001thank you okay [Music] it's perfect for her that's what I like about it yeah how is it inappropriate it totally makes sense this meeting of the board is now called 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 welcome everybody to the meeting on this cold evening and we'll get started by approving our agenda are there any changes to the agenda as printed frustration is there a motion please to approve I'm getting a tour by move that the Board of Education approved the agenda is printed thank you Terry is our second nice second thank you I'm only all in favor please say
002aye aye the motion passes we'll move forward with our agenda and that means we start with the Cooper tennis report sir we have uh three items on the reports agenda and the first of that is a bond project update and Johnny Edwardsville thank you good evening tonight thank you superintendent B Lang as well as members of the Board of Education my update is brief our Auditorium refresh project from 2015 foreign dollars uh the new speakers in the high school auditoriums have been hung the new amplifiers and projectors have also been installed uh we are waiting for the new lights to be delivered we're expecting them to be delivered sometime near April the speakers have been programmed commissioned and telling to ensure that they are working properly with this phase complete we're waiting for the lighting
003control package and that's what's remaining again we're hoping to have that in April as ours are a 2021 Elementary bond this past Friday January 29th we held our ninth design development meeting and this meeting oake presented a preliminary cost to the design we worked as a team to review the line items and discuss preliminary ways in which we could potentially continue to buy some areas to bring down costs in short we'll continue to use our guiding principles as our means for decision making we would like to bring a preliminary budget allocation to the board sometime next month for the schools and finally in that project will work for the city of reporters on our site plans for both Central L and Haverhill so due to our Partnerships obviously the City Water Sanitation and other things
004we have a collaboration in terms of them approving portions of our site plan that concludes my presentation tonight or my update tonight I'll be happy to answer any questions from the board thank you second report is our monthly financial report s apologize and welcome to the new members Kimberly Ian and Emily included in your board packet was the financial report through December 31st that's halfway through the fiscal year I'd like to touch on just a couple high points but to give some of the new board members a little bit of background on this report we are required to report financials to Michigan Department of Ed on an annual basis for our finances and this report is comprised the first page breaks out our 26 digit account code which everything every section of that account stands
005for something that we were pulling back to mde it breaks it out by function code and the second page breaks it out by object code you see a lot of the budget documents that come to you for approval in a minimum format very similar to this so what this report does is it Compares a snapshot of his fiscal year compared to a year ago at this time and I'm going to point out just a couple highlights between both pages and give you just a little brief update on what's starting to happen with next year's budget um under local Revenue we are up in local Revenue compared to last year for a couple of different reasons our property tax values increase and so our state aid pays us the net balance After we receive property tax
006revenue so I'm adjusting values in the revenue and expenditures and the amendment that's coming to the board next month in February our curious kids program has ran all year compared to a previous year when we were under covid it started in late in September athletic gate receipts are up moving down to local payments from other districts this is the category that houses payments that we receive from krisa for our special education millage and our enhancement millage and our enhancement Village payments are lagging compared to last year so that's why we're down in this category we actually just received a check today from K Resa from the enhancement yeah moving down to expenditures I'd like to touch on pupil support there's a variant small small percentage variant showing but if you look at the actual numbers
007last year compared to this year there's there's a higher expenditure being spent in that area and we're really starting to utilize the mental health money the 31 and six money and so that was not showing a year ago at this time and now it's in these expenditures for through the end of December moving down to instructional staff this line and holds the function category 221 which is Improvement of instruction and we are trying to focus a lot on improving instruction through the Esser dollars that we've received and so included in this category this time compared to last year or a lot of one-time funding sources that were using the federal funds for such as letters training library book purchases for the buildings student assessment software curriculum PD work costs and substitute costs and purchase service
008costs are also up in this area moving down to Central Support Services a little further down we're showing up from last year compared to this year because we did have a very large staff Chromebook purchase that we received this year using Esser one-time funding so the second page of this report breaks it out by object and the only thing that I really want to point out to the board is the same thing that I just pointed out look at the supply line there is quite a variance there and that does constitute they have Chromebooks that were purchased so this is just a tool to use I just requested some federal money on Friday from Michigan Department of EDS so our Federal rep up back up on the revenue side our federal showing a little bit
009low compared to what we've actually spent but that's not coming out in the report that you're looking at um also just a quick update legislatures or legislators just trying starting the process to build the budget for next year already the governor put out her state of the city address last week on Wednesday night she touched on her high points of where she's going to focus for her budget and House and Senate will come through with their recommendations so this is just the starting process of where we will end up to find out what funding will be for next school year count days February 8th that's all I have any questions or just a process question then we will do our first budget amendment next month we're working on that now Beth and I were diligently
010working on it now thanks yeah the next item on the superintendent report is is not so much an item but a recognition of a board member service to the district January of each year I'm not sure who does the naming of this it's probably done somewhere at the legislative level it's designated School Board member recognition month so we'd like to recognize our board members and I'm going to step around makes it a little easier for me but we want to present board members with just a token of appreciation through a certificate that acknowledges your service and I know we have three members who are who are new and when we have like the other wave that I wouldn't say three board members that are old but three more members who have several years of service
011under their belts so thank you we do appreciate your your your continued your continuing uh and newly kind of found commitment to the work it takes to be a board member and reviewing your materials in advance to make sure that that members are prepared to have effective discussions at the board table and to uh and to ask the the questions that are thoughtful and insightful and maybe something that we haven't thought of uh as we're presenting our recommendations so we thank you for your service and your commitment to our children I hope that you're able to stay and continue to stay focused on what's best for for all of our students as we make decisions uh on be on their behalf so we have a certificate for you and also a little uh a gift
012certificate that it's a credit towards the purchase of some PPS swag from our school store that you can probably wear out in the community so Kimberly thank you thank you thank you thank you make sure I've got these in the right order so thank you sir thank you very much thank you very much can we have a nice round of applause foreign we have two uh two items to report back to you and uh I'm gonna I'm gonna you know have Michelle introduce uh the presenter on this audit but I just wanted to preface uh her comments with just saying that organizations uh that are interested in getting better take on some difficult work uh we embarked on a continuous Improvement Journey uh several years ago and and really through our through our surveys that
013we've done through the feedback that we get from our community our staff and our students um you know we kind of lay bare some of the the things that we need to improve on and so as we move through that process and understood that better we wanted to do the same thing with our with evaluating taking a look at District Communications as you know during during covid Communications became very difficult and tricky and navigating that we've begun establishing some systems of communication but we wanted to take a thorough look at at everything that we do from a standpoint of communication so we worked with the National School of Public Relations Association and I'm going to stop there because if I keep talking Michelle won't have anything to say Michelle do you mind coming up and
014introducing times good evening superintendo B Lang trustees yeah some some uh and for the new uh board members some months ago I was before you um telling you about this process that we're gonna undertake with the national school public relations Association um our district is part of the Michigan School of Public Relations Association of which I'm a board member um and so I found out about this process through my work there and um so it really is something that holds us up to National standards um it was something that the superintendent I began talking about prior to covid um as a way to again take a thorough look at what we're doing improve upon what we're doing well and improve upon even more of those things that we're not doing so well and so um
015I was I was very excited when you know after we kind of got through covid to be able to undertake this process and I'm very pleased with the results of the audit not so much because we're doing everything perfectly we're absolutely not but because now we know what we need to work on and what we have a direction for so um I'm going to turn you over to Tim Carroll who is our auditor Tim is an APR which means he's accredited in public relations since 1985 so he's got a few years of experience he currently teaches public relations and writing at Texas Christian University he's also taught at Texas A M and he was the Chief Information officer and director of public information at the Allen Independent School District 21 500 students in Allen Texas
016before he retired there and so he just has a wealth of knowledge he has worked with the National School of Public Relations Association accrediting process for about the last 11 years and I've seen him speak at workshops and other things as well so I was I was pretty excited when he was assigned our auditor so I'm going to turn um the dice over to him for the report and then I'll have some follow-up comments um on what kind of where we're going next step after this uh this audit report okay thank you and hello good evening board members those of you welcome back for some of you that I met for the new board members I'm Tim Carroll as you just heard so I had the pleasure of talking to some of the board members
017before but uh I'll be glad to answer any questions I'm going to go through kind of a brief summary of the audit you have a copy of the full auto report here at your place and this PowerPoint I've got to cover the highlights of that but I obviously didn't put all that information in there but I'd be glad to answer a question about anything at the end of this that's where we go the uh audit as as Mr had been mentioned the audit is a an assessment of everything but it's commonly we think of audits we think Finance you know don't find anything wrong in the audit you know a financial audit when people find things in financial it's always like that's not a good thing or something like that but there's audits in a
018lot of other areas there's Audits and curriculum Audits and technology and other areas just kind of look at what we're doing best practices and whether we need to change and that's what this is it doesn't really mean something's wrong as much as uh something could be improved and you actually have a pretty strong Communications program especially for the school district this size and so uh at the end of all this even though there's a lot of things in here that don't want you to leave with the impression of oh you know what's going on here kind of thing it's not that at all um but I I will point out some things I think that are interesting to work with including some things to support have some fun with okay let's see what everyone 's
019office there we go you told me to turn it on dude so first thing she said turn it on and then I'll follow instructions very well um anyway I'm Tim Carroll and then that's the group I work for the national school public relations Association it's a pool of Auditors that get called upon to go to different places and do audits so that's the group that so even though I I'm the person that visited the site and the person that wrote the initial report it's actually vented pretty heavily by especially Melissa Braum who's in charge of all the Audits and they they make changes and just like an editor would be at a newspaper or something like that so a lot of other people's hands in this by the time it gets to you and that's
020you know what we're talking about they talk about it Communications audit is kind of a program GPS for the programs you know what are you doing as well how do we get to the other point and things like that let me give you some to that than that cute little graphic so uh it's a comprehensive assessment of the current efforts that district has it's also a snapshot of perceptions about the district so it's not just I didn't just come in and say oh this is what they're doing let me look and see what's happening also I spent time talking to groups of citizens uh staff members a lot of different people I spent two days here in October doing nothing but sitting and interviewing different groups of people and you'll see some of the results
021from that but that's a key part of this whole process and then also Edinburgh the National Group adds their Baseline information on what best practices are around the country based on their observations and you may or may not know that Michigan is actually one of the birthplace of school Communications public relations it's been around a long time in the state and the association itself was almost started by some people from uh or closer to the Detroit area so it's got a long history so the audit itself the first thing I did was review all the district materials the print digital Publications things like that uh look at all the policies Communications policies campaigns this is something that Michelle and her staff had to put together for me uh probably took them about a month to
022put together before I came out to visit everything and then I also look at media coverage for the district I also do my own research I'll Google something as simple as Googling your school district and looking at how it pops up and what's going on in your District but then also looking at social media and other things and how things are interacting with the district so it's a pretty big picture by the time we get done with it um one of the things that ensbert does now ends for I mean this Association is it provides a survey tool prior to the visit and so I got a comprehensive survey of teachers faculty and staff parents and family and also the community um this is just the summary page of who Took the survey not the
023survey results but the survey results are in the report in front of you so we but we did different survey for faculty and staff different one for parents and family a different one for the community and the community one was sent out I'm not sure how it's distributed but that was sent out public or anybody in the community could take the survey actually all these were open surveys in addition to that we did interviews of course I interviewed uh interviewed our superintendent and interviewed the communications staff then I also met with key stakeholders and that was in October 24th 25th there's a list of the groups that I met with 11 different focus groups over a couple of days and that's really the core of the audit because face to face with people in a
024room and it's all Anonymous I don't take names of the people that are there when I meet with them uh I encourage them to you know speak their piece and some of the questions um you know wide open you know what do you what do you like what don't you like and people are more than willing to share sometimes and so all that information goes into the audit that there's no we don't take names and attribute anything to that but we do include all that so that's the setup for it so here's so we have findings and then after the findings we have um observations of the auditor and the team and then we have the recommendations so these are some of the key findings one of the findings of course is that the school
025district has a strong academic performance and reputation you know they have a strong academic performance because you're here and you see that but also the reputation of the school district outside the district and in the community when I talk to all the groups uh without a without doubt the number one comment that came up was this is a really good school district because people parents want their children to go to school there they get a good education we have good test scores and then the second thing that was we have a killer for regards programs and I don't know about your foreign Arts programs which is a good thing um but in in addition to that um the uh the strength of the district also in the quality of teachers and that's not just the
026teacher saying that that really is a lot of people saying that the reason why the good academic course because the teachers in classrooms like this and so that's something everybody's almost exclusively mentioned in various places when I spoke with them community support and pride is the strength of the district you have support on your bond elections you have people in the community this is not a school district that's admired in some kind of controversy and everybody's fight with each other and people are looking for a way out or something like that it's a good school district people are proud to be here you have some big companies in town as you well know and uh that's good for the school district it's really good because you have good support of those companies and corporate Partnerships
027but also those Partnerships reflect support for the schools and indirectly as well so it's Circle that really benefits the school district and then the participants the parents I spoke with and specialized programs whether it was uh Performing Arts again ipib AP programs like that parents are and students I talk to high school students as well we're very proud of those programs and thought they were a real check mark for the for the school district those kinds of things one of the things we look for are challenges what are some of the challenges the district faces common themes of talking to all these people in the survey and everything else one of the first ones is coming out of the covet environment there's still strong differing opinions on how the school district should approach health and
028safety everyone's not in agreement on that and I'm not going to offer an opinion on what's right or what's wrong but I think we could all probably agree that we'll disagree on that on that topic and it was very controversial especially in the middle of the covet crisis and so the school district's still coming out of that and still trying to deal with that and there's no questions back of everybody's Minds is this could happen again this is that may not be the last time we go through this and so how are we going to set ourselves up for that next time so that's a challenge to the school district it's not something they did wrong but it's a challenge ahead of them you are approaching a situation where you can have more diverse student
029population as the school district grows and ages your population will change you have new Financial economic economic situation for people in the community you also have uh more people who are in the community either coming from non-english speaking families or limited English-speaking families and that affects Communications from my side it affects Communications with students Communications with parents and so that's something the district's going to see more of in your senior numbers they won't grow quite as fast in a district this size but like in a disregard size 22 000 we could have 400 students move in that are not English speaking in a year so it challenges the district you won't be in that situation but it even at a smaller level it puts stress on the system you have a challenge of maintaining support
030for future Bond and millage proposals which seems to be frequent in Michigan if I did my research on that and um you're not saying that you you won't be successful and I'm just saying it's going to be more and more of a challenge uh as you as the district goes forward it's an entire country it's just the political climate is such that people are paying more attention to things like this and accepting that that's just what school districts do or that's what government does isn't really a standard anymore and so I think transparency in the district's having to be a little bit more of uh well we'll explain that later explaining how things go and then the last thing which uh your principals and your administrators mentioned are you're going to have a challenge of
031attracting quality teachers you've got a growing teacher candidate sort of shortage I don't know what the numbers were but I know I heard the number when I was here that Western Michigan had graduated a very small number of students in the last round for their new teachers and that's a small number to go around a lot of school districts in the state of Michigan the age or the teachers out so that's gonna be an ongoing problem it's a not as much of a problem Comfort District a good District like Portage but it it is a challenge that you're going to be facing in the future if more so so in public relations in the line of work that I'm in um there's a phrase we use and I was talking about today it's it says
032facts are negotiable and perceptions or not what that really means is you know we all know what the facts are but if you perceive them to be different then we have the types of discussion about it and in public schools there's a lot of facts that are there and the code would be one of them this is the fact but I think the other so we work a lot with perceptions and so sometimes people will say something that doesn't mean they're right or wrong but it means that's how they perceive it so you as government officials and us as uh and and school administrators have to treat that legitimate it's not like well you're wrong and we can't talk about this and so there's more and more challenges on that so here's some themes of
033perceptions that we picked up on uh one that is in the way the district improvements initiative the school district has been very involved with student education training there really has been comments I've talked to people staff members especially but also some parents who really felt that customer service and the culture of the campuses had changed for the better positive last couple years and I don't know the history of the school districts in previous years but there just kept saying it's a whole lot better now and things are things are better they look better and the culture of the school where culture is used on several occasions and so I wanted to point that out to you uh parents appreciate social media platforms Peach jar is one of them uh used to be if those of
034your school parents know used to come home with a stack of papers from your kids school and stuff like that something as simple as Peach jar can make parents happy and and that's not just a trick it's it everybody likes schools like it too but if we had a lot of peach jar type Solutions we'd be in a good place but um anyway parents on the survey felt that building level Communications are reliable they like building level Communications and it's a good source of information as a matter of fact most parents said they get the information about the school district from their campus that's a good thing it's a bad thing and the good thing is they have a reliable states to go the bad thing is they're looking at the school for information they
035could be getting from somewhere else and so we'll talk about that and they did when asked people felt that the board School Board information on the website and in public is organized and accessible so if you want to know what's going on school board you want to see a video of the school board meeting stuff it's out there you all the board itself and the uh probably thanks to Barb it's very transparent and accessible to people and that's that's a good thing all right so some other perceptions and the accuracy and timing of major announcements is a problem according to uh the research that I did and that doesn't mean that it's wrong all the time it just means that sometimes it gets out a little bit late and this is on major announcements not
036on on everything but sometimes it's either it comes out late or the timing of it is where people one of the issues that I heard from staff members was that information will be released at the same time the parents and the teachers but the teachers might be in the classroom teaching at two o'clock in the afternoon and then they start getting text messages or emails about what's this or what are we doing with this or that like in a school closing or something and they're caught off guard because they don't even know what the information is yet and so that's not a example probably but that's the kind of example that we had so we've come up with some strategies for a lot of these things survey participants in all three groups felt they were
037not well informed about school district finances and this kind of puzzled all of us because the school district actually has all your financial information is there it's not hidden in any way but regardless of that this gets exactly to the point of perception and fact whether it's there or not doesn't matter if people think the information is not accessible or it's not what they're looking for some research and some poking needs to be done to find out what exactly is it that they're missing then and it may be something very specific it may be right to one thing occurred and they want to know whether it's maybe the federal funds or something you know what do we do with this or that but there wasn't a single thing that came out like the school district
038wasted this money or they did this or that it wasn't like that at all it was just on the survey at the bottom of Technology information District finances came up so it's it's one of those that we need to pay attention to in some way probably do a little bit more research on staff members indicated they would like more involvement decision making and feel they should be informed that major decisions prior to parent Community Communications that is common that come from staff members but it's also relevant because that's uh you know we talked about the timing but also the decision making sometimes you can involve a lot of Staff in decision making other times decisions have to be made quickly or by this group here or somewhere else and so but once again the communication
039of how those processes work maybe need some work we'll talk about those recommendations the chain of communication from the central office the staff was identified as a problem area by teachers and administrators and what they meant by that was sometimes things come from one department or they come from another or they don't come quick enough the a lot of different variations on this but all the variation is if I'm not getting the information I need as a person I'm going to mark on my survey I didn't it didn't work for me but it wasn't a common theme like this is how to fix it so my point on that one is that when information is released from central office to the campuses and then the campus is releasing it from there to the parents and
040then to there to the staff or whatever it's not so much that's not happening but maybe it's the process itself they'll stop and look at the whole process is it order is it orderly is it does it make sense parents themselves and you're gonna if those of your parents are gonna nod to this because everyone does parents identified the school to home Communications is a problem they said there's too much of them they actually they didn't say any of them are bad they liked them all but I had one parent who had kids in three schools and she said I have almost seven different platforms that I communicate with I got my grades I got my this my her kids coach had its own platform dojo and seesaw and then of course the district's using
041Skyward so that's something I think that if it's an issue with the parents but I would say it's an issue with the parents for the last couple of years ever since these technology platforms have become popular everybody's jumped on them but it's very difficult for the school district to say we are now officially a seesaw District or something it just doesn't really it's not that simple but nevertheless it needs to be looked at if it's an issue coming up from the parents it's it's a friendly issue it's not it's not a crisis but it needs to be addressed probably and maybe some meetings and find out what can be done to try to bring that trim that down a little bit at least some other uh one other issue here or not issue but a
042key finding was the non-english speaking parents I met with a group of families and we had translators in the evening that evening is actually very interesting and one of their issues was they really stressed they really need more translation of school documents and school Communications in their native language and one of the moms stressed the point she said I don't like having my child have to read all my communications so because some of the communications come on were coming about my child he's a nice kid I mean but he he was a high school kid spoke you know a very very smoking was very well but he had to take everything that came home and he read it to his mom in in Spanish and so that kind of thing and the mob was kind
043of like this isn't really working for me completely and so but her point was well taken so your numbers aren't extremely high so you're not lucky enough to have just lots and lots of kids and you can hire a team of translators and have an office and everything else but it's probably something the district needs to look at as you continue to grow and I think Spanish is probably a predominant one coming up first but okay some other observations for the recommendations and uh let's check the time okay the school district values Communications function I want to complement the district I know at the communications department's been here for a long time but trust me there's a lot of school districts either don't have communications or Communications is really a function of some other department
044the communications community relations director reports to the superintendent which is the preferred path so she's aware a top level of things that are going on the district is kept in the loop on that and that's very important that says something about the value of the district also the fact that the superintendent and the communications director together requested this audit because I've had situations where the superintendent request the audit but the communications person doesn't know it or vice versa it's let's just say everyone's on the same team that's a good thing leave it at that um you've got a great academic reputation but what's interesting when I was here was I couldn't get anybody to really articulate what it is you're good at and that sounds like a marketing person but I would ask over everybody
045I asked I'd say so tell me about your school district they tell me that I'd say tell me what you're most proud of and then I turn that question around and say what is the one thing that you're really good at and they'd say well we have really good test scores we have great performing arts or athletic team or whatever their connection to it was but nothing could really put their hand around and say but we're in the district that like is killer for science or where the district did this killer for this or that or something like that and and I know you probably are at something I don't know what that is exactly because that wasn't my research but it would be beneficial to The District in a marketing sense and and just
046in a I call it an elevator speech sense that you know your administrators people could say you know we're the district that works with the the company in town we have one of the top you know internship programs in the country for you know biomedical science or something whatever you're sorry so that's just an observation it's not something bad it's common most school districts don't so that's not like it's a but as the district um it's in a marketable area you have private schools you have Charter Schools you've got um if I remember correctly Kalamazoo was accepting is that correct Kalamazoo has an open enrollment thing so there's other districts around you that can take your students so it's in your best interest to be able to articulate that and say but we're the guys
047that do this or that or something like that but to say we have good academic good academics and good Fine Arts sounds good but it's not uncommon every good school district in the state everybody not everybody has it but a lot of people do so what makes you different is the question I guess would take some research to look at but it's a good question and it's a positive question not a bad one um sorry Mr superintendent but one of the things is it's covet's over we need to get the superintendent the cabinet members out into the community more um he knows that I'm kidding with him but um but we do uh we do think that the district could benefit if the key administrators would be out on the campuses out in community more
048now that you know during covet everything just you know we know shut down but it is it's it's definitely to the advantage face-to-face communication just kind of kind of just a mental health check how's everybody doing and the key to that is in a non-evaluative way because what school administrators and I worked in school district for years usually when you saw a Metro District they were either doing a walk through or they were there to fix something or check something but sometimes it doesn't hurt just to be there and just have a chat with the principal and see what's going on show me around show me something you're proud of those kind of things and and not just the superintendent I put the pressure on on him but on central office people to get out
049into the campuses as their schedule permits I understand how that works a couple other things we'll go forward here the surveys and the conversations with staff particularly the parents a little bit showed a lack of trust in school district Communications I think what they meant by that I don't think it was like we don't trust the people we think they're bad I think it was more a question of we don't really know whether this is accurate information or not we're not getting the information in a timely manner and so I think there needs to be a little bit of soul searching on what are we sending out how quickly are we sending it out and how is it being presented and what platforms and that kind of stuff and we'll talk more about that but
050that came from the surveys and it doesn't mean that decisions are wrong and it doesn't mean um that all the communication is not adequate what it means is that we're just not doing we meaning you the district is not doing as good a job um reaching those different audiences if they feel that that means something's not working just like in a relationship all of a sudden it's like this isn't working but I'm not sure what I kind of thing the community relations department would benefit from a more strategic approach to Communications we've talked at length about that with Michelle already but you can get I've worked in the business for most of my career you can spend all your time doing stuff but then sometimes you're not working towards the bigger goal you're just doing
051the stuff I'm working on the teacher and the deer banquet which has to be done I'm working on retirement things and I'm working on the video and things but am I working on what the district's goals are and that kind of stuff and so and I'm not saying they're not but I'm saying is there needs to be a purpose that just like a classroom teacher needs to know what the outcome of a lesson is the PR department you know what the outcome of a PR program is at the end of a year maybe not a week but over the course of time and so there's some good strategies for that in here as well and there's a need to evaluate the effectiveness of what with that goes what are we doing now are there things
052we're doing now that don't need to be done completely or to re-evaluate we're doing maybe do a different way because sometimes you can say we want to do all these things but we're already doing this so that's a way to look at that and then the other thing is there a need to evaluate the job descriptions the current job descriptions the staff is new this year so I think of a year with the current staff the way things are I think it's great everybody kind of get settled in but over the course of the spring start looking at maybe reevaluating those job descriptions responsibilities I'm not suggesting adding staff I'm just suggesting reevaluating what people are doing so that you can move into some new areas and have some space to do that and maybe
053move some things out so and a couple of quick observations in this last page for this and then we did find there was a lack of print materials to support the school district's efforts we were kind of looking for you have a brochure if I'm a realtor and I'm old school realtor and I walk in I want to for sure something like that do I have one I have newsletter do I have a fact sheet that you could give to every principal and have it in their back pocket so they know how many students and what the budget is and things like that event calendars you're small enough where you could do an event calendar of some kind for the whole District at least big events through the year and have a nice calendar printed
054calendar things like that so print materials are not dead yet they're heading that way but they're not quite there yet so community relations needs in my opinion needs to start investing some time resources into video a video something that big districts do all the time smaller districts really don't have the capacity or the staff for it but uh video engagement is so high in social media and online when people see video they pop and people immediately drawn to it and I think for very little cost even the cost of some equipment to go with a good quality iPhone you can do some pretty good video these days but they have some equipment so that's something to look at and then the last thing is social media platforms are managed well if you actually have some
055good social media platforms but the Strategic purpose of them kind of fits into what I said earlier is it's this stuff for example I'm not picking on you because just an example but if your website if your social media is completely pictures of recognition here's your National marriage kids and these kids won the football and these these girls are going to state for something else that's great and we all like to see those things on Facebook but none of them have to do with learning per se and directly learning there's no picture of a teacher in a classroom there's no math teacher there's nothing it's always going to be the kids that win and every year it's the same because I did it myself it's the same cycle of the kids to get the award
056just different names and so you get caught in that and sometimes you'd step back and say but if our goal is let's say Science Education is the district's Big Goal this year then probably we need to be highlighting Science Education some of our Communications and our pictures and or if diversity is our goal that we want you know whatever our thing is we want to make sure that even the little stuff like Instagram and Facebook and Twitter are hitting on those little buttons every now and then you still do the other stuff but you need to pay attention to that too so so that's the observations and everything else leading up to the recommendations um do you want me to go through these then first is it keep going sure okay so I'll try to
057go quickly through these these there's nine recommendations and I'm not going to read them all to you line for line I think that'd be redundant but they uh this this talks about aligning strategic Communications with District goals and objectives you have school district goals in the board and the administration set and so to kind of lay those out literally on a board in Communications and come up with ways that the Communications Department can strategized to help help with this this district and the goal in that way strategic Communications plan looks like at all the activities and says which ones make a big difference which ones are really just spinning wheels and maybe we need to cut some off we've already talked about that there's uh that rpie what that stands for is research planning implementing
058and evaluating it's a PR thing but it's it's how we evaluate stuff the crisis Communications plan the district has a good crisis plan I think it's tied in with the local First Responders and everything else but the Communications Department does not have their own and the communications department needs its own crisis plan not different from that one and that's part of it but in a crisis and I'll use it as an example we have a lot of disasters in Texas it seems to be a theme and so if you live in the Houston area you get floods and tornadoes or floods and hurricanes and so here's a good example a hurricane hit one of the one of the school districts in Texas where my friend works and he had no power and he's locked couldn't
059get to work for three or four days so the day of the crisis he had no way to communicate with the people he's working with because all the cell phones are down but yet three schools are flooded and the high schools were closed and it was a mess this is one from a couple years ago so then PR guide number two had to be the person to go to the high school to deal with the media because everybody the national media was all over it but the first guy couldn't even get in from Galveston you know this kind of thing a crisis plan says that says if Michelle can't get in then you do this and you do this or if there's an on-site incident like let's say this gasoline Entry School and you evaluate
060you evacuate the elementary school which happens that's a news thing everybody likes that to see all the kids outside are they in danger this kind of thing well who goes to the school who stays and answers the calls from panicked moms and dads Because that's going to happen so you don't want everybody to go over there and then have nobody answering the phone so a crisis plan says this is in this situation you do this in this situation you do this then God forbid if it's a terrible situation you still have a plan you know what to do if something bad happens and you're ready to roll so that's what it is for a crisis Communications with all right um we talked about that one there one of the mentions I had there in the
061future as as the district grows in different space may become available it'd probably be beneficial to have communication staff not working at the front desk of the school district right now I don't think it's it's probably a practical solution but in the future I think that'd be a good solution to be able to get more time more on task and then also probably some more formal evaluations communication relations staff oh everybody's evaluated but there's not really a Communications evaluation tool and so it wouldn't hurt to create or use one from menswear Association has them and use that to evaluate um so many things we're talking about so all right second recommendation is internal Communications establishing internal communication establishing expectations somehow or other you know schools operate autonomously this is the way all school districts are
062not yours you know if things are going well every school principal sees themselves as basically the superintendent of that school in a good way and so it's kind of like I got things covered my kids are learning there's no problems here if you don't come over that's fine we got it under control kind of thing and so you've got 12 of those or 20 of those how many schools you have or something like that but they don't always operate and work together then as a team it's more like I'm good you're good and welcome to the meeting together to talk about it central office is constantly trying to break that out and to have people work more collaboratively and so when we talk about internal Communications it's really important for central office to take leadership
063role and to encourage everybody not just the Communications office but everybody to work towards this goal because it's an issue that came up that internal Communications especially with teachers and staff needs to be changed and the only way to do this to get everybody working on the same page the uh process for communicating key information we mentioned that already I won't go into that again keeping administrative assistance in the loop I met with the administrative assistants it was actually we had a great meeting and one of the things they said was their supervisors often go to meetings um come back and go straight into whatever the workday involves and they basically won't know for hours what happened at that meeting yet people start calling them about you know are we going to close school tomorrow
064are we going to do this or that and so they were asking more it would be nice if we kind of had an idea of what the agenda items are for the meetings whatever's relevant to us we'd be able to respond to so I think it was a good observation by them and uh face-to-face Communications gets to the idea of people getting out onto the campus is more we'll try to keep moving from that and internal email I had the opportunity to speak today with the administrative the cabinet administrative cabinet we talked a little bit about this and the notion that one teacher could get emails from three or four or five different departments in central office in the same day and of course they're teaching as well so they're taking a break and they're
065looking and here's something on this this and this and if there's ways for departments to break to that and even within the same department and I'm not picking a curriculum but they usually have a larger staff you know they may be sending somebody out on Ela and someone else sending somebody out on a math Workshop or something else so these emails coming in but there's really not coordination trying to winnow that down a little bit and so that was one of the suggestions maybe start looking at how we communicate out the let me see what this number three one of the things that uh we talked about is evaluating the current tools is is we're going to talk about that is maybe this goes back to the parent and family Communications process is maybe a
066committee of some kind of Select Committee that involves teachers and some principals and inevitably the technology department uh maybe more than community relations or both uh to talk about are there things we can do to kind of cut down the number of platforms that the schools and teachers are using over the course of time it's not something you can do like that you can do it like that but it doesn't go very well but you can gradually do that so I think that's important to look at it's a good positive thing to look at and it would address the issue that the parents brought up the uh let me see expanding expanding the text messaging what that is is the a lot of parents one of the preferred methods we're getting Community important Communications that's
067the key is important Communications uh was text messaging but School District doesn't use text messaging very much for that purpose but they're saying you know I don't mind uh getting a text message if it's for my kids school and it says you know don't forget to do this or this or that kind of stuff it's what they don't want is fun fair bring your you know bring a can of food to the fun fair or whatever so I get those text messages because they start becoming numb to the good stuff but using text messaging the two questions we ask is how do you prefer to get information and then how do you prefer to get uh emergency or critical information everybody said text messaging for that the other one people are all over the place
068you know send me an email call me you know lots of different things but the text messaging was pretty important to them so I think that's probably worth looking at anyway how the district does that engaging the public in conversations about their schools this obviously has been going on for a while but I think public schools around the country have been uh it's a big issue you go to school boards convention there's going to be a workshop on this every hour of an entire convention on public engagement and so it's a big issue one of the things that I would encourage is to look at ways and there's some suggestions in there but look at ways that you can involve community and giving input things but also look at ways you can have discussions about
069education with the community I think that's the key sometimes we tend to go out in our engagement is to give them information because we know they want information here's the bond election here's the the buildings we're going to build we're going to close this school we're going to re repurpose it of these kind of things but we don't get out and just talk about education we don't talk about learning we don't talk about you know social economic social emotional learning or things like that and you may I don't mean to suggest you don't but sometimes we get at that kind of situation we get trapped in the information out and and maybe it would be beneficial to just have dialogue with parents and dialogue with the community and that could be through rotary it could
070be I went to your Rotary meeting while I was here good large group of people look like a lot of influential people in the community and I'm sure school districts done a lot of presentations there if it's like the Rotary Club I've been this probably school people rolling through all the time but rarely is their conversation it's more of a presentation kind of thing and that maybe there's ways to to break that down a little bit and there's and if you're going to do that kind of thing one of the things that can happen too is if the district's approaching a certain issue maybe it's Finance might be a good one to look at or some other issues with the school board can certainly get behind that and help with that and help promote that
071because you represent the community in a sense you have a lot of influence in the community and um if you have you know if you're using social media and other things of your own you can tell people and say you know this is something that's important you may want to come and kind of add a different spin to something rather than just something on the school district website that says come to a meeting or something like that so I think that'd be beneficial I did talk to students the students were very interesting to talk to if you want to know they prefer Tick Tock so if you don't have Tick Tock accounts you want to go out and get a tick tock account if you want to talk to your teenagers because I have an
072entire group I said how many people in here have Facebook and one of them did because his mom made him have a Facebook account but he never uses it he was proud to say I never actually use it but I have a Facebook account but everybody else said if you want to get word out in the high school maybe Twitter but in reality Tick Tock so it you know that we smile at that as a grown-ups but in reality if that's the way they're communicating do we need to communicate with kids on that platform in some way there's there's a place for that I don't know if we started communicating too much they just moved to something else I have two kids of my own I know that works social media and video like I
073said I think the school district does a good job of that so I'm not going to hit on that too much one of the areas that's a little bit weak is when you get to the lower tier of social media platforms and stuff there's a lot of unattended houses so to speak so Facebook you've got a Facebook account for the district maybe a campus has a Facebook but you go to campus and find out on their Facebook account that it has the Halloween party on it and nobody's actually done anything since Halloween since October for that before worse than that you get lower than that and there's teachers Pages which they may have used in August like welcome back to school and then it hasn't been touched since welcome back to school now I'm not
074picking on those people what I'm saying though is those countries will be shut off turned off if they're not being used or updated or have very generic information like just name rank serial number kind of thing on there so if somebody goes there but it leaves an impression on a parent or a new person when they come there and find something that's three or four months old like who's who's doing this and so it's very hard for excuse me Communications Department to track hundreds and hundreds of social media sites but as they get down to the lower and the campuses somebody needs to be looking at those things will start saying are there things that are in there there's nothing inappropriate I have a lot of dead dead space as we got lower the whole
075thing we talked a little bit about video so on with that uh marketing Define defining the brand that's kind of what we said a brand um the whole idea being you know what is the school district known for what is the one what was our one thing remember Billy Crystal one's the one thing but it's your one thing um so I think that's something that that's not something you need to do next weekend that's something you could look at in the long term but it would be a good exercise for you you could get a facilitator you could do it yourselves and just try to nail that down a little bit and do some ties some of your marketing expertise into that rather than just doing things because it's your 150th anniversary for example somebody
076had really nail it down the district extra newsletter is a it's a good newsletter one of the things I found in talking to parents or they're people that don't get it because they live I may get this wrong they live in the county but outside the city of portage so I can show this is the Portage City people get it because it's tied to the city I think but the people outside of that space don't get it so that's probably a concern if you're sending Communications out and I know it's available to them but it's probably something that needs to be addressed or the school district takes it on themselves it just says we're going to email us to everyone of our own patrons which of course I'm assuming be additional cost because you're being
077back on the city one right now but it also might be an advantage to you too to do that in the sense of having your own identity instead of instead of you know you're part of the city every now and then it's like this is our communication this is something you could look at that I'm not saying it should be done uh real estate agent re Outreach I think you need to uh not you but I think the district could probably do a better job in packaging and preparing information for realtors who are selling in this area we know Realtors aren't supposed to tell people where to live and they're they're very good at that kind of thing but I guarantee you they get information from a lot of different sources about schools and would
078rather than tell people what to do they share that information with the parents and so if I'm totally new to this area and I walk in and I'm handed a whole pack of material from Kalamazoo schools about something or other and then I have just a one sheet here I don't know enough about you I'm not probably not going to come here and drive the community I'm making some quick decisions so I think that's important to consider and then the other part of that too is when you get people moving in there are sites and you're probably familiar with the beef if you're into Great Schools or Niche and we're always proud and we get ranked High I remember we'd always make a big deal like we're one of the top schools in the state
079in Niche or something like that but people use those online is not that uncommon anymore so if I'm moving here from out of state I'm going to go to those sites I'm going to rate and I'll make a decision about school to send my child to in this District based on that information the catches that information is coming from totally unreliable sources if six parents are angry with X Elementary School and Rhode Island there's a terrible place and the principles mean and whatever I'm going to just go right over it because I'll just trust that it's the trusted source of information and because those are third party based there's research in it but there's all the comments are third party based basically put what you want up there my advice to that is track those
080have your Communications track those and keep an eye on those and what they are you can take ownership of those as an owner they call it and track them and it's actually a good thing to do uh we talked a little bit about the non-english speaking families and uh there's a woman named Teresa Teresa's last name is they asked for two more trees supports they said if we have three Teresa forgans we wouldn't need anything else I don't know what that means I think that was a good thing but no they just left her and I say that because I just thought of such a about it you just get two more Teresa's about this I said I would share them with the boys there you go tell Teresa I said hello the Board of
081Education we had this conversation uh earlier when I was here last time with last word me about what are some things that the board can do or get involved in and a couple of things is the board is not very visible on the district website and social media and I don't mean you should be doing that that's what I'm talking about the district um and so I think there's some strategies on showing the board doing something other than attending meetings a lot of people think well they go to board meetings and that's it but you do so many of the things you probably go to the athletic events you probably go to plays you do those kind of things but you're also involved in a lot of other things and so I think more attention
082if you go to Board of Trustees on the website and look at it it's a picture of the schedule of board meetings so of course that's what you're going to assume that's what people do but I think that's something that can be looked at and improved upon because for the work you do I think the recognition might come from that something that the board has an interest in I know and certainly should look at is ways to interact with the community some of the things I talked about were things the district would do but there are other opportunities for the board to have um where they can get conversations at a higher level about things that board policy and things maybe bigger things you're looking at changing or you know as we look to the
083Future things like that because there's a lot going on there so there's a lot of different opportunities those recommendations are in there suggestions I won't go through those the last thing I want to mention on the board though is the board Academy that's something we mentioned last time we I work in a school district and sponsored board Academy over 20 years and the board Academy if you had an interest in we have new school board members here so imagine this as a potential new school board member the board Academy has always held in January in Texas in our district that Ford filing date is in February so a month for filing date and basically it's a half day on a Saturday morning and anybody that had interest in you don't have to run for the
084board but maybe that interesting for the board or just really interesting and knowing what's going on in the school board 10 to this and we would literally go through everything like here's your Finance 101 here's how curriculum Works here's how campuses are built and then board president explained what the role of board member is and then what the real-time responsibility is to that because people sometimes don't realize those things and then they would graduate from the board Academy and after about two or three years uh it got became an expectation if you're going to run for the board you better go to the board Academy and now pretty much anybody that runs for board will say I was in the board Academy six support Academy seven or something that doesn't mean they're not required to
085but the community kind of became kind of an expectation so you might want to look at something like that it's not as much work as it sounds um for you it's worked for them here I'm sorry but uh but it is a very effective program and it's a great opportunity for the board to get in front of people who might want to be board members and some people say I don't think I want to do this after all or yeah I'm in I want and then before they run they're a little bit so when they do their campaigning they've got a little bit more information than they would normally have to do things together themselves we also have leadership program like leadership you probably have a chamber of commerce or something leadership program in there
086in the school district has a leadership program well that might be something I want to look at so those are all the recommendations then we do a benchmarking against the national uh best practices and rank the different areas Communications internal external that kind of thing established emerging um an exemplary none of those are marked example only because I'm a college teacher and I can't Mark anything except I've apologize for that I probably should have but the um but those are areas that based on all the information we had but those those are constantly changing and then you know it's a team effort one of the things that I really want to stress there's a couple things before we close is Communications sounds like we're you know it's community relations but it really isn't Department it's
087more than Department it's all the administrators and it's all it's the board it's a super then everybody represents the communications after the district the leadership from that should come from community relations but if they're basically not responsible for all of it that's what I'm saying uh the recommendations you see before you could be taken you know soon or they could take over a period of years you know there's no expectation at all this should be done like okay let's get working on the scene we get it done by June or whatever you've got a presentation coming up so I won't steal any more Thunder from that but um I do want to thank you for the opportunity to speak I'd rather think that um analysis go public relations Association also thanks you and on behalf
088of them for the opportunity to do this audit it took a little while to get here and I'm really happy to present and I'd be glad to answer any questions sorry it took a little longer than I expected but lots of pages questions points of Pride for the district I didn't see anything about facilities in there did that come up at all points of Pride uh I mean facilities meaning the new facilities well saying facilities that come up at all no did not no wasn't you know it doesn't mean that maybe the first thing off their head wasn't that first thing after something else it and for those people who are receiving the Portage or in the district extra with their their comments about it or what positive or or it was useful I don't
089think it ranked the highest I think really what I wasn't asked people to rate it as much as how do you rely on where do you get your school information from and so that was ranked in there it's in there somewhere but it wasn't ranked number one to get most information online like ever like we do people do the same thing but a lot of them said I get my information from my school for my child's School the parents did now if you're not a parent if you're retired or you're young and you don't have a kid in school most of your information in the schools has not come from the media anymore that's what's changed a lot in the old days the old format when I was when I worked in South Bend you
090know South Bend Tribune we have an education section and you could always read about the schools there but that's just about gone and so now you have to rely on your own media what you're producing or unfortunately people that aren't really media people just people that just want to post stuff and so you've got to kind of be careful in that sense so but to answer your question um there's nothing bad about the the newsletter at all uh just some people said I don't get it because what we'd asked them have they rely on it they're like what is this or I don't get this or something like that so thank you sure any other questions so much a question as a comment thank you very much for the education that you just provided it's
091my pleasure I'm pretty passionate about this stuff so I agree appreciate it depth in here as I was looking through I'm going to enjoy that thank you we really don't want to just give you a bunch of advice and just say good luck with that we really want to give you the answers too so the report is a lot thicker than what I just told you because we do want to help as well so as you went through your PowerPoint and I was following along and here instead excellent excellent appreciate it thank you okay I'm going to turn it back over to Michelle thank you thank you Tara one thing that's really awesome about this process is that it's it's really not taken from a punitive standpoint as much as a coaching standpoint and so
092um we've talked a lot about what you know so none of this is a surprise to any of us and so um so we've already taken some some steps here and so just um we wanted to real briefly first of all I wanted to introduce you to uh my new team we had the opportunity after hire an entire new team so we have Kayla Miller who to uh those of you who've been on the board a while she's not a stranger you've seen her at these meetings before because she was the M live education reporter so uh and then Terry Reed who um joined our team this fall she showed up at a um a hiring event and just it all just came together very well and she's the smiling face you see when you
093first come into the into the building or if you you called the front desk so and so Kayla's Communications coordinator Terry's the assistant um one of the things that did come out so so like I said we weren't going to wait for tonight to start taking some of the actions there's uh the way the report is set up as you'll see is there's some uh some quick wins and so I wanted to kind of go let you know what we've done so far as the result of meeting with Tim when he was here prior to the audit report uh some of the quick wins that we're going to undertake right away and then what we're going to be doing as far as our next steps um so social media is one of the things that
094um you know we bring Kayla on board certainly had you know she did a lot of that work with with MLive and stuff and so uh I want to bring her up and have her just run through some of the social media successes that we've had and how we're building that following and then we'll get into some of the other things so uh good evening superintendent beeling and Board of Education um so yes like Michelle said um I want to talk to you a little bit about social media and some of the work that we've done since Tim's visit in October um so our district social media presence has grown significantly over the last six months and the graph uh ahead of you here shows our Facebook and our Instagram reach and reach is defined
095by the number of people that see something on Facebook or Instagram so the blue is Facebook and the red is Instagram and that kind of shows you month to month I go in and I track that how many eyes are on our posts and how many people are we attend potentially reaching on Facebook so one point of Pride I wanted to mention in the last 90 days 50 000 people have been reached on our Facebook page and so those are all people that within our community as well as outside of our community we also track the number of people following our social media pages and so that in the last few months we've added more than 200 followers on Facebook and another 100 on Instagram so something we implemented was throwback Thursday which is a
096common phrase you probably have heard um so what I did what I did was I took pictures from some of the yearbooks that we have at the administration office and I try to put cute engaging comments on there to engage with our community and so in this example I asked what song this student from 1997 was convincing to received lots of fun guesses from our community and so what what you see here is reach and that's how many people thought and then engagement is how many likes shares and comments on Facebook so another example was how old is this computer from Portage Central High School so people got to take their guesses as to how old that was that was a fun one um we also use our social media to promote the great things
097that our students and our staff are doing kind of buildings and so in this example this is Isaac Dunn he's a work based learning student and that's a partnership that our district has with local organizations to bring our students and give them real world work based learning experience so this example this reached over 8 500 people on Facebook and there were hundreds of comments from people engaging in that another example this is students from Woodward or excuse me Woodland uh KPS um Woodland that pairs older students with younger students so just getting to show kids faces on Facebook this reached over 4 000 people and had 172 likes comments and shares on Facebook uh the last example I have for you is actually a retired secretary this is Vivian MC Cowan she turned 100 years
098old she lives over Heritage here in uh Kalamazoo and she used to be a secretary and so we promoted her on social media District extra newsletter and the post on Facebook 6 500 people and had 578 engagements score another action to date this goes beyond social media but is printed materials so as Tim mentioned we didn't really have a brochure or good relocation guide for jakeway realtors or any other realtor in the area so you have copies of that here at your table so I designed a trifold brochure well some of the same information from our district profile and as well as a larger relocation guide which is a lot of the same material but it's just a larger guide to fit into the jakeway relocation guide so these printed materials really allow us to
099Market ourselves I actually handed a brochure to a incoming kindergarten mom this morning she said hey I want to enroll and I hand it to the brochure so it's really good to have that um people up to people we also this spring will be launching some new kindergarten and young fives enrollment marketing materials so I created three one-minute videos and that screenshot is from a lovely little kid in a young five's classroom uh using magnifying glass and well launch stores on our website and on social media in February and I also printed some posters designed and printed posters that went out to daycares preschoolers or preschools and pediatricians in the area to promote our Schools kindergarten and young fives and all of that was made possible with some updated office equipment so I am able
100to go in and take better pictures and video of kids and use those marketing materials on our website and social media so that is the end of my portion of this presentation so I will hand it back over to Michelle thank you so yeah so we so we did want to take you know those kind of immediate actions here's some other things that are are in the report and you'll see as you can kind of dig into it because there is a lot to absorb there um really working on we had a we had a process kind of from a crisis communication standard prior to covid and of course habits go away lists get outdated so we're working on updating that process we're keeping administrative assistance in form for instance if um one school goes
101into a a lock-up for whatever reason we want to make sure all the other schools know that so um so that they're not caught off guard so and we'll be looking at some of those things like how do we tax how do we update kind of that Communications process um there's some very specific uh recommendations for the district memo which is our internal communication our uh our staff newsletter so we're going to be working on making those emergency those are kind of quick easy things to do uh looking at the district extra and how we can get those get those items out to people that that don't receive it we have taken some steps but obviously it's not enough you can find the district next you're on the website we do send some out to
102some of the schools that have the neighborhoods but we'll definitely look at some of those recommendations as well and then evaluating website options um one of the things our website in there is is six years old and so at least six years old and so technology changes we want to be able to look at that and how that might even integrate with some of our Communications um and then kind of our next steps after that we're definitely going to look at how we can carve out some time like Tim said we're all at the front desk as well so that it makes it very difficult sometimes for us to get away but as we're going to take some opportunities during breaks or over the summer to be able to do that uh we'll definitely work
103on updating our job descriptions now that Kayla and Terry are here we definitely have shifted some things around um you know take a look at that cascading communication and refining that process to make sure that that it is logical that we're leaving enough time for the teachers to find out before we roll it out to the parents and um so again all of the things we've kind of done and it's it's more of like how do we continue to refine that and improve it take a look at it and then um with you so that we can um look at how we can continue to enhance the communication about what the board is doing and how you're engaged again some of the same things that Tim said so that's really where we are right now
104I'm happy to answer any questions or if you have any other ones for Tim Tim yeah and I was going to try and sneak out and drive back to South Bend um but on that we'll uh yeah all right we all appreciate the audit we really do I I'm very excited about it I think it's gonna have a really positive impact and like I said he loved to hear that everything you're doing everything wonderfully and it's great but that's that's not really how you learn and grow right it's it's by knowing uh the ways that you can improve and so um again it's very much um I'm very excited about what we have here and and there's a lot there and it's going to take a long time to do it but that's where the
105strategic planning will come in to kind of stage that and see where we have those those quick wins and then that significant impact longer terms kind of speaks to continuous Improvement here and how it's part of the culture and it's okay to say you know we got to get better in a certain area and you're not going to get better unless you bring it up exactly you talk about it all the time with students so um I think we should apply it to ourselves as well all right thank you are you ready to go into topic number two it's Improvement yes so um we're taking advantage of the people who are able to join us uh this evening and Tim flew up from Texas to be with us and aside from that we're also in
106the middle of we just completed day one of two days of our leadership development institutes and those are those have been facilitated for the last uh after seven years now by Dr KK Owen and so she's here and it happens to coincide with the board meeting date so we had a matter of good timing and Fortune we're able to give you a little update about what we're doing with continuous Improvement for our new board members I gave you a little bit of insight on this back in in December on some of our efforts AKA is going to kind of review that from her perspective of what kind of work she's been doing with the district so okay we call her kkkades Dr Karen Owen but when she goes by and I'll refer to as KK
107field please please call me KK good evening it's great to to be here and be back with you it's nice to see new faces and thank you to the board members and to the superintendent for continuing the partnership with us and continuing this really really important work what we've been working on over the years of the continuous fulfillment partnership is really improving a system it's different than an improvement project you feel you find a gap and you work on a thing a project process but this work is bigger than that when you think about how do you improve a system you fix something you spread that and scale that and next thing you know you have systems that are improving and that's really what this work is about these are the nine principles we call
108them the foundational beliefs and it's really what high performing organizations know how to do and do consistently so high performing leaders in high performing organizations know how to take actions aligned to each one of these really really important pieces of the work and you see some that we've talked about in the past build a culture around service just today we did two sessions of service Excellence work with people from the schools focus on employee engagement we are measuring that and working on that all the time measuring the important things communicate at all levels we've heard a good bit about that tonight so if we know where to focus and we know behaviors and processes attached to these now we're improving an entire system so what does that look like to improve the system first of
109all you've really got to have an image of the future that people can wrap their heads around that make sense to people and we're going to talk about that a little bit later you have to measure you have to put in place very specific actions and measure the results of those actions and one of the problems that lots of organizations run into is they're doing way too many things they're focused on everything and then they're focused on nothing the really really important pieces here in Portage is this part right here those employee student parent experiences what's the perception of students perceptions of employees what do people out in the schools and the Departments think of the services that they're getting from each other that's a critical piece those stakeholder measurements of perceptions we take action
110on those when you add that together it's taking that academic improvement work and putting it alongside culture work and service work now we have a system that is improving if you look underneath that kind of framework there are lots of leader habits we've worked for several years on building these consistent leadership behaviors actions and habits what are leaders doing every day that add up to an improving system you see some of those here leader rounding Department rounding and once again you see those important pieces that stakeholder survey are we listening to the people who are utilizing the services within our system here it's one thing to measure and that's important to do it's another thing to say here are the results so that's a consistent leader Habit to not just measure Employee Engagement but to
111roll out those results to the employees this is this is what you guys said and now as Leaders we're going to take action to improve your perception of your workplace so that's some of the the ongoing work this is a pretty basic model um this is Tony reich's model from the Carnegie Foundation but you kind of have to have a system and a cycle of improvement you see some important questions there at the top what's the problem what are we trying to solve what do we want to accomplish and then figuring out how will we know if it's better every change is not Improvement so we have to know and be able to measure whether or not a change in action really leads to Improvement so you see the plan do study act a pretty
112common continuous Improvement model we uncover something in a stakeholder survey we make a plan to improve it we do those actions and then we study the results is it better is it an improvement or not and then we tweak those actions stop doing things start doing things adjust what we're doing but you can't do that just once you have to do it over and over and over and those iterations improve a system this is a really important part of the work that we've been working on for almost two years is that right almost two years and you you may remember last year we had the first district values team EBT and they proceeded to build out with lots and lots of input three really critical elements that were aligned to the 100th anniversary that identity
113affirmation statement the equity definition and the selection of these six values that students parents employees community members all weighed in on what are the things that matter to us that we want to do every day within Portage Public Schools so the new work is District values team 2.0 that's working now in building out definitions and specific actions can we observe that let us know these values are in place in our schools so we've just begun that work we started in November we had a virtual meeting last week we're having a live meeting with that team tomorrow interestingly enough it started with the students it's like the last work did that student voice is such a critical piece and Mr B Lang has been pretty adamant about that from the beginning we want to know what's
114happening let's ask the kids that's really that's really correct so this process started with students taking each one of the values and saying what does that look like to us as students you see their list there for accountability and then you see the employee list the adults on that team did the same thing we've done that for all six of the values now we're in the prioritization phase and so you can see there what are the top five ideas for this particular definition and set of actions here's another one for passion don't worry we're not going to go through all things and again you see the student responses what does it look like to them the employee responses and we started last week and we'll continue that tomorrow pulling the most popular ideas the things
115that are most meaningful to most people and from that we'll build the definitions and the specific actions that go along with each one of the values if we can't see it then we don't know if it's happening or not the need for specific actions aligned to what we say are our values really really important so this is that overall framework you've probably seen this before in other times when I've come to present and you see here a pretty simplified version of what this looks like as it rolls along over time and what we want to focus on tonight a little bit is that first one define success remember that first chart that said You Gotta finish out a meaningful picture of the future that people can hang on to so we want to share that
116with you tonight and Mr beelang really wants to share that with you so I will stand aside and you can you can stand there I'm going to work from over here okay it has been alluded to we've been working on a lot of things over the years we've been working on things for school Improvement the reports that I've been presenting to the board at the end of the school year and my goals and objectives have been formatted around the pillars that we work on and uh and so all this work we've we've been trying to figure out how do we capture this in a simple one-page document and that's where this whole idea of this plan for lack of a better word yeah we're still working on branding this but we've reduced our planning to
117one page a one-page document that we can share with you as a board with our community with our staff and with our students and so let me just go through the elements that are on here and how they fit together so it starts at the top with the board's Vision so this is the vision and I know those that are probably watching uh remotely and sitting here but our vision is to be an exceptional continuously improving learning culture committed to all that was the board's Vision the board created that Vision probably seven or eight years ago nine years ago now but it was one of the first things that happened shortly after I arrived where the board was really thoughtful about what do we aspire to be and so over the long term so that
118that's the statement that we've been using throughout the district as we work with our various teams and organizations so AKA mentioned the the formation of the district values team they there were three things that they were responsible for and they're all up here on the chart the first one is to and it was in conjunction with celebrating our 100th year anniversary we said what can we do to begin to unify the district I mean we have two campuses for our Secondary Schools they're very competitive uh we have eight elementary schools three middle schools that that you know operate very well but we've never worked together in unison and so what are those things that we can do to help bring us together so there were three things that that came out of that discussion one
119was the values that KK has already talked about the other was what is what do we aspire to be as we begin our second hundred years of existence so this is this is a statement that's intended to help bring about the Boar's vision and we're inspired to be a community grounded in fostering strengths growth and lifelong learning every student every future so we want to make sure that every state we understand who the kids are that we're serving what their needs are what their strengths are and what is it that they aspire to be after they leave Portage Public Schools so that was our our it's been referred to as our declaration statement our aspirational statement um inspirational statement whatever you want to call that it's designed to be feeding into the board's vision the
120third element after these two was our commitment to equity as we were having discussions around Equity people had different ideas of what that meant so we use the process that through the district values team that included surveys of parents surveys of community members students and staff we had rollout sessions of that throughout the last 16 months or so where we got you know face-to-face feedback from folks and then we assembled as a subset of our district values team a writing committee that processed all the information we received and landed on this this is pps's definition of equity Portage Public Schools is an inclusive environment providing each individual access to resources and opportunities for success that's the lens that we want to use as we talk about equity for our students so those three elements and
121then sandwiched in between there is the standards of service Excellence this is one of the first things we worked on as a district when we started working with student education is when we provide service it started with central office because central office provides service out to our buildings what is it that how do we want to treat the customers we serve we we came up and again we use people from out in this in the uh serve other individuals we use their secretary's Frontline contacts at our buildings to help create these standards of service excellence and there's five of them here provide service with respect act with Integrity only interaction communicate clearly and be part of the team each one of these has backup information that has more detail about what they mean and we
122just most recently Revisited this and made a few revisions based on practice for the last few years and so these are this is the latest iteration of that and I'll explain where why it's located here but as as you Circle back at the center of this chart and Central to everything we do is how we organize all of our efforts they're organized around four pillars with Student Success being first people and culture which deals with our organization the people that work within our organization service Excellence how we serve our customers you know our parents our students our staff service and then the last pillar and you'll notice this is if you remember some of the final report that I give every year we added this fourth pillar of stewardship knowing that we get a lot
123of resources we've had a community that's been very generous in supporting us our facilities operationally through the enhanced millage millage enhancements and our special ed millage countywide so we have a lot of support we feel responsible those resources responsibly and so we felt that was important enough to create its own pillar so all of the work that we do we bundle into one of these pillars so this is the district level look at this oh let me get back I was going to say service the standards of service Excellence really connects most closely with service providers and it's to stewardship because that's where most of our interaction with the community takes place so that's why that's located here and we overlaps these two each one of these pillars and a lot of this other information
124that's on here has backup material so if you dig more deeply you'll find out how this works at the school level so all of our schools continuous Improvement plans are aligned to these four pillars primarily around Student Success of people in the culture they'll have they as each building develops their continuous Improvement plan um they will set goals in most of these areas some in some and some in others but for sure it's Student Success and what they're doing to improve their culture within their buildings and then they'll be sharing this information out with their parents with their students with their staff outside of the the smaller teams that are working on those initiatives we're doing the same thing with each of our departments in central office and creating action plans goals I guess I
125should reverse that goals action plans and then a monitoring system for all that we're doing with a lot more detail behind what's up here now so we're launching this information tonight with the board later this week we'll be sharing this uh with staff and with the community it'll be on our website and uh and then this poster will be we have posters for each of our buildings so this will be posted throughout the district and the administration building so so we can explain what we're doing how we're organized the things that are important to us and uh and we've also created these little cards that we'll be Distributing I'll give you you guys will have first for this so these are just kind of a snapshot of that that you can use as as you're
126speaking to folks out in the community and kind of captured most of this and KK what did I miss Ed very well Mr villain this level of work is really what high performing organizations who are already pretty good they pretty much stand on status quo but people who are continuously improving look to do work like this this is a confidence Builder this is a way for people throughout this community to say I know what they're about and I know how I fit into that for employees they can find themselves in there it really reduces anxiety it's pretty transparent and it was a pretty intensive process to get here to make sure that it was right and that it really did represent all those perceptions and what people need and want from Portage Public Schools I
127remember because this number will be in my head forever the equity definition that one piece alone on the first serving we did got over 1600 recommendations what should be in what you see in that green box and it takes a lot of work to get down to what is the right thing to put in the green box so we're there now and this is continuous improvement work at a pretty high level now we have to make it come true now we have to live it so an example of that is what you see on the bottom those those values once we get the definitions and the actions built out we should be able to see accountability in action today we'll be able to see respect and action and know what it is and know what
128it is not and then in the words of the kids and so how we're going to hold each other accountable for this wasn't that one of their first days I did kind of a softer roll out with my student Advisory Board and that was one of the things they looked at Lydia's values is what what happens if we don't see this in action or someone's violating this and it was like we've got to figure out a way to make sure that we communicate to the people that can do something about that and so they're already thinking ahead of you know going to be times when we see things that aren't right and um or the office and you know when we see someone doing what they should be doing how do we recognize that and
129make sure others know about it exactly but yes students are you know the engagement we've had with students around this has been fantastic I mean they're very insightful not afraid to speak their mind and are pretty darn good at being accurate in what they're what they're seeing and communicating they are they really are so this is a big step and and I think it's been well done with lots and lots of input and will continue and we'll get back to work on it starting tomorrow so when you are planful intentional with leader habits with um what are our standards of service excellence what are our values how do we Define equity all of this will drive the decisions that are made every day that leads to Improvement now we're building a system of continuous Improvement
130by making good decisions based on what we've built out and align our work to thank you for giving me the time to be with you for a few minutes tonight and give you this update and I'm happy to answer any questions okay may I ask a question yeah you're right ahead well I mean first of all thank you and um getting to this point is not easy and so who knows kicking with it um my question for ukk what Mark chiman too um you've been working with us for a few years would you reflect back and then reflect forward and just name a few of the key kind of milestones kind of in our in our journey from your mind that we've gotten to and this is going to be one of them I'm sure
131but are there a couple kind of big moments and then reflect forward and I'm I'm not going to make you commit this in ink but what might be able to expect as some significant milestones in the next year too good really good question and I think the first thing that comes to mind is the first time I met all the leaders here and we first begin to look at and talk about what is continuous Improvement what are leader habits what is a framework an execution framework for these processes which was pretty new to most of the people on that on that team and they dug in I mean right away we we started and one of the one of the biggest and still is to this day one of the most powerful practices that has
132become a leader habit is rounding leader rounding on employees when that becomes a part of your culture that is an expectation that's big it makes people want to work for this organization it makes leaders want to be in this organization and then when we when we grew a little bit and we started stakeholder surveys a lot of that responsibility falls on leaders again that's why the leader development is such a critical piece they have to take their results analyze them roll them out to everybody and that's that's being vulnerable and transparent in front of your people here's what you said about my leadership and where where I'm doing well as your leader and where I have opportunity for improve and now by the way can you give me some suggestions for what that Improvement looks
133like and we graduated from there to the parent and student surveys where now whole whole faculties talk about this is what the parents said we're doing well and what they'd like to see us improve what can we do about that so being able to take ownership just a step at a time the whole piece about service Excellence how we built the standards with full participation just like this was done a lot of ownership they're a big team of people worked on that and and learning those service Excellence kind of must-haves always behaviors one at a time from the 510 rule to the 62nd grade aiae and ate it and all the way up and we we did we actually did a self-assessment today with two different groups of service providers because we have to reflect
134where are we so I can see huge growth I think going forward and I'll I'll be quiet here in a minute Mark let you take that but I think one of the things that we heard in the presentation around Communications there's a culture shift that has occurred here where people are not afraid to be transparent leaders are not afraid to be vulnerable and they are learning leaders they learn new stuff every time tomorrow we're going to be doing a really important piece that's part of the future how do you analyze the comments that you get on your on your surveys some of those are painful because people are critically they're honest and that's a pain point for leaders you get stuck on that negative comment you can't see anything else so we're going to begin
135that work tomorrow how do you keep that in perspective take the emotion out and really look at what people are saying and what's behind that what could have driven someone to to make that comment what were they really trying to say to us so that's some of the work I see in the future is clinging to this because this is that sticky piece a meaningful vision of the future that's sticky that people can attached to what would you add sir well you I probably shouldn't say anything after what you said but you know I think the biggest challenge is making sure tactics that we the skills that we've learned become part of the culture and and happen consistently throughout the district I mean that's I think one of the toughest jobs that exists in a
136school district is are at the building level leaders because they're caught between us at the uh and I shouldn't say in this with this way is us but but it's between central office on one side and and teaching staff on the other and trying to effectively navigate that and and that's a tough position to be in and that's where a lot of these practices have to really take root in order to be part of our culture so making sure that that happens consistently across the district is is probably one of our biggest challenges uh moving forward to to if we really want to address the culture you know it's not you know doing the surveys for example is is one thing as you've heard but then doing something with that information in a in a
137thoughtful and organized manner is probably more important than the survey itself especially if it's going to be sustained over time so that's uh that's how I my we're taking bold steps one of the things we're going to do the um District Services survey it'll launch very soon that annual survey but we've been talking about this for a long time and we have this has been driven by the Departments to really expand who takes that survey in a lot of school districts it's the principles the assistant principles that's it Department serve schools and these are the people taking the survey and then people said well what about secretaries they interact with maintenance Transportation attitude activity directors athletic directors now we've expanded it to it's everybody in all departments because these people said you know what we
138serve each other let's all give each other feedback Department to departments so it's I would say I think Portage is going to have the most people employees participating in the district Services survey that I've ever seen no one has ever to my knowledge in one of our partner districts said let's everybody take it let's let all the employees in the Departments we want the feedback from each other so remarkable things are are happening and we're trying to get our participation rates back up again you know I think parents got over surveyed um during covid a lot of uh I mean you come home from the grocery store and you get a survey so we're trying to find out straight how do we strategize to uh to get participation rates back up so our data is
139you know is more reliable from them so that's a that's a short-term challenge that we're already working on and getting more students and staff and parents to participate in surveys I like what you said about meshing the communication at different levels and how that highlights exactly with what Mr Carroll shared it seems like both of these go so hand in hand thank you there is a lot of overlap I mean you know Communications and challenges there in the process that are used there with the process we're using here it's we're trying to keep the work so it's not separate work but it's part of the work well thank you thank you thank you thank you appreciate service to the district thank you good to see you thank you nice to see you glad to be
140here okay we'll move to our comments and Communications section yeah I would Terry reader guidelines for public participation I meant at board meetings board welcomes Community input at our board meetings and recognizes the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on District matters permit fair and orderly public expression please conform to these guidelines when addressing the board attendees must register their intention to speak during the public participation portion of the meeting by completing the speaker registration form at the beginning of the meeting individuals may not register others to speak ERS will be recognized by the presiding officer and may not be called in the order in which they have signed up to speak ERS are requested to State their name address and group affiliation if applicable limit comments to three minutes direct
141all comments to the board and not to staff or to other participants speakers may not yield any of their speaking time to others provide a written copy of your comments and supporting documentation through the board secretary if available and professional manner to model the behavior and expect it according to students refrain from mentioning any student by name contact the superintendent directly regarding Personnel matters Board of Education meetings are held for the purpose of conducting the business of the school district and are not considered to be Community meetings board members are not obligated to respond to issues raised during public comment normally such issues are referred to or are followed up on by our administrators thank you Terry we welcome our first Speaker tonight uh Daniel Smith welcome hi I'm Daniel Smith at 3022 Fleetwood Drive
142in Portage a member of Portage linking our voices or Portage love uh speaker at a previous meeting was complaining about a book which was apparently it was in one of the libraries seemed to insinuate that the Portage Public Schools was a disseminating pornography I think this is a gross disservice to our board to our Administration Librarians and teachers I haven't read this book that was in question apparently the movie Precious was based on it and I haven't seen the movie either but it sounds like a very difficult and disturbing read because of what happens to the protagonist but it is wrong to read this difficult passage by itself without context in order to smear the district as allowing pornography it was unbelievable and ironic also the the fending book passage was read aloud allowed given
143its horrific graphic nature I I hope no young children were in the physical audience or listening online to that talk from what I understood and the book was last checked out in 2014. it's not like it was required reading for first graders I mean let's have some trust respect and consideration for our the professionalism of our teachers and our librarians but let's face it our society has some ugly aspects however problems in our society won't go away by simply removing any book that attempts to Spotlight them it's appropriate and necessary for intelligent and mature students to examine difficult even painful issues in a proper context with proper guidance most importantly I'm in in support of keeping our schools and libraries abundantly and inclusively stocked with stories by from and for all who may see themselves
144in those pages so I want to commend and thank our teachers and our Librarians they're doing a difficult job balancing the need to bring new ideas to our kids with the beliefs and sensibilities of parents against the backdrop of a polarized Society um real quickly I want to read an opinion of a PCMS middle school student asked me to read this for her quote if we understand about what happens about that stuff we'll know how to deal with it in the future she says 80 percent of women are sexually verbally or fiscally assaulted in school you can't ignore these things it's dumb because these things happen all the time there are guys in middle school that go around hitting girls bottoms these problems are probably occurring even more because people don't know how to deal
145with them if you're uncomfortable by it by this book you don't have to read it unquote finally the fact that this book was last checked out in 2014 should lead us to the conclusion that the real problem we need to deal with is not how to sanitize our libraries on the on the contrary the real problem we need to deal with is how to get more students into the library checking out books welcome hello my name is Kelly Sackett and I'm going to speak about something that was sent to me today from a parent of a West Middle School student and it was a survey that was provided to the students by the ELA teacher and it's a social issue survey so I'm going to read a bunch of the questions that were within the
146survey Should teens be banned from trick-or-treating should the penny be retired should the driving age be increased to 18 should the breeding standards be changed for purebred dogs should sugary drinks come with a warning label should schools go year round our athletes overpaid should zoos be abolished should dodgeball be banned from the playground or physic class should the school year start later for middle and high school school day um should individuals be allowed to clone their beloved pets does jail time work to rehabilitate juvenile offenders does global warming really exist should the death penalty be illegal should minimum wage be raised should beauty pageants be allowed for small children should cell phones be banned in school do the police use too much force should parents vaccinate their children do helicopter parents harm their children should
147all students get a college degree should school lunches be regulated to become healthier our immigration laws too strict are humans the cause of climate change is feminism even necessary in modern day Society are kids getting too much homework should people be allowed to carry concealed weapons should animal testing be allowed is the government spying too much on its citizens should there be stricter laws for animal abuse and animal cruelty as nuclear energy a good solution for fighting our environment and energy changes challenges in the U.S Should teens be allowed to play violent video games should sports teams have more safety precaution and laws to protect players is music therapy an effective way to treat patients with serious illness will the immigration reform be beneficial to the U.S are humans having an impact on reducing the
148number of endangered species what music does music with explicit content cause people to do bad things this Society addicted to the internet should the government do more to help the homeless do sports fans go too far can teens resist peer pressure do genetically modified slash engineered Foods harm the human body are people obese because they're lazy did social media cause people to lose basic social skills should brick and mortar schools be eliminated do magazines promote an unhealthy view of the human body I'm just curious as to what this has to do with 8th graders that are in ela thank you Kelly our next speaker is Veronica Egan welcome thank you um hello my name is Veronica Egan and I have three children attending Portage Public Schools I'm before you today to offer my two cents
149about the book Push by Sapphire in the place in our school libraries personally I found this book very compelling because it lays bare many of the issues in our society such as blaming the victim of it for abuse shaming the person for feeling complicated and mixed emotions about the abuse and the abuser is especially if it's a family member as well as our culture's propensity to ignore and neglect marginalized citizens in addition to all of this the book is also filled with love joy and hope as the character precious is allowed to be your whole true self through education and finding belonging with others who see her for more than her abuse because of all the points mentioned above I feel is important for our students to be exposed to the complicated issues that books
150like push bring up I feel this is an Avenue to forming the skills necessary to navigate the uncomfortable questions and emotions that arise rather than try to hide from them additionally it is important to have stories such as this available to students who see themselves in Precious because unfortunately this does happen to people even in our community and for experiences to know they are not alone and are seen yes this book is a burrito read at times and can be very upsetting and maybe even triggering in its depictions of sexual violence for me these scenes help me feel very deeply for precious as well as understand her and the decisions she makes throughout the book now I fully realize that my comments are based on my own very limited Viewpoint so I am so thankful
151that we have highly trained and educated Librarians teachers and administrators to weigh the merits of the content books that are in our schools I trust that they have the best interests of our children in mind and will make the decisions necessary to protect our students from material that is not conducive to learning while also bringing in content that will broaden their minds and allow them to grow on a personal note I am trying to get to Beyond an US versus them mentality so if anyone would like to sit and discuss a book like push please let me know I welcome the opportunity to engage with others thoughts and opinions especially if they are different from mine in the hope that we can find common ground and connection thank you and I have a book here
152if anybody would like it thank you Veronica our last speaker tonight is Tim Earl welcome hey Tim Earl 6862 Shallowford way long time listener first time caller who came here to uh to thank the board for the job you do particularly those of you who've been here for a while I know and I've seen that it's become a thankless difficult job these last few years you've endured verbal abuse from people airing political Grievances and you don't deserve that when we moved here in we chose Portage largely because of the schools and we're still happy with Portage Public Schools it was great to hear an objective assessment of that earlier today just to let you know my neighborhood is full of Kellogg's Executives and doctors who work in Battle Creek and choose to live here in
153Portage because of our schools that says a lot about our schools I came here expecting to hear the usual drama that we didn't hear this week drama and misinformation about lgbtq issues in PPS and I just wanted to let you know that I am very glad that PPS supports their lgbtq students and faculty and the fact that some people are upset about it just shows that it's needed to listen to some people you'd think this is really controversial but if you talk to kids and I talk to my kids about it you'll see it's not they don't care they use they use preferred pronouns without even thinking about it they don't care who uses what bathroom how these kids go with the flow like that parents who are uncomfortable with lgbtq people are basically just
154projecting on their kids a little older than I look old enough that my parents grew up uncomfortable with dark-skinned people and thought that segregation was just something just the way the world worked today's kids are going to look at their parents and their grandparents the same way I look at my parents I love them but I'm disappointed that they clung to those outdated and intolerant views think about what your kids and grandkids are going to think about you in these issues in the future kids need to be exposed to people are different from them quick story to wrap up my time when I graduated college became a Navy officer I met graduates of VMI in the Citadel institutions at that time were just being forced to admit women and there are a lot of angry
155alumni who had a lot of things to say about that and every single officer I met that graduated from one of those schools was a less effective leader because they didn't know how to deal with female subordinates peers and uh senior officers we can't shelter our kids from lgbtq issues and then expect them to become successful in college or the workforce so I applaud you for what you do on that and uh not trying to force people back into the closet again most of the community thinks you're doing a good job keep it up thank you for your comments Tim yeah thank you our speakers this evening and uh take some time now for board trustee comments does anybody on the board have any comments this evening foreign [Music] as well as more information about
156your student work and it's always good to be up to date about that so thanks for that um also Johnny I attended the play at Portage Northern yesterday and I can assure you that the microphones are working really well and I'm looking forward to seeing SpongeBob according to Central so anyone else said my comment s well I have a few um number one as we regret receiving the resignation this past Friday of trustee Kurt droppers after eight years of service on the board we will be accepting applications to fill this position through Friday February 10th at 3 P.M the link to the application can be accessed on our District home page and I will be reviewing those applications at our next scheduled board meeting on February 13th where we will either fill the position or
157schedule interviews for February 20. this process is governed by our bylaws I also want to mention the annual K Resa Career Connect event is scheduled for Tuesday February 7th from 5 30 to 7 30 at the Air Zoo this event is for middle and high school students to explore CTE options education for the Arts as well as early middle college it's a fantastic event it's usually very well attended if if people are not aware of that now I had a couple of shout outs the first is about a sports team you normally don't hear about and that's the Portage Central archery team Under head coach John Dunlop a parent let us know that that team finished first this past weekend at the Howe Bullseye blowout tournament over 600 students participated in a tournament including teams
158from Portage Central middles and in West Middle Schools so congratulations to our archers and finally I want to recognize Jeff White Grant and his students including his student production manager Robert Hayworth and their CTE engineering and wood technology class at Portage Northern they were chosen to fabricate the seal used on the podium at the governor's inauguration the project required using classroom knowledge and problem solving skills and the seal was fabricated on a laser engraver but uh what a what an honor and a tribute to those students in that class so there's some good news more good news of things happening at Portage Public Schools okay we can move on to the consent agenda and all we have is the January 16 2023 organizational meeting Committee of the whole work session minutes are there any uh
159exceptions to this to these minutes everybody's good okay the minutes then uh are approved from January 16th and will now move to our first action item tonight which is replacement of the wireless system in our in new middle schools is there a motion please on page 17. Serena Antwerp I moved that the Board of Education approved purchase 170 access points and management system from Vector Tech colleges again in the amount of 110 560. thank you Terry is there a second second thank you all right welcome there you are good evening everyone I apologize I'm a little interacted with some sinuses today it's not covid so but uh I sound a little uh amazingly I apologize um as I indicated at our last meeting we opened up proposals for replacement Wireless Systems over break and immediately
160went to homework to review them we got six wonderful proposals and we spent a lot of time getting detailed product demonstrations from the vendors interviewing them doing reference checks and processing the proposals with a couple of outside independent analysts that give us their feedback on proposals that we received I'm at this point in time I'm recommending that we go with Vector Solutions they're quoting a Ruckus system I've spoken to over five school districts that are very similar reporters that use this exact same system they're all very very happy the one thing that I heard more than often than not from my fellow colleagues was once the system was installed they haven't had to do anything it just runs and wouldn't that just be The Proposal itself that Vector wrote in my career might be one
161of the best RFP responses I've ever read they really did their homework they asked for building Maps before they designed a solution we talked a lot about our environment and the interference problems what we're having at the middle schools and they actually recommended an access point that avoids the lower bands more aggressively in favor of access points that focus more on the higher bands and as it so happens those access points are cheaper which knocked off about twenty three thousand dollars off of the base bit anytime a vendor does that much homework ahead of time before just throwing a response at us that impresses me um and I said the reference checks went well so we're going to proceed we had our first engineering meeting with Vector last week on Friday they have everything in
162stock and ready to go with the exception of the controller but they are letting us borrow one of theirs so we can get the early config up and get everything staged and ready to rock and roll we are scheduled to do our install over midwinter break and the goal is to have both middle schools replaced before the students come back from that break that's a very aggressive schedule but it's what needs to be done we might not get to all the access points just because of some of the locations we have to bring lifts in and perhaps make some custom mounts but for sure in the academic areas of the buildings where we have the most problems we can get those done um and then you know we're going to run them through the month
163of March and it all goes well then we'll start the actual transactions with Vector in the month of April as I mentioned at the last board meeting we have submitted Eatery applications for this equipment and I fully expect it half of the purchase price will be refunded to the district so that's a very positive result the other thing I would tell you that right now I have released a second RFP for an additional 700 access points if this solution goes well then it is my intent to get a bit more aggressive and this summer try to get the rest of our Cisco canopy that is quite frankly out of date of The District in in button this project up the Cisco system is starting to have some blips makes me a little nervous from time
164to time so I think this is the appropriate way to go I'm obviously not going to issue any kind of a purchase order anytime soon but I will be asking the board for preliminary approval on an action them at the last meeting in February and what's driving that decision is so we can also apply for e-rate funds for these access points and get that 50 discount I just need a dated board action in the month of February to get that application done I don't think we're going to need 700 access points to get the project we found the rest of the district but I'm padding my numbers right now to look at the site surveys done one thing we'll learn after the system's installed the middle schools about a weekend Vector is going to come
165back and do updated Heat maps of both middle schools while the students are in session in the system's under load so we can make any final tweaks and get more runtime and tell for what we want to do in the remaining buildings in the district so very excited again I'm not making any guarantees that's why we're doing a month-long trial but Vector has done these type of installs in schools a lot like the ones we have here in Portage they've been very successful and I have a lot of confidence that we're moving in the right direction here and with that I would be happy to answer any questions the board might have done you did say that um going to sell the present system yes yeah we should be able to find a market for
166it this system is frequently out of stock and a lot of smaller businesses in lower density environments this is a real popular system because it's such it's really cost effective so good to know because there's nothing wrong with the system no I don't think there's anything wrong with the system I really don't um you know we do have the interference issues in the middle schools but interestingly enough we have the same lighting system at West Middle School um and we see the same interference patterns there with that lighting system but not nearly to the level that we see at Central and North so I think it's the lighting system plus part of the construction in the building and my you know I think it's two things I think it's three floors stacked on top of
167each other so we're getting not only you know competing noise coming in from the sides but also coming in from up and down and there's also a lot of prefab reinforced Concrete in the new schools and all that extra steel tends to wreak havoc with radio waves I would still love to get an actual RF specialist in Industry to come in and take a look at it I have not found someone yet I've spoken with very good Wireless Engineers but I would love to get more of a pure physics orientated person to come in and take a dive at it that way and if I find someone will do that but still we have to move ahead with with what we're going to do here and how long has this been going on over a
168year right it's been going on since we opened the buildings it hasn't been consistent um you know and one of the reasons why this has taken so long we opened up North Middle School and started debugging the problem but then covet came along and we all had to shoot years and then we started to open back up from covert we saw the same problems at Central Middle School and then we realized we had a more serious problem and if the board recalls I did bring a proposal to you earlier to replace the systems as a trial but due to supply chain issues back then we were never able to get the parts we needed to do that so we finished last year strong we started this year strong and then it just picked up again
169and it and that's been honestly the most frustrating thing for me in trying to manage this with the technology team the problem hasn't been consistent you know and there's more than one factor in play and that makes diagnosing things very very difficult but like I said we brought several different outside consultants in to look at the existing system they verified we've got it set correctly our systems are good they keep saying we don't know why it doesn't work it should just work and that's great to hear that we did it right but it's also not helpful in actually you know moving forward with a solution I was contacted by multiple people several community members from our community mentioning concerns about the LED lights interfering and you mentioned that yourself that there is you know similar
170with West but we have multiples floors in the middle schools um how would having this system counteract that or is it just going to be the same problem continuing so this system does two things differently that's a great question the first thing and this is one of the things that has really impressed me with the vector response is they looked at that problem and specifically it shows access points that avoid the bandwidth where the interference is the interference is limited to the lower bands and this solution is going to more aggressively Target the higher bands but the other thing with our current system it can only auto-tune itself once a day and it's during the middle of the night because it actually has to take the access points offline to do that work taking those
171samples at night when all the lights are off and no one's in the building hasn't been very helpful this system can much more aggressively in real time tune the radios while they're being used to combat any different waves of interference that might come into the facility and so those two things will certainly help Okay um couple quick comments and they have a follow-up question in the comments that I received from community members um I received mentioned that apparently Vector is an excellent company to work with so that was I was very pleased to hear that and see that I also someone commented that using e-rate was extremely wise and a really great idea so thank you very much for that also um you mentioned an initial install is that going to operate as a test
172run before we put a buy a full system with this and so if it doesn't work what will happen we'll abandon it and have to you know try something different okay we have we are obligated to provide reliable Wi-Fi to our middle schools yeah probably more than any other level in our curriculum the middle schools rely on online curriculum and teaching tools I mean all levels do but even more so at the middle school level but again with all the homework that I've done all the people that I've talked to you know I'm as optimistic with this proposed solution is I think I can be at this point in time like I said I do have an RFP out for the remaining of the parts for the system and I'm going to ask for board
173action on that in February but I'm not going to act on it until we know for sure the solution is going to work I just need the board approval so I can get the e-rated apps in and reclaim that money yeah the the biggest concern was if we're not changing the lights is it just going to continue the problem we will know very soon and we will find out that sounds like an excellent idea um and as I said there were many positives also that came through to me so I appreciate that thank you any other questions for Dan just a comment and we really appreciate your diligence and trying to get this taken care of and I know you've been around the district for a long time more than 20 years you've been part
174of so many technology move forwards over that time if you think that that's yeah 2001 that was a long time ago and we've come a long way since then and you have led us through all of that so I know you're doing the right thing thank you um very quickly Dan um we're approving a hundred and ten thousand as the math work that if we get the e-rate that drops to 55 or is it 220 in it okay this is pre-e rate uh part of e rate rules just in case for some reason our application is accepted but you know so I'm working with an out the e-rate process gets a little complicated but I have no doubt that we're going to be successful with these applications at this point in time so the my
175only other comment here is this is one of the few issues where students have actually come and stood where you're standing and so this is just this is an important Milestone and I know you've kind of smear stepped up to Solutions on that so I appreciate everybody hanging with it and students have spoken to us over the last couple years so I live with students who speak so oh you mentioned Cisco is that the one that's in the high schools or Cisco canopy is everywhere except okay the administration building Central Middle School and North Middle School it dates back to 2009. I've been very very happy with the radios we don't get quite as much density on them the the biggest Achilles heel on that system and it's just how all these systems were done
176back in the day Cisco system has a centralized controller that actually run the access points they're not very smart and if that controller is not working properly the entire canopy doesn't work properly this system and pretty much all systems moving forward there's still a controller that you use for centralized management but for some reason that controller goes offline if there's enough intelligence in the access points they can keep running until you can get that controller repaired and back online I think I get daily updates on how well the wireless is working in the high school here any other questions comments all those in favor of improving their replacement Wireless recommendation please say aye opposed the motion passes thank you Dan appreciate all your work uh the last thing we have to do tonight is buy
177some calculators is there a motion please on page 22. there's a new video Board of Education approve the purchase of the i-30x8s and TI-84 plus CE calculators from Office Depot for 63 989 the funds for which will come investor three thank you Terry's our second thank you hello welcome good IE goodie Dr Sheehan and I are here tonight to talk to you about some calculators so a little Wi-Fi some calculators um we have been working towards outfitting our middle school math classrooms and our High School classrooms with those calculators so specific calculators um over the past couple years covet hit lost some calculators along the way um we felt that with the use of Esser funds this would be a great way to go ahead and just finish off that process of making sure every
178single classroom in every single math classroom in middle school and high school had a set of 30 calculators we will be using our barcoding system that will be then checked out to those teachers makes life a lot easier in the classroom for you know similar calculators teachers are able to help support problem solve students know how to use them and then when they go into standardized testing they they know their tool so we'd like to propose that we go ahead and um has this recommendation for 450 TI 84 calculators and 110 ti-30x calculators today and we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about some calculators today what percentage of students bring their own calculators you know um it's a little hit and miss it just it depends on if they remember it
179that day but we do know that a majority of the Math teachers both at middle school and high school have reported that having a set inside the room is essential because there is a there is a large majority that are not bringing their calculators and we don't necessarily want to make that an expectation for all students and families to have to purchase one if if we are able to provide them any other questions you need a full classroom set absolutely um less disruption during testing the kids first of all especially with no backpacks carrying a calculator tube from class is the first thing that's likely to fall out of your arms if you're doing it we don't need that especially since they are expensive second point Equity standpoint for parents who can't afford it those
180things are expensive especially the ti-84s which are good excellent calculators I will say um where it comes from teachers standpoint and this is why I want I just I know it's going to be a proof but I I'm assuming it'll be approved yeah um from a teacher's standpoint having all the same calculator in the class is essential because invariably you have a parent who's done the right thing who's looked at the back of the calculators I'm guilty and said oh this one's about 30 or 40 dollars cheaper I think you'll do the same thing I my budget needs us and you buy that for the child and the teacher then while teaching calculus invariably trying to do something strapping row reduce hash cloud form something like that that calculator does not have the same key
181patterns that you need to hit to get there and you're suddenly losing 10 15 20 30 minutes of instructional time trying to teach that one student how to do what you planned for the lesson to teach everybody else to do and you've downblast the class you've lost a structural time that's that good absolutely not good um lets them keep it at home if they can't for it they can use Desmos on their Chromebook which is awesome but they do need the practice in class so they can use it on the standardized tests the act the SAT you can't use your Chromebook on it where I have questions after I've done all these really great things and I think that's excellent that we're buying them and let's just leave it at that I was curious later
182individually and I went to Amazon and turns out it's 119.95 which is about 120 so you multiply that times 450. blah blah you get to a total of 54 000. which is a little different than the 62 460. so then I was thinking what about Chargers right because you don't want all those scores plugging to make these are rechargeable so that's 89 each so 45 of those we come to a total that's about four thousand dollars four thousand and five which still doesn't reach us that 800 8 000 discrepancy that I had from that first number so then I did a little math because you know yeah um that would end up being about four additional calculators per classroom 34 instead of 30 which as a teacher would be an immense blessing is there any
183way to work it out to do that well we did our finance department did bid this out to several companies just to see what we could which one we could go with looking at the lowest price I would be curious just to even talk to you more about what type of charger you looked at versus these are the ones that set into the charger it was it was 10 or 10 at a time the only difference is that if you look at the price of they call it a teacher pack that was much more than your quote so you did a better job as you're looking at teacher packs this would be buying individually and then buying the 10 Chargers as a teacher I can say that having those four additional calculators per classroom you
184have the one that didn't see properly and therefore didn't charge you have the one that somehow someone did something to it and you can figure it out in the evening but not in the middle of the class any of those having some spares on hand would be a blessing we will have some spares on hand through our destiny system at that checkout system so there will be those available and we do order these as class as those sets of 30 so they do come in those classroom sets and that we work with the Omnia partner that contract so that's why we didn't have to do that RFP piece so that's kind of how that that process works there I know sometimes we look on Amazon too and we're like no yes you go to order
185like a ton of things and they're like yeah no you get five of them so walking through this process through Office Depot oftentimes is our better way to okay a big order and we're able to do that success that's good to know and my concern is not the calculators is not the need for the calculators is not any of that is trying to make it a little easier just those extras for the teachers and by the way the ti-30x is the current version of with one of my two favorite calculators ever to use so good choice excellent thank you very much thank you any other questions all those in favor of reporting the calculator purchase recommendation please say aye aye opposed the motion passes the calculators are on the way we've reached the end of
186our agenda and we're adjourned thank you thank you all right yeah what are our new trustees [Music] everything [Music]