Portage Public Schools Board of Education Committee of the Whole Work Session - January 15, 2024

001did you hear the whole story Tera hwood Stone Christmas it's that late yeah it is I didn't realize it's a it's a long story too so good good okay this 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 and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all like to welcome everyone to our meeting tonight on Martin Luther King day and uh inform everybody that uh truste Hamilton is ill and will not be here tonight she sends her regrets and we'll start with revisions and approval of our agenda are there any changes to the agenda uh as indicated nothing for me is

002there a motion please on page two to approve the agenda president V on I move that the Board of Education approve the agenda printed thank you is there a second second thank you Keith all in favor please say I I I opposed the motion passes and we'll move forward with our agenda as printed and our first item is an organizational item election of officers and I'll uh read the process we're going to follow the board's past president will officiate during the election of the president following the president being elected that person will conduct the election of the vice president and secretary the person conducting the election of each position will ask three times for nomination for each position the nominations will then be closed person conducting the election or his her designate will compile the

003votes that announce those candidates receiving two or more more votes than how each board member voted election of officers shall be by a majority of the full board if only one person is nominated for the office the person conducting the election May declare that person elected by acclamation a nominee is elected to each position by a majority of support from the board any questions this the process we followed for about 100 years so the first position to fill is that of President is there any nominations for the office of President U Mr President I would like to nominate Randy van anart for the position of President both thank you are there any other nominations from pres for president asking a third time are there any other nominations for president I therefore uh Mr van Anor

004is elected again by acclamation are there any nominations for vice president I would like to nominate um Bose Snider is there a second nomination for president is there a third nomination for president with that then Bo um You by acclamation are elected president of the board congratulations vice president president and try to give it away yeah have your position already I know I know it would have occurred to me by about 6 months in ready good good our last nomination is for secretary is there a nomination for secretary please uh yes Mr chairman I'd like to nominate trusty navaria for secretary thank you Keith is there a second nomination for secretary is there a third nomination for secretary uh then by acclamation Terry you have been elected Secretary of the board congratulations okay with that

005being done we'll move to the superintendent's report and I believe the first thing is the CTE Consortium agreement presentation it is and uh with the excitement of the new uh CTE Center being built we uh uh we have to also adopt a uh resolution that we've had in place but because of the changes coming forward we we have a new resolution to enter into and I'm not going to steal any more of the the words that they're going to use but before I turn over to Eric I think Eric's going to do it I want to introduce you to dedri Martin dedri is here as well dedri is the uh superintendent of kesa took over for Dave Campville uh earlier this summer and uh we're glad to have you here with us dedri and if

006you wanted to say anything uh now is your opportunity absolutely first of all thank you for having me it's great to uh be here and to finally meet you guys um as he said I am the new superintendent of kesa and knowing that I wanted to get out to board meetings to at least introduce myself and uh that we have the uh Career Connect Center as a topic of discussion I thought tonight was a great time so look forward to getting to work with you and and know you and uh better support uh the port school system so uh thank you for giving me some of your time thank you dedri and uh just so you know we as County superintendant we meet uh on a of a bi-weekly basis uh uh on Mondays uh

007Monday afternoons we meet together to uh discuss issues of common concern and and use that as professional development opportunity as well and this is one of the we've as County Superintendent have reviewed this um back in uh December the the presentation that you have and had discussion around this as well so we're pretty well vered in this uh but uh but we have Eric Stewart uh who's taking the lead and I'm sure he'll introduce the others who are with him this evening Eric thanks so much Mark and thank you for having us out on this cold snowy night um I hope everyone's staying warm my name is Eric Stewart I'm the assistant superintendent uh kesa covering all things career and talent development so the world of career connect and the new career center that I

008hope everyone's super excited about uh Falls in kind of my Lane of responsibility with me tonight are my good friends and colleagues Scott Thomas he's our citizen superintendent business services and our executive director uh for secondary programs uh who's really overseeing all things CTE um kesa Sarah mansberger is here with me as well we brought the team so we can answer any questions anybody might have uh this should be fairly quick and painless um but by all means um along the way if you have any questions feel free to stop me so as Mark was mentioning uh and and I know everyone's at least a little bit aware of um we're building the brand new career center over there on the corner of sprink Road 994 hope folks get to drive by it it's moving

009things are going up the excitement's building um as the building's building so um in you know as as that kind of works towards the fall 25 you know opening uh you have to really get um the back of the house stuff in order and the new system requires a new consortion agreement we currently operate under a Consortium agreement that supports our current decentralized model and uh before we get into kind of some of what the elements of that are I just really quickly well first of all on the screen here uh you'll see a team of folks we we we came to the superintendent uh group coup months ago and um started talking about this and was quickly decided that we need to kind of form up a committee and so we we drafted a

010few superintendents in a few business Managers from locals in and uh the three of us and we uh kind of hammered out what a new agreement might look like and that's what we're asking need to consider here tonight I'm signing on to uh this is the folks that were represented in that committee and really appreciate their time and their work in that um but before we get into the agreement itself and any questions you might have related to the agreement uh we wanted to root ourselves back into the why why are we doing this uh why why in 2017 we started looking at data we all said who we need to really look at the system of career in tech ed here in Del County it might not be serving all kids the best way

011possible this is a stat that uh we continue to get quite a bit of mileage out of because it just Echoes Truth uh uh to us and and the need for us to focus um on all students at a different level our current labor market for every 10 jobs there are the labor market requires one master's degree two bachelor's degree and seven two years or lower degrees that's what the labor market needs for all of us to go about our daily lives uh the career center is a focus on all 10 students I will tell you that but it's placing specific intentional attention on that seven um that sometimes don't get all the attention uh that they need to succeed and so that's a little bit of that's a little bit that got the conversation

012started prior to 2019 um we formed up three groups uh was really representative of crosssection of the community 7 75 different individuals in business and industry education Community leadership into three different groups and you see them in front of you here on the screen today one group focused on Career Readiness and exploration those are those career awareness activities those work-based learning activities well no not work based learning activities career awareness and exploration activities that focus on younger students helping them think about you know who they are what they're interested in and starting to see the options in the world around them then you have that high school program design that's those are those Career Tech Ed focused courses that's where the idea for the centrally located career center came out of that group and then

013the third Group which I was the I was able to chair that group was focused on community collaboration Community Support what do you need from business and industry from the community to make a project like this come alive how can they support work based learning opportunities all the different things that we need to to help career learning really come live for students so after these groups met came up with a plan we were released report to the community and went to the voters in 2019 November 2019 for support on the career in tech ed millage that was passed at a 60 to 40% um yes rate and since that time we've been about the business of putting the plan into action uh the biggest focal part you know is the career center and uh and

014certainly Co came along it slowed the plans just a little but we're back on track we're in a good place and we're going to be opening up that building for 1350 students uh in the fall of 2025 and hopefully a lot of forage students included in that number let's see here so since that 2019 though there's other elements of the plans that have been activated just wanted to go over those these are um these are parts of the project that are supported by the millage and so you see I won't read them all to you there but what you see is a host of different career development activities career arance activities um that Portage right now benefits from uh and we have Career Development Consultants uh in your buildings we have work-based learning opportunities for

015your students uh this the millage does not support the current CTE model uh as it were uh that's still funded through a Consortium agreement with the locals through the current consor we've started the process um of developing curriculum we've started onboarding certain staff we started to hire what we call Pathway leads um for programs to make sure that the curriculum's in order and that we get all the right equipment there's a lot of equipment in a career center building and for for uh 11 different how many different programs there so we have 19 pathway teams and 21 programs 19 pathway teams 21 programs that's why we bring stah cuz she knows that um she knows everything and so that work um uh you know we started to ramp that stuff up with Staffing and and

016everything that requires here you see a little bit more about more about the community collaboration side of work all of these things currently are ongoing we had to do quite a bit of research into the labor market to figure out what the right programs for the building are to to get to the uh number of programs that Sarah mentioned there and we've had to integrate a lot of employer support important that we have 19 different advisory groups I know that with uh over 220 different individual advisors that we support in the planning this process this process really has been inclusive of the full community and we'll continue will continue to rely on the community particularly that business and industry sector of the community uh to make these learning opportunities come alive for students so with

017that um as we prepare to take your questions for agreement we wanted to show you kind of a early sneak peek okay I'm going to cave out this thing early sneak peek at what some of the projected budget costs come down to right and so what you see there on the top line uh is the current cost of the CTE programs a little over $3 million for the consultion right um that supports 940 students currently at a cost of $3,200 per enrolling what we project with the support of the millage is uh that cost to go down and we project the number of students to go up and so so the average cost per enroll be right around $1,900 uh per student and I'll say this you're going to get right now you're getting a

018Chevy at the cost of a Chevy right you're with this career center that we're building and all the support that we're able to layer into it you're going to be getting a Primo Cadillac for the cost of I don't know what's below Chevy a used Chevy a used Chevy um and so we're really excited about where the numbers are coming in really excited about all the partnership that is allowed that to happen really grateful uh for folks like Mark and your team here at for public schools have been true Partners in this work and uh with that you have the agreement in front of you right they have the agreement in front of them do they have the agreement yes it's in your agenda packet it's in your agenda packet and you'll see here a

019real quick slide this is kind of how we broke down um the various elements of the agreement these are the parts that we really had to analyze and and reaching uh the the proposed agreement that you see in run here today and with that you happy to take any questions anyone might have about the agreement or entertain any other questions about the career center or the world of career in general what would you say is the biggest thing that brought the cost down so much per student well I would say there's there's a few there's that's a there's a lot of elements to that um but the biggest obviously the big the most important thing is the passage of the millage we're able to support a good chunk of the operations through the millage I

020think she's up anything else you add to that Scott it's about $10 million that coming into our County to just support all of the Cur programming compared to now where we have some state and federal funding to support but the rest of the cost is shared among passed on to the locals directly so this The Village was all nine of the locals and kesa came together and said this is a priority for the county and uh bring the for because we're able to do a lot of cool things now that we weren't able to do before it's 20-year millage started in 2019 so that I'll cut through the drama I'm going to vote Yes on this thank you um my question is could you speak to just how unique this is oh it's incredible we've

021had the Good Fortune um you know and I don't think um I it's no secret that we received a100 million gift to build the actual facility um and that really that that was both an awesome gift and an amazing lifechanging thing for our County and it was also a message to us that we better aim through the roof because uh you know this ain't going to be good enough we're we're talking world class and so we've had the opportunity to kind of go all across the country and even um you know think with some folks that have done this at a global level about what the best kind systems of career and talent development are um within you know within the world and um and it's been eye openening and uh it's been amazing but

022a unique opportunity like this where you're able to invest so deeply um into career learning doesn't happen we I have every anticipation that we're going to be the spot for Career and Technical education um definitely in the Midwest and we're we're part of we're part of kind of an advanced career in teched Consortium it's called the Caps Network and um folks you know I anticipate us having what couple hundred tours a year that come through the career center just because of the level we're talking about investment in the team um the investment in the facilities will be like like no other and we're able to able to do things that as Sarah talks their Co around the state they just dream about and that's nothing we did that's that's that's amazing donation and an amazing

023community that supports this type of why that everybody does so so there wasn't a place to go out and do an the best place we found we spent a lot of time at a place called Cherry Creek in Colorado um just outside of Denver that are really done career uh Career Development Career learning at a Continuum level right K through 12 plus um at at an an incredible rate Mark I believe had the chance to come out there with us once um we've been out there four three or four times and um worked with them on how did you get this up and going what were the you know what were the different elements you look for from business and industry we talked to everything from equipment to heck even we have the same Architecture

024Firm that they used and so um it's been just a gift to have that that group but they said to us right at the beginning like your you like we were the best you guys need to be the best now and so we're kind of it's kind of that iron iron sharp and iron type of thing and so um we weren't able to find a one to one certainly don't talk to a lot of folks that got a $100 million Anonymous donation that's a tough one to come by but uh grateful to have you know there is a community in the United States of folks that are really um pushing this to a different level you know just to to piggy back on what Eric is saying uh you know I had in my previous

025District worked in uh in vanen County where uh vbisd had a uh career center um that was had a very good reputation still does I mean they offer some great programming um so that was kind of my vision or you know my experience with tech centers and then we had a chance to go out to Cherry Creek to see similar programs but in a space that's designed completely different from what a traditional CTE Program Center would look like and uh um and that was really an eyeopener to see all these students coming in there from the various high schools in that area to get their their programming and uh it just it it creates a different level of excitement on the part of students you know one of the things we learned here and I

026I I don't think you mentioned is that students don't like to go to other schools to get their programming they'll stay here but they don't want to go to you name the school in the county to get another program a neutral site like this like this Center really um is what's going to drive those numbers that uh that the budget is based on I think we'll see a lot more participation uh by our students and we certainly are challenge to get those numbers up to make sure that you know the students that really belong there and want to be there get there um but um it's it was just nice to be in that environment to see how these programs can work so the $1,900 per participant yeah how is that covered is that just

027out of the family's pocket no that's out of our go ahead you can speak to that brought my good friend you speak to it yeah so it really operates very similar to how things operate under our current consor agreement right now districts pay um based upon enrollment which is calculated on a billable hour very similar except this will be on seats and so it'll be a portion of your seats compared to the total enrollment is how that $1900 but districts are paying for that out of their general fund and part of the per people that they're getting and their and their ft and you know one of the things I just looked at is so you know if a student comes to the Center for like a a half day class you know it could

028be. 3.4 FP of which based upon 9,68 per pupil is kind of what districts are getting that would equate to about you know anywhere from 3100 to 3800 is what districts are receiving for that equivalent FTE spend at the center compared to the cost of the center actually being 1900 so you're generating more through that FTE than what you're having to pay into the center so and that's an important I mean that's that's been a priority of all of ours making this more affordable for districts to opt in making it a no-brainer when a kid goes to their counselor and say Hey I want to be in Career Tech everybody's a winner that's that's the goal so you know tech centers around the state are there's not one consistent funding model for uh for house

029CTE centers are funded some have dedicated millages for the center that that go back to the 1970s which you know are even are less cost to local districts others have to pay their own way to varying degrees so um I think we've got a with the the millage that we have and the reduced costs that we feel that we'll get I think this is a good deal for for all of us in the county you would would technology at Northern will remain a Portage program or will that become part of this as well uh I believe and I don't want to speak on behalf of um of your team but I believe the talk is right now that it would remain a program at Northern um but it will not be a programming in the

030career center we're going to have a we'll have a manufacturing we'll have a construction trades we'll have a mechatronics program stuff that are it'll more than likely be a program that exists for our own students not students coming in from other other schools okay and no changes Math and Science Center that's operated yeah there was some some conversation at some point but no that that's that's no changes to the Math and Science Center well uh if there's no other questions I'll thank you for your time yeah I just wanted to give a quick comment yes um I like the idea that the district will not have to spend as much um per student because I had my daughter go through early middle college I have another daughter starting to do so also and knowing the

031benefits with that with both my mother and my sister being in drafting you know all of this um the benefits to students to be able to graduate from high school and be able to get a good job that's right without having to have the cost of college if they would rather not do so is enormous and I knew enough um when my daughter went through when my eldest went through to be able to seek it out and push for her to be able to do this opportunity and she thrived because of it that's great I would like to see that for more parents who may not always know that that is an opportunity to be able to take advantage of that so that their children if their child would learn better that way will benefit

032from it I would like to see more families have that benefit it thank you very much yes oh it's totally an honor and uh to your point I taken that also a challenge of our work is to make sure that you know everybody's aware and so we have a team that's just dedicated to getting the word out and maintaining the momentum the building project has been long and so we want to make sure that uh folks that might have heard about it back in the day bring them along and get them excited as we ramp up for that very purpose because we want their kids sit in the seats so thank you and thank you all if you have any questions about the agreement or anything about Career Connect Feel Free at any time to

033reach out thank you I just want to congratulate you on on resolving the bell [Music] schedule I can't believe that yeah yeah as a county we need to get together on that one I'll just that's not my job though I'll leave a multicolored rainbow document you should see the document for bell schedule in County it's it is we had yeah we've had some discussions on that already trying to figure out what you know if if there are adjustments that are needed by the locals to help align when programs St and in but if I recall correctly Cherry Creek had kind of a they had students coming and going at different times there was some degree of flexibility but well they had a days and B days and and the difference between Cherry Creek and where

034we're at is that's one school district it's there one school districts bigger than our entire County but it's it's one school district and so multiple high schools coming into there scho yeah so they had they've got a little more control over their schedules than we do with you know the nine different school districts feeding that so there's more to do on the bell schedule no we have our have our schedule and we worked with principles and pick the best possible through line I think congratulations that's great yeah I'm not sure everybody loves it but you know it's it's as best as we can do so bus hub still be acting the same way with at ly norx or will this eliminate a lot of that this is going to eliminate uh the need for the

035bus hub obviously uh because we're going to one central location EFA and our Arts programming uh there's some twists to that a little bit that we're working through but um this will eliminate the need it's one direct shot so students will be out of school less time that's the other benefit is they're not having to go to a place get on another bus and take that to another place and L time out of the class that alone also seems like a cost savings yeah it should be I hope should be definitely yeah thank you thank you folks thank you very much for being here um second on our agenda is the bond project update Johnny Edwards is here to give you that it's a tough act to follow uh but uh I'll be brief first

036I want just show um before we talk construction uh the board approved several projects over the course of the last six months or so so I just want to just provide some winter project updates uh it's only two weeks it's probably six business days uh eight if you don't work for the district uh and our team did an outstanding job working for vendor so just just just some photos of some win projects first this is a a sample a hill um and in central pilot classroom um as the board approved um pilot furniture for the two elementary schools we also wanted to test the pilot furniture with the new carpet that's going to go into the new schools so we were able to put carpet in uh I believe it was six classrooms between the

037two schools so this the flooring that you see is what the flooring will look like in the uh in the new elementary schools uh here's just another classroom example you'll see the new carpet as well as some sample furniture from the pilot uh we included a a nice portion of soft seating so some of those stools you see near those tables those are a big hit with kids and adults I will say uh and actually as uh Dr jinius and I towards some classrooms kids are actually uh uh changing the soft seatings on different sides and sitting on them uh differently which is pretty cool so just wanted to show the board couple of those photos here's a third uh picture of a different classrooms uh you'll see some smaller tables there I think they're

038called Sushi tables where students can kind of you know sit uh and fold their legs or stretch their legs out and be able to uh work there as well uh so the furniture have some different Arrangements of heights as well uh just moving over to our our middle schools um as is the board approved us to put additional acou acoustical panels uh in our science room specifically along with our art and our fabrication lab so we just took a few photos of a few extra uhal panels that were installed over the break um were not complete with this project uh some panels are still arriving but as those arrive on our next opportunity of a no scope then we will install here's another photo I walked the classrooms and spoke with teachers and many teachers

039said that they could notice a difference in their um their classrooms right away appreciate that U finally uh this was kind of a a throwin project I should say uh West Middle School's weight room um we were able to upgrade the flooring uh we were lucky because we did the high school project and there was unused flooring uh not touched that uh the manufacturer sent and given that we had a nice amount of flooring left over we were able to order just a little more flooring and kind of complete their weight room so here's the flooring from another angle so that flooring is the exact flooring that's in both of our high school W so those are just some project we did over the course of of the winter even though was only two weeks

040uh we were quite busy uh our business team did a great job as well as uh Marty uh my assistant in operations for helping to guide those projects that concludes those pictures and then now I'll move over to talk a little bit about our construction uh the structural steel has arrived at Central Elementary and that is being installed if you actually drive past their campus you'll see that you'll see a crane outside so we have our first uh sighting of a crane uh masing walls are still being constructed now they are able to go higher now that the structural still is being installed at the same time work continues on things like the underground and uh underground utilities and now we can work on the N wall utilities uh they're still working with the interior

041and exterior lock miring and now at Central L we're working on the Gathering stair and they're pouring the concrete for the Gathering stair which will be in the heart of the school over at HH Hill H Hill Construction is ongoing they are working on many of the same areas within Central L with the exception of the structural steel and the inlaw utilities as you know we staggered those projects intentionally I also want to add that uh Dr jinius is working with both friends of as well as our construction management firm Oak to incorporate some educ educational opportunities uh for the students uh this work is still under development we'll rise the board on this work in the upcoming months and then finally over at Woodland since our last board meeting we've held two schematic design

042meetings for Woodland uh we looked at the design in three different areas the site or the footprint of the building and how that could look at a pop potential bus flu par parking lot secondly we looked at the school from the learning communities and that's where our our learning Studios will take place for our students in their grade levels and then third we looked at the remainder of the school which include the office the cafeteria and the elective spaces um we will go back to the staff at Woodland for an engagement session near the end of this month to gather more feedback on those Concepts that are in development so that concludes my presentation for tonight and I'll be happy to answer any questions about either the winter break projects or the construction updates I

043just want to say that weight room looks great yeah good move it's been fun to pull into the parking lots at ha Hill in Central and see the progress I have been enjoying that thank you thanks Johnny thank you and just lastly before we get into our board education piece here is uh you you know you've probably been reading and hearing a lot about the teacher shortage and uh in the in the country and in in our state and we're um we're also doing some things on grow your own program trying to get people who are in education to get them into a path where they can get certified and and uh get into the the pool of available candidates I was recently notified by this state that we uh we're the recipient of a

044$285,000 grant that uh to help us in those efforts I don't know Brad do you know any details on that yet I know some details yeah no this is actually the second grant that we've gotten through the state for grow your own actually the first one we got just a little bit this will allow us to help pay and fees for some of our non-certified staff who are interested in becoming certified teachers so we've already through some other grant funding through the cumoo county foundation and some the other things we've already done some of that so in fact our first one just graduated this last month so Austin Giles at Northern High School we had another teacher at a um Special Education certification earlier last week we celebrated her and then we have another one

045in the pipeline for April as well who'll be wrapping up this so this additional grant money which was uh gotten by uh our recruitment retention coordinator Melinda Nelson um main hand in this but will allow us to more folks doing that and we're already building our pipeline so to speak and so those of you who have been in sales you know your sales funnel well right now I have a teacher recruitment funnel because I want to get as many in as we can get so I just heard from someone the other day when we were visiting a school building about an employee there that is one of our students former students but that is interest in pursuing and it was real exciting to hear about that and knowing the person I think it's going to

046be a great thing for them so we're very excited to have this opportunity and to have this funing to be able to help not only ourselves but helps obviously the community as well I've had people question the program to me and like why are we doing this and the benefit of having someone who has classroom experience when they start their first year of teaching not just a eight or a 16 weeks of classroom experience but good solid classroom experience that is phenomenal um that is so valuable to the teachers and to the students um they can hit the ground truly doing well out those first couple years thank you wow great news great grant writing wow good so I think Michelle and her gr writing skills are put to work it definitely a team effort

047but definitely a shout out to Melinda for leading the effort and uh keeping me on task my my deadlines as well so great thank you Brad appreciate you your input there we move over to our board education piece which is our kind of our summary report of uh ends policy 1.1 so Dr Pasco well good evening superintendent Bel beang trustees tonight we're here to present the final overall report for mr11 um this year we presented the spring data for 2023 High School in October Middle School in November and was before you in December uh presenting on the elementary data so today's presentation is the collection to see how we did in a few areas so we focus on improving over prior years as one category we're going to look at tonight if we're approaching comparator

048schools and then if we're exceeding our comparator schools performance on state assessments and we're looking at three years prior so we're comparing 18 19 and 2022 to how we did in 2023 uh looking at specifically mstep PSAT sat at the respective grade levels of fth 8th and 11 where we have the three years worth of data all right so we'll get into it the first metric in our mr11 summary looks at how we've improved over prior years so for our prior years measurement we average again the results from the previous three years relevant data so 2018 19 and 2022 again 20 and 21 were not included due to disruption in the testing um due to the pandemic so this three-year average kind of minimizes that impact uh particular the cor of a particular cor so

049we have four metrics here um that are green meaning we improve by more than 2% and met expectations so that was in 8th grade pla evidence-based reading and writing um for all students economically disadvantage as well as our black and African-American students and our 11th grade black and African-American students in math so those were our four areas in which we uh highlighted in green we have six that are flat u meaning yellow so we're not declining or improving kind of just staying stagnant therefore we say we're partially meaning expectations and then there are um nine that are declining so that's the red so that's minus 2% or more meaning we did not meet expectations so overall to sum this up our middle school scores were kind of the most positive with three indicators improving and

050then fifth grade uh changes we're concerning for our teams with declines of uh five of the six group that's the first one the second metric in mr11 summary looks at how we're approaching comparative districts by ranking comparable communities on their change of performance relative to this threee average this indicates if we are trending towards the top or not and that's regardless of change in performance or test conditions and again we're looking at 1819 and 2022 is at threeyear average and these are districtwide measures for Fifth and 11th we don't have eighth grade yet because of that transition if you remember back in 18 and9 from mstep to PSAT so maybe uh next year's report of the following will'll be able to have that threeyear Trend data to include so um here we have just Fifth

051and 11th so one of our metrics are flat meaning we rank three or four in change relative to other districts Landing more in the middle and that's for sat evidence-based reading and writing the remaining 34 are declining relative to our peers meaning ranking lower than four placing Us in the bottom half of the other seven comparators so we did not increase our performance as well as the top two districts therefore we did not meet the Expectations by these metrics and the way they're set up and then the third metric in mr11 summary looks if we're exceeding compartive schools performance on 2023 State Testing so we interpret as meaning uh ranking first among all comparators we also include rankings when there's limited numbers of comparable communities and you can kind of see that based off of

052the numbers up there of some of our subgroups indicate that on the table and that those are areas in which we're able to actually access the data and so on this table we're either first and in green or anything from 2 to8 is in Red so being top ranked is our is our goal and that's what we're always uh aiming for so we have two of our 21 metrics meaning the assessment in the group in which it applies to we rank first and that's sat evidence-based reading and writing and we have four of our metrics where we rank second all within the PSAT and sat so that means in four areas we're very close to achieving that gold standard and landing in green and then again the major concern is the three metrics that we

053see uh within the fifth grade mstep which we'll continue to focus on moving forward um sometimes you read articles uh that ports Public Schools is um the top performing School District in the county uh so we've seen that from time to time um but I wanted to share with you just a a different lens tonight of some of the work that's happening uh with our instructional coaches within the CIA and with with our building teams to just get a different uh a different frame on all of this data especially just looking at what we went what we just looked through and in the three presentations that we did throughout the fall and into the winter um and then maybe be more of a collective conversation as we move forward so as our instructional coaches began

054the work of supporting building teams and engaging our staff in data review specifically around the College Board pat8 results we started to search for comparator schools that were kind of more accurately reflecting each of our middle schools um the goal was to provide our teams with an Apples to Apples comparison versus being averaged into overall District scores and that's how we interpret this particular monitoring report so this has been really relevant and impactful for us and our building teams so you'll see here we have uh two schools uh that are in our comparator group when we look at Central Middle School in particular but many are not in that case so you see one from Zealand and you see one from Hudsonville so what we did was we identified similar schools for each of our

055middle schools based on a weighted index so we looked at economically disadvantaged we looked at the total enrollment and we looked at the percentage of special education and then we also looked at the same race race and ethnicity groups that we look at for monitor report 11 one so very similar um and that all got pulled from my school data with the help of Melissa O'Keefe in our office and then these criteria there's similar criteria that we look at in mr11 but they were determined by our middle school teams and our folks within the CIA as to what was important to them and then what we did was we ranked each Middle School's achievement against its top matching schools for the three uh previous years so not including those pandemic affected years so for example

056each School may have different set of comparators based on the criteria that again more accurately reflects who they are and what you see up here we initially ran a group of the most comparable top 30 within the state and these are the top 10 most comparable and again I'm using Central Middle as one example here um and initially looked at the 30 so we kind of narrowed it down to see who is who is our closest comparable so we're looking at schools with higher rankings uh within that comparable group to identify what instructional practices are working best working to see if we can use these practices to improve our academic achievement um for example this slide you see specifically the PSAT 8 math where Central Middle School within that group we ranked six out of

05710 um to similar schools in 2023 but C CMS had previously ranked fourth in 2019 and then third in 2022 so these are schools if we were look specifically you know at Central Middle within the state that align to those criteria and again we're not in the business here in terms of mr11 to compare schools to schools but I thought I would share a little lens on how we think and what what we look at to help try to improve alongside some of the data that we present to you so I don't know I hope that this is helpful um and then this next one here is uh North Middle did it click through yeah um so this slide shows North middle and you know when we talk with the North Middle School staff and

058we look at within our three middle schools we know that North Middle School is unique and in its in its own in its own way and it's not uh it's not the same as West or Central and and we respect that right and so we it's it's hard sometimes when we put them all into one into one group and and sometimes I I would say it's it's not fair so uh when we look at North Middle School and to their most top 10 comparables in the state um they ranked fourth out of 10 in 2023 and if we were to go back in time they they ranked second and 19 um actually in both 20 19 and 2022 so here in this group we don't see any of our comparative districts showing up um that

059have the specific makeup especially when it comes to economically disadvantaged in the percentage of special education as well as the total enrollment again this type of data is is very helpful when looking at what the top schools are doing on the list and helps to give us a more fair comparison for schools um like North Middle for example and it's and it's Unique so we plan and we are following this uh at elementary we're looking at following this at the high school level to to do a similar approach um to really narrow down to True comparatives that match their specific demographics and again um a little different than how we look at it here but really helpful for our building teams and then again this is just a middle school example we're looking at 8th

060grade math so this one shows West ranking third out of the 10 that rebound was more most comparable to them in 2023 and then if we were to go back in in 2019 they would rank third in 2019 and second in 2022 so here we only see one of our selected comparator schools show up within the search based on the criteria that we selected and I believe it might have been Hudsonville middle school so we share this because it's important to show that there's some great things going on in terms of academic achievement in this district and we wanted to highlight some of that sometimes mr11 particularly this year there's been a lot of it seemed like a lot of negative and and and some Darkness there but I just wanted to highlight some of

061the good work that's happening and when we look at true comparators and just using middle school as an example there are some good stuff going on there is some really good stuff going on and we are seeing some highlights um again I say this this may also be a time where we we look at maybe who's in the current um comparator group I know it's been a group since I've been here for seven years I don't know Bo maybe going on a decade of using that same set and and I'm not sure sure how much other districts have changed because I know we've changed and so maybe uh working through superint intendent beang and the board as you work together we're more than happy to kind of work collectively with you all if you want

062to look at a different approach and it could even be not just who's in the group but maybe you know what we analyze and how we present it to all of you so maybe a further discussion I know we've talked a little bit about that throughout the last few months and this school year but again I don't share this to get into the business of comparing school to school I just wanted to share some examples of what we do in in in our work and and what's meaningful for the teams outside of just you know the mr11 report that we present to all of you so I hopefully that was just you know maybe some uh helpful a tidbit for you um you've heard some of this before in terms of the next steps we've

063added quite a bit in your report uh probably more than we've have had it before so if you go to the actual monitoring report you'll see a lot of what I'll highlight here here in terms of what we're doing about um all of the reports that we've done this year and the data that we've been able to articulate and then summarize tonight uh we continue to focus on on our two pillars around improving tier one instruction and improving the culture and climate in all of our school communities and the things that we'll go through tonight the focus is really to impact long-term uh sustainable change we're not looking for Band-Aids or short-term fixes the stuff that you know we have gone over and I'll go over again tonight is stuff that we hope has an

064impact at each of our levels okay so when it when we look at tier one uh focus on number sense routines and formative assessments we heard us talk about that Dr jinus and Dr Shen we have three Fame facilitators in each Elementary building they lead their colleagues through cycles of learning and they apply uh the format of assessment process we're engaging in knowledge riched curriculum which you've heard about they're able students are able to to connect their learning to Real World Knowledge and they need that prior knowledge to activate and connect to new learning we have about 130 teachers K8 trained on letters um which is an intensive bless you uh ongoing PD series that goes on approximately two years and it teaches teachers how to teach students to read and also helps them Implement

065um some of the ELA resources such as youly so as of right now we have over 35 teachers that have completed both courses so you know congratulations and and Kudos go out to the teachers that are going above and beyond to do this training because we know that it's going to have an impact on our students uh we're engaging in the curriculum design cycle with the help of Dr shien's doing a wonderful job leading all of our U subject areas that are due for a cycle again we're prioritizing that based off of needs we came to a few presentations to go ago to say hey maybe we we need to look at the timeline for math so we're doing that in conversations with our leaders and our principles and our coach so that's ongoing there's

066more of a connectivity with our professional learning uh on our PD days so with October February and April it's more sequential it's Progressive it's building on one another I think our teachers are starting to feel that and our administrators are starting to see that so that's our goal and we'll continue to uh have that approach um our PD plan is aligned with what our buildings are saying with their our continuous improvement work uh we've done a lot of that with the help of Dr jinius and some of our instructional coaches Dr shien uh Courtney Hoff Jessica and Stanley that've been part of those conversations where we go into the buildings and we meet with their continuous Improvement teams we find out what their needs are and then we do our best to align the district

067professional learning to support what they say they want to take their buildings and that has been very meaningful uh for our teams uh we continue to analyze our results both with mstep evidence-based reading and writing uh we're still utilizing our screen of data at District data reviews for student support system adjustments our math and our Ela instructional coach positions they're playing a critical role um in data analysis and supporting teachers so Colin nmer Laura kby and um Jessica win Stanley in particular and they're branching I know I say math and Ela but they're branching out into other departments and subject areas as well as we do cross-curricular planning and we do Project based learning they're not just math and Ela so they've been a wonderful re resource and and thanks to the team for kind

068of thinking outside of the box in terms of what our needs were within our department to better support the buildings that was that's a big win and and hopefully we can continue to sustain that uh we have tutoring for uh students experience homelessness as well as our ESL uh Learners ESI has added uh positions to help address academic needs as well uh so we have a student academic support specialist to address the differentiation of instruction in the classroom as we adopt new curriculum and then we also increased uh three interventionists at the elementary level they provide reading and MTH support for those in need and other and another uh and also to ensure our curriculum is accessible to all students as we go through the curriculum review Cycles that's more of the tier one piece

069and then the other part is our improving our culture and climate so we're still focusing on professional learning of our social emotional learning competencies and our proficiency skills and alignment and strength in PBIS you've heard us talk about positive behavior interventions and supports we still have a strong partnership with Griffin place for providing restorative practices training and implementing that within our schools uh we're reestablishing the peer-to-peer programs in all of our buildings uh our professional learning provided uh for staff you see there's a focus on diversity equity and inclusion we continue to build on that trauma informed schools training is another essential part of what we do you've heard me talk about a lot of the school safety stuff with seag and our comprehensive threat assessment piece to help support kids proactively as they struggle

070we have our mental health coordinator in place Maryanne there's two new uh ESI positions called the Student Success coordinators and they focus on building positive behavior supports increase engagement strategies and assistance on implementing successful intervention and engagement and then they've also added a mental health specialist that works with Maryann joint and she's supporting schoolwide based cogni uh behavior therapy Crisis Prevention and suicide prevention so that's a few of the things that we have going on um to support both of those strategies and then lastly in this presentation we always want to give you an update on anything that involves changes around the programs of studies so if you remember back in January 2022 we came and presented the program of studies for approval last year we made some adjustments there was quite a few adjustments

071last year that we had review and so this year we wanted to update you there was uh not too much to update but we did make some general changes so we clarified the sixth grade ELA course description language we added some language on disciplinary literacy and Project based learning um at the high school level there were some updates to the language on graduation requirements to ensure that they aligned with the administrative guidelines and superintendent belang was very helpful working with us on that we also updated the personal finance course language to align with those new graduation requirements that will take into effect for I believe the class of 2028 and then the last couple of changes were to some of the IB language mainly in World Language and then as always we're updating the NCAA

072approved Court course list and we'll continue to inform you as a board each year as updates and changes are made so that you always have that most current information in terms of updates and the program studies that's all I have for you tonight um more than happy we have the team here Dr sh and Dr jinus as well as myself if any questions or comments for Mr one1 summary oh good I can talk I was giving others a chance first you just gave a lot of really great strategies and that was a mouthful yeah um I could I could tell you were like getting it out um a lot of really great strategies um my question for you uh as a teacher we need to write smart goals and I'm sure you're familiar with the

073term specific measurable achievable relevant and time bound how will we know that you are successful and last meeting we talked about three to five years I'm not looking for I'm not expecting I should say an immediate woohoo we're number one you know by you know a year from now because that's not going to happen but how do we know that we're on the right right track would you be able to give us a smart goal that we can then use next year or the following year to know that you know when we look at this again in three to five years we're on the right track and I think when I talked about the things that we're doing and the focus on this long-term sustainable change I know as we go through that Journey there's

074going to be wins along the way that could be tied to say smart go goals uh more short term and I think we want to highlight those I was talking to these two ladies today and and there could have been a slide on here to answer just that question around okay so some of the stuff that we're presenting to the board it's not new you've heard us say this for a couple years now a lot of this stuff has stayed the same because we're going to stay the course and we're going to be persistent but we're always going to revisit it to say all right what what isn't working is there something that we need to peel away um and we're never going to come up here with a with a new slate of of

075things cuz we we know this is research based evidence-based and we know that this has been working in in other places so that's why we're focused in on it and we've got a lot of talent and a lot of knowledge within the district too so we're hoping to be able to present as we go um some of the short-term wins and some of those short-term gains within that long-term sustainable change uh initiative so what should our expectations be know Dr Shen and Dr jini anything comes to mind in terms of well yes I think when I think about your question I asked that question back what is it that the board working through mr11 what is it that you would like us to be presenting to you so we come to you with mr11 with

076the information that you've asked for so I guess as a board what is it that we could bring to you that would help you see maybe another part of the picture because Mike uh Dr Pasco is right we have a lot of those smart goals we have a lot of that data everywhere but that's not what the this this has been this is not what what we've been tasked with so we would like to know what is it specifically as a board that we could bring to you to to help fulfill that so right now it says students demonstrate continuous Improvement in the Mastery of Core Curriculum standards with results approaching or exceeding the highest performing comparable districts and you know that and that's why we see so much red and I know you're doing

077more than just not meeting expectations I know you are and so I'd like to see those wins stated this is what we're aiming for so that as we're getting to that point because that Point's not reasonable to expect by next year it really isn't so how can we that I think the board's going to have to have a discussion around this because this really ties into this whole concept of over the long term and that's something we've wrestled with um I know the board has wrestled with what does that mean and you're attempting to quantify uh a concept that we haven't as a board you haven't really come to any agreement on so I think that's a discussion for the board to have perhaps one of its retreats to uh you know if you want

078to refine that we you know I think as you know as as ns11 has has evolved over the years um you know the board decided you know we not only want to look at our own ourselves but how we compare to other districts so the bar that we've set is pretty dog on high and and we're trying to present data at the district level um and not get as as deep as comparing building to building which Dr Pasco was trying to show that there are other ways of presenting information but that takes up you know that creates uh you know time uh a burden on time of of extracting that data and does the board want us to get get that deeply I mean we were you know we've been presenting at at the district

079level um to get at some of the stuff in a different way is going to require more time more presentations more of your time in analyzing the data which we're happy to do that but you know we're trying to find that right balance of what is the level of information to to provide you um while at the same time keeping our bar very high but District data doesn't always tell you what building level data tells us and which we use out you know amongst ourselves but is that something that that needs to be you know come to the board and does the board want to spend time that way so I think the board's got some work to do either refining this end or really telling us we're not on the right path with the

080way we've interpreted your your uh your end statement I'd like to be able to have something achievable and right we we have high goals but again that's I think that's an issue that you're going to have to take up with your fellow board members because you know you're setting it seems like you're setting up a criteria that you want to see happen I don't know if the board wants to see that happen the way you stated it and the and the trick is there are literally thousands of things going on in this District to move all these needles right and how do you summarize a thousand things and so I mean your your question has and so do we summarize to show success well and so watching this kind of pingpong from a comment hear

081a question there a response there and response there it's it's this is all headed where I think it should go which is you know our policy 1.1 is the most edited and debated policy that we've had and and it's not one Retreat it'll probably be three and it'll you know it'll take us into the fall because these discussions get complicated ated and and sometimes we to dead ends and we have to back up and sometimes the debate is worth it even at the end if we barely changed the policy because we've all gotten to a smarter Place through all the dialogue and kind of with with your help so I mean I support it and I I think over the years debates on 1.1 have been the best most interesting kind of debates and kind

082of because your question is a it's a really hard question um the board's here to produ to provide accountability just as we are held accountable and I think that I want to see you guys share your success not just show the red well but we could do that easily by just comparing ourselves to the other schools in cazo County because we're at the top of that so that shows success but what our goal is is to push ourselves farther than that so I think we have to keep that in mind that we can easily show success but it's just what we use are we comparing to comparable schools if we do that and is that is that the driver is that so it's a lot of questions and we we can show success but how

083do you want to show that success well again the challenge I think sounds good I think the challenge is do we present that data at a district level or do we drill down into the building level data and if we can easily go into the building dat level data but we'll probably have as as Dr Pasco alluded to we're going to have to create different comparator schools for each of our schools because none of our schools are the same you can't compare as an example the the uh ha Hill to a moorsbridge um without creating comparator districts or comparator schools for each of those and that really extends and expands what we'd be presenting to the board and it might be more reflective of what we're doing and maybe get us more green spots on

084a graph it is a lot more work so again I think our challenge is to try to find that balance what works for you that's doable so I'm going to throw out a question that I gave Dr jenus and I will address it to you how can we as a board best support you I think well think about it think about it come back with that that's not a well one you I would I would say you have been supportive um just just being able to have that honest dialogue you know over the years because sometimes we've come in front of you and it's been more more green than than what we've seen maybe this year and I would say in the times where we haven't when we talk about this next step slide you

085truly understand the amount of work that's taking place in this district and how hard people are working and so that's the support that we feel and we continue to feel from from all of you as as tough as it is sometimes to present these numbers we know they're not a true reflection again this is a set of comparators that we have decided on but just as my three slides show when you look at true comparators to our individual buildings there's a lot of winds and there's a lot of highlights that we you know we could could use just by looking at the data in a different way and comparing ourselves uh in a different way um but I don't know I just I feel like you have been you have been supported whether it's been

086you know more of a challenging report or it's been you know a little bit more favorable um I just continue to to I guess acknowledge and recognize the work that's happening out there uh from our teaching staff our support staff our leaders um some of the district folks that are helping support the building teams the best we can and really our effort in closing the gap between central office and the buildings I mean that's one of our number one goals in our office and our vision is for them to feel the support and feel like we do understand you know what their needs are and where they're trying to take their buildings and then us listening to that and providing uh more guidance and more resources in order for them to obtain their goals so

087that I guess that's how I would answer that I don't know anything comes to your L's mind around how the board can better support the work that we're doing and and like you said Kim maybe it's not an answer for tonight but something for us to take away and think about it give us some feedback too thank you yeah thanks Kim we appreciate your questions I appreciate your presentation tonight and I appreciate you looking at those individual schools I know that's not what we usually do but um you know it's our job to set high expectations for the district and that's why we didn't choose to be the best in kamazo County cuz that's too comfortable we've got to give it some stretch which we've done but as you said we've used those comparator districts

088for 10 years or more now and in 10 years demographics have changed um when when I look at the elementary numbers here and I compare ours to um the two districts that we compare ourselves to that are always on top I took a look at the free and reduced lunch there in the elementary schools it's like 20% and you know we're around 33 or whatever the number is and overall the district when I joined the board 15 years ago was less than 25 so I mean those things have changed and we ought to have a a fair comparison that still gives us high expectations and some stretch so I appreciate you presenting that data and uh suggesting that maybe we need to huddle and come up with something that would work better for the district

089and for us in terms of monitoring performance here so those are all great suggestions the other thing I want to say is um I really like those standard growth percentiles that you showed for um middle school and um Elementary and I know you went through and explain how you calculate those but uh to me there was a lot of good news there in terms of the percent of our students who are uh you know growing at good rates so there's there's good news here and the other thing too is if you take those top two comparator schools out of there and every measure we're in the hunt I mean we're within a couple of points of a couple of districts so there's good news here yeah and what we do learn as trustees over the

090years is that there is a degree of unexplainable Randomness in these things year year and sometimes you just turn the corner and you're looking at red and everybody's working hard um but um this question of what we could do to to help or or be more supportive the word I wrote down is is to make sure that in our feedback we're balanced um and I'm saying this of us to you because with those comparative districts the bar is set high and there's going to be red on there from time to time the thing that I love that I get from you guys is when it's red there's no tap dancing there's no excuse making you guys really embrace it and own it and so when I come back to the balanced there's we put that

091in policy and so it forces you to go through this and sometimes it's tough on the other side there's the MLive article and Terry and Randy I think you've referenced it here over the break that the state data that shows our building scores and and what was the headline it's like Portage tops the area and the number of high rated buildings and it's like well kudos it's like yeah um so anyway we just we can't get too kind of stuck on the results of 1.1 that we the bar has been set uncomfortably High and the fact that you guys Embrace that that gives me Comfort and it's it's appreciated and I and I think I mean I sense a series of good Retreats coming up I mean kind of boring on one level but kind

092of interesting but very interesting and important to just slow down and just and pick through this and and I'm going to go back to to my pet issue on here it's the um um uh the African-American students and the economically disadvantaged students with the end sometimes is low really get weird is thinking of a new way to look at that um right so I think all those things on the table and look forward to those meetings if you've got uh retreats in the future that you feel our presence to be helpful at least engage in a little bit of your time together by all means through Mark just let us know if we in a few over the years and this might be one where might be helpful to have a couple of us in

093the room for at least a little bit of time and then let you have your discussions but uh we appreciate you just being open to you know where we're at currently and and just taking a look at where we may need to go in the future yeah I just just adding to you know to your your comment about the red you know if you take a look at the the end statement there's the Improvement the approaching and the exceeding if you divide that into thirds roughly exceeding is a yes or no if if you're not exceeding it's red and and so that's just the way we've chosen to depict that I don't know if there's another better way but when you say exceed it's there's no middle ground on that and so um I I

094I guess if that's and and maybe we're trying to measure something that um is unfair to to how we're depicting with you know what what it looks like in the end as you look at the red yellow and green so there may be other ways still that we can uh we can show you how we're improving that doesn't look like it's red that's the ultimate goal and you know this is the ultimate goal here and are we on the right track to get to are we headed the right direction is what I like to see I just want to say thank you board member other board members for good discuss just now that was awesome thank you yeah I just want to reinforce what both said we really appreciate when you come with the data

095you show us The Good the Bad and the Ugly and we appreciate you being honest and feeling like you can do that and that's a really good thing we don't want to lose that we never want to lose that we don't either we appreciate the support appreciate you listening to well what tend to be the longest presentation for my colleagues once I sit down and read my text messages but but you know this is what we do this is this is our work and it's these presentations are just sharing what we do um the sense of urgency is there and I think that's another thing that the Board needs to uh understand is that we we don't we're not like you said we're not making excuses we continue to create that sense of urgency in

096our teams and our leaders we have it in ourselves and we're just going to continue to try to get better because that's what we all effect of ourselves else we wouldn't be here we wouldn't be in por Public Schools if we didn't have high expect expectations for our kids and for ourselves and you already have plans in place and have for a while so that's impressive to the strategies sound like really good strategies thanks for the questions andate you listening yeah I mean my last Quick comment is um is you know the critique of Portage Public Schools could always be well was it a district that rested on its Laurels yeah and and I don't think it is I mean I don't think you guys rest on this stuff and so um yeah Kudos because

097it would be easy it would be easy to do that and I don't think you guys are doing that so that's appreciated and respected it'd be easy to say we're the big fish in a small pond for just using that as a phrase but I love that we are pushing towards better right thank you thank you we're at our comments and Communications section we have uh no comments from citizens this evening are there any comments from board trustees well I want to uh just say to my fellow board members happy New Year and I wanted to relate a quick story about an experience I had over the break um most of you know a couple of my kids live in Washington DC and we accompanied them back there to spend several several days over new

098years's and on New Year's Eve day following church we went out for brunch in Georgetown and we're sitting in a restaurant in view of the door and at the doorway there was a family of four standing there um a mom a dad probably a high schooler and a middle schooler the high schooler had a Michigan sweatshirt on the middle schooler had a Portage invite t-shirt on that's awesome so so that I was just like oh he has a Portage invite t-shirt and as they were walking by we said are you from Portage and they said oh no no um we're from Grand Rapids but we go to Portage to run every year great talk for a few minutes more as I was sitting there I looked and I said oh wait are you congresswoman Hillary

099Scolton yes I am am so it's just to me it was great to know that we have a member of Congress whose child is participating in activities in our district I thought that was really cool so super friendly very engaging nice to see her and yeah did you invite sh wow wow and one had a university in Michigan sh yes come on so so we're all [Laughter] good thanks Terry yeah was kind of a fun thing that was a good one top that okay to all the teachers who might be listening enjoy sleeping in tomorrow again again yes I have been receiving text message after text message of various districts announcing and so enjoy that to those of you who are watching online yes sir Randy just just a quick comment I want to thank

100my colleagues for the last half hour and Michael and your team um good discussion 1.1 is kind of the heart of it um look forward to I I suspect a number of Retreats where we will get into this and um to the heart of it again um always good discussion um the second thing I will say is that this year's Community readbook is salt to the Sea um I read it yesterday uh it's a page Turner um Sarah Brown the librarian at Port Central gave this to me last week and she said just keep passing it around so I'm hoping one of my colleagues will walk out of it it it is a an absolute page Turner and uh the event uh will be in I think late March yeah like 19th or something like

101that that book is on my book club's list for this year so I'll C on that one I need a new read maybe we can pass it around the the board and can make make the rounds here the next couple of months thanks B anyone else just a couple of things I want to remind everybody that our community survey went live today and it'll be available for the community through the 26th of January and you can access it on the app you can access it online and you can access it with the QR code no you can't not yet not with the QR code so online or on your app um so we appreciate the community's participation in that and also wanted to uh thank uh Eric albertis and Central High School for uh hosting

102us for our first school visit that we had last week to discuss academics and culture at the school so we appreciate that and we've got some more tours lined up this week so uh anything else from anybody just a quick underscore that Community survey asked the community some questions about policy 1.1 other things so yes join our join our debate thank you discussion discussion okay we'll move on to the consent agenda and we have a number of organizational items uh the the first one is to designate depositories for school funds there's a number of banks listed there the second is to approve our Board of Education meeting meeting schedules the third is to designate users of the safety deposit box which includes our board secretary um the next is to designate the electronic funds transfer

103officer the next is to appoint our board recording secretary Barb Atkinson uh next is to approve our uh District legal council and again TR is our primary Legal C counsel for the board and pre approve attendance reimbursement per bylaw 0 175.2 board member attendance at board related classes conferences and workshops Etc and approve reimbursement for actual and necessary expenses incurred to attend said events and finally is to approve our minutes from the December 11th 20123 regular business meeting and closed session are there any exceptions to the consent agenda as presented hearing none the consent agenda is approved and we'll move to Assurance of District um performance and that requires the approval of monitoring report 1.1 there's a motion on page 21 yes President Van ANP I make the motion that the Board of Education accept

104as presented the monitoring report on 1.1 Global amends as a reasonable interpretation ation and evidence of compliance with policy thank you Kei second thank you Terry I don't believe there's any discussion we've discussed it thoroughly correct all those in favor of approving monitoring report 1.1 please say I I I opposed uh the monitoring report is approved now we have two required action items the first is on page 30 and that's the CTE Consortium agreement and it's on our agenda tonight it's on the agenda for kesa to approve it um this coming Thursday which requires all the locals to approve that in advance um on page 30 is there a motion please president answer whereby move that the Board of Education approved the resolution authorizing CTE Consortium agreement as presented thank you Terry is there a

105second second thank you is there any discussion hearing none all in favor of approving the CTE Consortium agreement please say I I I opposed the motion passes and the Consortium agreement has the approval of Portage school um our next required action is the planned use of virtual instruction days this was discussed at our last meeting is there a motion please on page 44 yes President Van an tro make the motion that the Board of Education approve the resolution for district planned use virtual instruction days as presented thank you is there a second second thank you any discussion all in favor please say I I opposed the motion passes and the virtual instruction days planed use is approved uh our next item is a discussion item the building site and syncing fund resolution we have two

106presenters good evening boarded superintendent Ving up in December now was like quite a while ago a month we Johnny and I came to you with a presentation giving you um information on the history of building site and sing funds here at forage what building s what building site and sying funds can cover in general we came to you with a recommendation um for renewal of our building site and syncing fund and also to expand the scope of what can be covered with those funds to include technology Safety and Security Transportation Vehicles so included in your board packet tonight is that resolution and that information that was probably in the board packet in December it's just a discussion item this time that you will take action on in two weeks so that we can move forward

107with getting the ballot language and everything wrapped up and out for any questions so many reasons to support this and and one is I think the law changed that will now allow um buses and transportation items to be purchased from this fund so freeing up general fund dollars uh for things like learning recovery and salary yeah and it will just be a renew it'll be a renewal of the same um Levy amount it's currently at 4988 Ms experienc a small roll back from the5 Level good thank you our second discussion item is new audio visual equipment for Central High School and Northern High School uh yeah this is just a routine replacement of the uh equipment in those rooms uh specifically C band both in this facility and in Northern what are that original dates

108back back to 2009 had a very good run especially considering the extensive amount of use that that equipment receives uh so the goal here is to bring the back to full functionality but also match what we're doing at the middle schools now with those more modern AB systems a lot of teaching staff share spaces between the buildings and so to provide them with a consistent experience will be nice but it also give them more flexibility with how they can use uh that equipment for instruction um we did go for an RFP uh we had uh two responses uh Parkway was the low at just a little over $61,000 this will come from the bond fund we want to reiterate this is just for the equipment we're going to be doing the configuration installation ourselves page

109is very blessed to have a couple of avch staff that know this stuff backwards and forward specifically Steve Van Brasher and uh they'll be able to handle this install without plus so with that I'd be happy to answer any questions the board has does the displaced equipment have any secondary use most of it end of life at this point in time will be um recycled but when we take equipment out of rooms we do evaluate it for potential reuse on other places in the district uh but um historically in this District we try to get every last mile out of everything we buy and frequently when we take something out there isn't much useful life left in it thank you Dan okay um so trustees I'm going to need your monitoring report evaluation form need

110your meeting evaluation and uh the next thing we need to do is um approve a resolution to go into close session and we will not be coming back in in Open Session um after that close session so there's a motion on page 63 please president V I move that the Board of Education move into to close session to discuss collective bargaining strategy as allowed under the open meetings Act 15.26% yes so very good we are going into close session and we'll wait till uh our audio visual equipment is confirmed yes start car