Portage Public Schools Board of Education Regular Meeting, October 25, 2021

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 this evening we're in smaller quarters because both auditoriums are being used by students tonight i i want to remind you if you want to address the board tonight to please sign the speaker registration form and we'll start by approving our agenda are there any changes to the agenda as presented none for me randy okay we have a motion to approve please yes mr president i like to make the motion that we approve the agenda as printed is there a second second thank you very much all in favor please say

002aye aye opposed motion passes and we'll move forward with our agenda as presented and our first report tonight is the superintendent's report mark thank you uh we have uh several items to present to you today uh first are the bond project update and the bond budget update johnny edwards is here to our assistant superintendent for operations is here to do that for you johnny thank you uh superintendent belang president van antero members of the board members of the community tonight i would like to provide the board with the bond update at central middle school our final tab which is testing adjusting and balancing that was completed last week the commissioning is still in progress and we should be completed with the commissioning by next school board meeting if all goes well also at central middle

003school we are exploring the possibility of adding additional sound panels in the art classroom and in the science labs we found that the quantity of sound panels at central middle school is slightly less than the quantity that was installed at north middle school so we're exploring the possibility of adding additional sound panels also related to bond projects our construction of the softball dugouts a central athletic event facility is still on the expected timeline to be completed by the end of november they are currently backfilling the foundation the slabs will be poured shortly thereafter moving over to the 2021 elementary bond the committee reviewed the architectural engineering services rfps since our last meeting our plan is to bring an architectural firm recommendation to the board at the next school board meeting in terms of the construction

004manager the rfp will be issued november 2nd and the proposals will be due november 17th and i'll combine the the budget area with my presentation uh the highlighted i items listed one through six and item twelve those are the items of the project that we're currently pursuing are in progress it is our hope to bring a school bus recommendation to the board within the next couple of meetings we are looking at adding four school buses from our unallocated contingency when you look at the budget we have approximately 1.9 million for unallocated contingency and i'm happy to report to the board tonight that based off of our work at the portage northern natatorium that there is approximate savings of 709 that was budgeted for the project that will not be necessary so that would bring our

005unallocated contingency to about approximately 2.6 million dollars the next four items are items that have already been approved by the board we're working with some technology items uh the dugouts as i've mentioned already sound equipment and video equipment for our auditoriums once those projects are completed we believe that our budget will be approximately 1.9 million dollars and then you can add in the anticipated interest for that fund that would bring us to an approximate 4.3 million dollars for our unallocated contingency so that concludes my presentation for bond updates and the budget i'll be happy to answer any questions from the board tonight well that was all good news sir it was all good news absolutely absolutely we're really appreciative of all the work of our contractors particularly around the natatorium project to come in on

006time and under budget is the interest income as restricted as the principal as far as what we can do with that yes we have to follow the same rules for the interest okay for interest as well okay so if that had to be obviously the bond proceeds are very strict what we can do with it but the interest falls under those guidelines also absolutely absolutely any other questions from the award all right thank you that concludes my presentation tonight thank you thanks johnny our next report is our financial report and sammy stevens our business manager is here to present that today as uh paula is out of town sammy good evening board of education and superintendent biling included in your board packet was the september financial report of revenue and expenditures through 9 30 of

00721 compared to 9 30 of 20. the first page breaks out the revenues and expenditures by function code and i'd like to touch on some of the key differences you'll see in that in that report as you see a lot of the revenues and expenditures have increased compared to last year which is a good sign for the district please keep in mind that when looking at this september is the month that we don't receive state aid and we rely primarily on property tax collection and other miscellaneous revenues that we've received you'll notice that local revenues are up this is due to curious kids last year they didn't start operations until september and this year they've been running all summer athletic gate receipts are also contributing to that increase with local revenues state revenues are up

008as well this is primarily due to the esser supplemental payment that we've received an at-risk carryover from 630 of 21. you'll notice that the federal revenues are down and that's primarily due to grants that we received last september due to the coven 19 pandemic and those two of those grants include the child care relief grant and the coronal virus relief funds local payments from other districts are up and that's due to the district receiving enhancement millage revenue leaked from k resaff under expenditures a lot of the expenditures are up and this is primarily again due to us leaving pandemic pandemic learning and go to a more normal learning experience basic programs are up this is due to the chromebook purchases out of the coronavirus relief funds there was also capital outlay included in the budget

009for 2122 and that wasn't included in 2021 um there's also new learning summer opportunities that are included in that through the which was done through the mde and hasn't been previously included or previously done instructional costs are up as well there was an increase in curriculum work for 2122 substitute teaching costs are up along with contract and staff costs and again like i mentioned this is due to us no longer being in pandemic learning operations and maintenance costs are up as well there was an increase in the grbs costs compared to last year this is due to additional locations being added to our contract but johnny is also working on that increase as grbs is experiencing labor shortages the school liaison officers are full-time this year compared to last time or part-time last year and

010then supplies and maintenance for supplies for maintenance and operations are also up the transportation costs are up this is primarily due to us running buses five days a week instead of four so we're seeing an increase in gas gps and repairs central services is up this is due to the bond marketing technology software licensing costs as well as esser supplies that we've added to the budget this year that weren't in the budget for last year other support costs are also up and this is due to athletic official costs being up as we enter this new norm after 18 months of sports during a pandemic child care services are up and this is again due to curious kids running all summer long instead of starting up in september like last year on page two you'll find

011expenditures split out by object code purchase services are up and again like i previously mentioned this is due to substitute costs being up our district liability insurance with psych also increased and we're seeing an increase in conference fees and expenses as we're seeing a normalcy seeing a sense of normalcy in the return of in regards to conferences the supplies are up as well um and this is again as i previously mentioned due to the chromebook purchases that we've heard that we've made and we're also seeing an increase in teaching supplies custodial maintenance supplies and in the testing and assessment areas i think that covers most of the big gaps in the board report a quick general update for you regarding the business office we did have count day on october 6th and we are starting

012to compile final numbers for seppie and those will be due mid-november after count we'll begin the amendment for the general fund and then we also had a successful bond sale on october 13th and you can find more details on that in the memo that mark sent to you from bakertilly i'd be happy to answer any more questions sammy i think you hit it out of the part thank you thank you appreciate it thanks tammy just a couple of other uh well three other things i wanted to mention uh hopefully everyone now is aware that the uh cte uh center is a is more of a reality based on the announcement that there was a hundred thousand hundred million dollar gift to build the center uh it came to the k resa so that uh that

013is good news along with the the naming of the site which will be adjacent to wing stadium along i-94 so highly visible area centrally located in the county easy access to all the schools so it's what we had been hoping for all along k risa is going through the design charette process right now and pulling together where programs will be located adjacencies and beginning the just to do the uh lots of schematic design right now before they get into design development so good news on that front also we continue to have challenge uh challenges and having uh a uh enough bus drivers we today we were we're fortunate we we were able to get all of our runs done but because of you know individual illnesses and and such we've already consolidated from last year

014five runs uh consolidator combined some runs so we're still watching that it's on a day-to-day basis we may have to cancel runs here and there and we will make those announcements as soon as we are aware of that so parents can prepare for transporting students if they need to right now it's it's uh we're we're okay but oftentimes when i say okay that means our drivers are being our excuse me our maintenance staff and our and our office staff and transportation are being used to to drive buses so it's it's it's a one day or another hard to tell what's going to happen but we will we will try to spread that out so that one particular run isn't always affected so our drivers know that they can drive several routes and we may pull

015them off of their route just to distribute any inconveniences that might exist out there and the last thing i wanted to mention is we did as i indicated in the last one of the last monitoring reports we're not doing the traditional employee engagement parent and student satisfaction surveys this year we are continuing with the pulse check surveys and we just completed those and and had a one week window at the first week of october where we where we surveyed students parents and employees and those survey results have been broken down or being distributed out to the building level and the buildings take a look at the results for their particular unit and and really the goal is to find out what parents students and staff say we're doing well and continue to do those things

016well and then take a look at one of the lower areas that um that are identified and and and we're to do something to improve that in hopes that it'll it'll change you know some of the results for next time and some of the services that we provide we'll be doing a 90 90 day pulse check survey then in december to see you know how we're how we're progressing on that so just at a at a very high level on the student side we had 3 600 students participate they were asked ten different questions and and that the top areas and there really weren't a surprise because it's it's some of the same results that we got last year our students are feeling safe they're feeling connected with their friends and that they have confidence

017that they'll be passing uh their class or their grade depending on elementary or secondary so that continues to be good news uh the concerns that they showed or the areas that scored the lowest were students not showing respect for one another i think that's been been very evident at least from uh from the conversations we've had at the building levels where you know our students have have forgotten how to behave around one another after being gone from school and and all this you know i guess i shouldn't it's not that simple it's you know a lot of the pressure they're under the stress that they felt it's coming back in with other students and i think that's where that respect piece uh comes in parents we had over 2 000 parents participate in the survey

018their top area they were asked eight questions by the way they have access to their child's teacher which was the same as we heard last year that was you know we want to make sure that parents stayed connected with staff parents are confident in their ability to support their students uh in their learning and that they also that they have the resources they need to help their child be successful so those were the the top areas an area of concern that that surfaced was getting the kind of feedback that they need about their child's learning progress and again i don't think that's a surprise to us and and mind you these differences in from the highest to the lows are probably on a five point scale less than a half a point so uh they're

019they're pretty tight but it's areas that we have to start somewhere with with where we improve on the employee side we had 413 staff members answer 10 questions the top three on the staff side were i know what's expected of me and my work i would recommend pps to other parents and i feel a sense of belonging in my work environment so again uh that coming back into this environment has been very very positive uh where the the areas that that could use some improvement and this is again the same kind of thing that we've heard in previous time is uh that i'm consulted in the decisions that affect my work and again that's a very very difficult one in the decision-making process as to how how we can involve everyone especially on decisions that

020need to be made in a very short turnaround matter so that's just some high-level results again those district results and then the building level results which which probably vary by grade level and by building are being shared and they'll be developing action plans for improvement on that so happy to answer any questions that come up out of any things i reported on all right that's all you have thanks for sharing that mark thank you very much okay we'll move our comments and communications section and first is comments by citizens and i'll ask our secretary dr celeste shelton-harris to read our guidelines for public participation i'd be glad to thank you public comment on board meetings the board welcomes community input at our public meetings when addressing the board please conform to these guidelines sign the

021speaker registration form at the beginning of the meeting state your name and address limit your comments to three minutes provide a written copy of your comments and supporting documentation for the board secretary if available present your comments in a respectful and professional manner refrain from mentioning any student by name and contact the superintendent directly regarding personnel matters board of education members are not obligated to respond to issues raised during public comment normally such issues are referred to the superintendent for follow-up thank you celeste now we have some students who wish to address the board tonight and we're going to let them go ahead so they can go home and do their homework and our first uh student tonight is donnie i'm sorry i can't pronounce the last name welcome [Applause] hello my name is daniel

022harper i'm a junior at port attention high school i'm speaking before you discuss the importance of more accurately and consid and consistently incorporating african-americans lgbtq plus and other minority groups into our curriculum why do we only focus on history and literature to through the eyes of white men here let me give you some examples as i said i am now a junior and i have yet to read a book that was not by white arthur one book that was particularly difficult to read was of mice and men by john steinbeck this is a book that has countless examples of the n word only one female character who who doesn't even get a name she's referred to as curly's wife why is it that we can read literature by a white author where this word is

023used by redaunting that serves the perspective of a black person jacola merkenberg is read in 11th grade again this is a white arthur using the n-word and giving their white perspectives of life in the south before the civil rights movement where are the black voices on our history it is important for people like me to know that they can be viral beyond sports and music but as a smart celebrated and valued part of art literature science and beyond a possible solution to the lack of black authors would be to incorporate books by toni morrison james baldwin maya angelou and angela davis why while i believe that i have made it clear that i would like to see myself in the history and literature that i am learning it is also important for people to get

024different perspectives my white classmates would benefit greatly from reading the literature that told the stories of minorities my straight classmates would be would benefit from learning the voices of the lgbtq plus community to not only see the struggle but to the success of overcoming seemingly impossible obstacles the lgbtq plus community is still fighting for their rights and safety and students to know that the lgbtq plus issues expand beyond the aids epidemic we should learn about the history of stonewall harvey milk's matthew shepard diversity and voices is absolutely a necessity for students in porter's public schools it is important for us to grow learn and become better people we must challenge ourselves in a way we've never been challenged before there is power and knowledge and i want to be in a school that values who

025i am and where i come from that means celebrating people who look like me why wait for the change when you have the opportunity to be the change thank you for listening to me now please do something to make me feel like a varied part of this school district [Applause] our next speaker is is grace [Applause] my name is grace and i am a student of porter central high school and today i feel that it's important to speak in this meeting i came here today because students like me need more representation in school as a freshman in porter central high school i don't notice much representation for people of color women and queer folks in the school curriculum in my experience i've never heard about queer folks in school at all not imported central elementary

026cms or chs there needs to be more representation for queer folks as a student that identifies as queer i don't feel seen in my school and i know i'm not alone i want to be to feel and be seen in school i'm not being represented in my school i don't feel seen so far in my history class students don't learn about people of color unless the focus is on enslavement in this country or the lack of voting rights for people of color there needs to be representation for people of color if students don't learn about people of color we won't have equal representation and we won't feel seen when i learn about women in history class i typically will learn about one woman or zero woman per module or chapter unless the focus is on

027voting rights for women there needs to be more representation for women i also identify as a woman and again i don't feel seen in my school i don't see much inclusion in potential high school and i want to have that changed to conclude there needs to be more representation for people of color women and queer folks in the school curriculum thank you for your time thank you [Applause] our next speaker is lily please [Applause] hello my name is lily davis and i'm a senior here at ported central high school i'm a part of my school's jedi club which stands for justice equity diversity and inclusion over the summer i participated in a seminar run by the university of michigan called the summer youth dialogues it taught me how to create community projects in order to

028have social reform which is why i'm here last january we sent a letter demanding social changes in our school district 312 people signed it including 271 students 30 teachers and 10 staff members at central and middle high school along with northern middle and high school this was all done during the virtual school year although we sent it in january we didn't receive a response until may my my understanding of this being that there was a response written but there was no idea who where or who to send it to we share a parking lot with the administrative administrative building i can see the building out of the windows of my classes we are an established club with student and teacher support yet it wasn't known where to send the letter to you are missing out

029on an amazing opportunity to better represent the students of color in our district because of this passive attitude you say that you're doing something however we hear and see nothing if you think you're doing something none of it is getting back to the students if it had we wouldn't be here that is unacceptable in our letter before our calls for change we praise the effort put into hiring a dei or diversity equity and inclusion coordinator before the end of the last school year though they had to move away that is no one's fault where fault does come into play is the fact that the rehiring process just started within the past two weeks going five months without a dei coordinator is detrimental to students especially my peers of color there are daily racist incidents and

030microaggressions at my school and one public incident so far this year in which a dei coordinator would have been invaluable these incidents aren't things people can just get over they are not just words or actions with no meaning they are damaging causing more stress in an already stressful environment what could have been a great moment of change for portage public schools especially ported central ended up being another step backwards because of your lack of action as a district and a community we cannot afford to take any steps backwards in the fight for social justice we are a community that strives to create a safe learning environment for for all of our students when we allow these biases and microaggressions to exist we fail this goal thank you thank you [Applause] next speaker is fiona welcome

031hello my name is fiona doyle and i'm a senior at port central high school no otherwise qualified individual with a disability in the united states shall solely by reason of her or his disability as defined in section 706-8 of this title be excluded from participation in be denied benefits of or be suggested to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance as many may see this is a sample from the school's handbook this is a section on discrimination but these words mean nothing when they are not applied as a disabled student of port central high school i face daily discrimination almost every day for the past four years i have learned that the school system does not help students with disabilities but rather hinders in my case i have sensory processing disorder adhd

032primary and detentive working memory disorder and these sent me back in life i've been told several times that people with my type of disability do not normally receive accommodations so trying this process may be worthless i have been waiting 187 days for my 504 to be processed and implanted etas that is legally required to take 30 days i've had over 30 emails in five school meetings still i am unable to access equitable education and i'm not the only one that's had this problem i've been told students in advance classes do not need accommodations they should drop down a level instead just because i have a cognitive disability does not mean that i am unable to comprehend complex subjects i've been told people like you provide no use of society and will get nowhere in life

033i reported this teacher in 2019 to the school and no action was taken are any of these sentences acceptable to say someone let alone a child none of these teachers or staff received reprimanding for the words reported or not and i'm not the first person to struggle with this problem one-fifth of americans are disabled meaning a serious percentage of children in your schools have to go through what i have i've lived my whole life knowing that i will have to struggle to do simple tasks then why does this school work actively against its own students by fostering an ableist environment we should all have equitable access to education what has been said to me cannot be changed but what could be said to someone else in the future could be prevented that's why call to

034action to educate its teachers and staff for essential schools on ableism and disability is also helpful for other subjects such as lgbtq rights or in racism implicit bias training is a great way to do this many may not know that the phrase that they say may be hurtful many may not know that simple things such as putting on captions or not requiring eye contact and speeches may significantly help a student but until we teach people ableism will continue to be a problem in portage we should be fighting for our students not against them thank you [Applause] our next student speaker is elise hello board members i would also like to mention i was a part of the u of m program as well as many other programs this summer working on this project there are

035student members of our community who face social injustice and adverse experiences in and out of school on a day-to-day basis leaving chronic disparities on motivation education and success fear and shame circulate the community and will continue to circulate until change is made the loud silence from the port of central school board has encouraged me as well as my fellow members of the porter central jedi group and our close allies portage northern u of m youth justice fellows and the lewis walker institute to create a space for local accountability i am here hoping to generate interest in the necessity of implicit bias training for all districts staff and faculty teachers need to be trained so they can effectively have tough conversations with their students and in their classrooms this training should be open to interested students

036as well understanding your own bias is extremely crucial to the well-being of not only yourself but also the people you come in contact with so this not only goes for teachers but all members of the portage community including superintendents of curriculum and instruction principals assistant principals paraprofessionals counselors administration members office staff members guidance counselors school social workers academic and athletic directors food service workers assessment and curriculum programs coordinators communication specialists human resource assistants and most importantly students all these positions and roles need to understand the significance of their biases impact in order to communicate with those around them recent research on k-12 education shows that interventions can fabricate instant reduction in implicit bias we can integrate equity related guidelines into our teacher evaluation instruments by developing an examination rubric that contains specific knowledge attitudes tactics

037and behaviors teachers should exhibit after receiving equity training examples of areas in which we might evaluate teachers equity practices include classroom relationships instruction office discipline report referrals and student achievement on assessments in 2019 the study was done on the efficiency of 18 de-biasing interventions found that the most effective strategies are those that expose those participating to examples on how to profile understand how to act with intentionality and conditioning on attitude formation this is to say that educators intentionally seek to understand their students something they are innately wired to do and be we understand that education professionals have a desire to improve the lives of their students in any way they can that said without proper implicit bias training staff and faculty lack strategies and an understanding on how to react in certain situations and prevent

038themselves from saying or doing things that are inadvertently hurtful the children they truly care about these staff the staff members have only the best intentions and they work extremely hard in order to create a safe space for students humans who go into the field of education don't do it for the money or glamour they do it because they want to make a difference in the lives of children they're devoted to this students are owed unbiased teachers and teachers are owed the opportunity to improve themselves so please take the next step to improve the culture of pps by providing this opportunity thank you [Applause] our next speaker is ryan freeland welcome evening mr president mr superintendent members of the board thanks for allowing me the opportunity to speak at this meeting my name is dr ryan

039freeman i'm a physician and graduate of portland central 1996. it's been a few years since i've been here the halls look very different in any case i am a 16-year veteran of the united states air force having served on 10 deployments and five of those combat deployments know that tonight i'm representing thousands of of students faculty coaches and community members who couldn't be here tonight but my point of request and my point of encouragement is to consider under 0.2 commemoration and naming of school facilities as many of you know a legendary community has passed over the last weekend mr robert knight he was a football coach here for 41 years and teacher for 34. so in simple and in short as we consider naming and renaming policy here at portage public schools i ask that

040you consider naming or renaming the cambly field and or the athletic facilities at this school allow me to present my case as i mentioned my story is unique coach knight's impact on me has not been i speak for thousands of individuals who couldn't be here tonight who could also highlight his life-altering impact on their lives for those who don't know again coach knight began his work here at ported central 1971 retired in 2005 continue to coach on staff until 2017 impacting not only football players not only athletes but non-athletes people of all races all genders faculty and he was the de facto leader uh of the faculty and coaching staff in my opinion so allow me to set the details aside and allow me to read just a portion of the note that i fortunately

041wrote to him this summer just months before he succumbed to metastatic melanoma over this weekend this letter is dated 24 june 2021 coach knight my letter reads knowing you and playing for you changed the course of my life i'd like to tell you how i'm 43 years old now and it has been 25 years since i graduated from port and central high school but the lessons i learned from quarterbacking your teams are timeless innumerable and compelling to me even to this day with deep gratitude and tremendous respect for you coach please allow me to detail the most impactful lessons i learned from you number one you connected hard work with success in the minds and lives of your players weightlifting summer camp two a day practices sunday night films and so on were just a

042small representation of the work you had for us to compete and play for you on a weekly basis number two you connected teamwork with success and i have forever been changed by my life experiences and teammates i played with in college on the in the air force service of our country and now the teammates i call teammates at my private practice in interest of time i'll fast forward right to the end but essentially he molded us uh players non-players athletes non-athletes and in my final paragraph i said coach knight please know that i'm eternally grateful for you and the ways you have poured over all of your mustangs with your quote great expectations which was his annual speech to us your enthusiasm for teamwork your extraordinary giftedness your leadership and your own brand of life

043impacting coaching was as intense as it was molding and as personally challenging as it was team building with highest respect and lifelong gratitude thank you coach knight for the opportunity to play for you dr ryan freeman so thank you for your consideration on this issue later tonight thank you for your perspective thank you our next speaker is kimberly larson please hello apparently i am one of your favorite domestic terrorists i say one of not the only and students here i so appreciate you speaking up especially about the adhd my daughter went through similar it took a lot of courage thank you um the domestic terrorist comment is because i remember at a recent board meeting that some of you were attending i think it was the national association of school boards no no thank you

044so much for telling me that i appreciate that correction thank you in which case much better so my next question um comes up because i was you know i'm kind of a geek i've admitted it i was looking up numbers and um comparing them to papa and i don't know how we fully compare but between papa madawan those i was looking at and i need to kind of know how many students are in our jurisdiction how many students have been quarantined and how does that compare to other districts in order to really answer these geeky questions that i have but i noticed that we have uh in portage it looks like 134 students that have tested with positive for cobit but even including up unt before this friday there were only six students that actually

045got that in school and that was for our entire district that's like massive and then i'd like to know how many were quarantined because of those 134. see my son was kept home and he was a lucky one he was fortunate he was only kept home for five days of school because of the weekends on the ends whereas most students could miss seven or you know depending on things maybe more and i'm also fortunate my son um learns well at home many students don't you know that's a privilege and yet he you know so i think of students who have ieps who have learning difficulties who struggle with that at-home environment and are being kept home and i'm wondering is it worth it and the reason i brought up pawpaws that they had 36 cases

046i mean they're smaller districts so you know they can't make sense but i'd like to know how they compare because they don't wear masks um and they quarantined 155 students but only one of those 155 students ended up positive so my question is a teacher is is that worth it or is it better to have them at school and and i look at you randy and i look at you miss navarria and i you know i my understanding is that covet is a little more dangerous for someone who's older than high school and you guys are a wee bit older than high school students um how much that's up to you i don't know and so i'm wondering why are we masking them why are we masking students for whom it isn't dangerous i mean

047they're going to get it but it's not dangerous when we aren't masking ourselves and that doesn't make sense especially when you compare the privilege of being able to be at school and the students who are being affected detrimentally by not being able to be here for that and that really bothers me um thank you kimberly thank you for your correction also mr van antwerp i appreciate the clarification you're welcome thank you for speaking our next speaker is karen smokes please thank you um it's my timer start um good evening my name is karen smoots i've been here obviously before you all have seen me um i don't even think it's worth showing any more statistics and what parents have presented because clearly it just i feel like it's going in one ear and out the

048other emailing board members emailing the superintendent i listened to miss harris say you know if you have any other questions please email the superintendent and they'll get back with you they don't get back to any of us parents we've had no feedback my husband actually said why don't you go in and play the michael jackson song that goes they don't really care about us and and i feel like that's the parents that are asking for a choice i look at that sign and it says please practice social distancing and maintain a six foot from others i wish i had a tape measure in my purse that i usually carry because not one of you in here are maintaining six feet of social distance i watched mr bailing take his mask on and off i don't

049understand that like if you're worried about spreading then why would you take your mask off and talk when particulates can come out and then you put it back on and your hands touch it and that's what we're doing all day i'm just i'm simply asking i have a i have a degree in business i run three different companies i'm accountable to people and i have yet to see any common sense of what is going on we don't wear masks in the hall we don't wear masks at a volleyball game i sat in the gymnasium on wednesday night for freshman jv and varsity volleyball not one person had a mask on but in a classroom for 45 minutes they have to wear a mask i get a text from my son last week or two weeks

050ago he's got his sniffles right he's got a cold not covered not influenza he's got a cold he couldn't come to school because he couldn't breathe through his nose right so he's stuffed up so he has to breathe through his mouth but he got yelled at by teachers tell him to put his mask over his mouth so i get a text from him at 9 49 am saying i'm dizzy mom i'm hot i don't feel good so he brought him home miss three days of school he's a straight a student he's never been in trouble and he failed a test because he missed the notes and he missed the in person what are we doing here none of these things make any sense like i am literally a common sense gal i have to deal

051with common sense business people every single day of my life for the last 20 years that i've ran a business successfully none of this is making sense you didn't even half of you didn't have a mask on the last time now we do and we take it off to talk and then we take it off and we talk into this and maybe this microphone has it's not going away it's going to be here give these kids a choice if you got vaccinated that's your prerogative and you made that choice but you can't mask every child just like these children who spoke they have a disability and i appreciate that i have a disability you don't know what it is because it's hidden all we're asking for is a choice if these children want to wear

052a mask and the parents want them to i hundred million percent respect that but on the same token we've been asking you since school started to please give those other children a choice my child should not have to miss school because his nose is stuffy and he cannot breathe through his nose so he has to breathe through his mouth i took i have an o2 sensor it was it was 81. that was his oxygen level with the mass gun thank you kelly appreciate your karen i'm sorry i'm sorry kelly's our next speaker hi my name is kelly sackett and i'm from texas township i have two children who attend quarter central schools i would like to address the letter that the national school board association sent to the biden administration on september the letter states

053america's public schools and its education leaders are under immediate attack the nsba respectfully asked for federal law enforcement and other assistants to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation they then asked for expedited review by the justice department the homeland security the fbi and enforcement of the patriot act on october 4th a.g garland issued a memorandum citing the justice department will launch a task force consisting of criminal national security civil rights division and the fbi the fbi launched the national threat operations center and a tip line for anyone to turn in disobedient parents no one advocates for threats to be made of any type however calling concerned parents domestic terrorists is beyond the pale do you know when i became a concerned parent when you

054put a mask on my child i will fight and continue to fight until the masks are gone and then i will move on to crt or as diversity equity and inclusion as you would like to call it many of us trusted you to do the right thing for our children and our community and you let us down we will continue to show up every month and have our voices heard we are done being quiet and we go by the names of mom and dad and not domestic terrorists let's go brandon our next speaker is rob walk please my name is rob walk i would like to thank you guys again for for the service you provided as public servants we appreciate uh what you do uh in trying to provide education for our children one

055of the things we teach in our family is to be the example of what you'd like to see in the world when i show up here and speak and i think this is the fourth time now i try to be example for my family in the community to stand up for what you believe in i've done so with respect and conviction and my expectation that the elected officials and all of you would also be the example and stand up for your beliefs and it should be done with conviction and respect to be perfectly honest i've not seen that conviction and respect from the board or the superintendent during the board meetings while you certainly feel free to disagree with the things that we say um it's it's our right to stand up uh it would

056be nice to see some respect while we're giving those comments in the past people have been on their ipads on their phones and uh and there hasn't been a lot of attention to our comments i understand they've been long and there's been a lot of people but these things are important to us so instead at the end you know it's been acted as if not one person showed up for public comment and and there's been no recognition that we've even been here at the end in your comments i've been to other school board meetings because this is important to us as parents to support other parents and at those meetings climax gods they actually say thank you for coming we appreciate your comments we haven't received that here while we're asking for is the same

057respect we're engaged parents we want to be engaged we vote for you if you don't want to come back next time because it's getting hot and we're terrorists then don't but in the meantime we do vote and we will be voting next time and all we're asking for is to be engaged to respond to people when they email whether it's the children or whether it's parents we all want the same thing i applaud the kids for coming up and being engaged in the process that's what this is about it's about being engaged and we're engaged we're asking you to be engaged with us now i have 49 seconds left i don't want mass on my kids anymore i don't some of you have choice here today i understand that you probably don't all agree with

058the mass mandates i'm assuming so i've heard that i've also heard you vote as one my understanding is if you have a collection of if you guys meet together it needs to be open i haven't seen that open meeting where you guys say whether or not you you meet together or if it's emails so i'm concerned that clearly all of you probably have choice some of you have choice of whether to show up today with a mask if you really believe that our kids should be in a mask if all of you believe that then you would be wearing one today too if you believe that that's that the virus is so deadly to our kids and so impactful you'd have one on two because the numbers show that for adults it's way more way

059more deadly way more contagious than for kids thank you thanks rob our next speaker is josh cunningham please hello ladies and gentlemen of the board superintendent belang this is atkinson um i sure wish i could speak as eloquently as dr freeland i can't so i won't try uh but i just want you to know that there's a fair amount of support for change in the district there's been a lot of talk here tonight about change and different things for students and different things for teachers and all of that um our community is is also an area that i think that we can certainly be connected to our high school here um and in specific the field uh out there uh the football field coach bob knight uh his scope of influence that's that's something that

060dr freeland talked about carries generations both as a teacher and as a coach and bottom line there are some things in this world that don't make a whole lot of sense this is one that does mccamley from what i understand was a local politician that that may have played a role in the land being donated for a very very cheap price of a buck so that we could build our athletic facilities out here and i certainly wouldn't say that that needs to be dismissed in any way shape or form but there's just some things that make sense and renaming that field in honor of coach knight is is one that does so please give it some consideration thank you thank you guys our next speaker is mary beth henry please last december there was a

061huge emphasis on our first ever coordinator of diversity equity and inclusion it was also glorified in collaboration with the great lakes equity center it most certainly gave the perception that portage public schools were starting to take steps towards addressing not only current issues in the district but also ongoing issues unfortunately we would not be here if this were the case i would like to reference a letter us parents residents and alumni received from the superintendent last april the reassurance we were given was that the dei coordinator would be familiarizing themselves with dei efforts and initiatives already existing in the district meeting with students staff and parents to learn about what is happening and gaining an understanding of the issues facing our community those findings would have then been presented to the executive leadership team to

062help draft a comprehensive equity plan and i quote it is critical that our efforts to create a more diverse equitable and inclusive school culture contributes to and is embedded in our three strategic priorities student success people and culture and service excellence these issues were later addressed in meetings with the dei coordinator between april through june then board meetings in july and august as well as in personal communications with ann gordon and janine metz and gearhart here we are nearing the end of october and the same questions are arising when will our dei coordinator be replaced which was once estimated to be hired by the end of last school year are there continued initiatives taking place with great lakes equity center or the local efforts that were referenced in april has the executive leadership team started

063to draft a comprehensive equity plan are we providing education on implicit bias are we looking at our own disciplinary data and its inequities are there cultural competencies equity education or coaching provided to our educators we are not asking these questions to just be appeased by a formal letter we are asking these questions in order to create momentum and initiate action towards goals strategies and a better future for our children thank you thank you our next speaker is jessica van dyke please i'm good evening thank you for having here today um as i said my name is jessica van dijk i'm the parent of four kids who are enrolled part-time in portage um so i was pleased over the summer to see the parental choice messaging from superintendent bealing and portage public schools regarding the fall

064covert protocols i do believe it's very important for parents to be able to make medical decisions for their children to the greatest extent possible so this messaging was very encouraging especially when there were all those channel three interviews and over and over super dealing with them sizing our parents want parental choice and so that's what they're going to get now obviously the council county mandate threw a bit of a wrench in those plans i was not particularly thrilled to see portage choose to extend that all the way to 12th grade but i did at least appreciate that the communications during the summer were indicating it was just for instructional time as is required by the mandate and i felt fairly confident at that time that we would as soon as the vaccine for ages 5

065to 11 is approved that we would see the end of mandatory masks and other restrictions and it appeared that in the meantime fine arts athletics clubs and so on would be able to operate normally with no mandatory restrictions which again tracked with with superintendent's emphasis on parental choice but the reality is that it has not turned out this way in practice middle school and high school students all of almost all of whom have the option of being fully vaccinated if they choose are still being required to wear masks in some cases do daily antigen testing for extracurricular activities and this is not required by any health department or governing body and so this has been becoming very concerned that port-au-public schools as a district does not have an off-ramp for these requirements that are invasive

066very limiting to our students and are also inconsistent across departments i'm concerned as well that the parental choice that superintendent being spent so much time emphasizing is not going to be restored even with the vaccination availability that most likely will be here within the next next few months with hopeful approval in the next few weeks we were told and we're continuing to be told by our public health officials that our vaccines are how we return to normal they're freely available to all high school students and almost all middle school students and yet we are still imposing these interventions that are not normal and we're not required to impose them we're choosing to do that and so i want to know how long are we going to continue doing this how what are the circumstances that

067are considered good enough that we're not going to require it anymore right now there's no expiration in these requirements for the 7th through 12th graders and that's really very unfair to these students who are expected to mask and test far beyond what most adults are required to do the majority of districts in kalamazoo county are currently running near normal educational programming minus the k-6 masks during instructional time while portage is continuing to deny us the parental choice at all grade levels both during and after the school day and there's no particular difference in covet outcomes between different districts i feel that it's and it's very necessary that superintendent biling and porter public schools set a hard date now that parental choice is fully restored and it needs to be concurrent with the kalamazoo county mandate

068being rescinded if not sooner it'll be far too easy for us to sleepwalk into continuing this for the whole rest of the school year without a hard deadline we need to accept whatever risks are present as many of you currently are and restore our full educational experience in portage thank you thank you our next figure is abigail van dyke hello my name is abiel van dijk and i am a part-time student at porter's north middle school i've been going to portugal's middle school since i was in kindergarten i'm very glad that this year we got five full days face to face school i love going to band in spanish all five days but i'm very frustrated that we still have to wear masks even for kids who are able to get vaccinated when it came

069to learning spanish it was hard because of the masks it was hard to understand the teacher and what she was saying in spanish because i couldn't see your face um for band we had to wear a two layer mask fitted that so that we could put our instrument in to be able to play and they were very annoying i was not enjoying wearing these masks and i know my friends and family don't like them either so i'm wondering when is this going to be done and i don't want to wear these masks anymore thanks [Applause] our next figure is ellie lapuri welcome hello i'll be very brief uh my name's ali i've been a portage public schools parent for about 15 years now um i just wanted to voice my support for the jedi club

070and diversity equity inclusion principles i'm here at portage i wanted to implore dr belang mr albertus mrs jensenius all of the administration and the board of education to report back to the jedi club periodically hopefully you know once a quarter about the progress that's been made i thought they had some really great suggestions and things that porridge public schools could do right now what i have been told by by many is that black and brown children do not feel safe and supported at portage at times so if we can do anything as parents as board members as administration and as teachers to help these these young people feel supported then i just wanted to voice my support as a parent for that thank you thank you our next speaker is i'm gonna get this wrong

071i think it's it's reverend is it mccartney is that correct okay our last speaker then is emily crawford please i'm going to speak from here um i just wanted to join in and reiterate read it again as parent of five kids in the school district i would like my kids to have the choice for me to have a choice about what's going on with my kids medical decisions not only when it comes to math which let me just tell you it's fun with my kids they're gross but um i want to reiterate this is that i've had the kids come home and told me their teacher has told them they can't take their mask off until they get vaccinated in this school district that there is a plan for all the kids to be required

072to be vaccinated teachers have said this to our kids in elementary school okay if there is any variety plan if there's anything involving vaccinations you need to do a better job communicating that to the parents to the community as according to what we're reading right now they're hoping that's going to be eligible for the kids from five to eleven um starting the first week of the first and second of november and if you need to make communications before that happens because um as we've seen other school districts actually they've had their kids sign off on things and had their kids to get vaccinated without their parents consent that's happened in this country and i don't want that happening to my children so i want to make sure what y'all are going to do about vaccinations

073when it comes to that age group thank you thank you emily now we'll go to comments by board trustees please i want to make a comment about our football coach kurt schwitzel at portage northern i have not met coach twitchell but there was an article in the october 19th issue of the mhsaa second half that some of us may have seen online that talked a little bit about coach twitchell and had some good things to say the thing i want to recognize that he did that i think was pretty commendable on the 16th of october portage northern hosted a band invitational and coach twitchell asked that all his football players attend that band invitational and watch portage northern's band in the competition um that is something that i have never heard of in all the

074years that i've been in portage there are sports that are highly visible and they're supported by the community there are lots of other activities including some sports who very often don't have spectators except the students parents so i thought this was really an outstanding move on coach twitchell's part that he would have his football players who are weakly supported by the marching band attend the marching bands competition so thanks to the coach thanks terry uh randy i'll go next um i'll start with the cte you know what a great uh gift for this community i mean i was i you know i'm 100 support cte i wasn't 100 support of the plan because we were talking about maybe a 20 million dollar facility maybe an 80 million dollar facility but there really wasn't a plan

075but wow looks like we got a hundred million and i can't tell you how excited i am i mean this is great for the community uh thanks to the donor um this is fantastic our community is so blessed but this or these anonymous donors that i just cannot comprehend it there's no community as lucky as ours when it comes to what we have and so great thing for our community go ahead okay well i was just going to say the same thing on behalf cte and congratulations and credit for k reese's superintendent dave campbell who we heard from i believe the last meeting and certainly to the donors but also to the parents in this room and in the community that have pushed for this and supported this it's a wonderful thing um once again

076mark i do this every meeting thanks to you and your staff still have lots of struggles you know finding people hiring people uh we're talking about buying for more buses and there's enough work just trying to find bus drivers and i mean everybody's pitching in teachers are doing more you know we're trying to do more with less just because you just can't find people um i know everybody's working hard and getting creative as as as we talked about earlier you know you know with bus routes and everything get created with that a lot of creativity going on and i just appreciate everybody's hard work um but lastly i just want to talk about coach knight um i have a unique perspective because i played at porter's northern and i played against coach knight um and

077i was one one-on-one so um strangely enough you know i was a northern player i graduated in in 83 i developed a close friendship with coach knight um somehow he respected me enough he was the first person to ever ask me to come on school board about 25 years ago coach knight showed up in my office at work said i want you to go to school board i said gosh coach knight i'm so honored got a little problem i live in kalamazoo i said i will fix that and then i will run for school board but i mean i really choose because bob knight was just such a such a leader such a mentor um you know i don't i don't know what god's plan is sometimes god takes the best from us early um

078you know that same thing happened with my brother's case and i just can't understand but we just need to you know celebrate coach knight's life he was just he was just a wonderful person um i think one of my i mean some of the some of the celebration of life you know just think of all the wonderful people he helped uh eric i think my favorite story was it coach knight that kicked you off the coffee machine so ford doesn't know the story i'm going to steal your thunder eric but uh eric was a young teacher brand new teacher at porter's northern i mean today he looks like he's 25 so so he probably looked like he was 13. so eric albertus is at the coffee machine as his fresh new teacher and bob knight

079took kicked him out of the coffee room he said get out of here you're not supposed to be in here eric battles all stuff together and had it all done so just a great great story um yeah this community lost a great man it really did um a wonderful person selfless person just it's just really sad and i appreciate everybody's comments tonight coach tonight that was really good um i would like to just uh do a segue into that because uh my first administrative position in portage was important central high school and i can't say enough what coach knight did for me personally um and as an assistant principal you're dealing with discipline and he just made my job easy when it came to football players so uh i definitely believe that there should be

080some celebration i'm just not sure how that looks but uh i am indebted to his kindness to me and make me feel a part of porter central high school especially as a first time administrator thanks celeste anyone else um randy i would just say you know regarding coach knight and his family condolences to the family i never knew the man but i knew his reputation i grew up at gull lake and knew his reputation then he was a giant not quite sure you know how to address the issue but looking forward to beginning the discussion of that a little later thanks paul on behalf of the anybody anybody else on behalf of the board i just like to extend our condolences to bob knight's family um i only met bob a few times i went

081to northern but he was a great guy i enjoyed my meetings with him just had a few meetings with him but he was obviously a great guy and my fondest memory of him was at the last night under the lights at mccamley field and bob and his wife got to throw the switch and i mean what an honor i mean he was he was quite a guy and certainly deserved that opportunity to do that at mccamley field and with regard to our speakers tonight we always welcome public comment we appreciate the respectful way the comments were delivered this evening i know we don't agree on everything and i i just want to make it clear that we don't view parents as terrorists we're not part of the national association of school boards and we welcome

082public comment here just wanted to let you all know that thank you we will move to the consent agenda we have three items this evening the first is approval of the october 11 2021 committee of the whole work session policy revisions that the board of education approved the proposed bylaw and policy updates as presented from neola that mark reviewed this at our last meeting and finally that the board of education approved the proposed revisions to policy 1.0 global ends as presented and that has our new ends policy 1.3 on resilience in life which is a reference to social emotional learning are there any exceptions to the consent agenda as presented my hearing done the consent agenda is approved and we'll move to our discussion items the first one is on page 19 and that's the

083msb delegate assembly handbook revisions as you know i'm going to be attending the delegate assembly on november 11th trustee novaria vice president of berry is my alternate and i am uh i'm ready to vote ready to do my job now i don't know if any of you reviewed the material or have any questions about the material well i just want to give you some high points of the things we'll be voting on and we're going to be voting on a lot of stuff anyway uh we have some amended resolutions we're going to um vote on and a lot of them are just changes to the heading or the title of the of the of the resolutions for instance curriculum and parental control i'm going to cast the vote to make it curricular and parental involvement

084huh oh yeah i like that yeah and another one is reading skills they're going to change that to literacy skills okay and [Music] there's a new resolution for social and emotional learning supports that they're encouraging local districts to establish and i just thought you'd be interested in the language they used given we just worked on this policy and it says they say that students need to be able to regulate their emotions collaborate with their peers communicate their ideas and appreciate the perspective of others and i believe that's sort of what we meant in our resilience title for our uh for our policy and really everything else is is just pretty simple there's some deleted resolutions that they've decided are duplicates and others that are covered by state law but um anyway i said i'd never

085go again because the last one was four hours but this one's only supposed to be two so you can count on me you can rest easy i'm gonna get this done okay all right our next discussion item is commemoration and naming of school facilities and this is on our agenda because of the communications we had last week from the community suggesting that the name of mccamley field be changed so to get that discussion started we thought we would put that on the agenda for this evening and i'm just going to review the policy real quick and sort of describe where we are now and we need to have some discussion about where we go from here uh the policy is very specific that the board of education has complete authority and responsibility for naming facilities

086and to change the existing names of facilities and facilities includes athletic fields now our customary practice here is to name a new school or facility after a street or a part of the city and you know for instance 12th street elementary reported central high school but we also have the the option to use commemoration and commemoration as the board may commemorate a facility by by means of naming it after a person who has made exceptional contributions to the district or the community and meets the following criteria number one contributions and good character of the person are well documented and acknowledged within the community and that the person must be deceased or no longer employed or have any current formal association with the district agreement of the person or next of kin if possible must be

087obtained but the policy offers no guidance on who can make a suggestion to to name a facility or change the name of a facility so based on that from the policy we're assuming that anyone can and right now we have several suggestions regarding mccamley field one is to rename mccamley field another one we received is to rename the football field after coach knight and leave the entire sports complex named camly another suggestion we received was to name the field mccamly knight similar to what they did in rockford with a former school board member and their football coach we've also had letters asking us to find another way to honor coach knight and ported central has also been working on some plans to honor the coach so those are the suggestions we've received now we haven't

088named a facility after a a coach or an individual for over 60 years at least mccandly field was named over 60 years ago and i i just want to point out who mccamley was stuart mccamley was elected township supervisor portage township supervisor beginning in 1936 and he said he served for 20 years until 1956 when he was 79 years old he was elected and served as president of the board of education from 1954 to 1945 to 1954 beginning when the eight portage schools were consolidated to form portage township schools during his tenure as president of the board the first football team was fielded land for the stadium was acquired and portage township high school was built mckamley field opened in 1958 and you know we affirmed that back in just a couple years ago when

089the new mchamley field was was open so i'm just reviewing the policy telling you what it is telling you where we're at and i'm looking for some feedback on where you think we need to take this and we need to take it ahead but in a thoughtful way so open the comments well you know randy coach knight certainly meets you know the commemoration aspect i mean you know and i mean you have a lot of great community people in this community a lot of great coaches but you know coach knight like i wasn't even one of his players you know um you know but he was a mentor to me and i was close with him um you know he wasn't just a celeste he was a leader he he was so much more than

090just there for the football players so i mean he does meet that commemoration in my opinion how he approaches there's just too many avenues especially for this board because i think we're 100 percent portage northern board members up here not my plan but this is how it is but it's a part of the community i understand that central community but i i just think somehow there's a lot of suggestions out there and i don't know if we have the collective knowledge to be able to really make that decision we need to have some type of committee in my my opinion you know what that looks like i don't know um but you know and i don't want to move to fact we want to move fast but we we want to do what's right you

091know and slow the signal i mean coach knight just passed and then it'd be great to have some family input as well um you know they're a great family and i just loved their they don't want privacy they want community they want people to talk about them i was with a friend this weekend whose husband passed away and she just appreciated because we sat down after the michigan game and talked about her deceased husband for for hours you know and she said this is so important because people just don't want to do that um and i think it's wonderful that the night family says stay we don't want privacy we want community we want to talk about this that's just a wonderful thing and that's what coach knight i'm talking about coach tonight but that's

092my opinion i think there's some type of committee there's some type of recommendation because we've had a lot obviously you've said we've had lots of recommendations uh coach knight clearly um exceeds the the reasons for commemoration in my opinion thanks russ i think there's some precedent on the way they did husky we did husky stadium that they formed a committee and they came to the board i mean terry and i sat on that committee and they came to the board how we got and you know got to husky stadium and i think there should be a committee outside this committee to bring us a recommendation that's gone through administration and fits the criteria and you know it doesn't have to start here probably shouldn't start here and so um you know the way the i

093have no problem doing it except it shouldn't be us making it it should be a group of people concerned and trying to figure out what's best for this campus and and figure out how to do it and and you know come to us and we're pretty reasonable people most of the time and we'll consider it and we'll vote on it so i would say this needs to be a very thoughtful process two years ago the new stadium opened here and at that time there were discussions that went on about what we wanted to be called and the decision was made to keep it as mccamley field two years ago so i guess my thought is bring it forward change it now cancel curtis stewart mchamley 50 years down the road is that going to happen

094again and what are we setting ourselves up for with other facilities in the community school buildings athletic facilities auditoriums and so forth so i'm not saying good or bad i'm just saying there needs to be a really thoughtful discussion about what kind of a precedent this sets and how are we going to appropriately honor coach knight but then how are we going to set ourselves up in the future when this comes up again and and i you know i had said you know i fully support and that but as i mentioned i'm not sure how that looks and i and i agree uh you know you said 65 years ago 65 years ago this board won't be in existence so we don't and we want something that's going to have some longevity some longevity even

095if we don't know what that looks like now i'm also i don't know where we where we are as far as mccandly i mean are there some family members are there some do we know anyone who is a part of of that family my family family i mean i i'm not sure how that someone would feel from the family if we're taking that name away i mean i don't know what it looks like this is not an easy decision but i do think it needs to be very thoughtful and in addition to that something that's going to have longevity i mean you know even even when we're no longer here as a board or as whatever well and a pretty well-known precedence of that is uh john wooden is certainly a familiar name to most

096people and certainly somebody who i think the whole world would agree should be honored and of course he coached at poly pavilion for ucla and they couldn't take away an established name so they named the court it's it's now poly pavilion it's the john wooden basketball court at poly pavilion so i do see some parallels but to take the name away of somebody who presumably is still in good standing i think would be an unusual thing to do but i like the committee idea outside of this group just for some levity i think the mccandley family had to be embarrassed for that football field for like 20 years finally a great deal no longer i mean i'm serious it was probably the worst football field in south westminster pretty rough but it's not most communities

097very proud of and um yeah maybe they didn't mind it that way because he made a comment when he was running for township supervisor because the issue was the roads and how bad westedge was and apparently he said well why would we want to fix it just more people come here i don't like them then i think we should spend more time all right right never enough barrels my gut is i would like to see some thinking and we probably have to help facilitate it but bubble up from the port and central portion of the community i think i mean i would listen strongly to that um and i'd like them to be mindful of the policy um i mean there is there is something about jettisoning the mccannly name um just my gut is

098i i would want to be very sensitive to that but um but i think when you give it some time and have some dialogue i'm just hopeful that there could be some clever way to figure this out because i i mean it's uh i'm just trying to think of who would be more meritorious of something like this and i mean i just there's nobody else so um i just you know i really want to hear what the ported central community uh would think about this and i i just welcome that a lot of dialogue and a lot of thinking and i think i'm just hopeful that there's a good solution there yeah i think it's safe to say that everybody on the board believes it would be a good thing to honor coach knight in

099some way maybe it's the field maybe it's something else i don't know it's kind of ironic that on the 100th anniversary of the district where we're trying to celebrate and enhance our history that we would be totally taking away a name that's been with us for over 60 years so i agree the decision has to be thoughtful and the work probably starts with the policy because that's how we do our work because we don't make ad-hoc decisions that are arbitrary in one situation we we govern through our policies that set the standard for what happens down the way no matter what individual might be involved so we can say the community we want to find a way to honor coach knight and uh we're gonna we're gonna take a look at our policy and see

100what we can do to put a group of people together to vet all these um you know suggestions we've received and uh you know we'll move on as fast as we can we would like to honor him he's he was a great man no question somebody blew for granted thank you i volunteer to lead the committee if it'd be your pleasure i'm happy to work with with you guys i will say very specifically i know the family would shy away from this sort of activity because i know in their humility they don't want it to be a family project so while we would love that knight family incorporated they don't necessarily want to lead this and that's the exact reason we should honor coach knight because that's the type of individual that he is and

101we mean in in no way any disrespect towards mccann we played on that field we played under those lights northern and central both of these communities both great um histories there so we mean no disrespect in any way but we just want to honor coach knight under the thank you thank you well thanks for coming down here all the way from grand rapids tonight just you know one other thing with that doctor doctor being brought up is um his mccamelli a lot of people have great memories about mckamley so whatever we want to do i think it's really important that we still have the camly part of that situation because i played on the family you put it on the camera and so you still i think still somehow we want to keep mccandly playing

102i'm just giving the community direction i also wanted randy i this also um because we guide by policy but um the committee structure might i don't know if you can tweak it yeah i think we need to take a look we need to tweak that many structures just not really strong for this type of thing so so i would leave it up to you and mark to consider a way to tweak that because there's a lot well on the policy committee you know yeah you know you can't do anything yeah don't throw this to policy committee just change it okay just i just i i would like you guys to consider wandering outside the the specific structure of the committee as as as in this policy yeah i think we yeah i think we should

103we probably need some advice from some people that are closer to the situation yep yep okay well we're uh moving on to our last discussion item this evening and that's the uh that's the approval of the virtual program and we have mike and kelly on tell us all about it all right thank you trustees it's um good to be before you receiving to kind of wrap up our agenda tonight we are making a recommendation to explicitly include our virtual elementary program and select middle school virtual courses in our programs of study for both elementary and middle school respectively giving you a little background on how this came about so michigan has always had some virtual learning and distance learning elements in the way we were doing pupil accounting and when the pandemic happened those had

104to be rescinded to some level and because we weren't meeting the expectations of in-person instruction during the pandemic as we've moved out of that season we still have schools that are utilizing some sort of virtual or distance learning and i use those two two terms specifically so recently this last summer the michigan legislature adopted some new language through their appropriations bill as well as they adjusted what we call the pupil accounting manual or the pam and in there it kind of set up new definitions for distance learning basically distance learning used to be a situation where the teacher was far away and the students were in school in a particular lab so we could utilize a teacher from another district and students here but now that means students at home who are working possibly with

105a teacher somewhere else but they're meeting on the same time schedule and through the same daily repetition that their in-person classmates are as well and so that's what's designed as distance learning so we're still using google means and that is really our high school and middle school virtual programs they really are what the state refers to as distance learning because they're still following the same schedule of the day the class is the same length of time and they're just using that interface of google means to do the connection different than that though is what the state defines as virtual learning and that's learning that has a modified schedule for the amount of time and the work can be done asynchronously so a teacher may issue some assignments and they may not meet again or meet

106at a particular schedule that matches their in-person counterparts we have a few classes at the middle level that are doing that in order to get some of their electives in with our virtual program we needed a fitness class a french class and then a handful of electives for students to kind of round out their schedule and those are done using the virtual learning but the rest of the high school and middle school uh virtual programs as we call them are really technically defined as distance learning and so those don't require a change the distance learning ones do not require a change to our program of studies but the virtual ones do and i'll let kelly explain about our elementary virtual program thanks mike so the elementary program is utilizing the virtual learning module or way

107or program and that's really because we are modifying the in-person requirements for the amount of time that kids are on that computer we don't want kids on a computer straight all day long kindergarten through fifth grade so we're being more flexible with the amount of times that they're able to jump up jump back in do a small group to have a snack do things that kids normally do at school being able to have some breaks there with them but on the computer at home with that we do have to have some expectations that go along with us to in order to count it to meet those state and federal guidelines so one of those is we have to have a separate course syllabi for each of those programs k through five and within that they

108have to basically say what are the kids learning what's the name of the post program what is the course description and all of the standards that will be assessed so uh jessica when stanley has been working diligently getting that all up and running and ready to go for us so we have a course syllabi k5 for our students the second part is that every student needs an edp or an education develop educational development plan so what that means those are counted as part as their pps memberships of student count we hold record of those so currently we have reached out to every parent in the virtual programming to say things like tell us about what your student needs what are some ways we can help support them how do they learn best and along those

109lines so then what we do is we take those the teachers have them on file they're able to access and reference them and support kids so those don't go anywhere but our own files but if we were asked for them we do have them for each and every one of our kids the third and most important one is for our attendance is that we track and record weekly two-way interactions for the duration of any virtual learning program so we have to do that that's probably the most tedious part of the virtual programming right now is being able to not only do that part which we all want to communicate but really is to record it in a two-way conversation or interaction is a conversation so it can't just be i sent out a blasted email

110to all my families and check i'm done it is really around being able to say i called this parent we had a conversation about my child's learning i can count that as a two-way interaction as the kids are older they are able to do that the teacher and the student but in elementary because of their age we really need to have that interaction between the parent and the teacher so we do have we do have that in place and again with the assistance of jill slott through the k recep pupil accounting she really helped make sure we were hitting the right things on that accounting measure and then jessica when stanley developed a whole system for us to keep track of that so we feel like we have all the pieces in place that we

111need to make sure that we are doing this doing what is right for this program and then what we want to be able to do is have it explicitly as mike said at the beginning in our program of study so it is saying there that we do have that and that's why we're recommending um or submitting this recommendation today so if there's any questions we can answer for you we'd love to do that well thanks for letting us know what the pan is i didn't know yeah it's a good one yeah it's an easy read yeah so so um so big picture the pandemic came we started doing things virtual because that's the way things rolled um the legislature gave us a waiver to do it so now the pandemic we're kind of lifting out

112of it and we found a need to do some of this stuff ongoing so now we we have to jump through some additional hoops and have formal board approval of aspects of the program to as well so they made modifications themselves to coming out of the pandemic because there were just so many users of uh distance and virtual learning that if they needed to adjust their expectations so is um is any of this done in expectation that some families really like this and uh you expect this to be this is kind of a new probably small but new way that some families will elect to go yeah it's a new territory for us we are making it the best experience we possibly can for our families just today at elementary we had our virtual picture

113day so they went over to the stable our students were able to go physically go and have pictures taken and then on on the opposite side of the stable we had them spread out so they could meet their teacher and do an activity with their teachers so we're really trying to make sure they continue to build community so we do see parents you know it's working for them right now as for the future that i don't know i mean as the past 18 months plus have been we're not sure what it will bring us but we are doing the very best we can for our families choosing that option we want to take good care of them yeah it was a part of developing the um educational development plan because it sounds a little bit

114like an iep but not quite i mean he was involved in that so that was um so we were getting the require again like mike said this pam changes and every time you kind of look and you're like oh there's the what you need in the edp um so we did get those out of out of the pam we found the requirements of what we needed and then um dr sheehan developed a google basically a google form to fill in and then they'll have those conversations with the parents from that to develop it so it did come out of the requirements there kelly who who actually develops the edp the edp would then it's going to filter in based off the parent comments so technically the parents feedback fills into an autocratic form and that

115creates that evp that way but then the teacher and the parent we have conferences coming up so then they can talk through that and make sure that we have it all addressed appropriate and then after all of that it's reviewed or revisited periodically yeah we need to be reviewing that periodically as well at the high school level the counselors and parents and students are involved in the development of that edp as well so the students are involved at the secondary level and then we we used to have the michigan virtual academy is that we still do a little bit of that or is this kind of in place of that because it's more hands-on yeah local yeah it's it is we still do that so we still have courses that students are allowed to take

116i reference uh 388 1621 f if you remember it was called 21f was virtual instruction when that law first came about so we can still have students use michigan virtual's catalog and our students would access that through their counselor but since these are courses that we're offering as an entity we need to be able to have all the rest of the things that right now michigan virtual this was this was easy for them because they already had all of the syllabi developed their course catalog was developed all the standards were done so we're just doing some of the work that michigan virtual already had completed to meet the needs of our elementary students and those middle school courses and we used to do something through like oakland university was it or there were there were

117a handful of different places that have stuff along the way yeah it seems like i remember years past okay thank you i'll be new and different thank you very much and uh with that we are adjourned thank you you