uh he needs to address uh I recommend that the Board of Education approve the sell of a parcel on the campus of Porter Northern uh to mark and Beth kenck of kenck real estate LLC in the amount of $35,000 um this particular parcel is on the northeast corner of the campus between the highway I94 and two of the duplexes owned kenic real estate LLC uh this particular buyer they've had an interest in this particular parcel for several years and uh as of the end of last year after some several conversations we were able to engage some discussions I've consulted with our attorney from TR law firm and Ryan here is helping us out from a realtor perspective and um he's

107provided us with an estimated partial value and through some preliminary negotiations the uh cost of the uh parcel that we have been able to discuss is right around $35,000 included in your resum in in in your recommendation packet is an outline of where the parel actually lies also in your recommendation is a u a brief paragraph from the perspective buyers how they intend to use it um also within your packet is a breakdown of uh the cost that we would incur um in terms of some fees unrelated related to the the selling of this parcel and then the standard agreement uh that's uh approved by greater cazo Association of relators so it is my recommendation that we uh dispose of the property to the perspective buyers for $35,000 Ryan or I will be have ask

108any questions from the only thing I would add Johnny is that um we do have policies in place for the disposal of real property and the process that was followed to get to this point is aligned with our policies so just curiosity is the parcel that's to the east of that still Pro property that we own or do not no the part the property that's east of the area that's highlighted is not owned okay good and and it is owned if I recall from the from the committee it is owned by one of the next home owners in that Row one of them owns that bag parcel this would be a separate owner okay great yeah if if we had a larger graphic um that area to the east kind of goes into a triangle

109and there's probably five or six homes uh in front of that parcel and one of the five or six homeowners own that entire triangle okay great this particular uh prospective buyer owns the parcels that are identified as 528 and 520 uh on your grab yeah that's what I fig yeah pursuant to the policy we had a subcommittee of three board members review all this uh with Johnny and uh I think we were satisfied that everything was in order any other questions I want to thank Ryan um Ryan got a cold call from us unbeknownst to what we were trying to do and he's been extremely helpful with helping us getting some values and some documentation as well and working with the realtor of the prospective buyer thank you sir thanks thank you our next discussion

110item is the time clock purchase no Johnny was mentioning Ryan and I thought oh I don't think it it's my turn yet but okay so a I'm recommending uh that the Board of Ed approves the purchase of 20 time clocks from uh School Technology Associates in the amount of $72,900 180 uh proceeds coming from the 2021 um the business office right now is currently going through a conversion from our existing Skyward uh finance and HR System to the new version of that the time clocks that we have in the buildings right now are not compatible with the new system so we purchased those original time clocks in 1718 so they've lasted a good seven years or so um they're basically end of life and Skyward is because we're moving to the new system we have

111to move to New basically every building will get one we also have three installed at the transportation building and so we'll just be replacing those and have a couple on hand we did go out to bid we uh did receive a s s Source a affidavit from school Technologies and they were the only the only response that we got I'll take any questions you are these the ones you have to enroll fingerprints they are yep and these new ones will have that same technology they also have a 7in touchcreen just make it a little better experience for for our staff members um Brian would like this brought to action if the board is okay with that is there a motion please to take this to action Mr President I may move that we me move

112the time clock request to action thank you there second second thank you all in favor of moving the time clock purchase the action please say I I oppos the motion passes we need a motion to approve the purchase Please Mr President I move that we approve the purchase of time clocks as requested thank you Terry is there a second second thank you any discussion all in favor please say I I opposed the motion passes thank you Ryan thank you very much our next discussion item is the library book purchased good evening I'm here tonight to give the recommendation that the Board of Education approve the purchase of Library materials for Middle elementary middle and high school from fet content Solutions in the amount of $177,200 [Music] a couple years ago in a three-phase process the

113first phase being we asked them to weed their libraries to make sure that we were um taking care of any materials that weren't being circulated or the kids weren't checking out and so after they did that process then we went through one purchasing phase which was our second phase and this will be the end of that which is another purchasing phase um so we are just excited to get materials into the libraries that students are really excited to handle and to check out and I am here to answer any questions that you have about this purchase so much a question as a comment but as a student I remember the thrill of seeing what new books were coming into the library which however often they came in and perusing them to see if I could

114get some of those first um and so this will be very exciting for students I believe any other questions for McKenzie thank you thanks McKenzie we're at the point where we're our last discussion item and that's the masb board of directors election Mark well I don't have a whole lot to tell you except there are a couple of people uh that you may be familiar with that are uh running for uh the one-year term uh it's listed there in your uh in your notes um and uh Tiana Harrison from Kazo Public Schools is one and Elizabeth Odell from St Joe County ISD the other the uh the BIOS are there and uh I guess if uh you would take the time to look at those uh in preparation for our next meeting meting so that

115we can identify a candidate bar is there anything else that you can think of on that one that they need to do no just the time line in the packet is there so action would be needed by the next board meeting so we meet the whatever it was Voting deadline so we'll put a a motion in the agenda with the name blank and then someone would have to recommend a name for us yes to put in there y February 24th meeting yeah for next meeting either of these candidates Dan Harrison I I met her at the I think everybody got a an email from the other candidate yes okay yeah I'm not aware of what what the campaigning is going on behind the scenes but it sounds like you all are getting some stuff yeah

116we will make the right choice I'm out of the loop I'm sure you will right yeah quick question um on this the U on the library books there's a discussion at the bottom Val Poss into action I didn't know we wanted to do that request for yeah so there yeah there is uh there was a request to move that to action I mean it'll take a while for the materials to get here and once we get them they'll have to be barcoded cataloged uh distributed and uh we have limited access to staff uh outside of the school year so that would be uh if you feel comfortable doing that that would be the reason uh we ask that to be action and there are I don't know how many there are thousands of books that

117are coming in You' like to review [Laughter] them read everyone Randy is he loves reading for pleasure you know that right right uh we okay taking this to action then I think we take this to action second all in favor of taking this item to action please say I I opposed the motion passes we'll take it to action motion please I move that we approve the purchase of these books as presented thank you Kimberly there second second thank you Mark all those in favor of approving the library book purchase please say I I I opposed the motion passes and uh with that um we are Jour thank you for catching that thanks for catching it forgot all about that