001Call the meeting to order. Uh, first on the agenda or I'm sorry, is the mission of Montgomery public schools to educate and inspire all students to become motivated, articulate, productive, and successful citizens for today, tomorrow, and forever. Uh, item two on the agenda is pledge of allegiance. I pledge algiance 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. Item three on the agenda is roll call. Here, Mr. Smith here. Mr. R here. Mrs. Rans here. Mr. Here. Item four on the agenda is approval of the agenda. Suggested motion is to approve the agenda as presented. Moved by Amanda, support by Joel. Any discussion? All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. Item five is consent agenda. To
002suggest a motion to adopt the consent agenda as presented by Amanda support by Karen. Any discussion? Yes, I would like to make a change to the consent agenda. I would like to remove uh under C5C under resignations remove Tom. Um he will no longer be resigning from the district as the district. So we would need a new motion with the removal of five. [Music] So I need need a motion to amend the consent agenda to remove Tom Co by Cindy supported by Amanda. Any additional discussion on that consent consent agenda? I'll discuss that further. Okay. Okay. Um, all those in favor? Yes. Opposed? Motion carried. So that's the motion to amend the consent agenda. Now we need to approve the consent agenda as amended. Right. Is that the latest? I believe so. Yes. Go ahead,
003Cindy. All right. Motion by Cindy. Support. We got that out first. Support by Karen. Any additional discussion? All those in favor? Yes. Opposed? Motion carried. Item six on the agenda is the public comment portion of the meeting. Public comments will be accepted at this time. Each statement shall be limited to 5 minutes in duration. Participants shall direct all comments to the board and not to staff or other participants. The board welcomes public comment but does not respond to citizens concerns at its meetings. At the citizens request and the board's direction, the superintendent or designate will respond in a timely manner. This meeting is a meeting of the board of education in public for the purpose of conducting the school district's business and is not to be considered a public community meeting. We have three people
004uh on the uh participation sign in. So, I guess we'll start with uh Kristen Tank. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. I'd like to start by thanking you for the job that you do as our board of education. And I also want to mention that my son Carson Tank graduated here in 2021, went on to complete at Mske Community College and also at University of Michigan with a degree in economics. So just want to thank you so much. You had a wonderful experience here and I'm just so grateful to be able to tell you all that. I am here for a reason though. Do you need my address? 7770 Old Channel Trail. Okay. And I am here to recommend Tammy Drau. I understand that there's an opening on the board and I would just like
005to recommend her. I met Tammy when our son started here in kindergarten at Monu Area Public Schools. She's been a wonderful friend and just a great person who really cares about children and the community and she has wonderful professional experience that I think she can bring to the board of education. So, thank you for listening and having next on the list is Teresa. Good evening, Superintendent Johnson. Um, and Teresa Eers. I live at 6375 in Union Point. I've got three children at the district and um I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. Um, you may recognize my name as an applicant for one of the for the current board vacancy and um, I know several of you through different activities in the community, but some of you are new faces to me.
006So, I wanted to give you guys a chance to see who you're talking about. Um, and also thank you guys for the opportunity to let me participate in this process and I look forward to seeing it through the rest of [Music] last on the list. Hello, Amanda. I keep bringing you my address. Yes, ma'am. 8701 Westwood Lane. Um, I am not moving forward conceived, but I did think about it. And part of the reason behind um not going forward with it is that I wanted to substitute. I've been teaching for 17 years and I have a masters in educational leadership. and I asked Cindy if that was something you could do in Tampa and she had said that school board members cannot substitute. So that's a point I want to bring up is that I
007think if you're going to be on the school board, you should be able to be in the schools as that type of person as well, but I know that that's up for discussion. Just want to point that out that I would like to be in the schools if I was also going to serve on the board and get a bird's eye view of what I'm talking about. Um, in addition to that, there's a couple of things that I wanted to put on your lines for suggestion in the future. One is our schools have never had a crust and we differ between different emblems on um, RNC email as we sign off or have the website or whatever it's the MC or it's the weather man. So this year I wanted to try to see if
008maybe the high school kids or the community could come together and come up with a crest for Monu schools. So we could have some of these pieces that we see regularly on the crest, but moving forward we have something that represents um the educational endeavors and the mission that you state and kind of encompasses everything that Bondue stands for. Um because again there's different models to use. Um so that just wanted to put on here to the point of something we discuss later on. And last of all I'm here in support of Teresa. I know her personally. Our um children are in the schools together and I know her family well and support her as the board. [Music] Are there any other public comments? All right, moving on. Item seven, uh, reports, superintendent comments. All
009right, just a couple, uh, comments before we get into some other reports here. Uh, next week starts our professional development with staff on the 19th. We'll have our, uh, new teacher, new professional staff in on the 19th. 20 and 21st will be all other staff for two full days of professional development here in the district within school starting on August 25th. I believe we're already here. The summer has flown by uh and we are moving forward. Um no current legislative updates as far as the budget is concerned. Um I think we're in a stalemate right now. Uh many representatives do not want to necessarily play their cards too early with an election for the 2026. they uh feel that that could be used against them in an election for 2026 even though we're still in
0102025. Uh so I do anticipate along with our lobbyists and many uh different individuals it'll be a lastm minute uh budget changes and and many practices or a shutdown both at the state and federal level. So our budget uh we proposed one with kind of a shot in the dark and we're going to stay that way. It was definitely through into October. uh graduation rates. We did receive some graduation rates uh back this past week. I will share those with you in in more depth as far as numbers are concerned. Uh but we slightly did uh go up in Montigue High School go up to 96.36% up from uh 96.23%. So slightly up as a district we went up as well because obviously uh as a district we have a way community uh head students
011have done pretty far that my version as well. Uh so I'll share those numbers as well. That is it for superintendent comments. Next we will go to uh report B here with the athletic update and Mr. J Moulder. Hey Mr. Johnson. Hi guys. How are you? Good. Hey. I'm here. You know you should have uh my yearly report in front of you. I'm not gonna take a whole lot of time. Uh two things I really wanted to uh you know hit on like on page three you like we always us in the athletic world you know we always have a goal right hey what's your goal going to be and the past couple years a coach really got behind you know we're going to continue set the standard uh basically we want to lead from
012the front our coaches and myself feel we're not we're not afraid you know to try something new to do something that's going to make our student athletes perform better in the classroom and also not being and like one example is um we were like the first one in the area to sign on with a final four and this was like five six years ago if you have a son or daughter that's been in athletics and I know like final four it's like a godsend it is like so easy we could take care of that you know so again we're not afraid you know to take chances you know and you know like lead and do almost like you know and sometimes we fail forward a A couple highlights. Hey, our our two soccer teams this
013past year had amazing seasons. I mean, they won they both won their first ever district championship, which is amazingly I mean guys had an amazing season the fall and then the girls repeated that in the spring, you know. So, uh that is uh really exciting. And we uh did state champion fair child was state champion. We adapted 400 repeated and osmo in the two. So, I mean that is really nice. Uh, I'm going to go to page four. You know, again, this is kind of old, half worth, but year in year, our our students that are involved in athletics do better than nonathletes. It's just it's something that happens and like we really take pride in our academic hall state teams. I mean, this past year, we had seven of them on our state team
014academic hall state, you know. So, so that's something that we really hang our hat on. Our coach do an amazing job and our kids really understand, hey, you know, I need to do my schoolwork first and then I go and represent uh a lot of people on the side. Going on to page six, a few key uh highlights. You know, again, I really push multisport. I mean, I want our kids doing two, three sports. You know, we're a small school. We have about 420 kids in the high school. You know, again, in order for our teams to be successful and represent Honda, we need them to be doing multiple sports. This past year, 26% of our athletes in three sports, 53% of our athletes did at least two sports. You know, you know, again, if
015you look at the research that's out there, you know, kids that are involved in all the sport are going to do a lot better in school also, also in the kind of social circle, you know, again, and that's something that I preach every single day. We want our kids out and going. And then at the middle school level, 34% of our student athletes did at least three sports and 58% of our athletes school did two sports. So again, we really like to get kids out. We really try to provide a good product for them. And also, and this is kind of latest uh slain, athletics are the front corners of the school. I mean, I mean, we draw the most people, right? I mean, most people come to our schools, right, and do to attend
016the NFL. So, I mean, we always do a great job of uh running tournaments, games. I mean, it's something that we take uh we take pride in. Uh we love to host. I'll host anything. Uh you know, and I think it's nice when when we can host a tournament or postseason one, you know, it's going to be a good reflection of our school, of our community. It's going to bring people to mind. Yeah. And I mean like we host a big girls no wrestling tournament every year but holidays and like we have schools coming from the east side of St. Oh my goodness. Your town is so great and this is so awesome. Yeah. So we are going to continue to host and now with the gym being done I mean I think we're really
017going to see an explosion plus hosting tournaments like we can finally host a volleyball tournament again. We're hosting a conference tournament this fall and also districts. Something that me and hosted a volleyball tournament here. I've been here for 20 plus years. I don't have ever hosted because of So I mean that's something that we are very excited about and our coaches and athletes. If you turn to page eight, you know, again, how we fared in the West Michigan conference, I mean, you see our you see our place names uh for all girls and boys. If you did the average, boys or girls are the same. Our like average place was 3.49. So, you know, there were seven schools in the lake. So, you know, we were top three if you take the average, you know,
018and again, we are the smallest school in the lakes at 410 and we go up to 3 and you know, those guys are almost at 700. So, I mean, our student athletes do a really good job and it really prepares us for the postseason since we're one of the smallest teams in division 2, it's called now. Probably some of you old school remember Class B. Yeah. So like say when we go to basketball or model districts, you know, we could be playing spring lake or fruit there. Again, our kids always accept the challenge and we've been doing fairly well. Few more on page 10. Some things that we have accomplished this past year. You know, again, CAP training. CAP training is uh coaches and service put on by the MHSA. Our response this past year
019has been phenomenal. our uh our coaches are willing and they are eager to go to these trains and get PD. Uh it doesn't really take much. I just uh I just want to throw it out there and we always had good response. Uh for the CPR training, the MSA has a new mandate this year. All high school coaches uh need to certify. We've actually extended that. We're making all of our coaches 612. So if you're on the sideline, you know, representing [Music] response for that has been amazing as well. They are uh you know definitely for and this past summer we started our cat program which is our 612 strength and conditioning program led by uh front coach for the first summer that was amazing. We have 1,200 kids coming in here 3 4 days
020a week and uh I think that those numbers will continue to grow and now we finally have the facility with the new waiting room to make that happen. Uh few more some goals for this coming year on page 11. Our number one goal is we want to create some type of mental performance mental toughness mindset program 612. Because when I talk to my coaches daily, you know, two things that they're bringing up. Hey, strength and conditioning and you know, what are we doing to help out our athletes in the mental world? Some of our uh teams have been doing it like for example, our wrestling teams had been using wrestling mindset training for 3 four years and some other coaches are really starting to uh get familiar. But that's a clear message from our coach.
021Hey, you know, we need to get better. We need to be able to equip and help our students go through the struggles of the mental aspects of and that in a nutshell is uh 2425 in a uh in a few quick minutes to get some any any questions to. So Jay, I just have one comment. Um I think you always do a great job of presenting the calendar year. Um, something that would be nice is to see the whole trend data like how how you know like our our GPA or how we're performing year-over-year. So like, hey, I've been the AD for 5 years. What did it look like year one? What does it look like now? Right. Maybe mixing a little bit of that in. Not really a question, just something be nice to
022see. Yeah, I can easily get that to Jeff and get that to you. A little bit of work. So you mentioned um you know the goal of increasing resilience and that kind of stuff. How are you measuring that in ethics? You're your leader like how do you know like whether what we're doing is working? So we signed on we use a thing called grit leadership and it is a it's a survey growth tool that that we use with our coaches we use with our athletes. So we send a survey out to athletes and parents out to coaches and then and then it sort of gives a um and then it sort of gives a metric score different things and then it really leads a good conversation you know with coaches at the end of the
023season I'll first meet with the coach and we'll kind of go over your grit story you know and we kind of talk about and good conversation and like that really drives the growth of our coaches you know this coach say oh yeah wow my team you know gave me a 3.4 four on this. So maybe I need to uh look at that. And same thing with the student piece. Yeah. You know, I mean it's really hard, you know. But but the this whole grit is it's all growth based, you know, it's not like, hey, we're out to get you. We want to help you grow. We want to give you some tools to grow. any any possibility of publishing that information or is that and it could open some things as well but like personnel
024stuff but maybe just overall how do um overall no mains no partation too yeah no I could easily get that and then my last question then I'll be quiet I promise you can implement one change next season to raise our competitive standards and outcome. It's going to be a mindset. Yeah. The the whole mindset, the whole mental performance. Yeah. I mean, I mean, that's a done deal. Yeah. That's where all of our uh you know, tools be, you know. I mean, I've been here for Well, I mean, I been living in the district now for 29 years. You know, I married a girl from here, so here I am. But I mean, in my opinion, we always have athletes, you know, we do, you know, year out and, you know, and our kids are great
025kids and they work hard. It's just we're kind of looking for that little bit of the extra edge. Not that many schools have like 612 strength condition. So you want to really kind of focus on kind [Music] any other question? Just a comment. I'm glad to see that you still have on here school spirit. Oh yes. And strengthening the booster club that seems to be a yearly Yes. And actually our booster club, you know, I feel now we've got four women involved and they're doing a great job. Yeah. you know, so that's starting to come. I think now, say, for example, we'll be able to get more volunteers out at a basketball game, a lot more wrestling because you're like there, you can look out the window. Yeah. Whereas before you go all the way
026down the hall and so I think that'll help get more people involved. Do you still have a program where the athletes can support other sports? Like football players will support Yes. soccer players and make sure that they're doing Y. Okay. All right. Thank you, Jer. Thanks, J. Moving on to our next report. Uh, C, technology update from our technology director, uh, Mr. Steve Dennis. All right. Thank you. Um, it's been a busy summer already. U, we've been updating our all of our PCs from Windows 10 to Windows 11 primarily because Microsoft now says you have to update or we will not support or or give you more security updates. So, it's pretty critical we had an update. Um, we've been getting several Chromebooks ready. Um, we've got first and second grade are moving from iPads
027to Chromebooks this year. Um, and then we've also got all the middle school. So, we've been quite busy getting everything ready. But, I just want to give you a brief update on some of the things that we're working on right now. Um, I've got a great team. Both Alex and Chris are part-time, but I could not do what we are doing right now without their help. I I felt I had to give them recognition because they are very valuable in what we're doing here in the district. But I'm also thankful for the partnerships that we have. Um we've been working with Catch Park, especially with the new gym and that was a major project in itself. Um we utilize Moss Tech Telecommunications out of Grand Rapids. Um for a lot of our repairs around the
028district, um they just installed a new mix throughout the stadium. They've um been doing some repairs and they're building movements and projectors for us some different odds and just helpers with different projects. We have a partnership with Vectro Tech um out of Grand I mean out of Holland that they are helping us a lot with our our networking um things that I'm not able to do. They kind of jump in and do some of the more advanced stuff for us. Technet is an interesting um partnership and the fact that it's not necessarily fixing things as it is that they buy our old equipment, stuff that's obsolete and they're giving us good money for it. And we're anticipating we just gave them all the old G8 Chromebooks from the middle school um that were in pretty
029bad shape and we're going to end up getting a check from them like5 or $6,000. Um and that's good. It's not just going to the landfill. And so we're thankful with Matt. Um I'm also thankful and I really have to say this. I have a group of five or six tech directors in the area that we get together about once every six or seven weeks and we just spend time talking and and you know the tech director from Reese Puffer and North Moskegan and Moskegan or is it Revena Porch? a lot of these we just get together, we just talk and that has been extremely valuable to me just learning because I'm still relatively new uh tech director and so I'm thankful for that. I want to share with you kind of a five-year plan.
030Um and this is strictly with the the the the physical technology. Now, there's more involved in the technology than just the, you know, the physical. But I wanted to show you this kind of a plan because I'm so thankful for the um millage that we have that was passed by the voters um a couple years ago to extend for another 10 years. And this is a 5-year plan. Um but I wanted to kind of just show that we're kind of spreading this out so that we are going to keep improving and keep replacing things they become obsolete. But it's the idea that we don't have to do it all in one year. I want to spread it out. And I've also kind of planned this so that the we don't have like one year's a
031greater expense than other years. I'm trying to balance it out a little bit with this plan. And I think I think this was sent to you in the board packet. Um but again, you can always talk to me if you have any questions about it. Cyber security, it's a big thing in schools now. Um and in fact, there was just a big hit. Some schools got hit over the weekend. with some task. Um, so far I have not heard of any here for our district, but it's out there. So, we have taken some very proactive stances. Um, we have loaded what's called a cloud strike on all of our PCs. Um, and it has detected some things and what it does, it does wipe it off the PCs for us. Um, we have really encouraged
032factor authentication here in the district. And I can remember when we first rolled it out a couple a year and a half, two years ago, I was like, "Oh, do we really have to do this?" Yeah, we really had to do this. And now with Windows 11, they have to do it again because it wiped out everything that was there before. Nope, no big deal. They come to accept and they understand the importance of it. We also have um using a resource called no reform where we are doing some fishing campaigns where we actually send out fake emails and try to get people to fall for it and some do. Um but I think overall we're showing improvement. I see some else. It's it's it it's hard to tell sometimes and I mean sometimes I
033say oh I almost did it. Um, so that'd be pretty embarrassing in my office, especially if I said it out, but um, we are trying to be very proactive with our cyber security in the district and I think our staff is really starting to come and embrace it how important this is. Um, so that's important to us. Another form of security is our web filter. Now, this past year, we used one that we looked back and it really wasn't that effective. We found some really some major concerns with it. And so we've made a change to what's called classwise this year. Um I've been testing it on some summer school students and I think it's doing a pretty good job of blocking some things and and that kind of thing. I do love the flexibility
034it gives the teachers to instantly block the site or open the site as long as it's not locked out. And the district likes to things like violence and and pornography, you know, some of the obvious things. Um but it does give teachers a lot of flexibility. Of course, there's also the filters at the ISTD. So even before our we get our internet from ISD they're blocking some things and so that's all part of you know also part of security that we have. Another part of security and there's more of technology than security which we need to talk about it is the fact that we've got um security cameras all over the district. Last year we're able to install about 30 to 40 new cameras. We updated some cameras um with a state grant. I think
035it's about what 100,000 W Stacy something like that. Um we're so thankful for because we wouldn't be able to do that without that grant. Um we are continuing to look for new places where we might need cameras. We're going to install some soon in the new athletic trainers room at the new gym also in the golf room. um just as a way also I think it's just important not just for the idea of theft or but just to help protect our staff but to protect our students you know from false accusations and so we think that's important. One thing I've liked that we've started doing is we get billion notifications so cameras go down I get an email and we're able to respond to it much faster way than maybe finding out the next morning
036or something like that. Um our district website has been updated. I'm thinking you've probably seen that and Jeff mentioned that at a meeting probably what four or five months ago. The only thing I want to say about this here is that I know that if a website becomes stale, it's not updated regularly, people stop going to it. And so we're going to be very intentional about keeping this updated. I know Michelle puts things on the front page like I said, but we want to be very intentional about making this a um ongoing stuff some people want to keep coming back to and seeing. [Music] We need to upgrade our phones. Um I I I've mispr [Music] you for phones. One good thing about that is, yeah, we have the cost of the phones replaced, but
037our switches only put in like two or three years ago. They're able to dominate accommodate this update. We don't have to buy new switches because of this change. And so that is a huge savings for the district. Um, state rate funding. Every 5 years or so, the federal government has been uh providing funds to school districts to do some um what they call infrastructure upgrades and we have a new one that renews for 2026. I was kind of concerned whether the federal government would do that, you know, but they they've come through and what I'm hearing, what I'm reading is that might even be more money than in the past. Uh but our primary focus when this starts next January is we want to update our Wi-Fi or wireless system here in the district and
038all our buildings because they it is pretty old. Wireless has advanced so much in the last even the last 5 years. Um and our system is older than that. So we want to get updated with that. Um and we also want to do some fiber cable updates in the high school and middle school. We've got the elementary and mag already done, but I want to finish the project and get it done at the NBC and NHS as well. Um, some training. We've been doing some training on artificial intelligence. Um, Google Gemini, um, magic school AI, some notebook element I want to start introducing. We have the interactive whiteboards at the elementary and I want to see those utilized a little more. And so I want to focus on that kind of training. Um for the
039first and second graders who now have Chromebooks, we're going to introduce Clever, which is a like a management tool to make it easier. So they they can log in. They don't have to type out their names. You can imagine first and second graders, you know, trying to find all the letters to type their names. This is going to make it easy. It's a one two click thing in their hand. Um but it's also very secure. It's all it's all um what's wrong on my basically they can't read that people can't steal it um the information. So that's kind of a quick update of what we're doing. Um we're trying to be very intentional in what we're doing. Any questions? Any questions for Steve? [Music] Steve, is your are your phone systems void? I'm sorry. Are
040your phone systems void? They're [Music] Okay, that is it for reports. Okay. Item A is new business. Uh item 8A is what a lot of people have been waiting for, consideration to appoint our new board member to fill in Scott Lysiz's role. So before we do that, I just really wanted to talk a little bit about the process. So um Monturi Public School Board recently conducted an open call for interest uh to fill a vacant trustee position. um interested community members uh submitted their interest and completed a survey that included questionnaire on their background, reasons for wanting to serve, views on the role of the board board members and priorities for the district. Uh each board member individually received and reviewed the completed surveys um and responses and have carefully considered I'm sorry, carefully considered
041each candidate's qualification, the community involvement in alignment with our district's vision. Um the list of applicants that we got are as follows. Uh Amy Martell, Douglas Schmidt, um Brooke Cudney, William Okonnell, Teresa Eers, Tammy Drago, uh and Ben Roert. Uh so what we would need now is a board member's uh uh motion. And the motion would be suggest a motion to appoint whoever uh the board member wants to appoint as a new board member to fill the seat of Mr. vice and seat whose term runs through December 2026. I move to appoint Ben Rubert as board members to the seat of Mr. Vice Eency whose term runs through December 2026. Okay, so we have a motion. Do we have support for that motion? Support discussion. Um I would like to amend the motion. Okay. to
042have a brief discussion of all of the candidates before we vote on one individual. All the candidates that any of us are choosing to support. Um so what you what is the motion? Yeah. To Okay. So they move to nominate him. I would said um to before that to briefly discuss the positive a attributes of any of the candidates that we choose to support. Wow. So you're looking in this in this discussion time we just because otherwise we just I don't know we yeah I don't know that we need a motion to discuss all everybody that's what I didn't know discuss discussion already. So I think I think we can do that if you'd like. Um and uh yeah so I mean I guess do you resend the amendment and then we can just have
043a discussion if you're sure. Okay. Um so I am open to discuss the candidates. We were this is open discussion. So if you'd like to do that Cindy I would say go right ahead. Okay. I've got a couple that I'd kind of like to that but I should we go through each one? Let's No. Well, I would I would just say we don't necessarily have to do them all, but I have a couple that I'm in support of. So, I would like to talk about them individuals and then anyone else likes to do the same thing for candidates that they have. Okay. Yes. Okay. Okay. I'm going to start with Teresa Eers. Okay. Um, one thing I want us all to raise our hands and say if you're good with Brad. [Music] So, we could
044maybe have a little diversity, but I'm sorry. Talk to me. Um, I think we could use a little diversity. Maybe not that being a Monty Brad is a bad thing, but we all are. All of us. So, um, Teresa is not a Monty Brad. Um, she volunteers in the district at many levels and is currently involved in Jeff's community culture discussion forum. Is that good enough name for that? Um, and from what I'm told, she doesn't just participate in the discussions, but she also looks towards finding solutions instead of just complaining. Um, she's a construction contracts engineer with lots of experience with facilities, finance, unions, and governments. And I really liked what she wrote about continuing the tradition of pride in our community and um and its members and using that pride to welcome outsiders
045and grow the district which in then will help to ensure adequate funding to maintain the buildings and programs and be able to offer competitive compensation to the staff. So she's kind of looking out for everyone including the community. Um, I know that she read the bylaws and checked out committee structure before she showed before she applied for the job. She also showed up tonight to introduce herself. So, um, I would support Teresa. I have one more. Yeah, go ahead. Um, Brooke Cudney, who is also not a Monubrad. Um I don't know her well personally but my husband had many interactions with her at the township level. Um she was they were writing the the solar ordinance for Monu Township and she was very involved in that. He mentioned that she was very well informed, a
046good listener and based her decisions on facts rather than emotions. Her career is as a nurse practitioner. She's given years of experience in dealing with many people of all walks of life and I'm sure sometimes uncomfortable situations. Um, this has helped her navigate through focused and shared decision making and respectful dialogue and able to reach the the best outcomes for all involved. She's currently on the Montigue Township Planning Commission which shows her willingness to serve the community. She has a young family and um I've always heard really good things that people have worked with her in the past. [Music] I was pleased to see so many. Yeah. All good. All of them. All good. Yeah. You know, the last time we did this, we had 26. [Music] Was it? No, you're right. It wasn't. Yeah,
047it wasn't. Oh, because um others that would like to talk or discuss candidates uh you know just as regarding positive aspects was a really hard decision. They are all all of people. I I would agree. I do have to say one more thing. We have one candidate that um didn't make the deadline and I think that it's not fair to the community and not fair to the people that did apply in a timely manner to consider that individual. Okay. Is that true statement? Yeah. [Music] So there was a um email that took place with the wrong email address. Um the candidates were to submit to human resources uh under maps human ress human resources human resources at mapsk12.org that's the human resources was missing a letter so therefore it did not send properly. Um we
048do have snapshots of that email that was within the window. Uh but officially have been received the next morning that the board so that it was the next Thursday morning when the official official email came through. [Music] So I guess my question is was that we accepting that as a legal to the letter of the law legal or is that we could be a board decision as a whole to accept or not accept. There's no legal stance as far as I mean that's a recommendation. We could have said that it could be up until the board meeting. We could have said that day. We could have said a number of different things. We could have interviews like we did uh two processes ago and there was there's many it's the the realities of us is
049on point within this but you did have a deadline there was a posted deadline 4:00 Tuesday [Music] I can look it up as well there's a 4:00 deadline And that was stated in in our post. Yes. So the email was sent prior to the 4:00, but because there was a typo in the address, it didn't go through until the morning when the list came out and I I submitted that wasn't on. They provided set time slot. So when the message went out prior to that [Music] does anybody have a I guess I don't know handle that you don't really need to vote on that you just talk your discussion you guys are all okay with that is there anybody that is not okay I'm not okay um what would you do make a motion to
050say we disregard that we can vote on it and then at least I think that would be the So that means to do it. Let's make a motion this. Yeah, we have to table this motion and then we will have to have a motion to remove them. So I need a motion to table this motion. I know. I know, guys. Doing my best here. The motion. Okay. And I need support. Okay. So, we have support. Any discussion? All those in favor? Yes. Okay. Uh oppose. Motion carries. Now, Cindy, you can make your motion however you want it to go. Well, I would move that we not accept the application of the individual who did not the deadline. Okay. Do we need to have the name in there or can we say the individual? Okay. [Music]
051I would make a motion that we eliminate Ben Lbert's application because he did not apply in a timely manner. Okay. Is there support for that motion? I don't know what to do with Well, it just dies, right? Yeah. Then we're back to the original, right? Or no, we tabled that. We tabled it. So um we can then we don't need a motion to to retouch on that. We can just go back to the discussion. So um is there any further discussion on the original motion by Emily to appoint them? I would just um I guess reiterate what was said before. I think a lot a lot of great candidates that was kind of I made up my own little matrix of pluses and minuses things that I was looking for. And so that's kind of
052how I went through the process um of of selecting an adoption. I'm guessing you did something similar. Yeah, there's a lot there was way more pluses than minuses. So that's speaks to the candidates. [Music] Okay. Um is there are there any conflicts of interest with this? I won't vote for this. Okay. relatively. Okay. I would also say specialized, but I have no say in this process, but I I do feel comfortable with any of the superintendent. I think we all feel I think there's seven candidates that are are good people in our community and it's important. Good. Um, I would also encourage those that did put their names in um, two times ago when they were appointing. I put my name in and I didn't get select select and I hold that against Jeff to
053this day. But then I ran next time. So I would I would encourage you guys if you have an interest to serve definitely run the next election. I think we need great people and there was a great list of people. So, um, don't let it don't let if you're not selected, don't let this discourage you. Similar experience. Yep. So, so we both So, different times. Um, all right. Any additional discussion? All those in favor? Yes. Opposed? No. Okay. Um, motion carries. uh bedroom will be appointed to the school board for the position for SC. Thank you again to everybody who applied. We do definitely do appreciate this. All right. Item 8B, consideration of approving the administrative salary schedule. Suggest a motion to approve the administrative salary schedule as presented. All right. Discussion. So um through
054um MCL 381303A um in the interpretation through OS as far as administrative salary schedules. Uh they would like to see um a a schedule over time and and in a process where um a retirement or a pension process looks at the the individual's three highest paid years. They'd like to see that things are being done appropriately in school districts. So thus um comes out a salary schedule that districts are now doing. Um you can see the 25 26 school year 26 27 27 28 obviously within uh teacher uh contracts and support staff contracts, you have that out usually uh as part of something that is um approved by the board. Uh this would match then those percentage increases that have been seen in the past um just like the the last year when you approved
055this as well. So this would be the second year that we are now doing this. Uh last year there was a 3%. This year would be the 4% to match the uh individ the teacher and the support staff 4% last year 3% for the 26 27 and then a 1% 2728. Um and that's just for the many unknowns. Uh we can always um update this as next year we will come right back again. So that 2728 could be higher. It just would not be less than 11% in that process. I did want to pay note. I I said we'd come back to our the consent agenda talking about Tom who is our school psychologist. Uh in a process of him uh taking another looking position um we found that psychologists are very hard to come
056by and very important to the district. And so we did uh change rather than the 4% increase that there would be 8% from there along with a mechanic increase that does not meet the others and that's just to get up to where that's at. [Music] So just so I understand correctly um where are we in discussion? Okay, this is like a colum adjustment per year. There's an automatic 341. Is that accurate? 431. 431. Okay. Is there are there performance incentives as well or is that all they've got from each position? That is well there's the longevity that's out there. But no, there's not performance and obviously two evaluation between performance. So they're not getting a 4% getting evaluated to get the 2% on top of that. There's the only uh there is a merit paper
057from the district and that would be around our SAT score. The percentage of our SAT score all people in the district that's just teacher um SAT within the percentage. So it's performance. So, how do we reward high performing administrators if it's all scheduled and it's all the same? A glowing recommend their evaluation and great pat on the back. Thank them for all that they do. Heads up with these questions. Yes, and I I understand uh your questions and uh processes. I think that um if we had more dollars maybe that's something we could look at as well because they are individ at the administrative level they not teach my questions for [Music] any additional discussion Jeff I heard you say 2728 right now it's 43 to1 and you said it could be less than that
058No, this is more but it can never this it can't ever be there there is a process that we could go through and just say we could say there's a budget emergency here we say like for next year for next year are these locked in they can't ever be less than 1% out for the second year [Music] so and we could say though in let's say in 27 28 even though it's 1% % when we get like next year we could say you know what from 2728 let's put that as a 27 yeah that's just clarifying I heard it I didn't know if that's really what I understood can't see okay any additional discussion questions all those in favor opposed motion carried item 8 C is consideration of approving uh Hillary uh Keely Is that
059how you say it? Correct. As a student support specialist at the high school. Suggest a motion to approve Hillary Keley as a student support specialist at the high school by [Music] discussion. So, um, with the loss of our AM MCAN advisor, which was our, uh, supported individual through Grand Valley State University for our college and career readiness, uh, components, with the loss of that program and the partnership that we have, uh, we still needed an individual in our counseling office here in the high school. Uh, so what we did in this process is Mr. Patton who does all the scheduling and does a number of our uh supports of students around at risk or uh mental health uh work within that process. he will take on more of some of the college and career readiness
060components that were involved with that MPN uh individual previously and then this new position would be an atrisisk funded position uh that we would um it's actually a 30 title four this first year but it would be similar to an atrisisk funded position uh in the process comes highly recommended uh from Trinity Health as well as uh health west as a practice uh [Music] any additional discussion or questions. All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. Item 8, consideration of approving Kate Watkins as a atrisisk behavior specialist at the MAC. Suggests a motion to approve Kate Watkins as the atrisisk behavior specialist at Amanda. support discussion. So, Grand Valley State graduate does have experience both at Mard Holton area that be closed does have some experience with the daily news that it'll be throughout 31. Um,
061but uh has has had similar roles as well. This would be another funded uh position at the back as our kindergarten behavior specialist. Uh last year we uh had a part-time within this position and a part-time special ed uh teacher in that role. The special ed numbers have grown uh for this upcoming year in that. Uh so we still need an individual. It's hard to find somebody at a half time. Uh so this would be full time at this position. So not any additional discussion or questions? Just quick question. Do they all have one doc? all do all the campus specific behavioral specialist. So now the MAC does there is one at R O which is Jerry Hendrick and then Jen um Jen Sega is at the middle school and then we don't have one
062I should say we don't have one at the high school but we have [Music] so they'll be working with young five and kindergarten students. Yep. Yep. And CS students as well. Oh, okay. Um, not as much, but more the young five and kindergarten that they're coming in. There's proactive work. They'll do small groups uh kind of work on some of the small behavior. So, it's there is a approach that takes place. It's not just taking care of what there are behavior issues, which is part of that, but it's more the proactive work, small groups, friendship groups, those kind of things that took place that we have. [Music] Any additional discussion, questions? All those in favor? Opposed? Motion carried. Item 8E, consideration to approve city of BU easement. The suggested motion to approve the willing seller
063agreement to grant a permanent easement to the city of Bonu for the purpose of completing and maintaining safe routes to school sidewalk improvements. So discussion. So this is at Hancock Street between Grant and Cook. Um and you can see the agreement there uh that we will be uh entering into. So working with um Stacy Brown has done a great job within this with sidewalk to schools uh components that we are doing throughout the city. So we as a school district walked around found where sidewalks were where they weren't what we prepared where we need sidewalks all those components. There is a proposed sidewalk that would be on the south side the south side of Memorial Field right on hand there. Um our concern and why we now feel that it needs to go with the
064city putting in the sidewalk uh move it up further towards the field itself as many cars will park there uh to watch that morale field and if we put it where it is within the proper easement cars will be constantly running over it which would be damaging the sidewalk. So we felt if we move the side back um sidewalk back just a little bit. forget the actual footage uh is there there um which is is not much. It allows the car to park there safely. There's not room. There's that embankment there. So there's room. So they're not going to be up on the y. It'll be at the edge. We don't have any we don't dictate the improvement. We simply provide um access We can't say we want it to look like this. Correct. Well,
065I mean, we're a part of this whole process as a whole, but it would be just details barricade so that people aren't actual, right? I understand city grants. There is there is certain city funding that is taking place and you can see around the city right now, they've started some of that processes. Yeah. Okay. Any additional discussion, questions? All those in favor? Yes. Opposed? Motion carried. Item 8F is first reading of policy 5610. [Music] Okay. This doesn't need a motion. 5610. This was on the proposed uh um policies from previously. We did remove it. And you can see on the second page of 5610 the change was that previously it was the superintendent may recommend to the board a long-term suspension or that these student be expelled. So prior it was always everything had to
066come to the board within that 10 days uh created some some process of issues for us getting things around getting the board together um making sure we had all the facts around the student uh in question or the process as a whole. This allows the superintendent now to uh lengthen that component till we have a big outcome and that was why there is the 35. So longer than 10 days but not longer than 35 which would then force a board member then have that. Okay. if the idea was to go towards a longer term suspension. Um I do not put the the language many discussions about proper language in this um saying to put in a meeting it could be difficult because it could be 2 days until the next board meeting and that doesn't
067make it right either. So that's why we said just put the numbers of 105 forc. Okay. Any questions? You have questions, let me know. This will be back on the agenda. Uh, next second. There's a typo or something in here. Unless we're talking. I couldn't make it. Anyway, it says the board shall act on and then a appear to the decision. Any appearance or any act? I appear to the question. Yeah, I will make that change and we will send it uh to what that is and have it uh I believe it say oh the board shall act on any appeal to the decision is whe any any texting [Music] that's helpful that we know what it is Y. So basically it's said you will have any of the [Music] item PG is second reading
068adoption of the old policies. Suggested motion is to approve second reading and adoption of the Neola policy numbers 0131.1430 3430 4430 2340 5320 5330 5330.01 01 5350 7310 8320 8510 8640 2264 and 2266 I earned my money today. No. Yeah, you could say each one and then I'll talk about each one. No, just so so [Music] motion by support discussion. Um so just briefly going through bylaws and policies this uh should be adopted the board which is to streamline the policy adoption process uh for technical correction. So like that any appeal right there that would be blocked uh leaves of absence. This is part of the ESTA uh components that now are taking place really doesn't affect us in and and just due to the contracts that we have in place where 30 hours work
069equals 1 hour of uh sick uh 2340 field and other uh district uh sponsored field trips uh because it was found in 8640 the rescending of the field trip component of 8640 that's why they revised this to have overall language include transportation options and provisions, immunization, uh just to making sure that we are stating uh by the Michigan Department of Empization requirements for kids cannot drink vinegar in seven seventh grade um or filling out the forms that require the health department component. Uh 5330 use of medications. It's just including additional definitions for clarity in the process. Um um zero rise to request clients adding im community provision set forth in the applicable by state law as far as the uh 50330 student health well-being and preventions policies to include comprehensive mental health and wellness in
070initiatives probably should be considered for adoption. uh 5610 emergency removal suspension students revised. Um that's what we were just talking about there. Um disposition surplus properly. So just updating the threshold amount of how we um get rid of I guess uh our stuff after we have a surplus that uh personnel files. This policy is revised to reflect the recent changes to ERA due to PA 236 of 2023. um this meets law on that 8510 wellness. So it's USDA requirement to include um language regarding wellness options throughout the district uh operations which is making sure he meals and then the receiving of 8640 which we talked about with the district on field trips and policy 2264 uh which is the nondiscrimination um of uh the title 9. And so that would be the changes from uh
071where title 9 had changed and now it's going back to the pre 20. Okay. Any other questions around so outside the 5610 which we're not voting on? Correct. These are the same these are the same exact vessel last time. Exact same policy committee went through a little bit more. Yeah. Any additional discussions or questions? All those in favor? Yes. Opposed? House carried. Item nine is ajourned. So move. Cindy support. to support my mand.