Portage Public Schools Board of Education Regular Meeting - June 14, 2021

001foreign you oh look like we got a lot of papers here today you're here y'all hearing me talk huh he controls that from this meeting of the board of education is now called order please stand and join us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you and welcome to our meeting this evening and we'll get started by approving our agenda this evening are there any changes to the agenda as uh printed no is there a motion pleased to approve the agenda uh mr president i believe that the board of education approved the agenda as printed thank you thank you very much all in favor please

002say i i opposed the motion passes and we'll move forward where the agenda is printed and go to the superintendent's report mark thank you randy the first thing i have is just a quick update on the construction projects at central middle school the uh commissioning is about 90 percent complete um they're working on the on the chillers and uh doing some final testing on that we're also at that at that location at the uh at the campus painting the stable which is about 50 complete uh if you've driven by there you'll notice there's a kind of an odd color blue on the front which is not the permanent color that needs to be redone so that is uh that'll be repainted and we're awaiting the arrival of the paint there there's also some additional plantings

003uh and trees being placed in the plaza area between the two schools there's also some landscaping outside of the stable and other places around the uh around the campus there so that is taking place in the in the parking lot as well is they poured curb today and doing some finish grading there for the parking lot so we hope that paving will be followed very shortly on that same is true at west michigan west middle school the commissioning is about complete so that's uh that's nearing completion here at the northern auditorium they've been grading the parking lots today and we'll be doing the base course sometime this week with pavement and then some additional grading and landscaping happening around the around the outside inside the pool bowl itself is complete there's like a 15-day countdown

004before they can start putting water in there because it needs time to cure the grout that they put in so that's happening and while that's while we're waiting for that they're also doing the pool surface and the walls um everything else is pretty much complete on the inside so just some final touches going on there and hope to give you a little more uh firm date as to when we'll be able to open by at our next meeting so that's the bond project up a couple other things uh the district values team is uh is uh surveying the community at this point we've closed the uh the survey on our values work to uh staff and students and uh and parents of students we had over 2000 people provide input so thank you to all

005those that did that and we opened up today where we announced that it's open now to the broader community uh by visiting our website and we'll be promoting that uh via social media so we already have some folks that have completed the survey um from the from the community so that's there and then the the last thing i have is just thank you for rounding last week that was a very nice meeting with you and getting your feedback on on the number of questions that i asked and i'll have a report back to you when we meet uh to do my evaluation next meeting that's all i have randy any questions on anything i've talked about thanks for the update mark you bet i will move to uh board education the uh good old extended

006covet 19 learning plan update mike huber and kelly jensenius will do the honors here for you all right all right good evening superintendent b lang and trustees tonight mike huber and i will be presenting our last covid19 extended learning plan for reconfirmation for the 2021 school year we're here to give an update on the kalamazoo county regional health status our final k-12 enrollment and attendance data the results of our extended copen learning plan goals summer learning programming updates specific percentage of face-to-face and virtual learners for each of our buildings attendance data and looking at our plans for the future as we move forward as it pertains to our summer learning programming and the 21 22 learning experience so we have a couple slides for you tonight looking here we can start to see our current

007county and health regional health status we ended the year with 159 student cases and 60 staff cases of covet 19 on our coven dashboard throughout the year we consulted with the kalamazoo county health and community services staff about quarantining closures developments of protocols and guidance mr b lang received briefings from the county health staff weekly we are so appreciative of the investment that the kalamazoo county health services has made in portage and all of the county-wide schools and students they were just a blessing to work alongside throughout this year our current status in our region has us at a risk level d we have a seven day average of six cases and we foresee this number will continue to decline as this will continue to allow us to meet face to face so we're excited

008to see where we're at currently as all of you are as i'm sure next up our overall trend for the school year was an increase in our in-person instruction with each marking period we were able to show that to you throughout the year this is relative to our general health trend throughout the school year while the health data was more volatile during statewide or regional outbreaks we did maintain our increase over the year and so this historical chart illustrates the dynamic nature of education during this pandemic so you can see at the end of the year the percentage of students that were in person versus virtual at each of the different levels elementary landing at 72.5 in person middle school 57.9 and high school at 44.4 as we report each month our two-way interactions with

009weekly attendance this has been a consistent number from around 96 to 98 percent weekly average attendance for the entire school year so you start to see our students stay pretty consistent there and then when we go into our goals these were the three goals that we set at the beginning of the year i'll start with goal one and then mike will go into the second two so at the beginning of the year we set our equal goals not not really knowing what to expect this school year going into this goal one focused on sixty percent of students in k through 5 meeting or exceeding the grade level benchmarks and reading in ela by the spring and we were measuring that through our acadians data as you can see every grade level kindergarten through fifth grade

010met or exceeded that goal and collectively k through five we were at 73 this included all our face-to-face and virtual learners um you can see the percent of students who were assessed and were really proud of that fact because we were really working hard to figure out ways to assess our virtual learners and and making sure that we were able to get good information from them we want to take a moment to thank all our teachers reading specialists interventionists special educators and paraprofessionals for all their time and dedication and making sure all our students were able to be assessed during the three assessment windows throughout the year without them this wouldn't have been possible at all so we're very appreciative of that mike you want to take over goal too looking at goal 2 this

011is the goal related to our 6 8 students and their reading and there's a couple of artifacts in here that we want you to notice first of all it's our seventh and eighth grade students we did not reach our 60 goal for those students to increase their risk score what i've included and we're on page 16 and 17 of the report you received is we did meet that at sixth grade and at eighth grade we did have um a situation when we went to nwea task the app and our chromebooks were having some issues working together so beyond what we were seeing just from our general network wi-fi we also had issues that were related to the app being able to be executed on the chromebook and so we noticed our testing rates even with

012extended time there going down to around 48 of our eighth grade students this isn't obviously this isn't where we want it and we're not really sure if that would move the needle from 53 meeting that increase in risk score or um or not but we'd like to believe that that had an impact on that i've included some information about what a writ score is and so this is different than goals than goal one which goal one uses a spring winner fall and it's not a comparator of where they are it's a benchmark standard goal two and three are relative to where they began the school year at since they're related to nwea and growth that also could be a factor here and when we take a look at goal three that factor can also be

013the same at play but in the opposite direction goal three were all of our k-8 students improving in mathematics from fall to spring and this is a case where again you see those high rate of student assessments there except for that eighth grade uh assessment test and you'll notice also that the percent that showed an increase on their risk score is exceedingly high throughout the district so i think we're ranging from 65 percent all the way up to 97 so great score certainly scores to be celebrated relative to our instruction this year and also we just want to keep that in mind and temper it with that this is the measure of growth from the beginning of the year to the end of the year these are areas for us to continue our support when

014we look at that goal related to ela and that's that is important to us to reflect on and a couple of the things that we are reflecting on are found on page 18 in the report you'll hear more about our summer learning opportunities we're going to continue our fall screener and utilize that for specific supports relative to all literacy grades k through nine we do have a new curriculum component in ninth grade you'll hear a little bit more on that tonight when i share about curriculum purchases and then we also are continuing to support our middle school literacy program um including teacher and staff development and explicit curriculum instruction and our math teams and ela teams at elementary continue to unpack standards and apply those essential skills in their classroom with their teaching our middle

015school teams continue the integration of curriculum equity components at that middle school social studies level and our virtual teachers uh k-12 are continuing their process of developing and concentrating our virtual program for instruction in the coming school year so those are just a few of the things that we have in response to these goals coming out and while goals one and three look great and goal two looks like an area of concern we're certainly addressing it as such and we know that that could be relative to a lot of factors so we want to take a deeper dive and fall when our students come back with us okay so moving on to our summer learning programs we have our programmings actually starting today with middle school and high school but we have three different programs

016that our students have been invited into at elementary middle and high i spoke last time about elementary is going to be centered around a small group that is tutoring sessions with as little as one student and up to about four students per teacher they are being offered 10 hours of for per student to build relationships work on word and number sense routines and encourage academics as well as that social emotional piece of it so we're really excited to get that running they will be utilizing lake center elementary for classroom spaces and our portage public schools transportation has been working diligently to get busing up and running for us elementary programming begins their first session next week we have 34 tutors who are engaged in this work and today they were able to dive into three

017hours of training through a professional development software called loop which they were really excited to use so it was great to see them engage in that they've also reached out to the eligible families contacted them with phone calls and emails to make sure that everyone was connected and so that's been today we moved on to middle school high school who were able to get into the building again middle school is going to be a small group of tutoring as little as one student and up to i believe four students per teacher they are offering 16 hours for students to build relationships work on that word and number sense engage in academics they're engaging more in a project-based learning element which is why they have a little bit more time there while creating engaging environments for

018middle school kids they are utilizing northern high school for classroom spaces and again our transportation department has been working on getting the students to the building and then at the high school level this is a little bit different we're really focused here on credit recovery for all high school students who lost credit or failed to complete a course during the school year they are using a digital content platform called plato coupled with in-person instruction with a certified teacher so they'll have this platform where they're able to work at what what they need work on and then the teachers there help support the learning alongside them the classes may have up to 15 students and for students who only need particular components of a course the staff is adjusting the program requirements to meet the learning

019targets for those students at the marking period level and again they'll be at northern high school and using transportation the final one though i think is a pretty cool program that is called my city school program and that's offered in conjunction with k-risa in the youth opportunities unlimited and this has allowed us to connect students with career pathways work experiences and training with some pay for the summer so those were some targeted groups of students looks like we had 29 students enrolled in that program but what i'd like to say is thank you to our bus drivers and our transportation department for all their hard work and support getting our students into our building starting today and throughout the summer we [Music] it took us a while to get this up and running with tutoring

020and so it was very much pretty last minute and they have just been amazing for to work alongside and and make sure that our kids can get into the buildings and get what they need this summer so we could not have done it without them we're very grateful so then we're just going to pull this back up we've shown you this before this is what we're looking at moving into the 21 22 school year for our face-to-face in-person instruction it's really going to be our main modality of learning where we'll continue to work on our pps curriculum based on our standards five days a week next year wherever those health and safety protocols land us going into the fall we will be following them the recommendations from the cdc mdhhs and the kalamazoo health department

021as it relates to all things cleaning protocols mass wearing social distancing we'll see where we're at come august and we'll be following those and our goal really is to build our face-to-face program and incorporate the effective practices we've learned over the past school year as it relates to integrating of the technology into our daily teaching and learning and where that best fits for our students and for our staff and we will have teach camp once again this august which will be great where again we'll be having our teachers share out their best practices and proven instructional strategies finally within that going into next year we still will be offering that virtual option for our as a secondary mode of instruction and that will be taking place for a smaller percentage of our families it will

022be five days a week uh synchronous using pps curriculum taught by pps teachers and there will be some limited programming and offerings based on the different levels and what is available currently we have about 84 full-time virtual high school students enrolling middle school we have around 36 in elementary it's around 125. we're calling families double checking making sure that we have our enrollment solid over the next couple weeks to see where that lands and so that is what we're looking to offer into the fall we are happy at this point to answer any questions that you may have about as mike put our awesome year we have there what can we answer for you um i'll go first just real quick we had that 60 percent goal and is that the normal what is that

023event you call it a goal for performance improvement but is it really event people kids hitting benchmarks it it is it's not a neither of those the occasions tool we've used in prior years and shows up in monterey report one one but nwea has not our rationale for not wanting to use nwea is is because the minute we move it into maybe more of that high stakes arena or in a place where we're getting measured it doesn't serve us well to help direct student instruction as much so we've tended to leave monterey report 1-1 focused on the state and national tests and have our local data be tools that we know are particular for those either those grade levels in a national sense or just something that we know we can measure without impacting our

024ability to change student instruction and what's the normal year do we expect performance in our acadian's data we would set that at 85 would be our target goal for any given year kelly what were those numbers again for the virtual for elementary middle and high oh for for the upcoming school year looks like we're approximately 84 for high school 36 middle school and 125 at elementary i know dr sheehan was calling elementary today and so i know that number has gone down a little bit today so we'll have more solid numbers probably next week or the next time we meet with you guys any other questions for kelly and mike uh just one quick quick question one comment just to make everybody aware um you know we still don't know where we'll be in the

025fall so we those no i would imagine those virtual and and in class will change depending on math requirements um where we sit i mean obviously we all know things are trending well but we've seen a lot of crazy stuff some bumps along the way so just obviously we're all aware of that being prepared for what may be yeah true we'll continue to keep our eye on it we know the end of july we have an opportunity at a board meeting to take a look at what's coming up in august and we'll certainly be in touch with the health department and prepare kind of like an update of status on at the end of july i just remember when you set the goals at 60 there was a lot of anxiety there i mean and

026particularly on the part of the board because we're thinking wow that's pretty sobering you know you think that's as good as we're going to do and just a big shout out to our staff and our teachers for delivering the numbers that they did i mean that's that's really impressive given all the changes during the school year um i also i just wanted to comment on the summer program it seems to be very accommodating and i know there's more students that have been invited than what have those who decide to participate i sure hope those numbers go up because it sounds like a pretty neat program all the way around so it is it's been a good opportunity to kick off even in the midst of this there's a lot of positive energy from both the

027staff and students today yeah yeah that's great well thank you thank you we do want to say one last thank you as um that also includes you as a board in there this year by far has been a year that's tested and sifted all of our work internally as a collective uh community of bus drivers custodians maintenance administrators food service support staff even you as a board of education and our teachers especially both in-person and virtual have played a huge role in the success of this school year and we don't want to miss that we explicitly recognize the impact on our staff that the stresses the investment of energy and time and the rapid changes that we had to put in place this year have had on everyone externally we know that parents grandparents day

028care providers medical professionals members of the greater portage community have had an essential role that's benefited our students immensely and that's really what we do but we couldn't be here without all of those people in a variety of different places and and we up here are just representing another group of people that are incredibly grateful for us as a community because as a community we've put so much into this this last one and a quarter school years meeting the needs of students as families as best as we can as a system so we want to extend a thank you from all of us to all of portage to you as a board to our community members and our teachers here and the teachers who are watching online and extend that to to the greater portage

029community and while educators tend to set aside time for recharging every summer teachers kind of naturally get into that rhythm and mode we want to say that this summer we especially encourage everyone in our community to take the time necessary to take care of yourself to connect with your friends and family so that we can continue our good work and recharge ourselves to arrive back here and fall but we do want to say thank you to the portage community it's been a privilege and it is a privilege to serve alongside all of you here in this room and outside in our school system and in the greater portage area so thank you for all of that thank you well thank you that gratitude page you have on page 20. that's that's great might like everybody

030shows it was a team effort i just want to add you know because i've we've been saying it i've been saying throughout the season you know we split that dichotomy of of kids learning and and the safety of staff and say i mean it's not perfect but we did our best to maximize learning to maximize safety um probably all the decisions we made no one ever know if we did everything right but i think you know we did a pretty good job keeping people healthy and maximizing learning um and then to add to it when what like randy said is amazing you know to see those those scores and at the same time the staff beyond teaching is is concentrated on the social emotional uh health of our kids and um everybody was doing a

031lot and um you know it's really appreciated and we also hope this is the last uh equal plan that we bring thank you okay um we'll move forward to our comments and communications section i think we have some folks who would like to speak tonight um celeste if you could read our rules for public comment please i will indeed public comment at board meeting the board welcomes community input at our public meetings when addressing the board please conform to these guidelines as follows sign the speaker registration form at the beginning of the meeting state your name and address limit your comments three minutes provide a written copy of your comments and supporting documentation to the board secretary if available present your comments in a respectful and professional manner refrain from mentioning any student by name

032and 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 our first speaker tonight is aaron kaler welcome hi everybody i'm erin kaler teacher at north middle school just finished my 19th year and many of you board members i've worked alongside or coached or taught your kids and i just want to know this is my first time speaking out and so i think that should say something through our frustrations over 19 years we've had a lot of frustrations but north middle school staff have put together a letter i'm going to read part and pass this along so hello board of ed exec team fellow community members and teachers thank you

033for the opportunity to voice our concerns this letter is reaching you respectfully but with some pointed questions we would like to see action there have been many promises empty promises in recent years and especially in the last 20 months that we have moved into north middle school and this is why we're speaking today our students have been let down our students have missed out on experiences that other schools in our district have been able to learn and experience we have very special students with a spectrum of needs and we try our best to fill the gaps many of them came back face to face to ensure that there was no internet deficit and we did not meet this basic need this year the inequalities between buildings has set our students behind their peers and other

034buildings and are no fault to the teachers or our building administration in the month of may we as a staff work to administer m-step the state assessment that we're required to give due to the lack of internet on the last day of testing which is 6th graders 31 were sent home for device or wi-fi connectivity issues this is unacceptable we have raised our concerns throughout the process on several occasions we did so using the proper chain of command and at times just through group emails to the exec team to try to get action while some action items seem to be addressed fairly quickly others like the sound panels in the science rooms at north middle school took over four months to be addressed and to this day it's not completely resolved in fact the solution

035had created created further issues with the speakers in the room as we were trying to teach virtually high flex and in person all at the same time this year as i read this no one has followed up with staff to determine if the problem has been resolved which has not in fact despite the knowing despite knowing this issue was occurring the design flaws at new north middle school were set up and replicated at central middle school leaving that school struggling too as you can see there are central staff here to show their support the taxpaying community voted to build these new state-of-the-art buildings believing that they would function properly and at this point 20 months later these solutions have not been fixed this should not be acceptable to our community and our taxpayers before the

036buildings were built we as nms staff had a chance to review the plans for the new nms we were excited we thought we were a part of the process the lockers were slated to be not in the learning pod they are outside of the learning pod and so for us teachers to monitor we stand at our doorway but there's no lockers there the lockers are in a different hallway there is no supervision there but maybe the two or three hall monitors while as teachers are trying to corral the kids in the commons learning area the lockers themselves and her placement in our comments and concerns fell on deaf ears as a result the lockers had to be replaced in additional lockers added and again there's been no solution as of late to the security concern

037of these kiddos at their lockers by themselves in a hallway while we are watching the common learning pod now with safety being a concern across the the country for schools imagine our surprise when the new buildings were encased with glass windows not bulletproof as every single person i talked with said are they bulletproof no staff again points their secu voiced their security concerns during the design and building process we met with the executive team and the architects but no changes came we have since requested and been promised bulletproof film to be added to the windows alas again no action nms has been open for two school years and no film has been installed these are just a few of our concerns we have regarding the infrastructure it does not include the other incomplete items or

038mistakes in various locations that need to be remedied that's my part at this point it's just we are just very surprised at the inaction the lack of care or even i don't know i don't see many admin walk to my classroom and come in and say how's it going with 30 kids in here it doesn't happen we feel unheard that's my part thank you aaron our next speaker is nicole lahav i believe that's right behave okay i'm sorry welcome hi i'm nicole leahy i live at 47735 woodfield circle this is i just finished my 20th year in the district all 20 have been at north middle school i'm the second speaker who's presenting for the staff at north middle school from the moment north middle school opened for teachers we were keenly aware that there

039was a problem with the wi-fi we immediately talked to our building tech administration who notified the district technology and executive team our building tech and administration were ignored when these problems were brought forth the staff continued to put in help tickets which went ignored in fact it was our perception as a staff that we were deemed complainers and told that everything works to specifications the reports of wi-fi problems began immediately at north middle school in the fall of and were still ongoing when the pandemic took us out of the building in march of 2020 staff asked and were repeatedly told that the wi-fi situation at north middle school was fixed as we look towards online options this past fall and more so when we started high flex in january however it was click quickly clear

040that no solution was made the wi-fi problem still ensued and was replicated at central middle school as i read this it has been 19 weeks since high flex started and there is still not a permanent resolution to the wi-fi situation at north and central we cannot and will not allow this continue into the fall while the wi-fi is not a situation that staff at these buildings can control in any way we are the ones daily that have had to find solutions to keep our students engaged in learning without a basic tool please understand that what may sound like complaints are actually teachers and staff voicing their concerns in the last year we have been asked to pivot invent learn and by not fixing the problem quietly cover the inadequacies of this district the community barely

041has an idea of what the staff students and their families at north middle school and central middle school have been dealing with in fact other schools in our district barely even have an idea this is a testament to your innovative and hard-working staff at north middle school and central middle school after the last 20 months especially the last 19 weeks you have lost our trust we cannot and will not just assume that you will do the right thing by staff students and their families because you have proven in the last two years that is not the truth rather than sending vague surveys through the email please take the time to be in the buildings please take the time to talk to your staff who have continually made double lesson plans for their students who are

042in building with no wi-fi and online at home for all of these months doing your best to understand what the pulse is in billions and how you can help with these major concerns there are some top members of the executive team that are never in billions and never stop to talk to the staff we need you to hear us we need you to listen we want to help solve the problems and deficiencies and we are more than willing to do our part but we can't make solutions happen without you we hope that as you plan for the elementary phase of buildings and planning that you inquire and listen to the elementary staff when they voice concerns or offer suggestions the middle school staff were dragged through countless planning meetings and were ultimately ignored we were

043ignored when changes needed to be made and we have been ignored as we have brought forth problems and concerns since we feel ignored we feel disrespected and we definitely do not feel valued thank you i call our next speaker is tara trotter my name is tara trotter 1506 cambridge drive and i just finished my 11th year at north middle school we close with this our concerns may be hard to hear they may come across sternly but these facts are our reality we want action we want what our community expects from a 21st learning building we want what we've been promised we want to be listened to and we want action after two years we feel that's not too much to ask we want functional wi-fi we want to be respected heard and sincerely listened to

044by board and the executive team we want to work towards staffing needs being met so that we can utilize the building as it was designed for middle school learning and pbl we want bulletproof film on our windows we've been told this is supposed to happen this summer we'll see we want desks and countertops that do not scratch on day one from cardboard boxes we want better classroom and locker room acoustics we want professional communication from members of the executive team we need a flagpole fencing around our field and the list could go on and on these are not demanding requests they are literally just the basics this letter that you've heard aaron khaler nicole leahy and i read has been signed by 21 staff members at north middle school with a bunch here to show

045their support thank you tara our next speaker is rebecca galecki hi my name is rebecca delecky i've been at north middle 26 years all the years of my career i've trumped all of you okay so i'm here today to make sure that you are aware of our ongoing internet issues and to ask you to help fix it after as if teaching during a pandemic wasn't difficult enough we've had to endure internet that's run the gamut of being non-existent at worst to spotty and unpredictable at best high flex started on january 25 25th and out of the gates we were left scrambling to figure out how to not only teach virtually while teaching face-to-face but to do so with consistent wi-fi limited only to our tech computers after enduring these challenges for over a month i

046still remember what a relief it was to hear the consideration was being made to move to all virtual until the internet issue could be resolved this decision was to be made by march 5th we were told on march 3rd that six weeks into the wi-fi issues that this potential solution wasn't the answer and we were left to make it work i was hopeful that upon return from spring break we'd have functioning wi-fi system and this nightmare would be over i was disappointed to hear on saturday april 3rd the end of our spring break in 11 weeks into our wi-fi issues that due to supply chains we would be returning without a fix but that the parts would be in april 30th because this because of this i spent two and a half hours of my

047easter sunday reworking my online research project to work without predictable wi-fi on may sorry the work was finally completed on may 15th almost four months into our wi-fi issues we received an email at 707 on may 17th informing us that this didn't fix the issue the next step could be replacing the wi-fi system which would be a summer project and the saga continues on may 28th i administered the m-step to a tiny group of five students of those five only one student was able to access wi-fi three students were able to use ethernet cables and one student couldn't test in my room because she had no connection let me repeat those numbers i had five students and only one could access the internet how is this going to work next year when there's potential for

04830 plus students in my classroom all trying to connect in my eyes because i'm a language arts teacher in analogies work for me our internet is like a car it provides me with the way to accomplish my tasks the car we've been driving this year in my opinion may be considered a jalopy every morning we wake up knowing that it probably won't get us from point a to point b every day we expend energy to plan around its unreliability if only it were as easy as to pull out my cell phone and call a tow truck company a taxi a spouse a friend but instead i'm left stranded to figure out how to teach without internet in a high flex environment all the extra focus on being prepared in case the old jalopy doesn't work

049is stressful on all those impacted if our wi-fi were a car after just a few breakdowns i'd be considering a trade-in well bored i don't have the ability to trade in the wi-fi jalopy that white like jalopian i'm calling on you to help me all i want to do is teach can i count on you for a ride thank you rebecca our next speaker is stephanie wagner my name is stephanie wagner i live at 1525 harper grove lane i have been a teacher at north middle for 26 years do i trump becky because i graduated from florida central high school and have two kids that graduated from northern okay i first want to thank the community and voters for investing in portage public schools back in 2015. our community believed and had confidence in the

050portage teachers and staff when they went to the polls and as a teacher who who this directly impacted i am grateful as a community we were all very excited to have the opportunity to design and build a 21st century learning community to quote the statement put out by the stantec company quote the community of portage michigan came together in 2015 to pass a district-wide bond program intending to create a 21st century learning center while making while making thoughtful use of community resources as part of this program the new north middle school was proposed to establish strong sustainable relationships between its students staff parents the curriculum and the surrounding neighborhood end quote it is my belief that when voters passed the bond they were promised a high functioning 21st century learning center that would quote promote

051a variety of teaching and learning methods understanding that each student learns differently we designed spaces that allow for independent study small group large group project based and lecture based learning styles end quote we have not been able to keep this promise to its full potential with our current wi-fi struggles i really hope this issue is resolved before the 21-22 school year when the bond was passed building committees were formed that included administration architects and teachers other stakeholders were part of the process too i served on the building committee near the beginning of the process we were asked what we thought about the design how we would utilize the space and most importantly how the students would use and move around the space overwhelmingly we stressed the importance of being able to deliver a high quality

052blended learning environment in this new space many teachers spent countless hours learning how to create and execute this type of instructional method we also spent time discussing the unique emotional and social aspects of a middle school student and how the design of the building either supports or discourages discourages their social social emotional learning for example when the discussion of lockers came around we shared our perspective of how a middle school student feels about the locker situation what their needs were and how locker use fits into the whole scheme of things seems like a trivial point i get it as adults we could probably deal with reaching over others having our personal space invaded and others knocking into us as we're trying to grab our books for our next class for a middle school student having

053to do this every 45 minutes can be somewhat of an emotional trigger teachers explained how the locker design was not going to work and it needed to be looked at again our concerns and requests were ignored leading to the lockers not being utilized and now all of their backpacks books chromebooks etc being carried from class to class and taking up space in the classrooms try executing a lab with multiple pieces of equipment 30 to 35 students in a room designed to fit 20 to 25 and bags strewn all over the floor as the design process continued and construction began it was evident that the teachers opinions and input were either being ignored or placed under the weight of the architects the safety of the building in regards to the glass is still very much a

054concern albeit the virtual year has put that concern on a back burner we have been fighting for installation of bullet resistant film since the design phase of this process hopefully we will start the next school year in a building that is safer for students and staff as news arrived on our last day of school that the film has been ordered and will be installed this summer i am cautiously optimistic but thank you i stand up here to say all of this hoping that if and when the new bond proposal is passed for our elementary buildings the district really listens to the dis the teachers who are with the students day in and day out who know how a physical space will impact the students and their ability to learn and function how certain materials will

055or will not work how students move in desks tables when in groups during passing time and how they live their daily lives when in our care finally when we make promises to our community we have a responsibility to the community to do our best to keep those promises and keep the faith of those that believe in us in what we do for our students we're spending their money and we need to be good stewards of their their investment thank you for listening thank you stephanie our nest our next speaker is mary beth henry i hope these educators behind me are still teaching when my kids reach that faith my name is mary beth henry 2621 bach avenue i'm a parent of three portage students at mooresbridge elementary i am thankful to hear that our curriculum

056department has chosen to partner with liggins abrams consulting regarding improving outcomes for our marginalized populations and closing equity gaps this demonstrates that we are invested in developing our equity processes this past weekend a group of us parents and community members stood in solidarity with educators across the nation the day of action june 12th educators took the pledge to teach the truth and bring awareness about the danger of bills that restrict teaching the role of racism sexism heterosexism and oppression throughout history i am here today to not only bring awareness but also request we collectively act against the harmful bill in our state senate sb 460. i will read portions of this bill because it takes aim at critical thinking and can do serious damage to students in michigan by withholding funding and forcing districts to

057conform to arbitrary and unclear rules about what can and cannot be taught in the classroom the people of the state of michigan enact section 1167 withstanding any other provision of law under this act to the contrary beginning with the 20 20 21 2022 school year the board of a school district or the board of directors of a public school academy shall ensure that the curriculum provided to all pupils enrolled in the school district or public school academy does not include coverage of the critical race theory the 1619 project or any of the following anti-american and racist theories a that any race is inherently superior or inferior to another race b that the united states is a fundamentally racist country see that the declaration of independence or the united states constitution are fundamentally racist documents d

058that an an individual's moral character or worth is determined by his or her race e that an individual by virtue of his or her race is inherently racist or oppressive whether consciously or unconsciously by not later than september 30th 2021 and by not later than september 30th of each year thereafter the department shall determine each school district and public school academy that is in violation of the subsection one and shall withhold five percent of the total funds due to the school district or public school academy under the state school aid act of 1979 and i will leave the copy with the secretary ignoring historic facts will maintain today's systems of oppression rather than help us create a more just and equitable world i am thankful and confident that our district will stand with my kids

059and all its students students empowering our educators in teaching the truth and supporting our young people and becoming critical thinkers thank you thank you mary beth our next our last speaker is lauren mcmullen i also hope that you're around my students are old enough uh my name is lauren mcmullen i live at shering road i have kids who attend woodland elementary i too appreciate the curriculum board's transparency and replied to the email i sent them regarding the curriculum audit that has been taking place i would also like to second everything that mary beth just said she said it much better than i ever could i would also like to add um that i look forward to continued transparency and action around the matter of making room in our schools for uncomfortable and brave conversations to

060take place uh to take place for teachers who are empowered to manage their own curriculum and are also supported in engaging and listening to and implementing feedback from parents and students of color we cannot become complacent behind good intent when we know better we must do our best to do better i include myself and my family in that please know that there are many parents who support more discussion more awareness more training and the reallocation of funds to be in to that intent so that our kids who are black who are brown who exist in other marginalized spaces are empowered through representation a voice and a commitment by this board teachers the admin and their curriculum to anti-racism critical thinking and accountability based equity thank you [Applause] thank you lauren and that's the end of

061our public comment for this evening are there any comments from board trustees please well randy i'll go um i thank everybody for coming tonight and thank you for your comments um i also want to uh congratulate the portrait central baseball team i'm going to the semifinals it's a amazing group of some young young men who are pretty darn good athletes some of them going to some pretty big schools so it's a great celebration you know uh portage northern was the reigning champions for two years you know they had one vic one championship but they got to hold that crown and it's pretty just it's baseball's just a fun sport and i'm just really proud of the kids at ported central and uh the portage northern golf team placed 11th this weekend i'm in division one

062which is pretty good for our district as well so um i mean just just like our our band competitions and our arts and everything all these little systems provide education and sports provides a lot of education and watching kids excel is just a lot of fun thank you thanks rusty yes sir first like to uh thank uh citizens for public comment tonight um also members of owner linkage committee we have a we're going to do a video meeting tomorrow at 11 30. um i'll send out a google meets and uh just a half hour quick meeting thank you thanks bill anyone else i do i also want to thank citizens for coming out tonight and coming fresh off the heels of graduations at our three high schools in town here congratulations to the principals for

063putting together a wonderful and different ceremonies at each of the schools that is in in breaking with tradition of what they've been in the past and uh i think some of the new traditions are going to be around for a while anyway it was just very heartwarming and nice to be a part of thanks keith i just want to thank citizens for their comments and the staff at north middle school seeing some familiar faces your comments are appreciated i also look forward to our district values team meeting on wednesday as well as getting the feedback from the rounds that we did with meeting with the superintendent expressing concerns and answering your questions so i'm looking forward to all of that very good celeste thank you i attended the union's farewell for the retiring teachers almost

064two weeks ago and i just want to say thanks to those teachers for their years of service how many years did they say mark it was like a thousand something years of service combined over the retirees from last year and this year that is just incredible so thanks to those teachers and thanks to you who are still here with us helping our kids to learn and doing the best you can and whatever circumstances you're teaching in so thank you thanks terry i'd also like to thank our teachers for being here this evening and for citizens for your comments tonight we appreciate that it's a nice night it's nice of you to be willing to spend your time here um i just want to mention that we lost two significant friends of portis public schools last

065month the first is dr louis boyer he passed away at age 94. he was a member of this board for 20 years between 1967 and 1987 and served as treasurer for many of those years while he was on the board the pools and the middle schools were constructed as well as west middle school central l and woodland and you know we had very short notice on his passing but we were able to send flowers from the border administration to his funeral and i also want to mention the passing of judy hacker smith you know everyone knows judy acker smith and what was news to me is the fact that she was on the paf between 1997 and 2004 and served as co-president from 2000 to 2001 and she led the efforts to build the doghouse

066and the stable and in addition to that um she was the driving force behind fundraising and construction of the two state championship billboards that we have in in portage so we lost uh two good people and two good friends of portage public schools that's for sure um the other thing i wanted to mention i'm trying to schedule a policy committee meeting for tuesday july 20. i'll send something out but trying to do that that might work okay okay good good thank you anything else from trustees okay we'll move to the consent agenda on page six we only have one item on the consent agenda tonight and that's the may 24th 2021 policy governance retreat and regular business meeting minutes are there any exceptions to the consent agenda as presented a hearing none uh the consent

067agenda is approved as presented and uh now we're going to move to assurance of district performance we have two monitoring reports tonight is there a motion please on page 13 for to approve monitoring report 1.0 president van anter by move that the board of education accept the monitoring report 1.0 ends as a reasonable interpretation and evidence of compliance with policy thank you for a second thank you very much mark this is uh this is one that doesn't require a lot of explanation it basically is a um report that talks about all the reports that were submitted throughout the course of the year and as you know because of the halt on testing you did not get information on on 1.1 because there just wasn't any data to present and then the but i left those

068uh data points in the report just so that we don't lose sight of those and then also comments on actually just the the data that was presented on uh 1-1 or excuse me one two one three one four and one five with an explanation of those that were not provided this year so all in all there were still over 60 data points presented during the course of the year about student performance that's all i have on this one if you have any questions thanks mark well those in favor of approving monitoring report 1.0 please say hi hi opposed uh the motion passes and the monitoring report is approved our next month report is monetary report 2.0 global executive constraint policy on page 20. is there a motion please uh mr president i move that the

069board of education accept the monitoring report 2.0 global executive constraint policy has a reasonable interpretation and evidence of compliance with policy thanks bozer second thanks celeste uh very similar to uh comments on on policy 1.0 this uh this is a global policy 2.0 there are 10 other policies underneath 2.0 that are reported on during the course of the year and uh this pretty much just summarizes the same things that that have been summarized in years past so there's nothing new in here that you haven't already heard again this is a procedural kind of an action on on the district's part all those in favor approving monitoring port 2.0 please say aye aye opposed uh the eyes have it and the emotion is approved our next item is a required action item on page 25 the

070mhmhsaa membership renewal for 2021-22 is there a motion please yes mr chairman i make a motion that the board of education adopt the resolution confirming district membership with the michigan high school athletic association for the 2021 and 22 school year as presented thanks keith is there a second second thanks rusty again this is a pretty routine action there is no cost to join the mhsaa the mhsaa funds their operations through the end of the year end of season tournaments and sport tournaments we agree to abide by their rules as members so and this is for our two high schools and three middle schools i just saw a comment down i thought that mhssa did a wonderful job this year trying to make sports happen and there was a lot of ups and downs and i

071was just like us they didn't do everything perfect but boy you know there's a lot of a lot of good things happened okay any other comments all those in favor of approving the mhsaa membership renewal please say aye aye opposed the motion passes the membership renewal is approved we'll move to our action item the first one is to reconfirm the extended covet 19 learning plan that was just presented is there a motion please president van antwerp i moved that the board of education reconfirmed the 2020-21 extended covid19 learning plan as presented second thank you very much any comments any discussion all in favor please say aye aye opposed the motion uh passes and the extended covet 19 learning plan is approved our next action item is the wireless system purchase on page 31. is there

072a motion please yes mr president i make a motion that the board of education approve has presented the purchase of a replacement wireless system from presidio network solutions group in a base amount of thousand six hundred and twenty two dollars and thirty three cents the proceeds for which will come from the general fund thank you keith is there a second second thank you terry and i believe dan is going to uh present this all right as we've been trying to work through the wireless problems we've had this year we did issue a contingency rfp of which this is the product of to replace the wireless systems at central middle school and north middle school i will be honest with you when i say this i am not convinced that this is going to resolve the

073issues but is the next logical step in the process we have had four outside engineers both on site and virtually go through these systems left and right they can't find a reason for why we're experiencing the difficulties that we're seeing i've got evidence to suggest that it is the wi-fi system i've got evidence to suggest that it's chromebooks themselves the wireless systems at central middle school north middle school do work differently than our aging cisco system that might be the root cause but i just can't say that for certain what i can say though again this is the next logical step and you'll see from the bid summaries that we got bids all over the spectrum in cost and brand for this rfp of the responses that we received there are only three brands that

074we're familiar with that i consider recommending and believe it or not i am recommending a cisco option for you tonight i have been trying as you know to aggressively get this district away from cisco products whether they be wireless phones or switches because you never really own the equipment you buy the equipment up front but if you don't persistently renew the licensing over time you can no longer use the equipment and that becomes a sustained burden on our general fund that we like to avoid but in this circumstance the cisco proposal came back much more aggressively priced than they've priced it in the past in fact less than half of what they've quoted us previously and what they've also agreed to do solves another problem that we have in this district our legacy wi-fi system

075which is circa uses a single physical controller to run the entire wi-fi canopy everywhere in this district except for central middle school north middle school in the administration building if that physical appliance were to fail our wireless canopy would go down now back when we first selected that device that wasn't as concerning for us for two reasons one we didn't have nearly demands on the wi-fi that we have today and two we had a 24 7 replacement policy on it so if it went down cisco was obligated to get us a replacement within four hours um that physical controller is now end of life and no longer made we have support for another 12 months on the appliance but if it were to go down we'd be dead in the water this proposal includes two

076new virtual controllers for us that we can actually put on our own hardware and increase the failover potentials or the recovery potentials rather by unmanageable factor so that part of this purchase i'd be recommending to the board anyway the other thing that the cisco agreed to do which they don't typically do they were letting us migrate all of the access points that we currently have in all the other schools to this new controller and that's also very cost effective for us at this point in time i am asking the board to take action on this tonight cisco tells me the ship time for these access points is 42 days if they can keep to that that gives us just enough time to get all the access points replaced in the buildings some of these access

077points are located on very high ceilings we're going to have to get a couple of lifts in and get that work done but i'm confident if we can get these in 42 days we'll be able to complete that work before i start school i did want it to bring a bit more aggressive access point to the board basically the next step up in the cisco line but the ship times for those access points are 192 days which means it would be the following summer before we'd have a large enough window to get into schools to make this replacement this is the best solution i can bring to the board at this point in time and with that i'd be happy to take any questions you might have dan once this is installed will you have

078adequate time just to test to see if the demands on the system are going to meet the system's ability to to do them or will that have to wait until kids actually come in school well we obviously won't have full load until the kids come back we'll stick 30 devices in the classroom and see what happens under a single ap and get the feedback that we need to get education in general whether it's public education or collegiate education does one thing with wi-fi that no one else does and that's asked us to put 40 devices in the space and have it deliver high quality air to all those devices at the same time that's asking a lot um you know if you've ever tried to run 40 devices in your house you'll probably see that

079happen um you know the other thing that's unique to central middle school north middle school they have a lot of interference in the buildings there are locations in that building where over half of the radio spectrum is being eaten by interference the good news on the cisco side it does have a bit better technology in adjusting and compensating for that interference than the current unified system that we have has and so that gives me hope as well but again this is the very best solution i can bring to the board with the information that i have today and just curiously what's the interference from we're not sure uh it could be the radios themselves bouncing off the construction in the building initially when we were working with just north middle school we wonder if it

080was related to the highway at all but because we see several or similar levels rather of interference at central middle school that suggested something else i have been trying to get a company out of detroit to come in and do a full spectrum analysis of the building so we have more data on that but much like we ran into delays getting the core replaced earlier this year because of cobit-related restrictions getting these things scheduled has been very very difficult from a logistical standpoint interesting dan to your point of maybe the chromebooks are an issue um has there been much testing done of different sample groups of devices and whether or not they work and can that type of testing be done while you're waiting the 42 days for delivery uh there have been um the

081higher power chromebooks that we have available throughout the district have had less problems but they typically start at a price point of about 700 to 850 dollars per unit which puts us out of the range for buying mass quantities for kids so we've got to find a solution that works with that student entry chromebook that we can afford to purchase so in general though do non-chromebooks connect fine we have had far less problems with non-chromebook devices but it hasn't been perfect and even all things considered i wouldn't consider that level of performance acceptable either you know but certainly the chromebooks have been where you felt the pain the most i think it is in part because they do use a little bit lower grade wi-fi card in the chromebook itself but it's also the device

082we use the most it's so we're going to feel it the most because that's the one we're always using dan clearly this isn't a plan a we've gone through you've gone through several steps to try to make the corrections um [Music] and i hate to be one of those what-ifs but at the beginning you didn't sound as convinced but it seems to be the next step in trying to resolve the issue do we have any other alternatives i know and i had it not been for kobet i think we would have reached this conclusion last summer summer is really the only window we can get in and do this level of replacement equipment in a building it's not just as simple as just changing out the access point there's ceiling amounts and all kinds of

083other considerations that have to be made but as we exited from kobe last year we got some good feedback about how we're setting the power levels on the radios in the middle school and the unifi engineers and air folks that we work with basically we're saying you know hey you know let's let's play with the power levels we think we can get it the problem is we didn't have any real test data until the kids came back so much like everything else we are farther behind than i want us to be but this this is the next step this is what we have to do and is this going to be communicated to the teachers who have the yes games teachers tomorrow pending approval tonight uh and speaking of the approval itself um this is

084listed for the general fund uh today uh we're gonna be taking out of our land contingency funds but i fully expect that once we get our third round of covid really funding we'll be able to move this expense uh out of the general fund and move forward in that regard so something is planned to meet with teachers did i hear that correctly pardon me did i hear it correctly that something has been planned to meet with teachers or to share the information yes i'll be communicating teachers tomorrow okay dan i i i think what causes me indigestion the most is i've heard that we really won't know that this works until the first day of school and i'm just i'm just praying for some alternative to test this before then um and i'm encouraging you

085know looking forward to whatever the thermonuclear option is here um however crazy that might be because we've approved a number of things i don't i haven't added it all but it's been in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and um and i know you're empathetic with what those teachers said tonight and and it's just um if if if kids show up first day of school and the systems don't work um crazy i mean we will all anyway i'm just i'm just encouraging to look forward and if you need me to come in and fire fire get a bunch of them running i mean i think i think we would we've kicked around the idea of maybe offering a free pizza day and see if we can get some kids to come in we're not going

086to announce anything like that until we know exactly when we have a ship date and install schedule for the gear i don't want to i don't want to put a date on a calendar and then have to change it again yeah i'm just i i'm trying to signal as one board member any kind of creative solution to test beforehand and be thinking farther down the road in case it doesn't work the the good news is this system will initially use the same connection parameters that our legacy system uses and that's encouraging so if it really is a problem with the access points then this is fixed if it's still native to the interference in the buildings and the chromebook's not having a hot enough radio in them then we're gonna have to look at a

087different option sounds like if this doesn't work it will help you diagnose significantly and give you more yeah and again and i i want to i want to tread very lightly here but you know there is some good news in this purchase that it solves the other problem that's been keeping me up at night which is that legacy controller that's running the rest of the district even if central middle school and north middle school are working perfectly i'd still be at the microphone tonight recommending controller purchase alone for that reason thank you i'm not prepared to answer that right now any other questions for dan well dan thank you for your continued work on this and for bringing this to us this evening and uh we're gonna pass this and uh hopefully get you on

088your way on behalf of all of us thank you thank you thank you uh all those in favor of approving the wireless system purchase please say aye aye opposed the motion passes the wireless system purchase is approved our next action item is action item number three on page 53 and that's to appoint a new assistant superintendent of operations is there a motion please president ben antwerp i moved that the board of education approved the appointment of mr johnny edwards as assistant superintendent of operations effective with the 2021-22 school year as presented thank you i second that thank you celeste johnny do you mind coming up uh while i do this just have a seat at the uh at the table so the board can can see you or so it's really my uh my pleasure

089to uh recommend mr johnny edwards as uh the next assistant superintendent of operations um johnny currently serves as the director of secondary education for kalamazoo public schools it's a position he's held since 2013 but he's no newcomer to kps he was hired in 2008 as principal of lloyd norrix high school and while he was the director he was called back into duty to uh to cover both jobs for a short period of time while the district dealt with an issue there but johnny is a product of michigan state university he taught math at the middle school middle school level and then got his uh his master's in educational administration and uh is working with western now to pursue his doctorate degree there is one error in my commentary he uh he is not only working

090to obtain his cfo certification he has that already so that was my mistake in misunderstanding uh where he is right now in his current role mr edwards provides strategic direction and manages the daily operations of the secondary schools at kps there are eight middle school and high schools he has strong community partnerships that support our schools and students there and he'll be bringing that that skill set with him to to portage so johnny went through a rather rigorous interview process and background checks and reference checks and uh comes highly recommended knowing that he's he is a person that will really work with us well in moving us to the next level so johnny i don't know if you want to say anything uh at all and filling in any gaps i may have no thank

091you uh superintendent b lang and appreciative to this portage public schools board of education again my name is johnny edwards and i've been working just next door just north of public porters public schools and i've had the pleasure to build a number of relationships and partnerships with some of the administrators and teachers in the district in my previous role and i've enjoyed getting to know some of your executive team members and other administrators and staff who participated in the interview process so it gives me great pleasure to be able to join this team this upcoming school year even had an opportunity to speak with mr heron as well so i do understand i have big shoes to feel but i do look forward to the support of the board parents staff and community members in

092this transition time so thank you very much well thank you thank you very much for your willingness to serve portage public schools in our community and uh we all welcome you sir thank you very much thank you johnny will be beginning his duties on uh july 12th um and uh there will be some overlap with e and ron's position uh ron is like on the verge of of getting permission to work at least part-time after his uh surgery so there'll be enough overlap that uh will help make that a seamless transition great well i i will say that i'm glad that um you're still here after tonight's comments regarding some work that's ahead of you so we wish you well and have a great time here in pps thank you thank you yeah welcome yep

093we'll see you in about a month yes well sorry i look forward to it thank you that's all i have okay well very good um we have a motion on on the floor and uh all those in favor of appointing mr johnny edwards as assistant superintendent of operations please say aye hi opposed the motion passes sir welcome to portage public schools [Applause] very good we'll now move to our discussion items and the first one is the dell switchgear purchase all right so as we closed out the bond construction fund for primarily the middle schools in the pools we had some funds remaining as the board knows a committee was formed to kind of review and prioritize what we might use those funds for and one of the top requests we received from the leadership throughout

094the district was to upgrade our aging surveillance system throughout the district unfortunately that is not as simple as just changing out cameras every time you buy a camera you add power requirements and you add storage requirements previously this year the school board did take action to buy the additional storage we'll need for this project this addresses the switch gear that we'll need this will replace the remaining top of rex which is throughout the district that are used not only to provide the connections from each school building back to the data center but it also provides all the power that our wireless access points and cameras need throughout the district to operate the newer cameras do require more power than our current switches can provide and that's what's triggering this purchase at this point in time

095this is something that was planned to be in the next bond regardless we're just getting to it a little bit earlier because we have the funding available now this is a priority from the committee that met to look at the use of these funds and with that i'd be happy to answer any questions you might have any questions for dan dan thank you very much thank you um our next discussion item is a curriculum purchase on page 76 and i think mike's going to help us with um that is our usual june curriculum purchase and i wanted to make sure we had an opportunity to bring this to you tonight so we can approve it at the end of the month and be ready for the 21-22 school year we're really um we get quotes

096from multiple vendors based on our renewed materials all of these things are materials that we have approved through cic in prior years and we usually put these out to bid in individual book sets to multiple vendors and then bring back the best price items from each of the vendors and assemble them into one quote we also in here have a new adoption this would be our high school reading intervention course we have an adoption of the language live material from voyager sopras and this adoption includes all the classroom materials teacher materials and student subscriptions for the next five years for our reading intervention classes altogether these funds will come from the general fund for next school year and total 102 100 or 102 000 1.65 cents from these different curriculum purchases happy to answer questions

097that you might have on this good job mike no questions thank you forward and now we'll move to the final budget amendments of the 20 20 21 school year paula good evening board of ed and superintendent b lang this is a different view so if i seem a little nervous it's because i need to stand back there so tonight i'm going to bring to you uh the second budget amendment for the general fund and the first amendment for the the smaller funds the debt fund building site and sinking fund and school service funds and then also a preliminary look at a 2122 budget so let's get started on the next slide please okay the debt fund we are projected to end the year with a debt fund with an increase to our fund balance of

098approximately 1.5 million dollars and this is because some of the personal property tax payments from the state of michigan came in higher than expected so between the the two debt funds that we currently have that roll up into one for you to pass your resolution for we're adding to fund balance in the debt fund we did levy the 6.85 mills this year and you'll see a change when we talk about 2122 and then what will happen after the election next is the building site and sinking fund we are projected to end the year with an increase of unbalance there of approximately 369 000 there's lists of projects in your board packet for items that we worked on this school year they're not included in this presentation but they're in your packet we levied a 0.4988

099mills this year for the sinking fund it's the first year that it was affected by the headley rollback our general fund is currently affected by a headley rollback but the building site and sinking fund is a separate calculation from the operating and so we were not able to levy the full 0.5 mills this year moving on to the school service fund the school service fund is comprised of three different funds the food service fund the bookstore and then the former what we call trust and agency funds that are now called the school service our food service fund this year operated under the extended summer food service program offering free breakfast and lunch first servings to our students for the year so that was a great benefit we had to make a few changes through the

100year to to staffing related to that program but we are projected to end the year with a slight increase to fund balance of 27 i do want to note to the board that we are very fortunate that we have a food service program that is self-sufficient and does not require a contribution to to the food service fund from the general fund you'll see what i talk about 2122 that the food service actually pays back in in direct payment to the general fund so we're very fortunate there the bookstore fund is comprised of bookstore at central high and northern high those had relatively small activity this year due to covid so you'll see no change there in that budget that i'm bringing to you and then the school service fund the former what we used to

101call internal funds or trust and agency funds we had to change the name and change how we're operating slightly under gasby 84. so those are all things you've probably heard from me before in previous presentations so if we move on to the next slide please so let's talk a little bit now about the general fund and the second amendment to the general fund for the year we were fortunate through our legislatures that we operated under a super blend for this year which comprised of 75 of the 2019 20 year and 25 percent of our enrollment from the 2021 year that helped the district because we were used to a 10 blend and so doing 75 25 over the two years not having it all based on a covered year was a was a plus for

102our budget we operated under pandemic learning for the entire year so a lot of the pupil accounting rules were relaxed that we're used to days and hour requirements were not in place the virtual piece had less requirements attached to it as far as reporting purposes so those were all things that legislators took into account when putting together that pandemic learning section of the budget included in this final amendment is probably the most federal money that i have dealt with in my 23-year career in school finance and this we normally receive about 1.2 million dollars every year in title 1 title 2 title 3 title 4 the normal consolidated application federal money but this year in this final amendment there's an additional 4.5 million dollars in this budget it's one-time money it has an end date

103tied to it it's soft money it's money we can't count on to get every year so we have to be careful as to how we apply these funds for long-term purposes included in those federal grants were cova district costs coronavirus relief funds child care relief grants there were two different esr funds esther cares and sr2 we will spend the majority of these grants we're striving to spend the majority of these grants by the end of the school year june 30 but some of these are going to carry over the esser money is going to carry over possibly crf but i'm not sure i have to see where final expenditures land for the year but when i talk to you about 2122 year not very many of these federal funds are in that budget yet until

104we know where we land at year-end because i don't want to over-extend ourselves in the federal money category so we're going to exhaust the majority of these one-time grants in this year and some of it will spill over into 2122 when i amend so you'll see those added back in so i don't want you to be alarmed next slide please so an amendment takes a lot of work and a lot of analysis and i want to thank my entire staff for all of their efforts that without them i could not do this so we we look at basically we have about a little over 4 000 accounts in the general fund and so we look at all of them between revenue and expenditure so this slide shows you how we ended last year the amendment

105that i brought you in february in the middle and then on the far right shows a roll up of the numbers for amendment number two revenues are up slightly for amendment number two and that's for a couple different reasons now naturally i made a comment in the in the memo that you know tax revenues were down some but i want you to keep in mind that we amended the budget back in december or for february i use december state aid status report numbers they're a board of reviews that happen where people go in and get their property tax values decreased so if a property tax value is decreased we're going to receive less tax revenue from that and then the state picks up what we would miss in revenue through our state aid status report

106so it just it just changes categories from property tax to state aid so we didn't collect all of our all of our tax revenue due to changes in taxable values but we also very rarely collect all of our tax revenue and some of it is becomes delinquent in the next in the following year or the following two years based on collections so in a perfect world it would be great if we could collect every tax dollar for the operating fund but we don't so um the on the state aid side there was a mipser categorical that was amended since of the the december state status report and that had an uptick there and that's the categorical that we get to keep where there's not anything that we have to expense back out on the other

107side so revenues went up and then meeting with all of the directors we looked at we analyzed all the salary accounts insurance accounts benefit-related accounts and then all of their supply accounts and purchase services and you know amended things down to a point where we felt comfortable with them although leaving some room for unexpected things to happen and we were able to bring expenditures down to 101 million so based on the change in revenue compared to the exchange in expenditures we're projecting to end the year on a positive note of about 637 thousand now keep in mind that's if every revenue dollar is received and every expenditure dollar is expensed i would hope that not every expenditure dollar is expensed in my budget amendment i would hope that there might be some extra there for

108those unexpected things that may not happen so based on those changes we would have a slight increase to fund balance this is just a projected number until we close for the final year with the auditors of 10.32 percent so that is that is where i'm that is where i am predicting general fund amendment number two to end for the year are there any questions on this can we move forward now and let's take a let's take a peek at 21-22 so our building titan sinking fund next slightly thank you um we took that to the voters in 2019 it's going to continue through 2024. we did not experience an additional rollback to that so we will be levying a 0.4988 mills for our building site and sinking fund those are used district wide i listed

109in your board packet those projects that we plan to start with and i'm sure that those will change through the year and now that we're going to be completing construction projects i would predict that the building site and sinking fund activity could increase as we're waiting for a potential elementary bond next slide please the debt fund we are currently we can only currently levy based out in the amount of outstanding debt that we have to make current payments for them so currently the l4029 that will that will be signed by the board after the budget hearing is going to show 5.37 mills but um upon the outcome of the august election we would be able to then levy the additional um 1.48 mills to bring it to the 6.85 that we are accustomed to levying

110so i wanted to point out that the city of portage bills that will go out in july the city of portage is the only entity that we levy in the summer for would show the 5.37 mills and then on the winter bill it would come through with the additional 1.48 mills so that would total the 6.85 our other municipalities only levy in the winter for us so they would just receive the revised l4029 after outcome pending outcome of the election so just so you can understand what would happen there for the lunch fund usda has announced that breakfast and lunch offerings will continue to be free for next year this is first servings only so that'll be a great benefit to our students based on projected numbers that susan and i put together and also

111forecasting that we will the general fund will receive back 170 thousand dollars in indirect funds the food service would land on a positive note for the year for next year susan will also be starting her meet up eat up program tomorrow so we'll be offering those meals to those students in the summertime as well and then just to hit on a high note the school the school service fund and the bookstore budgets are in there because they have to be part of that school service budget so there was not much change coming to you for preliminary budget related to 2122 for the school services next slide please i just want to touch on a minute so that the board is aware of our state school aid fund is where we receive the majority of our

112revenues on a monthly basis on the 20th of the month except for when it falls on a weekend we receive our state aid payment and the revenue dollars that generate the so-called state school aid fund are comprised of all these different taxes that you see on this pie chart so sales tax and state education tax and income tax are the largest pieces of revenue generators for the state school aid fund and these tie back to those targets that the state sets that they need to meet to hit their budget and when i brought you the update from the may revenue estimating conference they've they've exceeded their target revenue so now they have a situation of what are we going to do with this extra money on both the state school aid side and on the

113general fund side so that's what we're waiting to hear the outcome of right now but this is what drives these these items are what would drive the revenue streams for the state school aid fund next slide please so let me share with you um we have to we have to make assumptions in our budget and we use the information that we have at hand to build that budget and in during the snyder administration era we knew right now what our funding was going to be but now we don't at this time so the governor first came out with her proposal like i reported back to the board in february 164 dollars per pupil she was also going to give us a special categorical for declining enrollment so we may or may not fall in that

114category depending on where our enrollment comes in next fall the house said okay well we're going to give a 100 increase per fte and the senate said well we're going to do 250. so now it goes to what to conference committee but the governor came through with a revised budget right after the may revenue estimating conference and she said i she says i feel that we should bring the foundation allowance up to eight thousand six hundred ninety two dollars a pupil and help close that funding gap that would be one of the largest increases that i would have experienced in my career that's really what happens so we we are at the mercy of the legislators um they have to pass bless you they have to pass their budget by the beginning of july uh

115they have i believe they have this weekend next week before they break for summer recess so um very anxious to see what what will that special funding number be so what did i do with my preliminary budget on the next slide i will share with you that i went conservative because i really hope that it's going to be at least what the senate said but i built a budget on a 200 increase per pupil i hope i'm wrong i want to be wrong here but i had to go conservative because still that felt like it was pretty generous because at one point in time i had to build a budget on something and a lot of these changes happened just recently um i want to give a huge shout out thank you to janet johnstone

116who works on enrollment projection numbers for our district and all the enrollment secretaries that report information back to her she does a phenomenal job to to put together information that is extremely helpful during budget season and i based my enrollment on her may 24th report which was 8741 pupils but if you really want to be technical i think when i got into my calculations i was 8741.96 or something so 8741 for you know for government purposes is close enough so i built it on that um i built it on the fact of you know 180 days and you know 1098 hours going back to those requirements that we were used to having to meet but the legislators could still make a change to that for the fall we don't know i just had to make

117an assumption the retirement rate is is increasing slightly from 21.21 to 28.23 i did not change the ual rate at this time because they do not report our revenue side of that number until november so i incorporated into the budget amendment and then increase the expenditure side because it's a net wash the ual is an in and out so it just it's cleaner to wait until the state tells us what we're going to get i took into consideration we know what insurance rates are going to be july through december but we don't know yet because mesa hasn't given us rates uh what we're going to be looking at for january through june of 2022. so i had to take a stab in the dark there using um you know caps on on current employee groups

118that have caps in place and then factoring in increases you know they're they're going forward uh the board is aware that the majority of our contract groups are up for negotiations this time and there's only one group that has a settled contract for next year and that's our bus drivers so at this time when i put together this first flush of the budget first stab at it i only included steps steps and steps only for employee groups that's what i started with just to have a starting point also in this budget it's just the normal federal money from title one title two title three title four um i didn't include any i only include one very small amount related to the virtual school for some teaching salaries related in the esser fund so that was

119under 300 000 i believe our enrollment number of the 8741 we are seeing the the largest drop is coming from kindergarten at this time and we're working with principals related to that to for parents and students that have come in for informational night but then have it followed back up to actually register their students so we're trying to work through all of those details to see if we're going to get back some of those kindergarteners compared to october of 20 to project enrollments for the fall there's a difference of about 111 students in kindergarten next slide please also i feel that this is good news because our headley roll back on the general fund side for the operating tax revenue didn't roll back any further so that means that our our property tax values did

120not increase beyond the rate of inflation the county does this calculation every spring for us so we we can't levy the full 18 mills because of our property tax values i can only buy law levy 17.5695 mills and we lose out on about 356 thousand dollars of tax revenue by not being able to levy those full 18 mills um we are very fortunate that we have the kairisa special ed millage that is renewed just this past may for six years and the previous may of 2020 the enhancement millage was renewed and those are our very large you know chunks of revenue in our budget that we are very fortunate to have two weeks from tonight i'll be standing up here and going over a lot of these details again hopefully it's going to be hopefully

121we might know what our funding number's going to be and i can hurry up and change those revenue numbers and maybe give you a different outcome on a financial report but on the next slide you'll see where i came in at the limit first preliminary stab of the 200 increase the enrollment at the number that i talked to you about steps only included in the budget and not very much federal or even normal federal revenue with the exception of a small s or piece added in expenditures exceed revenues by approximately seven hundred and eighteen thousand dollars now if we by chance get three hundred dollars per pupil instead of two hundred dollars per pupil is an increase that's like another 870 thousand dollars in revenue so that could pull that negative to a small positive

122so i'm hoping that i can bring back to the board some revised members before the budget hearing that would be my goal um but i wanted you to at least see there's still a lot of things that still have to be worked out you know through the legislation and um you know changing the numbers to report back to you a positive hopefully a more positive picture than what this is right here and based on those those projections i would reduce our fund balance down to approximately 9.89 percent with the 200 increase next slide please and then finally this is just a chart showing history of what how our fund balance has actually um landed each year the the last final number that you see is the the 1920 and the 10.01 that's an audited number

123the the 21 and 22 numbers are paula estimations at this time until the the june 30th is actually closed so at this time i can take any questions from the board if you have any and if i can't answer them i can certainly get back to you uh paul i just want to say um great presentation there's a lot of data in here and it's been a long night i was kind of fearful looking at budgets and we still have a lot to go so um very nice chat very nice summary it's very informative and very long so thank you i guess with all that detail i would ask are there one or two takeaways at a very high level that we should take from all this uh one or two high-level takeaways this could

124be one of the most interesting budgets that we see in school finance in my career never had this much of a surplus before that usually we're talking the other direction you know how are we gonna how are we gonna take this amount of revenue and and spread it you know amongst all the kids across the state of michigan so um and i really feel that all of these federal packages that congress has passed you know all the stimulus payments that they've that they've put out there has actually been a plus for the economy and it's you know sales tax sales taxes thriving for the state school aid fund with holdings were out people were having state withholdings out of their unemployment earnings so whereas you think pandemic and you think if the economy is going

125to have a downturn now we're on the other side of it and it's a completely different picture so thank you any other questions right now paula thanks for a really nice job on this presentation um you gave us enough without quite burying us you stopped just short of that hopefully it wasn't too boring no no this was really good i mean you had you hit all the questions so um very nice job and i would just say what a difference a year makes so um i remember a year ago i was standing here going we could deplete our fund balance down to two point something percent do you know what i mean so yeah but yeah very nice job thanks um looking forward to see how those final revenue numbers are um we'll see where

126it stands in two weeks thank you thanks for your presentation paul it's just the right level of detail for where we are and um you know there's a lot of uncertainty yet but we've got better uncertainty this year than we had last year so thank you very much right level of detail easy to understand thank you our next discussion item is the masb membership renewal for 2021 22. it's 9 287 it's the same amount as last year is there any discussion or comments i'll be good okay excellent our last discussion item is prioritizing the end statement this is uh the language we said we wanted to adopt so we would plan to do that at our next meeting unless anyone has any objections so we agreed to do it at our retreat any comments well

127it's uh you know we've had so many discussions on this over i mean we've just continued to beat it up so it's right we finally got some tweaks to it coming through the other end the process continues yes sir anything else okay very good um our next thing to do is approve a motion to go into um closed session uh mr president i offered the following notion of the board of education move into closed session for the purpose of discussing collective bargaining strategy as allowed under the open meetings act 15.268 section 8c thank you celeste seconded thank you lol and this is a roll call please barb mr restaurant yes mr crowell yes dr shelton harris yes mr van antwerp yes this is novaria yes mr snyder yes thank you the motion is going to

128close session is approved and i will not be coming back to take any action so this meeting is adjourned thank you you