001please 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 i'd like to welcome everyone to our meeting tonight now vice president ovarian was unable to be here as was trustee crowell and they send their regrets so we'll get started by approving our agenda are there any changes to the agenda as presented not for me we have a motion to approve then on page two yes mr president i like to make motion that we approve the agenda as printed thank you seconded thanks bo all in favor please say aye aye opposed the motion passes we'll move forward with our agenda and start where we always
002do with the superintendent's report mark thanks randy we have uh three scheduled reports our bronze bond project update and then that's going to go right into our bond budget update so johnny edwards is here to provide you with that at least to get us started absolutely thank you uh superintendent as well as members of the board of education my comments related to the bond or brief and then our budget update will come from dan rathburn who's the senior project manager from oak for let's start with the central athletic event facility uh the softball dugouts the fencing has been reinstalled we've passed the electrical as well as the final inspections currently we are restoring the field back to its plane surface the field will be available at the end of this week and our softball team
003will have full access to the facility the high school auditorium refresh we're at the 75 mark for the construction documents with the auditorium refresh tower pinkster will make some additional adjustments prior to finalizing the plan and going out for bid moving from our 2015 bond to our 2021 bond uh since our last board meeting i just want to inform the board that we've finalized or continued the student engagement sessions that were held at central l and haverhill we also conducted engagement sessions with central l and haverhill staff last month we also held a community engagement session with both school communities and just prior to tonight's meeting we met with the building advisory team from central elementary as well to kind of bring some of those things back tomorrow we'll do the same with the building
004advisory team at haverhill both schools will see different schemes for their school's four floor plan and how the floor plan looks on their particular site so those are my updates related to 2015 and 2021 bond are there any questions before dan talks about the change orders all right dan thank you okay we do not have any subcontract change orders to review but we do have bond funds moving in and out of projects and budgets so we have catch up here on bond change order 41. our variance on that is for northern natatorium and that's 709 fifty five dollars and this is really closing the contingency out on that project and moving that money into the unallocated contingency any questions there okay and then um for bond change order we're documenting taking money out of the
005unallocated contingency and moving that into the furnishings budget moving seventy four thousand two hundred and twenty seven dollars into that and then taking five hundred and twenty eight thousand eight hundred eighty seven out of ten allocated contingency and moving that into the buses and that concludes our changes to the bond funds any questions so we still have 1.3 million right in the contingency i mean unallocated correct and and that 1.3 that is for projects on the potential list that you have not yet brought forward is that is that correct and how i should link that up correct and and that does not show the interest earned as i've talked about before so it's about 2.4 million dollars in entrance that's not on this on top of the 1.3 or 2.4 total no 2.4 in addition
006to the one okay so we're at three seven approximately okay well so the good news there is we can look forward to a few more projects working down the priority list absolutely good good all good news thank you very much okay thank you thank you and paul is here to do the financial report good evening florida bed and superintendent biling included in your board packet was a revenue and expense summary report reflective of the first eight months of our fiscal year through the end of february 2022 this report is reflective of the budget amendment that you adopted in february just going to cover on a few highlights because there's not a lot to to touch on now that we've gone through the budget just want to bring it to your attention under revenue you've probably
007heard this before federal revenue is down from last year compared to this year because last year we received 3.2 million dollars in coronavirus relief money that was sent to us all at once we didn't do a drawdown on that money so there's a large variance there in that category compared to last year moving down to expenditures and basic programs they are up from last year for a couple of different reasons one a large chromebook purchase that was pushed over into the current school year because they were not received before the close of last school year planned capital outlay was built into this budget for this year and we had summer learning opportunities that happened after a july 1 new grant program 23 alphabet letter programming for one time money from the state of michigan moving
008down to support services under instructional staff we have an increase in curriculum costs for k-12 compared to the prior year we added media staff to the budget compared to last year substitute costs and contracted positions that were not being used in the previous school year due to the pandemic are now coming through on the budget so that's causing a difference there moving down to the transportation area we're running buses now five days a week instead of four as we did in the previous school year so um you know we are up in costs there moving down to the child care services area the curious kids program is now reflecting a full fiscal year starting in july of expenses versus a late start in the previous year so there's a variance there looking over on page
009two where it's broken down by object code i just want to point out that purchase services is up compared to last year due to substitute costs our insurance liability coverage was set seg and subscription and software support costs are up as well as the curious kids budget is reflecting a full year that's basically my update for the financial report in your packet just to give you a little bit of a of a brief overview that we just finished our account information for our spring count and we're down about 66 students from the fall so this february count will comprise 10 percent of our blended enrollment for the next fiscal budget so it carries a smaller weighted average we're still waiting to see what the house and the senate are proposing for budget we're hoping that
010they pass the education piece in time for us to have that information to to build our budget that comes to the board in june for approval we'll start working on that here really quick and rumor has it that they will focus in on that that that education piece because they really have until october first to pass their overall state budget so any questions is how much different from the fall count 66 is down 66 60 66 we're down in the fall also we were down in the fall also i don't have that information with me here tonight but yes we were we were we were down in the fall so we don't know our total down on what we were i do have that i just did not bring that okay hey paul um i've
011read some things about decreasing enrollment and a lot of that coming in kindergarten like kindergarten young fives kind of across the state um i mean offhand you have a sense of kind of like where the drops i mean have the drops been kind of k income five or is it more spread when the first large drop happened it was k through three k through four where we saw the largest drop happen when the pandemic first hit but i literally we just certified that number this afternoon i have not analyzed any changes i just thought the board would would like to be aware of of the net change from fall to spring we are trying six or six 66 i'm sorry 66. we are tracking enrollment numbers pre-enrollment numbers for for previous years to this year
012and you know keeping an eye on that to see where we are and how we might market our not so much market ourselves but but reach out to families that live in the within the district to make sure that they uh they understand what we have to offer and try to re-enroll some of those kids that might have left to go elsewhere i'm thinking maybe maybe the next time for us to get a report on that is when we do our our budgeting in probably june well as we plan our assumptions yeah i'm sure we'll have more information about enrollment as well have we already started that pre-enrollment process we had a kindergarten information night already earlier this month and i know that there are some activities planned for april as well thank you thank
013you so aside from that i just wanted to mention that if you remember about a year ago we assembled the district values team uh that that group was a it started out as a group of about 50 people from three from each building and they had a three-fold task one was to identify uh you know common district values and then a declaration statement of what we might be aspiring to in the future and then and then to begin writing a definition for what equity means in portage public schools so that group again was assembled last spring we included students on that group as well as staff members from different areas we conducted surveys last year assembled all that information we surveyed our staff our students as well as our our larger community so through the
014summer and then into the fall that committee has been analyzing the information that they've been collecting and are now to the point where they have some draft statements put together and this during this next phase which will be this during the month of april primarily i will be seeking additional input from our students and our staff our principals will be rolling out the information and getting feedback about their thoughts about the the statements we've come up with and the values he's surfaced and then we also have an opportunity for our community to be involved in that and that is through a series of of community meetings that will be held on april 11th and 12th just we'll share there'll be a powerpoint presentation that will be shared with community members about what the what the
015feedback has been to date and then allow for more input into that process so that we can refine and finalize those three elements so we'll be promoting that in the weeks ahead it'll be after spring break we hope to complete that entire process of feedback by april 25th and then that committee will or the values team will will take another look at that and uh and then continue to meet on the bones of some of those words especially as as we surface the values to you know what do these values and it looks like there's six of them that have have come to the top through our discussion so and they have different meanings to different people but we want to put our our own meaning by what we intend those those words to mean
016so excited about that process kk owen from studer education has been leading that process and working with staff it's really uh it's really interesting to get a student perspective on that because they see things that sometimes as adults we don't see so they've been integral to the process throughout the course of this of this project so there'll also be a for those people that can't make the community meetings we will have an online opportunity that we'll share we'll share the draft or the the presentation the powerpoint so that people can see what it is that we've been working on and then be able to access the survey so we can get their input as well lots of good work happening in that regard if you have any questions on that i'm happy to answer those
017if not that's all for my report i i would just say it's um it's refreshing and i think kind of bold to let that come kind of bubbling up from the bottom and having students i mean students and staff and the leadership role in that so that's really refreshing so thank you the uh you know part of what drove that entire process was the fact that we're celebrating our 100 year anniversary this year and we you know each building you know a lot of times has their own values each program has their own values but we've never really assembled what we collectively believe are the values in uh you know that we want to live live by as a district so comes in a timely manner and we're actually uh doing a presentation the poster
018presentation through the carnegie foundation uh later this month about our continuous improvement journey and student voice in that process so it's nice to be here showcased about the good work that we're doing thanks mark it was a good update thank you very much uh we'll move to our comments and communications section uh do we have anyone that wishes to address the board this evening we do very good our secretary s celeste shelton harris will um read our guidelines for public comment thank you public comment at board meetings the board welcomes community input at our board meetings and recognizes the importance of allowing members of the public to express themselves on district matters to permit fair and orderly public expression please conform to these guidelines when addressing the board attendees must register their intention to speak
019during 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 speakers will be recognized by the presiding officer and may not be called in the order in which they are signed they may have signed up to speak speakers are requested to state their name address and group affiliation if applicable limit comments to three minutes direct all 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 documents documentation to the board's secretary if available present your comments in a respectful and professional manner to model the behavior expected of reported students refrain from mentioning any student by name contact
020the 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 followed up on by our administrators thanks celeste we have two speakers tonight we welcome our first daniel smith hello my name is daniel smith i live at 3022 fleetwood drive and i'm a community member voter a taxpayer and a member of portage linking our voices or portage love i stand with also on sunday's portage kids peaceful protest and i'm a representative here of the folks dressed in yellow to support the kids who spoke a couple of months ago and some of their issues and i'm
021speaking to underline the points which i made to you in in the recent email and i appreciate your response to that i'm here to say thank you to the board and all those employed in the district in their work for greater equity inclusion and anti-racism in the portage public schools things have improved in our society since i graduated in 1970 our society is finally slowly starting to have conversations that we need to have to deal with systemic racism so i'm grateful for the work that's already been done and it's taking place publicly at this district level in the form of hiring a dei coordinator working with great lakes equity center internally defining the pps equity goals and initiating self evaluation and i support all those teachers the administration and the staff that are bringing this
022work to their schools but i'm also here to urge you to forge ahead in doing more i support these following actions which have been identified by students and parents across the district for example continuing to actively recruit and hire more teachers and administrators of color robust support networks and services for educators and students and staff in the implementation of equity measures and cultural shifts and implementing black history which is really a neglected part of american history which we all need to learn in the overall curriculum so these are just some measures which our district needs without them students are being harmed in our schools i believe in ways that can be directly prevented by your actions with these measures all students benefit all students are safer and portage can be a more welcoming community so
023thank you again for your service to the community appreciate it thank you sir for your comments our next figure this evening is kelly sackett welcome hello my name is kelly sackett and i live in texas township public schools are defunding themselves 65 000 students left the state of michigan public schools since 2018 2019 that resulted in almost a billion dollars lost in school funding why is that occurring it seems the public schools want to blame everything else except for themselves and the agendas that they're pushing on our children if parents are removing their children by the thousands from public schools shouldn't somebody be asking why if parents keep telling you that they don't want sel dei critical race theory taught in the classroom it would seem like you might take that under some consideration everyone
024is focused on teacher retention while public school enrollment is plummeting maybe they should start focusing on student retention without students teacher retention doesn't matter so much since literacy rates are horrible and learning loss is huge from the last two years why is more focus and funds going to sel and other non-core subjects that parents don't support then towards learning loss recovery why is there no statewide plan in place for making up for the detrimental learning loss from the pandemic when do you think that that we're actually going to acknowledge this and do something about it do something about the scores do something about our children's learning is is the clock not going the time timer is not going you got to trust me i'm looking around like wait wait wait how much time do i
025have left so i would like to tie that into um something that i've done a little bit of research on the zen education project which was founded by a man named howard zinn he was a anarchist a socialist he described himself as something of an anarchist and a socialist maybe a democrat socialist something i'd like to point out the u.s is a constitutional republic founded on democracy so howard zinn came up with a foundation and a way to teach teachers how to better teach things like the civil rights movement and things like that he saw them through a different lens the problem that i have is that he was trying to rewrite history as it actually occurred there are a list of 165 teachers in the state of michigan that have signed on to follow
026the zen education project and they are vowing to teach crt to our kids even if michigan law bans it currently there are portage teachers that have signed on to teach this way there's in the school right now is a black lives matter flag that's currently hanging in a classroom i brought this to everyone's attention back in december and i brought it to the board's attention i brought it to the principal's attention and i was told that it was put there because of inclusivity however black lives matter as we know it is not about inclusivity it's a political action hate group and i'm trying to figure out why the flag is still hanging in the classroom and no one has addressed it i would like an answer to that and i think that if we actually
027drill down into this a little bit further some of these things that are being taught to our children we might actually figure out why kids are leaving you know i know since the last time that we met two of my friends that were here with me have pulled their students from portage and that's not kindergartners and so if we're on this continued path of losing students and not making enough having enough funding to continue to go on to the next year i guess i'm trying to figure out how we're going to continue to make it as a school and what do we have in place i heard you say that you would like to survey the students the teachers and the very last thing was the parent and so i think that the answer to
028all of these questions i'm asking will be by serving the parents and there are a lot of unhappy parents that started with masking our children and all of the protocol that went along with the pandemic and it's carrying on into critical race theory and things like that thank you thank you we have a third speaker tonight welcome megan wilmax hi there hi my name is megan womacks and i'm a community member i am asking you as a an adult standing before you i know how i appear on the outside but something none of you in this room know including myself i don't know what my background is the reason for that is because my dad was adopted he never found his birth parents i know how i look but i have no history beyond that
029including medical i can't tell you that and you can't tell me this either i'm asking you to please keep political stuff out of our school districts back in eighth grade i had to do a family tree assignment and i lied on the project to get an a because it was more concerning to me to get an a than to address that i had no history of who i actually was so i went online and i googled random people to fill in for a project for school i got the a but i had explaining to do to my mom when i got home because i lied just to get that a there are other students who are adopted in your school district i also urge you to be considerate of people who have fertility issues where
030they may have to have a sperm donor or an egg donor is that your role as a school to address that or what about same-sex marriages how do they have children is that your role as a school board to address those i know the pain that is that i had to deal with because i didn't want to face my peers in a dress that i didn't know who my grandparents were i have no history we just went through a pandemic everything every time you walk into a doctor's office the first thing they ask you is medical history is that the role of a school thank you for your time uh thank you megan could you please give our recording secretary your address please sure thank you very much thank you for everyone who participated in
031public comment this evening we'll move forward with comments by board trustees mr president i wanted to say that i had an opportunity to attend the public meeting with the author dasha slater regarding the book the 57 bus and it was absolutely enlightening that community team read is has always been a plus for me and a high interest and i think that was a very well selected book and i thoroughly enjoyed it and the students appear to have enjoyed it as well thanks celeste anyone else randy i'll go um so here's the trivia question um when johnny last fall gave us the annual presentation on the bus purchases um do you remember the question i asked um yeah and and that's okay you don't have to ever remember uh i asked about electric buses and you
032know when is it time to start you know looking at those and your answer was not now but it's on on the rise and so i forgot about that discussion um and then i recently had a conversation with portage parent and state representative christine morse who has proposed really kind of a unique piece of legislation which is districts would be allowed to use building site sinking funds to purchase buses if they were electric buses and this is house bill 5721 and i think it's um i applaud for doing it it's getting bipartisan traction which which i really like um there's there's some good press around the state and i like it when we use the carrot approach and not the stick on that so i just so that kind of got me jump started and
033thinking about this and i just um i wanted to give some kudus to uh representative morris for for thinking about this and i just wanted to plant a seed i mean as a so as a trustee i don't want us to make foolish decisions but um but i would hope kind of in our annual cycle we'll start looking at the pros and cons of electric buses and you know and i think if we do that in a thoughtful way we'll get there maybe a year or two before other other school districts will and i've heard there are now 17 electric buses in the state and there will never be total total electrified because we've got range issues and all that stuff but but at some point i think we'll get there so i just want
034to encourage looking at that and thank you both anyone else well i never talk about my grandkids you know they're in the school system so i'm going to talk about my grandkids for just a minute because it's a positive thing my grandson was in sixth grade at west middle school was uh at the school band concert on thursday night it was fabulous the auditorium at central high school was full everybody had a everybody had a great time and bands sounded great and it's it's amazing to see that in september they didn't even know how to play these instruments but uh mr kozian just did an excellent job and uh the neat thing is they all the band members have t-shirts with their name on the back kind of like an athletic team you know and
035he really does a lot a lot for kids there and it was a great concert and then we had the kcsoa on wednesday night we had representatives from the up john institute there and they spent a lot of time talking to us about inflation about unemployment in the state and there was a lot of takeaways about the new cte center at queresa about that so it was a very interesting conversation and yeah it was a really good week of educational happenings you know and if anybody wants to see a picture of that same grandson standing with eli brooks at bw and ann arbor i have that to show you anyway i believe that's it for comments and communications and we can move quickly to page 9 and our consent agenda agenda we have just a
036couple of things the february 21st 2022 regular business meeting and closed session minutes are there any exceptions to the minutes as presented uh hearing none the minutes are approved move to our next agenda item assurance of district performance and the monitoring report we're going to review this evening is 1.2 our global end statement and i'll turn it over to mark thanks randy um this is uh this report is on the uh ends policy 1.2 which is uh 21st century learning skills that's one that the board has revisited over the years and there's some some moderate revisions too but the the report follows the same as a format as it has in the past a couple things i just wanted to bring in your to your attention we've typically incorporated our enrollment in ap and ib
037classes and uh if again this this report covers the 2021 school year so yeah if you looked at that you'll note that we had a slight decrease in participation in some of our courses um you know i i don't know how you assess that i think would we have to be careful about drawing any uh conclusions with the the information that's here but you know our students to be reminded were in a different format a lot of learning virtually at that time and that may have been a factor in students taking fewer classes not having the same type of supports they're accustomed to and again that's just a speculation on my part same thing a little bit with with our ib classes we had a slight reduction uh in the number of students especially at
038the senior level taking ib classes during the 2021 school year so we'll continue to monitor that and see if that starts ticking back up as as we look at this year's data and uh and then i also mentioned in the report that uh that that some of the extracurricular activities that that helped contribute to that skill development we're not offered in their same format or even or offered at all just because of of going through the covet situation so that is even though they're they're still there and a lot of them are back and operating this school year may have been it probably looked different for a lot of kids last year and then lastly i'll just say that also some of the information that we provide is based on the student engagement survey and
039we did not administer that in its traditional format during the 2021 school year because we used a different feedback mechanism we wanted to get information about our return to learn plan and and how we were approaching that so that was more relevant information to us we are uh currently in the midst of administering the student engagement survey we decided to move it to a different time of the year to give us to give students and the same logic for our parents to give them more experience with the school year before responding to those surveys so those are our live right now through the end of this week so our students are finishing that up and we'll have information on that survey in next year's report so nothing remarkable about the uh about the monitoring report
040is very similar to what was presented last year happy to answer any questions if you have them uh mark some fewer kids taking id courses but the grades were still really high so there's a yeah and it may be may have been that those kids that typically would or might stretch themselves be looking for something but maybe just afraid that they wouldn't be success successful so yeah the results and the scoring the grades are still on par with what we're used to well thanks mark it's a very important report because it deals with 21st century skills the 4cs critical thinking communication collaboration and creativity and some of those things we struggle to measure but it's definitely a goal that uh we need to have so thank you for your report you're welcome appreciate it hey
041randy yes hey michelle um am i correct that this month's report to the community from the board is going to be on 1.2 um yeah i mean yeah and that and it will be foreign so so just by coincidence um our board's monthly report to the community to show them examples of how we monitor performance is going to have a table um from this report now it may be last year's if you can't get this year's event and we have some more business with this monitoring report we need to approve it there's a motion on page 17. yes mr president i'd like to make a motion to the board of education except as presented the modern report on 1.2 ends as a reasonable interpretation and evidence of compliance with policy thank you kurt for a
042second hi thank you celeste all in favor please say aye aye opposed the motion passes and the monitoring report is approved we have one more agenda item and that's some policy updates and i'll turn over you mark thank you randy um as you know we get um recommendations roughly twice a year from neola unless something else comes along neola is the organization that keeps us current with their policies so this uh this update contains a few policies on on the dress code for staff dressing and grooming and you'll notice that covers three different categories one is administrative staff teaching staff and support staff and there's also a revised policy on student dress as well that gets further interpreted and developed by the building level principles so if you had a chance to read that language
043it may be a little confusing is the way it's written but i typically take what neola writes and put it in this format so in essence the the language maybe while it may be confusing essentially the changes that we're proposing to these policies are required by law but not required to have a policy so what we're doing is capturing this language as they recommend into our policies and as you know in a larger district where you have several different people looking at at policies you know different buildings that this helps with consistency so that they see what the law is captured in our in our policy language so that's really the first few uh the first four policy changes the ones dealing with uh grant funds and cost principles and procurement are as a result
044of the edgar rules and so those are just changes pretty much technical changes to policy nothing of any substance there so these are coming to you as a first reading they're available for review at the administration building and you know the way they're formatted it's awful hard to reproduce them because they have different color of ink when we receive them to show what's what's new and what could be deleted so again uh you're welcome to take a look at those prior to approval for next meeting my quick question would be but nothing especially controversial no i mean there typically aren't no there's as we've reviewed them there's nothing of controversy there i mean we have to abide by the law so we want to make sure that we're doing that any questions from her thanks
045um very good look forward to getting your mountain report evaluations on 1.2 you're meeting self-evaluations i hope everybody has a great spring break and with that we are adjourned thank you you