Livonia Public Schools Public Hearing & Regular Meeting June 14, 2021

001good evening welcome to the special meeting of the livonia public schools board of education of june 14 2021. uh the purpose of this meeting should be brief it is the purpose is for a public hearing for our budget that is coming up for approval later on this evening mrs fred you can take the role mrs acosta here mrs bonafield here mr center mrs jarvis here mr johnson here says here president berkeley here we have a quorum at this point i'm going to turn our meeting over to mrs smith who is going to go through the proposed 2021-2022 budget and village thank you president burton and thank you board members i appreciate all the time that you allocated for our in-depth conversation over the last few months for this proposed budget i am going to be

002a little bit abbreviated tonight and i would encourage our community if you haven't had a chance to watch our committee meeting that took place on the 7th to go back and watch that it's available on our website and we go into all the details of the items included in our recommended budget for this coming school year so with that i will turn this into our slide that looks at our general fund budget for this coming school year you can see we are projecting to end the school year with an ending fund balance of 30. million dollars or 19.2 percent and again for reference the michigan school business officials recommends a fund balance of 15 to 20 percent so i'm happy to report that we are within that 15 to 20 recommendation and even with the

003proposed recommendations that we're adding for the 20 21 22 school year we're looking at an ending fund balance of 24.7 million or 15.5 percent on the next slide i'll walk you through the proposed millage rates that will allow us to accomplish those budgets we have three different types of villages the first is our non-homestead operating village that would go into our general fund and i'm proposing loving 18 mills that will generate about 25.7 million dollars i know the board's familiar with this but for the benefit of our community school districts are funded on a per-pupil basis and the state assumes that we'll be loving this 18 mills locally so they don't give us the full foundation amount they back out this locally collected amount from our foundation allowance so this would be um to make

004us whole so we'll collect that locally the next is our debt retirement fund and i'm proposing loving 4.1 mills which is the same debt mills that we levied last year and this does include the new 2021 bond that was passed by the community in may next up is our sinking fund i'm proposing loving 1.586 mills which would generate about 7.6 million dollars for us this is the only one on the chart that actually is lower than last year due to the headley rollback on it is going down .0074 mills so taking us from last year it was 1.586 i'm sorry last year it was 0.5934 and this year it would be 1.586 and due to the increasing property tax values i anticipate that will generate about 7.6 million dollars for us so great news there

005i did want to mention again we went over these in detail last week but in addition to the general fund and the sinking fund and debt fund we also have a number of other funds um that will be voted on later this evening are funded projects that's where we are accounting for the federal coveted relief funds that the district has received we also have a special education fund which is where our county based programs are accounted for a health and welfare fund food service the few bond funds a capital projects fund scholarship fund and a school activities fund so that is it for tonight i will stop and pause and see if the board has any questions thank you are there comments or questions from board members mrs jarvis thank you president burton i would

006just like to point out for the benefit of our public both in person and who are listening that this is not the first time we've seen them it looks like this is very quick and that we're just highlighting when in fact we have discussed these four hours on several other meetings so you know please take that into consideration thank you very much if you'd like to hear some of the comments or some of the discussion comments questions yeah we have at one point we had about a two hour long discussion about all the different pieces that are going into this budget i do encourage you to look back on our website uh on if you hover if you go to livoniapublicschools.org and hover over the board tab you can drop down to meeting information and

007on that tab you'll find videos of our previous meetings one of the previous committee of the whole meetings just a couple of weeks ago we had about a two hour long discussion about all the details that go into this budget so if you're looking for more details more questions and answers about this more detailed information i do encourage you to to look there and you you'll be able to find probably all the information you want and more so the same holds true really for any of the items that are coming to the board for a vote uh they typically go through at least two meetings before they come to a board for a vote uh as this will later on this evening thank you for pointing it out mrs jarvis are there comments or questions

008from other board members or the superintendent that takes us to the next item on our agenda which is item three audience communications this is for those of you who may have joined us within the last couple of minutes just so that you catch the information that some of our other audience members received when they first arrived we are having a brief public hearing that is taking place right now at this moment for the purpose of the of the budget uh and then we will go into our regular meeting at seven o'clock most folks have indicated that they would prefer to have their audience communication participation take place during the regular meeting at seven o'clock but i do have one individual who has indicated that they would like their audience communication to take place during the

0096 45 public hearing and that is lindsey dunsky dynasty thank you lindsay thank you thank you for letting me go first i have a baby at home nursing so at any moment i might have to leave great and if you can give us your your name and your address for the record i'm i live in garden city right now one two one helen street garden city michigan four eight one three five it wasn't on i'm wondering why i couldn't hear myself if you don't mind repeating that because no one else absolutely did lindsay dineski 121 helen street and that's in garden city michigan 48135 okay we are looking to buy a house hopefully in livonia next year and i have a five-year-old who has a speech impediment and she also has a stutter and i

010homeschooled her this year because you know the mask thing was not going to be very conducive to her learning and i'm hoping that we can find a public school that is not going to be mandating masks so i'm here to speak about you know that kind of just the dangers of masks that you know is going ignored in my opinion um and if you don't mind your children i have to interrupt you for just a moment because i with this vegan public hearing i didn't do my regular opening on all of my items one of them is that audience communications has limited three bids per person we'll have a timer so if you hear if anyone's participating audience communications this evening here's a time to go off after about three minutes they'll then you know

011that it's time to wrap up your account thank you i apologi to me um it's important that whatever if we're going to live in livonia that the schools are going to be a good place for my my daughter who has a speech impediment and a stutter to learn because if her face and other people's faces are covered she won't be able to learn um but it's not just that but they're dangerous and i have a friend who couldn't be here tonight who is a little new resident already and she's a nurse and she said i could read something that she wrote and she asked me to keep her last name anonymous but she goes by nurse leslie and this is what she wrote she said kids puke little children puke too little children often times

012peep unexpectedly little children who are two and three most often do not understand they are about to puke and they can play and they can dance and i think even older kids like having a five-year-old that happens you know she gets overexcited or too hot or whatever um she they can just puke they'll be playing and dancing and eat and they don't even realize they're about to puke until the very moment that it comes out of their mouth um this is called i'm sorry until it comes out of their mouth and right until they're the mass that's trapped on their face this is called an aspiration risk of one of the highest degrees this is a tragedy in blinking red lights that i can't sleep thinking about it yes i'm a nurse and a mom

013and a person who's been alive longer than a decade therefore i can see the risks where in the heck are the nurses and doctors on this where are the teachers and child care workers what in the world is going on out there she said what do i do i call the health department who do i ensure hear this and she asked for people to share this letter because she said she cannot understand why in the world that they would be mandating these things for children who could be throwing up at any time and could very easily you know aspirate on their own vomit and you know also my oldest daughter she's an adult she's about to have a baby actually her first baby she struggled with um it was called cyclic cyclical vomiting syndrome and

014so she just all of a sudden you know she'll throw up randomly you know and she would never know so like if this would have happened while she was in school i would have had to pull her from school so i just feel like it's really important that both sides of the argument are heard when it comes especially to children for masks and the majority of the evidence states that they're not healthy they're not effective and that they're dangerous and a lot of times people with special needs like my daughter haley she's not going to be able to go to school if you know masks continue next year so i just wanted to put that out there and um and i'm happy to email you that the thing that she wrote if you want a

015written um and then there was just one more short thing i wanted to read oh is that my time out and that's okay that's okay i really mostly wanted to get that nurse athletic thank you for your time for individuals wishing to work to stand on the 6 45 public hearing for the purpose of our budget uh at that point i'm going to go to our last item which is our german we will return for a few minutes of transitions from this video to our regular meeting and we will see you in about two minutes mrs bradford would you please take a roll this is a coaster and mrs ronaldo here mr centers here mrs jarvis here mr johnson here mr bradford says here president burton here we have a forum mrs bonfield would you

016please lead us in pledge of allegiance and we are in a new room and i don't uh 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 welcome to everybody we have a very full agenda this evening if you are following along uh in your present this evening you can find a copy of our agenda just outside the door folks we do have a really full room and i'm going to ask that everyone be quiet whoever is speaking speak because there's gonna be a lot of different speakers this evening um if you are following along from an uh from home and you would like a copy of our agenda you can find it on our website which is

017at livoniapublicschools.org if you hover over the board tab you can drop down to meeting information and you can find a copy of our agenda there again if you're present here this evening you can find a copy of our agenda on the table just outside the doorway yeah yeah the meeting this evening is a voting meeting or a regular meeting as it is called and what that means is that the items that are coming before the board this evening have been discussed at typically at least two if not more meetings prior to tonight therefore you may not hear the level of conversation about discussion questions answers etc that you would expect to hear please understand that it is not because we are not discussing these items in depth but it is rather because we have discussed

018them at least two meetings prior to tonight's meeting if you're interested in hearing a lot of the questions and answers about the various topics that are coming before the board for a vote i really suggest that you tune in to our committee of the whole meeting you can either attend the committee of the whole meeting or you can watch it online or uh starting about noon the day after so about noon on any given tuesday of following a committee of the home meeting you can go online to our website again that is at livoniapublicschools.org you can hover over the board tab and drop down to meeting information and you can watch a video of our meeting from that evening you can get all the questions and answers you can that we could possibly think of

019to discuss about an item before it comes to a vote those items that you see on our agenda this evening have gone through that process already so they are running to be voted upon by the board of education and that's why we're here this evening one very important uh character trait that we teach our children in our schools is respect and that starts at the board level we take that very seriously uh you have a commitment from this board of education that we will treat one another and everybody in attendance on our meetings with respect and we ask that everyone who's in attendance this evening do the same we find that to be the very best way to teach our children by example let's see here the next item on our agenda this evening is

020communications i do want to also mention that for our audience communications when we get to that portion of the evening because we do have a large number of folks who would like to participate in audience communications audience communications is a time for the board to listen not for question and answer session audience communications will be limited to three minutes per person and it has a maximum of 15 minutes for the first portion of audience communication if you have an agenda with you that is item 3e audience communication the remainder of audience communication will be handled after personnel committee which is item 6 so that would be following item six g we will also be taking a brief a brief break following item three e uh and that is going to be no i'm sorry uh

021brief break following item 3c i apologize wrong there uh and that is in order to congratulate our honorees of the evenings and we do have several the communications item is next on our agenda and that is item three and three a is our forty year resolution and i will turn it over to mrs jacobs thank you good evening president i'm sorry hold on one moment we were gonna get a motion first move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district accept the proposed resolutions of appreciation for 40 years of full-time service with the district for the following employees james chartrand and winifred wendy cashmark we have a motion by mrs jarvis supported by mr centers and now we'll turn it over this is jared this is james thank you good evening

022president burton members of the board superintendent tonight it is my pleasure to share with the community that we have not one but two district employees who are celebrating 40 years within as employees of livonia public schools it is a tradition in lps that the district and the board of education recognize employees who reach the 40-month 40-year milestone tonight we're recognizing wendy chesmark and james chartrand wendy joins us this evening you want to join us and uh jim sharpton was unable to be with us this evening wendy we're so happy you're here you brought your lovely family susan hand and some other members of the transportation department you have quite a fan club okay wendy is a uh driver in our transportation department and mindy you've been a frustrator consistent like that's the only role that

023you have within transportation is that correct correct wow how do you do it i love my job i'm probably one of the few people that love my job well we're so happy that you can join us this evening to receive a special resolution at this time i'd like to ask trustee liz jarvis to read a resolution that's been prepared in your honor and here's a copy to take home whereas the board of education is desirous of recognizing loyal and long-standing service to the livonia public schools district and whereas it has come to the attention of the board that wendy cashmark completed 40 years of full-time employment in the livonia public schools on november 18 2020 and whereas in an era where many and varied employment opportunities often result in numerous work assignments it is rare

024to encounter employees who have remained loyal to employers for over 40 years and whereas it is a testament to both the quality of the work environment in livonia public schools district and the steadfastness and dedication of its workforce that wendy cashmark has attained a 40-year record of employment with the school district and whereas she has given up her talents time and efforts in fulfilling her many and varied responsibilities as a driver in the transportation department now therefore let it be resolved that the board of education hereby expresses appreciation and gratitude to wendy cashmark for her sincere and dedicated service to the livonia public schools and extends its best wishes to wendy on reaching this milestone in her professional career [Applause] my honor to present you with the bowl it's inscribed it's great especially for you

025and absolutely [Music] [Applause] and although mr sharkhand could not be with us this evening um he i wanted to let the community know that he's worked in various capacities over the years as a a plumber a roofer a custodian he's now a supervisor in the maintenance department i would like to ask uh once again trustee liz darvis to read the special resolution that we've prepared for jim and we will make sure that he gets the fancy copy and the bowl and all that good stuff it would be an honor whereas the board of education is desirous of recognizing loyal and long-standing service to the livonia public schools school district and whereas it has come to the attention of the board that james chartrand completed 40 years of full-time employment in the livonia public schools on

026december 1st 2020 and whereas in an era where many and varied employment opportunities often result in numerous work assignments it is rare to encounter employees who have remained loyal to employers for over 40 years and whereas it is a testament to both the quality of the work environment in the livonia public schools school district and the steadfastness and dedication of its workforce that james chartrand has attained a 40-year record of employment with the school district and whereas he has given of his talents time and efforts in fulfilling his many and varied responsibilities as a custodian roofer and plumber working at hall elementary central office and in the maintenance department now therefore be it resolved that the board of education hereby expresses appreciation and gratitude to james chartrand for his sincere and dedicated service to the

027livonia public schools and extends its best wishes to james on reaching this milestone in his professional career do you have anything you'd like to share with us or would you like to introduce your family my son and daughter there and the four little ones like i have one that's only three weeks old there's a lot of people that i went to school with that a lot of them don't work here anymore but when i started there was a lot of us that came yeah out of high school and worked here so they hadn't made it i was like and then wait i was hired a month before him i love it just a moment are there comments or questions from the board or superintendent this is bradford thank you president wendy you're not retiring aren't

028you this is just a resolution yeah no i'm not old enough sorry i was too much shy in my 30 years that's why i'm still here and we just want to thank you so much for being such a dedicated employee in a very difficult job bus driving has to be well you know it's the first person those kids see when they get on the bus and if they see somebody as wonderful as you i think that's awesome so thank you to our transportation department and all our bus drivers who give us a daily work hard out in the in the trenches so we appreciate it very much and our heart is congratulations ten years more [Applause] i absolutely want to congratulate wendy thank you and it is so emblematic of the amazing team in transportation

029that so many of you are here to support your colleagues you do such tremendous work day in and day out we are so proud of you we are so grateful for you we're glad that you're all ours and i also want to give a shout out to jim chartrand jim has been with us also 40 years he has served a wide variety of roles he is a master of his trade and he is always there in a pinch i'll tell you that i was he was here the other day i was visiting at kennedy today i turned around and there he was again he's always out there solving problems so wendy and jim we are both so grateful for you and you just shine in what is the best in livonia public schools so thank

030you [Applause] we have a motion that we need to vote on we have a motion by mrs jarvis supported by mr center so this is bradford would you please take the role go ahead mrs jarvis yes mr center yes mrs acosta yes mrs bonafield yes mr johnson yes mrs bradford says yes president yes thank you the motion passes the next item on our agenda is item 3b recognition of their of national merit scholars this is jenkins thank you president tonight is my pleasure to recognize a special group of students who have excelled in the national merit scholarship program the national merit scholarship program is an academic competition for recognition and for scholarships the program has been in existence since 1955. the students who are about to meet have scored in the top 1 out of

031more than 1.5 million students nationwide on the psat national merit scholarship qualifying exam at this time i'd like to tell you about each of these students one by one i'll go in alphabetical order um because of the late date on the calendar um in the school year um i was able to get confirmation from four about four out of nine of our uh honorees so i'm super grateful that they are able to join us this evening our first honoree is benjamin blaga and ben was not able to attend this evening but i'm going to go ahead and read i sent them a questionnaire so that we can learn about them and we've got a certificate which reads livonia public schools certificate of recognition outstanding achievement national merit scholarship either finalist or semi-finalist selected by the

032national merit scholarship corporation for outstanding academic success and personal growth in social and leadership endeavors dated june 14 2021 signed by superintendent andrea opquest and board president colleen burton so those students who were unable to make it uh we'll pop those in the mail for those for them so i'll tell you i'll start to tell you a little bit about ben ben is a 2021 graduate of stevenson high school he plans to attend schoolcraft college for two years then transfer to a nearby four-year university to earn a bachelor's degree in computer science he wishes to pursue a career in the field of computer science preferably as a software engineer during his years at stevenson ben was involved in a stem club where he developed an award-winning game for a class at the livonia career technical

033center ben is one is the son of john and robita he has three younger siblings jonathan rebecca and abigail when asked about the best part of being a student in livonia public schools ben said it has to be all of the supporting and caring staff that he has had the pleasure of meeting from his very first day of kindergarten up until the day of graduation so congratulations then next i'm pleased to introduce neil latte and i'm sorry if i mispronounced that but neil you want to join us [Applause] neil is a 2021 graduate of churchill high school neil plans to attend the university of michigan ann arbor to pursue a degree in biomedical engineering he hopes to be an engineer just like both of his parents while a student at churchill neil was involved in

034swimming track and national honor society neil is the son of j.j at aj and sonali and he has a sister named rita neil said he enjoyed the support he received from students and staff in lps and i'll quote neil because i loved what you said and i didn't want to paraphrase it the culture at lps helps to truly foster a healthy learning environment in which students are encouraged to do their best and are given the resources to achieve their goals the teachers are wonderful people who are passionate about their work and helped me reach where i am today i especially enjoyed meeting peers of diverse backgrounds and i'm thankful that i could form lifelong friendships with many of them i am grateful for these 13 amazing years i have spent in lps congratulations okay thank

035you so much [Applause] okay next up we have kenny feuer 2021 graduate of stevenson high school uh kenny plans to attend the university of michigan where he will pursue aerospace engineering during his years at stevenson kenny was involved in tennis quiz bowl and robotics he's the son of mike and michelle and he has a brother named jacob his favorite aspect of lps uh was his world history class with mr hoyt and i quote kenny as saying please give him a raise congratulations [Applause] okay next we welcome julia version [Applause] thank you for being here tonight all right uh julia is a 2021 graduate of churchill high school where she was enrolled in the msc program which is the math science and computers program julia is hopping right to it she's working as a paid intern

036at a local lab and in the fall she plans to attend stanford university to pursue a stem degree she would love to pursue research and design in the field of biomedical engineering during her time at churchill julia was involved in cross-country track and field the key club german club quiz bowl national honor society the science national honor society and in all of her spare time she was also able to achieve the highest rank of eagle scout in the boy scouts of america organization julia is the daughter of jack and lisa and she has twin siblings alyssa and alex she also has two little dogs which we can't forget our female friends tiny and max she said she appreciates the opportunities the lps provides for students who are more advanced or are willing to put in

037the extra effort she always enjoyed her advanced courses and they helped her to become the bright determined inquisitive student she is today so congratulations [Applause] good job dad okay next we have uh yash kokari yes okay dash was one of one of the students who was unable to make it tonight but i'll go ahead and tell you a little bit about him um josh is a 2021 graduate of churchill high school and was also in the msc program um he did submit some background information he plans to attend attend the university of michigan antarctica to study economics and data science he then wishes to continue on to graduate school and he hopes to work for the federal reserve or another government age agency as an economist during his years at churchill he was involved in

038the lps early literacy volunteers program the churchill varsity quiz bowl he was the team captain churchill's national honor society and the science national honor society josh is an only child who has an extent a large extended family and he said that the best part of being an lps student is the number of opportunities that come with being in a school district that provides that prides itself on its various magnet programs and its reputation for academic excellence particularly the msc program he said he also enjoyed the sense of inclusive community that his teachers created for each student every day so congratulations [Applause] okay and our next honoree is yajna ravan and he also could not make it i think right after graduation their families just skipped township you may remember yajna from a special recognition a

039couple of years ago when he represented the united states in the science olympiad in france uh jasmine is a 2021 graduate of churchill high school and yes he was also in the mlc program he plans to attend mit to major in chemical engineering his career goal is to be a chemical engineer during his years at churchill yashvan was involved in robotics tennis quiz bowl and the chemistry olympia jasmine is the son of alpana and melon rava ravan and he has one brother named shanta who graduated from churchill in 2015. he said the best part about being in lps was a number and variety of opportunities from robotics to ap classes he said he could always explore his interests within lps congratulations [Applause] okay next we welcome prana senator [Applause] thank you for joining us this

040evening is a 2021 graduate of churchill high school you guessed it also in the msc program you're amongst good company tonight aren't you prana plans to attend johns hopkins university to major in biomedical engineering he is interested in learning about the relationship between medicine and technology during this during his time at churchill he was involved in robotics tennis quiz bowl and he was a tutor pranav is the son of moana and soon cinderella thank you so much freda said he appreciates that his teachers were not only content experts but they cared about each student they made sure that the students understood the why behind the content he enjoyed the collaborative nature of his classrooms which led him and his classmates to forging strong relationships he said his years in acad maycat and msc magnet programs

041for years that he will never forget so congratulations [Applause] okay we have two others who did not actually submit the questionnaire so i have very limited information but i would still love to recognize them let's see violet lane is a 2021 graduate of students in high school and christian lovell also he graduated from churchill high school we will be sure to get their certificates to them and we wish them all the best in their future endeavors join me once once again and congratulating these amazing students [Applause] thank you so much mrs jenkins are there comments or questions from the superintendent or board members congratulations guys certainly absolutely impressive individual effort on on each one of these students parts i'm not sure when you sleep considering all the so many things in which you've been involved

042i also want to acknowledge the efforts and support of your parents of all of the efforts that they put forth throughout the years to care about you during your educational journey and every single one of our staff who touched your lives and helped you along that path we are so tremendously proud of you and we cannot wait to see how you change the world in front of you so go out there and conquer it congratulations other board members on behalf of the board we are just thrilled this is one of the very exciting things that we can do is to bring in our national merit scholars to our board meeting for recognition not only have you academically excelled but as is evident in your uh in the discussions about each one of you individually you've

043taken advantage of so many and such a wide variety of the extracurricular offerings of the school district which is why i know our family chose to come and live in livonia because we had our children were very young one wasn't even born yet we didn't know what they'd be interested in but your group has taken advantage of such a wide variety of the offerings and it's made you such well-rounded individuals academically we are so very proud of all you've accomplished and looking at the institutions that you've chosen to go on to for higher learning it's very impressive and we are thrilled that you that you'll be representing livonia public schools in your next few years so please don't be strangers come back and say hello and let us know what you're accomplishing down the road

044because i'm certain that it's going to be really exciting thank you so much for congratulations on your accomplishments and and thank you for being such wonderful examples of lawyer public school graduates we're thrilled to have you this evening [Applause] we are on to item 3c and we will be taking a brief break after the next item so that we can congratulate our honorees of the evening and then we will go on with our meeting from there so we're on item 3c right now our district update from the superintendent after which we'll take a brief break thank you so much president burton we have focused tonight's district update on our seniors and on our graduates so we are excited to close out this school year to share with you how proud we are of the graduates

045from churchill high school franklin high school stevenson high school and our western wayne skill center we'd like to just share some highlights from with you over the past couple of weeks as we have celebrated our seniors so this truly is a season of celebration our graduates enjoyed many of their typical senior events they looked a bit different but we certainly have to give a shout out to every single one of our folks who pulled together from student activities to administration to our custodial and support staff and many many parent volunteers who helped us to hold prom outdoors and under tents and on the fields they had wonderful sit down meals and music and games and had an absolute blast we are so so proud of those efforts so our students could have these special experiences

046here are just a few photos from those wonderful shakes if you've ever been out to m street bakery it's worth the trip and little conga line a little dancing lots of fun and then i'm not sure how many of you know about this wonderful tradition i think many in our community do but our graduates are welcomed back to their elementary school they come back in their cap and gown it's usually on the day of their commencement practice they they don their cap and gown and they go back to their elementary school and each of the schools has a special time in which they welcome students back it's a wonderful tradition so no matter which high school they may have gone to and attended they're able to come back home and take a picture where they

047began and i know that this is not only special to the graduates to their parents but also to the staffs at each one of these schools and then commencements went back to the good old days we had them on the field i know when i graduated a long time ago we used to have commencements on the field and um there although certainly the weather is always a concern we had three beautiful days and so on the left you see our stevenson students being crowned spartans for life as they threw their caps of the air we have our i believe our churchill students in the center and our franklin students on the right and then we're going to share some wonderful pictures of our students from the western wayne skill center program at garfield community school

048so what a wonderful celebration this was it was boy just a few short weeks ago and it was such a personal opportunity to hear about each one of our amazing students as they close out their time at the western wayne skill center you see dr meester i'm giving each student their certificate and the ability to share this time in this special moment with families was just wonderful so congratulations to our patriots those are some great smiles i think yes congratulations to our spartans and of course to our chargers who brought it home on that sunny sunday so congratulations to the families thank you mrs opus at this time we will take about a five minute recess to allow those who are in attendance this evening to congratulate our honorees um i believe that wendy has

049lead with fame equipment but i know that our national merit finalists are here so we'd like to thank you to say congratulations we're in a very precess right now welcome back to the continuation of the of the livonia public schools board of education regular meeting of june 14 2021. uh we are continuing on with our reading right now we are on item 3d written communications do any board members have written communications they need to share with the board seeing none we are on to our next item which is item 3e audience communications uh as i began earlier this evening audience communications is a time for the board to listen to comments from the community it is not a question and answer session uh if you have a specific question that was written on your blue

050slip uh you'll receive a written response back on that uh this is a time i also like to remind folks what the role of the board of education is as opposed to our administrative team the role of the board of education is to hire and evaluate the superintendent to set policy for the district and to set our long-term goals and align our budget to those goals so our scope is rather limited uh everything else falls under what we consider day-to-day operations and that falls under the uh the responsibility of our superintendent and our administrative team therefore if you have a question on your blue slip and it pertains to a responsibility of the board of education you can expect a response response back from the board if you have a specific question and you have

051and that pertains to our administrative team or superintendent you can expect a response back from one of those folks our audience communications uh is limited to three minutes per person the reason for that limit is so that we can be fair to everybody and give everyone the same type of opportunity we will have a timer going here and if you hear a a tone going off you'll know that you've met your three three minutes and we would ask you that you read up your comments at that time we just found that to be a little bit more polite way of having you wrap up your comments rather than trying to inter interrupt the speaker so if you hear that tone you'll know that it's time for you to wrap up your comments the audience communications

052uh typically is uh takes place in one batch if we have a higher than average number of folks as we do this evening it will take place in two batches the first batch of audience communication members of the first five will speak right now at the next item on our agenda that exceed 15 minutes and if it's three minutes per person times five there's our 15. any of those that exceed that we will take we will hear after personnel matters so if you have an agenda in your hands it will come after personnel matters which is after item six g we will have the remainder of audience communications at that time so you'll get to here's money's communications here's some more wonderful things going on investors and they'll hear my audience communications our first person

053who would like to participate in audience communications is nick uh sorry i apologize i will probably mispronounce several names this evening welcome nick thank you so much no just touch it do you tap that there you go all right and also if you can speak pretty closely to the iphone make sure that it's picked up is it working okay my name is nick palazzolo i live at 916 melrose lavonia michigan 48150 i'm here tonight to read this letter that was written on the concert on the behalf of the concerned parents of livonia public schools by attorney greece sarah esquire of the private firm at 805 oakwood drive suite 101 rochester michigan 48307 livonia public schools board of education to whom the main concern my name is rhys sarah and i represent a growing number of

054concerned parents and families of students within livonia public school district these families like many others both herein and other school districts have suffered through the difficulties of the covenant pandemic and have had to enter the following one virtual sessions two mandatory masking three no athletic or extracurricular activities and four athletic or extracurricular activities that were limited in attendance and limited by masking and frequent testing these families no longer feel that masking and or testing should be required for in-person school instruction or participation in school-sponsored athletics and activities for the 20-21-22 school year further the families of livonia public schools seek to encourage the lavon livonia public schools board of education to implement implement the following policies one children and parents who choose to forgo masking and or testing be treated the same as other children

055those who don't use a mask and undergo testing number two children who do not wear masks or undergo frequent testing be afforded the same privilege to attend and participate in in-school instruction school athletics and other school-sponsored activities three and most importantly that the district embrace a policy that places the choice of the student safety masking and testing where it belongs with the parents these requests are not here wins they are supported by scientific data ethical and moral beliefs and out of genuine concern from these parents for the physical mental and emotional well-being of their children indira gandhi the first female prime minister of india summarized it best when she stated we must protect families we must protect children who have inalienable rights and should be loved should be taken care of physically and mentally and

056should not be brought in to the world only to suffer in conclusion while we remain committed to an open dialogue with livonia public school board of education in the event that the district continues a policy that requires mandatory masking and or frequent testing for in-person student instruction athletics and other activities and does not place the choice of student safety masking and testing with parents of the children our office is fully prepared to take legal action to preserve protect preserve and protect the constitutional rights health safety and welfare of the students of livonia public schools if the district is interested in continuing an open dialogue please contact bree sarah of the private firm at 805 oakwood drive suite 101 rochester michigan 48307 you thank you we're gonna make sure everybody gets copying this too i think

057i attached one with the forum and you all be in the lecture version as well sounds great thanks and i will ask to uh out of a sign of respect of the individual speakers time that we not have any uh applause or outbursts during their speaking as it takes away from their time any applause that you'd like to give at the end of that week appropriate that would be fine but it is just as a request for a sign of respect to our speaker and not taking their extra their time uh the next speaker is jenny schussler i've not seen practice chess squad necessary it's very german i just uh correct because if i don't then no one will ever say we'll give it a shot all right thank you um good evening uh like

058i said my name is jenny i will live at 16764 fulton pines court in livonia i have a freshman who attends the churchill msc program and i couldn't help but notice that a lot of the national merit scholars were part of that program and nothing would give me more joy than in three years to see my son be sitting here and maybe recognized in that same way however i'm here because i'd like a deterrent to be removed from my son's life so that he can be here in three years being recognized in that way i am here to request that moving forward the board considered dropping the requirement of mask wearing for the 2021-2022 school year i don't have an earth-shattering or compelling story to move you to agree to my request my son like

059many not only survived this school year through all disappointments cancellations unknowns and social limitations but thanks to his commendable teachers and coaches and his commendable compliant attitude like so many of our kids he thrived however i do want to share a real life metaphor with you the morals of equality and freedom that define the very essence of this country did not arrive in year one in fact it would be through many displays of fighting for freedom and equality that various groups of american citizens would achieve the freedoms they were promised similarly our children's loss of freedom will not happen in a single year if freedoms are lost it will happen in a subtle time frame but methodically over time with increasing limitations placed on them our children's discouragement and disenchantment with the limitations being placed

060on them will also not happen in a single year the majority of kids have been compliant with the limitations and the losses imposed upon them please do not misunderstand their compliance to be agreement or complacency i believe this community in livonia is made up of law abiding citizens when my friends come to visit livonia they are impressed with the low documented and low apparent occurrence of crime our parents and schools are to be commended for this obedience however there is a time limit on how far compliance will last when freedoms are at stake and i just want to finish by saying please consider dropping the mask mandate for the 2021-2022 school year our kids have the right to choose what is placed in and on their bodies they have the right to embrace the freedoms

061that were won for them by so many before them thank you our next speaker is candace lamarana good evening good evening as long as it's green okay good evening thank you my name is candace lamarrand at 27967 would come straight in livonia i am a mother of a third and a seventh grader in the district i've lived here for over seven years now and i've moved to the city for the schools i want to say a compassion and gratitude for all the hard work that has been done since the beginning of all of this started before this current school year there were surveys and communication and it was very appreciated then i told my kids that if masks were mandatory they would not go i try not to cry when it was announced they begged

062me to go because they missed school so bad their friends their teachers learning in a classroom they missed all of it they said they would sacrifice just to be there after seeing them struggle with virtual the year before i agreed because it was certain i was certain that it wouldn't last all year with all that we know now i don't even want to say that i understand why the mandate hasn't been dropped but i can say i understand why it has been easier to continue to wear them for the remainder of the school year as a parent i teach my kids to do what is right and sometimes that means admitting when you're wrong and that sometimes you learn more and then you do better last week my daughter had a band concert she played

063a solo opening the concert with the star-spangled banner she played wearing a mask to an audience of many that were masculine i felt terrible that she was forced to play with her airflow restricted and she has never once complained she hasn't complained about having to walk in a one-way traffic down the hall she hasn't complained about having not being able to use her locker she carries a backpack that weighs 21 pounds each day and more in the winter which is one-third her weight she gets one mask break a day not every day my son gets three or four depending on the day it is not up to our kids to protect us or to make a stand although i know there have been some kids that have and they are so brave and sadly i've

064heard stories where they are punished and it is heartbreaking so many people have been respectful and compliant but enough is enough masks must be nothing more than optional for the next school year and the years following mandates about our children's bodies have no place in school where there is harm there should always be a choice i have a picture thankfully in elementary school gratitude for them providing a quick release lanyard while they went outside but unfortunately even a quick release lanyard is not always a safe option my son got stuck on the swing and completely burned his neck i'll wrap it up by just leading with a quote or ending with a quote from dr crouchy not that i really want to quote him but masks are really for infected people to prevent them from

065spreading infection to people who are not infected rather than protecting uninfected people from acquiring infection typical mask is not really effective in keeping out a virus thank you the next speaker is christine good evening good evening can you please put your name in your address sure my name is christine vitkay my address is 38813 donald street 48154 in livonia my name is christine goodkay i grew up in livonia and attended lps after my husband and i got married we moved back to livonia so our children could grow up in this great school district i'm here this evening to please request serious consideration to remove the mask requirements for our school children the cdc nih and numerous other health and medical organizations continue to debate the effectiveness of masks what isn't being debated anymore and it's

066fact is that our children are at very low risk from covid or covic complications vaccines are readily available to almost all of our residents now masks should be optional a choice like our ability to choose in person or virtual learning return choice to our students parents staff and community we need to continue our path back to normal empowering our families and community to make choices that best fit their needs the learning in l-town program looks wonderful it looks absolutely amazing i want to enroll my children in this great summer program yet just last week due to hot summer-like temps we had to call for an early dismissal wearing a mask was a main contributor to this decision if mask wearing is mandatory my family sadly needs to pass on this opportunity the ida public school

067district laid out a very well-written thorough resolution of their intent of moving forward into the next school year i sent it via email to the board i hope you get a chance to read it the document focuses on their local community ensuring all families are given choices thank you again for the chance to speak for it we will continue with audience communications as was stated uh after personnel matters which is after item 6g you said you were letting five speakers speak first oh i'm so sorry i apologize lost count our next speaker is susan then we will take that sorry about that if you could give us your name again my name is susan jablonski i live at 29145 jacqueline drive in lilonia i don't get a speech prepared so please wish me luck here

068my son goes to this school here he attended buchanan all the years there and he is flourishing here under the guidance of miss tanderies i have had many issues to discuss and i'm going to do them rapid fire i would like to start with the conversation that we as parents have all had conversations with their children over the years about stranger danger i know that you know what i mean when i say stranger danger it saddens me as a parent to have to add on and layer that conversation with what i was made aware of with the world health organization you can go to their website there is something known as implied consent as this year progresses and the threshold of vaccinating our children lowers and lowers i have been made aware through the who's

069website that there is such a thing called implied consent we're a school and this may or may not happen but i want to get ahead of it where school can have a pop-up vaccination site on a school day and unbeknownst to me my child could come home with a band-aid on his arm this is real i'm not saying this to scare anyone but the fact of the matter is i have lost trust in the last year and a half of physicians and i have a registered nurse in a large conglomerate hospital my hospital does not share my opinions and i'm okay with that i'm okay being unpopular i have had to have discussions with my son about how to refuse a vaccine and how to call and insist that he be sent home because once

070it's in it's done i need to make that known to everyone here i would like to move on to masks and i will keep this conversation very brief and only tell you that if you bother to look at the data prior to march 2020 you will see a very different efficacy of the usage of masks i'm here to tell you that masks provide a false sense of security you can spell through them so you can sure catch covet through them and i will end on one last thing this is my very first um showing up to a school board meeting and i'm very very nervous but i do intend to i intend to come to more and it has been eye-opening and and like i said over this last year and it has made me

071realize that more and more i need to to keep my nose and my child's studies ask him very frequently what are you learning especially in the area of social studies and social justice if you will i have my eye on the school i have the utmost respect for you and that you will take care of my children but up until when i see the verbiage critical race theory you will see a lot more of me thank you [Applause] i will make one factual correction for those present this evening just so you know livonia public schools has not and will not ever do any medical thing with any child without a parent's permission including vaccinate vaccination clinics that were offered through livonia public schools were offered after hours with parental consent and parental uh presence going

072on i cannot speak to any other school district i can only speak for liberty public schools our audience communication first part has uh has concluded i do have a response to audience prime responsing prior audience communications which is on the same topic because we had speakers speaking to the same topic last week so this may answer some questions of some of you who are here on the topics of either masks or vaccines on behalf of the board of education last week there were a number of individuals who addressed the board of education during audience communications primarily to encourage the district to discontinue the mass mandate for the remainder of the school year and into next fall and to voice their disagreement with the district offering hogan vaccine clinics regarding masks the school district takes guidance

073from the cdc the michigan department of health and human services and the wayne county health department the school district was required to present a mitigation plan to the wayne county health department for its approval in order to be allowed to conduct school in person in our buildings that mitigation plan includes the wearing of masks under the strong recommendation of the michigan department of health and human services and the cdc's those recommendations still stand due to the fact that the majority of students in our school buildings each day are not yet fully vaccinated as until very recently they have not been eligible to do so we respect the right of every individual to hold their own opinions regarding both vaccinations and masks but in this case the mass decision is not that of the livonia public

074schools school district nor the board of education alone to make it is a requirement in order to come back to school regarding vaccinations while some parents choose not to vaccinate their children there are other parents who choose to do so and we're very appreciative of the district offering this opportunity similarly the district has offered sports physicals at our high schools as a convenience for families we completely respect the choice that each parent makes on behalf of their children for these or any such opportunities there are only a few more days left of school and it is our sincere hope that by the fall masks will no longer be recommended or required by the health agencies if you wish to advocate to assure this i suggest contacting the wayne county health department and the michigan department

075of health department of health and human services as they have far more control over this decision than any school district or any board of education i assure you that we all anxiously look forward to the day hopefully very very soon when cobit is a thing of the past and school can go back to normal completely on behalf of the board of education thank you can i make a comment real quick i'm sorry you cannot this is not your time to speak i'm so sorry um turn to speak i'm very sorry but it is the next person's turn at this point you corrected her the next item on our agenda is item for our our consent agenda may i have a motion please president ford this is a poster move that the board of education in

076the limonia public schools school district approved the following consent agenda items as recommended by the superintendent item 5a minutes of the regular meeting of may 17 item 5g minutes of the special meeting of may 24 2021 i am 5c minutes of the 12th meeting of may 24 2021 and 7a approval of 2021 2022 newsreel and 8b approval to renew nhsaa membership resolution with 20 million support we have a motion by mrs uh posta supported by mrs jervis are there questions or comments on this item from the board of educational superintendents seeing them mrs bradford would you take the role on this item uh the consent agenda uh put forth by this is the foster and support of mrs jeremy's mrs acosta yes mrs jarvis yes mr johnson yes mrs bradford says yes mrs bronnerfield yes

077mr centers yes uh president yes that motion passes thank you very much uh the next item on our agenda is item i'm sorry item six personnel matters and item six a is appointment of elementary principal may i have a motion please president mr johnson move to the board of education for the livonia public school school district accept the recommendation of the superintendent and appoint sheri mazzone as principal of grant elementary school beginning july 1 2021. support we have a motion by mr johnson supportive asks bradford we have mr vazquez keeps we'll be handling this for us good evening good evening superintendent i have the great honor to recommend mrs sherry mazzoni as the next principal of grant elementary school sheri started her education career at adrian college where she earned a bachelor of arts in

078elementary education she then attended western michigan university and earned her master's of arts in teaching in the elementary school she earned a specialist degree for a certificate of school administration k-12 from concordia university sheri shared a story with me recently how she began her teaching career in battle creek public schools after that and many other roles in the elementary schools she has 13 years as an administrator under her belt she comes to grant with great experience and absolutely the desire and the hands-on leadership that the community of grant desires there were close to 90 candidates in the african pool that sherry stood out as an on top candidate congratulations to sherry and i'm going to turn it over to superintendent oakless thank you so much mrs keats and thank you so much president burton this

079is always an exciting and special time for us in the district when we have the opportunity to bring forth recommendations for our school leaders as we've discussed many times before they are really that heartbeat of building the climate and culture and focus and success of a school community and entrusted with the students within that school so we would like to thank each and every candidate every applicant interviewee and the final candidates with whom we spoke for their interests and their passion in livonia public schools we were so proud and so fortunate to have such a strong caliber of individuals mrs mazzone certainly stood out for us as a very committed caring and positive leader who truly leads by example she is not one to ever ask someone to do something that she would not do

080herself she's a a strong instructional leader focused on the growth and development of our learners she is steep in professional learning communities had a great deal of experience in her administrative role prior to coming to the district and is eager to continue to build on that strong foundation as the district embarks on this work in the fall she really sees children through the lens of a child advocate and we are so excited about bringing her forward to you to become the next principal of grant elementary we have a motion that we're going to vote on and i'd like to hear from you so clearly we have a motion by mr johnson supported by mrs bradford and are there questions or comments from from the board members or superintendent before we take the role see now

081mrs bradford mr johnson yes mrs bradford says yes mrs acosta yes mrs bonnifield yes mrs jarvis yes mr centers yes president burton yes motion passes congratulations thank you so much i am honored to have i honored to be here with you all this evening and all in person i'm so excited for this opportunity and i'm humbled by the recommendation that superintendent opus shared in your approval first i'd like to thank the board of education and the superintendent opus for your courageous leadership because it is empowering and makes me want to be a better leader every day while serving livonia public schools thank you cabinet members thank you kristen and the riley community as i have enjoyed my time at riley upper elementary both as a principal and as a parent the past three years riley

082is a great place to be thank you to all our dedicated principals who have helped show me the way since joining this fantastic team the impact i've watched all of them make on our students is above and beyond and something that i value thank you bill for believing in me i'm very excited to join the grant gator community and serve as our principal the amount of staff who have already reached out to me to give me a warm welcome or say congratulations already tells me how strong their climate and culture is i value strong relationship as you know so i love it finally i i'd like to thank my husband pete because he's with me this evening and he's my biggest supporter and champion thank you to our two boys ethan and cole who are

083at home because cole just got dealt with the students in hacking camp and you wouldn't want him here without a shower thank you to all the principals and teachers for being there and being there as well as i value you and your commitment to our students and our communities you serve i'm truly excited and ready to begin the journey as a principal of grant elementary thank you uh sherry we are thrilled um speaking on behalf of the board of education we are both places here we are thrilled to have you join your new role uh as a leader of grant uh each one of our elementary schools carries their own uh personality and their own specific needs and i know whenever there's an opening for administrator we go to that staff of that community and

084see what characteristics are important uh you embody those and if your enthusiasm is just evident in everything you've touched on among public schools we are thrilled to have you in your new role and just welcome you into that anyway please we'll do it thank you thank you uh the next item on our agenda is equipment of upper elementary principle may i have motion please president burtons this is bob fields move to the board of education of the livonia public school school district accept the recommendation of the superintendent and appoint tom traub as principal of johnson upper elementary school beginning july 1 2021. support we have a motion by mrs bonfield and we have support by assistant darvis and mr vodka mrs pete's back to you thank you president burton members of the board superintendent opus

085it is a privilege and an honor to bring forward our recommendation for mr tom trump and the next president johnson upper elementary school tom is the current ap at johnson but it all started uh here for tom as well as how the churchill graduates his props for the triad shows through he earned his bachelor's and master's degree at his bachelor's of elementary head his a masters in leadership at the university of central florida where he also did his teaching he began his future 2009 fifth grade in uh in florida he returned to us as an instructional coach in 2018 and did that for a short stint before joining us in his current position as assistant principal of johnson upper elementary he also most recently took on a lead role for us as we needed leadership

086in our living virtual program and uh he was one of our point people for that and personally delivered chromebooks to the neighborhood without the use of his gps because he just knows the play so well one of the founders award from ptsa in his second year is ap and which just speaks to his commitment to the community he has been a point person in his building for uh leading some climate and culture work in pbis data dives those sorts of things but i would just say uh and before i turn these over superintend oak was uh tom's just a high character guy and and to uh to speak to his grit his perseverance and his loyalty tom is a die-hard lions fan and one of our lions fans so that's just the kind of guy

087he is he's a wonderful person and very excited for the uh for the recommendation well thank you so much i would uh certainly concur that we have another exceptional individual to introduce to you this evening um and mr tom try travis is an individual who is deeply committed to kids and doing what is in their best interest we have many of our johnson jayhawks here who i know can attest um to that and as mr avatay shannon he has johnson elementary in his blood he went to johnson elementary as a student is so proud to return there as a leader and now ultimately as the principal of this fantastic school community his background in instructional coaching both in florida and here serves him well as an instructional leader his commitment to students his unwavering focus

088on what is best for them as well as being a tremendous advocate for the resources and what his staff needs really combined to make him just an outstanding leader and someone who we are so proud to be recommending this evening and we also got a wonderful two for one when the tribes came back in town because we not only had the great privilege of hiring um tom we hired his wonderful wife megan who is a teacher here at riley does a phenomenal job um and so we are so fortunate you chose to return to michigan return to your roots and to bring your family with you so thrilled to recommend tom this evening and very excited for johnson thank you either comments or questions for the board mr setters so when i saw the appointment

089come through i i thought about it and i realized i met tom 23 years ago but as soon as i i heard the johnson writer and just knowing a little bit about johnson i know top for 23 years what a perfect fit and i'm just so excited about the next school year we've had some amazing administrators already in place and some great people that were appointing tonight so this is just a very exciting night for the district overall so congratulations to you both uh and i'm just excited to see you next year thank you comments or questions for any other board members absolutely and tom it's very rare that we have someone who's going to come back to one of the buildings that they actually attended as a student and to have you truly know

090that community i heard the same story that that we heard a moment ago that that you were delivering gps delivering uh chromebooks without gps's because you know the neighborhood you know the whole community um that's an enormous chunk toward uh building trust in a building and and building relationships and abilities to really truly know your community and no one knows that uh better than it's in the absence of applicable than you do from what i understand um you've heard wonderful things about you in your role as uh is interim right now and we're just thrilled pieces to have you continue on as permanent permanent principal at johnson we have a motion by mrs bonfield supported by mrs jarvis for appointment of upper elementary principle mrs brantford would you please take the role mr bonafield yes

091mrs jarvis yes mrs bradford says yes mr johnson yes um mr centers yes now mrs acosta yes uh president burton yes and motion passes congratulations um i'm going to apologize if it's up to me i would name 75 people and give a story along the way here so i'm going to make this as quick as i can to thank as many people as i can in this short amount of time but first and foremost i'm just overwhelmed and just happy to be here to do this and to have the opportunity to give back to the community who made me buy him it's it's amazing thank you to the board members and all of your support superintendent oak west thank you uh you know people always ask why did we move home from orlando florida uh

092it's the people here the honest truth is it's the people that we the relationships we have and everything that we built that's why we are here um so all of the uh board members and people cabinet thank you for everything you've done over the last three years it's been amazing to come home mrs o'brien hired me my wife three years ago and here we are still doing that so thank you very much um first and foremost my mom and dad are here with me and um when i was a kid we moved across town to come to one of other schools that just always stood out to me and here i am 30 years later now working and trying to build that same mission and that same uh vision so that really stood out thank

093you mom and dad for doing that give me these opportunities uh i have two people here that uh mean very well to me i have uh former teachers from churchill high school kelly eddy is over here and i have tony demarco here right here um i am not someone that stood out in the crowd i'm not someone that was like a straight a student or someone that got all the scholarships but uh it's teachers like this that show you the impact of what education is they gave me opportunities they gave me leadership skills and things that i just didn't know wearing myself it's because of people like this that i went to college and it's because of people like this that i have a career in what i'm doing now so i cannot thank them

094enough 20 years later that guy's been 20 years but that is where we're at now so thank you to the wonderful teachers um in all those buildings that i've been to to do as well um like i said before i'm from orlando florida i'm from here but my career started i've got a few people watching on youtube right now from the orange county public schools dr deshaun of bronte uh dr lynn atkinson and mr justin mcdonald three amazing leaders who taught me a lot along the way and really showed me um everything i need to know and just great people to work for and be mentors too and the three of them have really impacted my life i know you're 1200 miles away enjoying the weather but i just wanted to give you a shout

095out i'll wait with the camera for you thank you thank you guys for all you've done two people that sit out the fuel this thick and thin um shannon wheeler came over to johnson two years ago uh came like a ball of energy just just all over the place and had to get everything done and i cannot thank shannon for coming over and just being my partner through this pentagon out and really just kind of let me be me and do what we did so shannon wheeler thank you very much and now my new partner in crime cindy pearson was thrown into this role in february we had to finish the school year out the two of us and cindy pearson has been a great addition to our building she has been a great addition

096to the front office and she is someone that is well respected by the johnson community and the staff members there so thank you cindy for all you do as well uh my staff is over here they've all wore bow ties i wrote no time on thursday and i didn't realize this but they already bow ties now so i cannot thank you all now for coming and doing all this and showing up so thank you guys um to the community i am just thrilled i am a kid who grew up that way to delay i know this place in and out in the back of my hand that's who i am and i'm excited to give back to those kids and to give those kids opportunities that i had i'm going to do great things i'm

097going to fight for every kid in that building so i'm excited to be there to learn to grow um and finally the most important thank you i'm done after this when i promise um my wife and my three children my everything so um [Music] this is madison she is six she attends hoover tommy is also at third grade he's nine and zachary over here is three years old right so yeah he'll be here for a few years so to my wife who does everything i don't know where i'd be without her she tells me where to go where to be and all that outside of school what kids won't wear that's that's my wife's job and without her we would be well so thank you for all you doing and i appreciate it um i

098am just i have no more words i think 50 people i've tried to keep it below 75 and i did that so uh thank you guys i'm excited to get to work i'm excited to make an impact i'm excited to help lead this community onto the next phase here and do great things for the johnson community so everyone thank you very much um and so many times we we've heard it and absolutely all of us i think probably everybody in this room has had children in school and you know that the administrator sets the tone um tonight we are enormously blessed to have two phenomenal enthusiastic positive leaders who are all about what's best for kids and we are just so excited to see you both excel in your new roles so congratulations thank you

099for watching [Applause] we're going to take about a two minute break to congratulate our two new principals we promised to try it back in 120 seconds for those would like us to give a quick congratulations we will do so we are at a quick recess welcome to the continuation of walmart school board of education regular meeting of june 14 2021. uh we just had a moment to congratulate our two new principles and we are on to the next item next item on our agenda is item 6b teacher for tenure uh may i have a motion please mr of california sanderson school school district accepted the recommendation of the superintendent and acknowledged that tenure status has been granted to the following teacher effective on the respectively erica crawford june 17th support we have a motion by

100mr center supported by mr johnson and mr vodka yes our teacher pretender on this agenda has successfully completed the district's requirements for probationary teachers including years of service evaluation overall performance and documentation of student growth okay carefully review all supporting materials along with the recommendations of our building administration and i've determined that this educator should be spending time all righty thank you do we have questions or comments from the superintendent or board members yes congratulations absolutely congratulations uh we have a motion by mr center supported by mr johnson for teacher for tenure and mrs bradford would you please take the role mrs battlefield i'm sorry mr centers yes mr johnson yes mr donovan yes mrs jarvis yes mrs bradford says yes this is a coaster yes uh president yes that motion passes the next item

101on our agenda is item 6d resignations and that does not require board uh action it's just for informational purposes we'll skip over the asks uh the next item on our agenda is item 6e retirements may i have a motion please president burton mrs bradford move that the board of education of the livonia public school school district adopt the attached resolutions of appreciation for the services rendered by yvonne bouchard jeanette chiodo mary collins glenn crosby julianne foley mark grenier julie juniman deborah mado owen laurie porter lisa teats nancy breeland patrick vreeland jane yee we have a motion by mrs bradford supported by mrs jarvis officer mrs peats yes thank you tonight we honor congratulate 14 members of our lps family who are returning at the conclusion of this school year as these staff members leave those

102winning public schools they take with them a combined total of 329 years of experience on behalf of the administration i'd like to thank these wonderful staff members for the dedicated years of service they provided to the morning public schools and i ask that the board please adopt attention resolutions thank you are there any comments from superintendent or board members yes i would love to um i know you're going to want to jump into it absolutely and no surprise that we have um once again if we do uh you know each month but normally at this time of the year a little more common um just some outstanding individuals in a number of different roles that have served throughout serve many students throughout the district we wish them the very very best on their well-deserved retirement

103and thank them for their many many years of service to our district thank you other board members there are always when we're looking at your end there are always a number of staff that are retiring and there are always a few that especially target your heart strings uh janet uh kyoto who was generous at the time because my daughter's sixth grade teacher is probably others in this room uh there are a number of folks they're just just phenomenal um in various roles on this uh i see some uh folks from all different levels all different roles in this uh this role or this list rather um but there's always a few that you say oh no please don't retire please please don't retire um jeanette uh especially is is near and dear to my heart

104and those of you who have been blessed to have your kids go through your class understand exactly why thank you so much to all of those who have served all those who are retiring it is such uh i always love it and hate it when i turn over this page of our information and award packet because it's such an exciting time for those who are going on to the next chapter of their lives and yet it's such an enormous loss for the school district so it is it is with very heavy heart that i will vote yes uh any other comments or questions very briefly i just wanted a quick tip of my head to anna and principal emerson um she was my high school spanish teacher and she's one of the first people that

105tried to start showing me the ropes when i when i came here as an ep and had no idea what's going on and uh she's been kind of my go-to person because she always has a particular policy if there's something out there that has happened she's probably seen it and so she's going to speak it out for me and say have you been through this before yes i have been she's always so she'll be missed she's a good researcher and that's the situation with all these folks when you've been in the district this long they they've seen almost everything and they and they are such a wealth of information um historical knowledge and and wisdom of how to handle situations so um it's an enormous loss uh any other comments from board members uh seeing

106none we have a motion by mrs bradford supported by mrs jarvis and this is greater could you please take the role mrs bradford says yes mrs jarvis yes um mr johnson yes mrs battlefield yes mr center mrs acosta yes president burton yes and that motion passes and again congratulations we're sad but we're so excited for you for the next chapter of your lives folks so congratulations uh the next item on our agenda is item seven i'm sorry six hold on a moment next item is 6f notice of discontinuance of teaching contracts may have a motion please president burton mrs bonfield move that the board of education of the livonia public school school district accept the recommendation of the superintendent that the teachers as listed be laid off for the school year 2021 22 and that

107their teaching contracts not be renewed at the end of the 2021 school year it is further resolved that the records show that the reasons for this action are a result of the budget process the district's financial situation enrollment changes teachers returning from lead and program changes be it further result that the board of education direct the board secretary to send a letter to each of the individuals listed officially notifying them that their teaching contracts will not be renewed at the end of 2021 school year and that they will be laid off as teachers in the livonia public schools school district support we have a motion by mrs bonnifield supported by mrs bradford um this is peace for mr buffett so this is a resolution um that quite frankly we wish we didn't have to bring

108you it's not something that we um uh that we take anybody in doing it is certainly a difficult situation but this time of year as mrs monica mentioned uh described uh district does have to make a difficult decision on whether to lay off our teaching staff for the factors that mr financial uh described so the determination of staff members presented tonight their lab is consistent toward policy administered procedures this is as mentioned obviously to remind notice employees laid out this has been done verbally by our building administrator and they'll be followed up formally to the department of human resources as well this time we're optimistic that we'll be able to recall some of these staff numbers and we'll be working to do so on timely manner are there comments or questions from superintendent or board

109members and mr mate um it's so that and we've been through this process many times it's an annual process but for those in the public who may be listening to our meeting um anytime there may be a change even if a teacher is going from a full-time to an eight-tenths position it needs to be a layoff and a re-hire correct um not necessarily if it's just if we're just reducing a small piece but when we put all those bits and pieces together when we're working on the scheduling when you're looking at seniority when you're looking at the enrollment numbers and you have to kind of fall back together when you're done with that shuffling you often have people that are displaced from positions because your need isn't there what was the year so often that

110yes and i'll just certainly add and echo mr avatay's comments and also um you know a good deal of hopefulness as well we have a budget that we are bringing forward this evening as you know um that will bring an opportunity for some additional student support positions both academic and social emotional which we hope many of those will be filled um internally which would then hopefully open up some additional pieces and so we i know our human resources team as well as our principals and our cabinet team are committed to doing whatever we can to bring folks back as we have those openings and to do that as expeditiously as possible thank you which will lead us to the next motion here just a moment it certainly will any other comments or questions reward seeing

111that we have a motion by mrs bonnetfield supported by mrs bradford mrs brantford would you save the role mrs bonafield yes mrs bradford says yes mrs jarvis yes mrs acosta yes mr centers yes mr johnson yes president virgin yes and that motion passes the next item on our agenda is item 6g teacher recall authorization may i have a motion please president burton mrs jarvis move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district accept the recommendation of the superintendent and authorize the superintendent or her designee to begin as soon as circumstances permit the recall procedure for teachers who are on layout set authorization not to exceed the 2021 22 staffing guidelines support we have a motion by mrs jarvis supported by mr johnson and mr flatting or mrs keats uh yes so

112um we do appreciate this this will allow us to bring back our staff in an expeditious manner um once we've issued letters of recall and concerns and calling back and then uh to get over it um you know we do hope to mr keith and i do hope to move quickly with those internal postings and hopefully um thank you any other questions from war members seeing them we have a motion for mrs barnett no i'm sorry this is jarvis supported by mr johnson for teacher recall authorization mrs would you please take the role mrs jarvis yes mr johnson yes mr centers yes mrs bradford says yes mrs bonafield yes mrs acosta yes president burton yes and that motion passes uh the next item on our agenda is item 6h authorization to accept resignations may i

113have a motion please president this is a poster move that the board of education of the limonia public schools school district authorized the superintendent or digestive need to expect employee resignations on its behalf for the 2021-22 school year support we have a motion by mrs acosta supported by mr centers uh mr about here mrs keith uh so i'll just note that our rationale for the past four years the board of education has approved annually to recommend enabling the superintendent what it doesn't mean myself in business to accept the employee resignations and then report such resignations that are subsequent or needed it's the beginning of our administration the process has worked well we offer the same rationale for extending the authorization for an additional year in order to estimate staffing and related for cell matters it's

114desirable to act on employee reservations between regularly scheduled board meetings at the regular table board meeting all the resonations accepted on the report will be presented okay thank you are there comments or questions from the superintendent or board members seeing them we have a motion by this is the coaster supported by mr centers for authorization to accept resignations mrs bradford you please take the role mrs acosta yes mr centers mrs bonnifield yes mrs jarvis yes mr johnson yes mrs bradford says yes president burton yes and that motion passes thank you at this time we are going to pick up with the remainder of our audience communication uh do we still have i'm not sure if one of our cabinet members let me know do we still have folks who are in our overflow room all

115right yes we do small handfuls we'll get them to come okay what i'm going to do in order to try to make sure that everyone's in the room who is being called i'm going to announce the next five who are going to be speaking and then uh if if you can just raise your hand let me know you're present in the room therefore if you're not president we can have one of our cabinet members uh go to the flow room and make sure that we've gotten you uh the next five are going to be kevin wellner is kevin president okay uh sarah barry sarah president uh mitchell carpenter spencer president okay you won't be speaking all right if you can just double check i don't want to certainly or not i do believe you i

116just want to make sure that i'm not going to miss somebody uh sherry prouch or crush uh reena dan greeny i'm sorry i know i put your last name okay there we go okay those are our next five um let me give you one more in case uh we do have one individual who has left is it vern stanley okay great those we are next again you will have our utmost attention and respect we do ask for the same in return out of everybody who's present in our room uh we do have a premium time limit that we're asking everyone to respect and that is in order to make it fair for everybody who is speaking this evening uh if you do hear the timer go off that's your indication that it's time to wrap

117up your comments and we um we welcome you to speak to us this evening um kevin welder you're going to be next on thank can you give us your name and your address appreciate it my name is kevin walner my address is 1135 edwin that's westland michigan my daughter attends frost middle school currently i just wanted to read a couple things michigan law 380 137b statement of prohibited practices clearly states its scope the following practices are prohibited for school personnel in the public schools of this state under all circumstances including emergency situations it goes on to list page any restraint that negatively impacts breathing face masks are a restraint and they negatively restrain the and impact breathing it also lists speed the deprivation of basic needs face masks deprive students particularly special needs students of

118the basic needs to communicate with verbal clarity and facial expressions they also deprive them of oxygen while mcl 380.118 b does confer authority to authority to every school district to provide for the safety and welfare fair of its pupils while at school or schools sponsored activities or while in route 2 or from school or a school sponsored activity it does not provide for it to break michigan law or the constitutional freedom rights or sacred values of its students my daughter has as much she has problems breathing she doesn't get enough breaks but like some of the other parents she wants to go to school everybody deserves to go to school you know and she wants to be part of that earlier i remember you saying that it was a recommendation of the state not a

119requirement and i've heard of several schools that have already took away the mass policy so i think it is up to the school up to the school district and that's all i have to say thank you do you have it on the paper it's requested it's not mandatory if you don't want to be able to just always ask all right yeah just for a question so my name is sarah barry i do live in livonia just behind riley on the streets um i am a parent of three lps students um i am going to be reading two statements from students and another letter written by an lps parent who wishes to remain anonymous so first from a middle school student my teachers are always telling us to pull our mess up it's so hot and

120hard to breathe in a mask all day i even have a teacher who pulls her mess down to remind us to pull ours up then she sits behind her plexiglass with fans blowing on only her i am tired of everyone always talking about the vaccine like who got it and who is going to get it i feel like we are so separated and i don't like talking or hearing about it from a high school student it was a text message to her mom mom it is so hot i cannot breathe and to literally i have to literally sit in the bathroom stall for the next three hours with no mask on because it's so hard to breathe her mom replies just pull it down a little i think it's ridiculous that they're making you guys

121wear mess right now actually if you want to just take it off and if anybody says anything to you tell them that you're having trouble breathing and if they send you to the office then call me i will get in big trouble for that mom this is absolutely awful i cannot think let alone breathe cannot focus because of how uncomfortable and hot i am okay i now have a headache mom i'm gagging i seriously need you or dad to get me this is unbearable like i can't focus on anything like this i am sweaty and miserable i have lunch at 10 25. if you can't get me can i please text that vegan letter i am the mom of two children currently in lps schools but prefer not to share my name to protect the

122privacy of my family seven months ago my 11 year old tried to commit suicide my outgoing accomplished athlete leader excellent student who has never had any any mental health issues tried to end their life during virtual learning this past fall i learned that my child began self-cutting in april after the school shut down we found a psychiatrist in ohio because of weight loss to michigan and was told no medication or hospitalization was necessary normalcy and exercise was what my child needed to heal we did our best to provide that at a time when youth sports largely were not permitted virtual learning was underway politicians were too busy campaigning to care and covered reminders were everywhere school went back face to face and some normalcy returned but it wasn't enough the fear of coped increased screen

123time and bullying exposure to toxic adult behaviors of division and politics despite our best efforts to steal them from it youth sport cancellation cancelled cancellations and the pending reality of virtual school once again proved to be too much in a moment of despair my child chose to swallow 50 ibuprofen pills after some time in st mary's er my child was discharged to a three week partial hospitalization program because there were no pediatric psychiatric hospital beds available in michigan my child was in this program with other livonia kids as young as eight and for the same reason i'm almost done seven months later my child is still in therapy medication was never required and no clinical diagnosis was ever made although my child already had a minor case of copit after catching it during therapy while

124wearing a mask the fear of focus still lingers the therapist still tells us normalcy and exercise is needed to fully heal the journey to recover requires one real human interactions not social distancing and quarantines two smiley faces not people hiding behind mass three less school mandated screen time not more google classroom four exercises and sports not restricted physical activities five constant reminders of being kind of great not constant reminders covered and lastly six hope humanity and courage not division politics and fear i share all this because i can't provide that into schools but the people in this room can this isn't a republican versus democrat issue this is a humanity issue this is a true leadership issue if you're waiting for direction from the county or state be the brave leaders our kids deserve and

125that i know you can be and demand the normalcy our kids need so who in this room will be brave enough to leverage their connections in lansing and with wayne county to bring normalcy back to our kids it's not just my family's future in your hands sarah you're gonna need to keep it it [Applause] speaker is mitchell carpenter is mitchell wanted to know under here correct groups our next speaker is the sherry proof for freshness good evening good evening um thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is sherry prusch i live at 9090 lathers in maloney michigan this is uh the first thing i'm going to read is a brief statement from another parent who was unable to attend uh voted my heart strings thank you for inviting me unfortunately i'm a full-time

126caregiver for my 16 year old autistic daughter and i can't make it she has not been able to go to school at all because she has sensory issues and can't wear a mask she attends berger baylor in garden city and she is bossed by lava public schools many autistic kids cannot wear a mask or any face shield i want to put they want to put her behind plexiglass on her desk but that gives her high anxiety i fully support working to remove the mass mandates and and passing on the work to other moms i know and she thanks us for standing up the livonia public schools i've spoken before this board many times on other issues and today i'm a little sad because usually my oldest is in tow and likes to speak on issues

127that that are on her heart and this is the first time you will not hear from my daughter because she's afraid this school year has caused fear in her of course she's compliant wears her hat she's a freshman in the kappa program and is grateful to be in person but she is afraid to say that she doesn't want to wear a mask or that it's too hot or that her friend passed out in front of her getting on the bus on friday she's afraid to speak for what she believes in because the stigma around people who don't feel that masking is appropriate is being pushed on our kids and we are dividing our children we are dividing our children with this i've always talked england i will go on the record and tell you that

128we are a family that no longer vaccinates my daughter is severely vaccine injured and does attempt through tribular so we don't vaccinate our kids anymore and caitlyn is terrified to go to school and have have a division that is a parent every day at school so she lays low and she stays quiet and she does what she's told so that she can stay in school and at least five members of this board have heard my daughter speak on several occasions i am sad that she is afraid to come to you as a student in your district and say hey i don't want to do this next year it's not safe i feel sick after i wear a mask all day long but i want to go to school i want to be in kappa i

129want to do what i need to do to fulfill my dreams and she feels like she's caught in the middle and i'm sad about that because she's never had problems speaking to the school board before today the other thing i want to bring to the board's attention i did write an email to her principal this morning i would strongly suggest the board look at the curriculum that is being passed down in our biology department currently pushing the vaccine my daughter was asked to create a poster board that would encourage 12 to 15 year olds to get this vaccine it is completely inappropriate thank you for your time the next speaker is reyna benjamin it's close it's not totally fine good evening hi good evening i appreciate west chicago you know what this is interesting right

130this is called a singer's mask my son and his entire musical theater workshop class were forced to wear these on monday june 7th for their workshop performance it was a 92 degree day most of the audience was unmasked fanning themselves sweating these kids were wearing this and it sticks up from your face and you can't see good and it's huge right vision breathing singing dancing running acting no fans no air conditioning parents were going out in the hallway to catch a breath and we were all watching these kids what is going on we're tired we are tired of getting a run around all year bringing up our concerns and our complaints and our frustrations with masking contact transiting distancing mostly asking for me and i keep on seeing the finger pointing and i feel like

131it's like the old kids song excuse me it's like who told the mask to work who told the kids to wear the masks all day they told the kids to wear the masks all day so all right so we tried to figure it out and i came up with my flow chart of blame so um and i did it in black and white because i think this needs to be black and white so melodica started with going to the principal's teachers administrators so here i put that down here at the bottom and i got a lot of answers um pointed to the cdc pointed to mdhhs pointed to wayne county health department pointed to the board um that's about it and then when you go to the cdc well cdc that's out because they are

132if you dig into their website they don't actually have science that tells us masks are good healthy effective against a virus they have the opposite so they're out x them mdhhs um well they only do recommendations and there was a freedom of information act request earlier in this year and they were not able to come up with any science and actually there were two of those so no no more there uh wayne county health department that sounded more promising but they told us that they only strongly recommended i emailed them and they got back to me and they said well we put out this return to school recommendations not a mandate it's up to the school boards oh really so i went to the school board and this is kind of funny but i put

133little notes to remind me wayne county said to the board make a plan the board said okay here's your plan the county said okay thank you for the plan and then the board said well you you made us wear a mask that's your recommendation and the board said no that was your choice and the board said well still it was you and then sorry no it's it's on you that was your decision but my point i'll wrap it up is what about with the parents parents said well we or the school board said well we included the parents and the parents said some of us said oh you did well did you ask us recently with when we got new information what about these people are here industrial hygienists and occupational health and safety professionals

134they are the ones who protect don't ask the doctor they treat these people industrial hygienists they protect they should be included so here's my final thing no you're not listening to wayne county the governor the media the president the cdc and the hhs we the board you made the decision is you with us supposed to be with the parents so here we are we have families should be at the center of this discussion parents and students making decisions for their own health and safety [Music] so i will finish up by saying we want to partner with you but we need you to listen to us listen to the correct professionals and we know that it is your decision and then and then if you can hold on a moment i'm going to just uh list

135off the next five so they may be getting ready to get them from the other room if it's necessary i'm having trouble reading this i'm not sure if it says joette is it no no looks like joe sometimes okay what's gonna do did you make sure okay uh then it's going to be megan wallace thank you she's not speaking no it's just a question it was just a foreign uh audrey rogers is audrey present jay shore adam wright's advocate he's actually going to be a phone call i called earlier to talk to and got permission that i could hold up the phone for him to speak um you need to be president uh we understand he needs to be president he's my 88 advocate and i called the board to ask that i called earlier

136the phone number for ada's and she said that it's not inside of the michigan um open meetings act i'm going to have to talk to you afterward and i what i have is is a information advice from michigan association of school boards attorney so our legal counsel is advising us that if a school board is not conducting a virtual meeting in poll or in part under the open meetings act the recommendation is that the board limit public comments to individuals who are attending the meeting in person i don't know if you know what recommendation means but recommendation means that it's not a requirement this is an ada it's not just a parent that couldn't make it in today it is our 88 advocate he lives in texas so he doesn't have the ability to be

137here right but he is standing for our advocacy which is legal and about what he can do is contact the board by via phone or via email and they are both available on our website for you do that okay after that it's going to be it will be tanya hoga's tiny president yeah that would be me okay uh colleen callahan uh and then call that olaf does it call that here okay they don't think it's the next few and we'll go from there uh bird's family vernon good to see your name thank you hello my name is vern stanley i live at 35451 dentist street level michigan welcome um thank you this is my wife liz in the back here my son nathan my daughter lauren um liz and i grew up in livonia we

138both went to public schools i graduated in 89 liz graduated from churchill in 93. when our children were born we lived down river so we when it was time to put them in the school we chose homeschooling them because the poorly raised school system and taylor we knew that we were going to be moving to living and look forward to putting them in the limoni public school system we started our daughter in johnson upper elementary in sixth grade and had planned to enroll our son likewise in his sixth grade year lauren in her sixth grade and uh in the sixth grade and partner for seventh grade advanced and excelled even taking advanced classes in math and language she made friends was treated well by the professional staff and her peers nathan had planned on having

139similar experience then coven obviously things changed virtual learning minimum of distancing mask mandates and now talk of vaccine requirements this is all quite an infringement on our personal civil liberties we are not these are not the values of the lessons i wanted to teach my children nor do i think that other children should be learning these types of values i'm sure the school board thought in his wisdom that everything that they have undertaken was in the best interest of the people they serve but has proven out to be false and the policies need to be put back the way they were prior to the pandemic the emergency is over the shot is not proven it is still experimental and under emergency use only it is not fda approved it is recently shown to have possible

140serious long-term or even fatal side effects and if in the true interest of the people of the volunteer school in the true interest of the people that the livonia school board serves i would ask that they reconsider their current policies return to normal operation removal of the mask and stand up pop-up clinics do no harm i will say that i have been to a school board meeting last week and i am convinced that all of you along with the people of the district the other professionals the district the principals and the teachers all have the students best interest at heart but you need to think these things through and there are bigger repercussions from the decisions that are made i don't know of any public comment that was taken during the beginning of the pandemic

141with all of the mandates and the different rules and regulations that were put in place they are owners that need to be dropped thank you uh audrey rogers is our next speaker what you're gonna segregate my name is audrey rogers and i live at 36937 ladywood street like many people here my family lives in live on purpose we like it here my kids are happy here and a lot of us showed up today because we recognized that as much as we love our district and love what we have had in the past lps needs a course correction i've done a lot of reading in the last few weeks and as of may 5th mdhhs has advised local health departments to advise the districts in their locale and wayne county put out the return to school

142roadmap and the only mandate that i saw on there was the governor's emergency orders that has since been overturned and if i remember correctly at the beginning of the year lps's return to learn was voted on by the board so i believe the board has the capacity to course correct um currently there seems to be great overreach in bureaucracy we have the mdhhs that you're choosing to follow at this point in iowa the legislature has passed a bill and signed into law by the governor to block any mandates that the schools can have to mass children so iowa children can now be free of mass i would like michigan children to be free of mass if they sew shoes today this morning my son is in fourth grade he it didn't feel well and he

143vomited into his mask i don't know if that's something anyone has ever considered not that vomit is great anywhere but in a mask it's certainly disgusting any at this point anyone choosing to follow a health agency that advises parents to put a face covering over their two-year-olds this agency has lost credibility in my eyes so i urge you to course correct thanks for your time our next speaker is hello thank you for having me you're very welcome tania i live in livonia my request from this committee is that we pass a resolution banning the vaccine pop-up clinics on school grounds and public grounds immediately all kids currently enrolled in the public school system are victims to the dangers of being a guinea pig for the big pharma even though there are preventative medicines and health

144practices that should be advocated for instead they are pushing a vaccine that is not even a vaccine i was told by an 8th grader that his health teacher in lps outbreak lied to their students telling them that kobit 19 was the third leading cause of death for spoken from children child i don't know if that's true or not but that's what i was told given the extremely low risk of severe covet illness and 99.98 survival rate for children each one of you should take who took an hold to protect our children and uphold our constitutions should be asking why is the prevention in creating a healthy immune system not the primary focus and why instead are they promoting and encouraging an experimental injection that is not approved by the fda you need to ask questions

145about the long-term risks and side effects of these experimental vaccines and why it is being so heavily pushed onto our children with such a low risk the emergency use authorization is being challenged in court because the risks and adverse side effects of the vaccines that do not occur the risk of contact contracting coven including the melacarditis and children which is causing the cdc to hold an emergency meeting to talk about ceasing the use of the vaccine in children so i don't understand why schools should have these vaccine clinics on school grounds period especially while the cdc is questioning the safety of the set vaccines any questions of the safety of these vaccines should create an immediate stop to the use of vaccines in children especially offering them to children on school grounds it is a

146medical treatment not a school grounds account you're making the choice to have this pushed on school property and offering it by school emails and don't try to point the fingers and pass it off as policy it is your choice to enforce these recommended mandates or not we have gone through all of the hoops and the finger pointing and it goes back to school board and the school board needs to answer to us parents what is the incentive for the school board to have and promote these vaccines and make them available on school grounds to our lowest risk age group i would like a written email with that information please there are too many risks and you should not be promoting the vaccine until these risks have been addressed what is the argument or validation or

147incentive for allowing medical vaccine pop-up clinics on your school grounds children whose parents choose to give them the vaccine should be going through their primary care physician who knows the child's risk for this heart condition or not the pop-up clinic on school grounds has doesn't know what the child's history or health risk to his adverse side effects are this is a medical issue not a school issue you are crossing the line that you have no right crossing let that be a decision those parents make with their doctors the medical decisions that we're supposed to we don't know the long-term side effects but we know the short-term adverse side effects and it's causing melakanitis and inflammation of the heart and our children and even death listen to the facts that are being presented to you and

148stop this now again i would like to ask that you immediately ban the vaccine jab clinics on school grounds because it is a medical issue and not a school issue thank you very much [Applause] [Music] here in this room uh the following will be ron sterling sterniak it's ron's still present okay uh crystal fulton come here uh jill sally connor is bryce present yes okay and vanessa lin thank you our next speaker will leave paul and ola good evening good evening thank you for the opportunity i'm paula ola lifelong livonia resident and i live in the sedmon and parkington area um i have a daughter at stevenson i'm here tonight though to play a testimony from a 7th grade lps student it's a minute and 20 seconds okay well i don't understand the difference between

149reading you know someone's testimony and playing it so basically what happened was this child had a mask on and felt sick and couldn't breathe and you know you've heard this story many times because this is a human issue i mean you guys got to be dying right now right i bet you can't wait to get out of this room and take your mask off your face and let's be honest right so um and the doctor who treated the child said that he felt that the issue that the child had was from the mass so there there's medical information from professionals that say this is not good for people and we know this i mean we're human beings we breathe fresh air and we don't inhale our waist it's not that's not normal and it's not

150healthy and i didn't know i'm learning a lot at this meeting so i'm really glad i came but it sounds like you guys have the power do the right thing you know do the right thing we've learned from our history that we cannot say i was just following orders come on let's go you know really do the right thing so i am going to make sure that you get this testimony however i can because i came to do this and that's not fair to the seventh grader whose testimony this is so you will receive it and again thank you so much for the opportunity and you guys have a tough job but man do the right thing we're counting on you and our kids [Applause] our next speaker is ron's journey ron good evening good

151evening as you stated i am ron sterniak and i live in the great state of michigan i wanted to talk first about the ineffectiveness of the mask which was brought up several times i i kind of consider these to be summary statements and then the second is the negative impact of the mass and then third would be the path forward first children we all know are less susceptible to the virus i've seen that the mortality rate for k through 12 is point zero zero zero zero three or three in a hundred thousand that's less than the percentage who die from playground accidents and yet we still allow our kids to do playground i believe also the children are less likely to spread it because as we all know they have a much lower viral load

152so they're really not putting anybody else at risk so well i to me i just don't understand what's going on but the second point is the cdc last week and another woman or a woman mentioned this earlier they stated that the only value of masks is if a mass person has coveted the mask marginally protects non-infected people so everybody that's wearing a mask you're really not protecting anybody yourself or anyone else it's also been proven that the masks aren't going to stop the virus the virus will get through the mask you're wearing so it's not you know if there was a big glob of something possibly it would it would stop that but otherwise your mask is doing you no good whatsoever then let's talk about the negative impact of the masks and this has

153been brought up multiple times by multiple parents but it's an under you're breathing an unhealthy carbon dioxide level and your your oxygen level if you would get monitored after you take that mask off you'd see that your oxygen level is low and that's just promoting inflammation throughout your bodies even worse it's doing throughout the bodies of their children so you know number one the mass are ineffective number two there's high negative impact on the on the wearers so number three the third point is the path forward and i think it's been brought up by several of the other parents here you can't you can't hide behind it's a recommendation you have to do what's right the only way that the right thing happens is when good people stand up and support that's what you our

154need speaker is crystal fulton hello hello kind of going back um forth with emails um i did get responses past friday because uh colleen has responded on behalf of the board of education um says regarding our mass concern the school district is a governmental entity and it requires to follow direction from the mdhhs and the wayne county health department and she said earlier when she repeated her email she sent out kind of as a mass thing to each one of us as a response the school district was required to present a mitigation plan to the wayne county health department for its approval in order to be allowed to conduct school in person we are told that mitigation plan includes the wearing of masks under the strong recommendation of the mdhhs and cdc that's how they

155put it you're seeing these recommendations still stand due to the fact that the majority of our students in our school buildings each day are not yet fully vaccinated i'm being told do you respect our individual individual rights to hold any opinion we have when it comes to vaccinations and mass but you're lying and you're saying belgonia public school district or the board of education alone cannot make the masked decision these children are being abused with these mandates regarding vaccinations you're telling me parents enjoy the clinic opportunity you're comparing that to when the district has offered sports physicals at high schools as convenience for families i don't see these as similar events i see this as child abuse being done with an experimental pfizer product that our kids are being fully pressured into receiving i am

156disappointed that the updated 12 and advisor fact sheet was not provided along with the client clinic signup email all lps parents were told the shot was approved i'm happy you're willing to change the wording to authorize and plan to keep that misinformation from happening again i expect the truth to be sent out on any further written communications that go out regarding vaccinations i need to know for a fact i can send my child into the fall school year with out a mask you are saying you hope the masks are no longer recommended or required by the health they sees by them please stop acting like you're not the responsible and reliable ones i do wish to advocate to assure this i will contact the wayne county health department and the mdhhs since you're saying they

157have more control over this decision than any school district or board of education there have been no studies done on how this will affect the development of small undeveloped lungs and brains due to the lack of oxygen and breathing in co2 and we literally are compromising the generation of children on the risk of an unauthorized experiment clinical tests and trial i have huge issues with the health practices of lps as they relate to cobit we will contact dr jennifer tayarel the lps director of student services covet is a thing of the past i am not sure why you're forcing this fearful lifestyle on our children i expect school to go completely back to normal we need to have the choice today there was a clinic at frost middle school the second most participators were sent

158out to email i was told it'd be inappropriate for you to send that email to the entire community i would love for you to admit your mistake and why you had to legally switch the wording to five their body on tag code 19 vaccine in parentheses authorized for children 12 or not by the fda under the emergency use authorization for the present prevention of cuba 19. i really hope the pharmacist on the site is liable at the vaccination clinic i know livonia board will not be able to handle the liability of an adverse reaction like they did today when the emergency and the stretcher got pulled out today during their second shots thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so as you heard from multiple other parents today by you guys it is recommended not required so

159it is in your hands and you're choosing to make up for the children for them to have to wear their masks at school but i also have this video to play talking about um this disease that's comparative about disease but um something that going vaccine will be holding an emergency meeting of this advisor's name the people who are speaking are supposed to be doing the speaking here i can't be bringing in outside people are not invisible i mean you can't exactly bring a news crew into here can you tell us what that you said says so the copenhagen vaccine more commonly in the second shot is bringing around a medical disorder that is causing inflammation in the heart amongst young children it's more commonly males and is making the heart or it is causing inflammation

160in the heart which is well not good and you don't hear about this stuff i mean it's on the news but not many people hear about it and when uh you're going to the vaccine clinic people aren't told about this there's no informed consent and the cdc is having a board meeting next week going to talk about this issue but yet we are still having these pop-up vaccine clinics on school grounds even though we know this information and it's happening but we don't choose to do anything about it we don't choose to stop it we don't choose to say okay maybe we should do this another time we have more information about it no we let it go through and we let our students and parents of lps get their back get their second dose

161of the vaccine and i know it's a different choice but they're not they're not informed about what is happening from the vaccine they're not informed about what is in the vaccine so they should know what is in it and what is causing them before they inject it into their bodies [Applause] our next speaker is vanessa lynn this is amazing are you are you public school here um sorry i'm probably not going to be as good as him i'm nervous my name is vanessa lynn i live in michigan um my daughter first of all she goes to iowa classical academy i love my school she's been face to face full-time five days a week art recess music gym learning only valentine's day party christmas parties it's been amazing they have gladly accepted our waiver for madison

162school the health department allows you as a parent and or child to stay to simply you cannot tolerate wearing a mask in the orders i sent that in my childhood was on a mask i think it was started at the election so november it's been amazing many of her co-school students i don't know classmates walk around free free breathing all day long my child has not missed one single day due to coco this year i say that with so much gratitude i'm almost overwhelmed with tears to say it and and also sadness listening to all these other students who aren't afforded the same benefit why what can my child go and your children can match look at all these children just begging just to just to come and learn okay so i have i'm going

163to take some best excerpts here this is from dr jeremy shaft he's a chiropractor locally um he presented this information to my school board and i think a couple others but there are a couple of facts here sorry i'm cheating um the negative effects on masculine people are especially in children are many i will focus on three aspects here first of all i did not know this but mass burning leads to mouth breathing because of the restricted air flow excess heat and sweat produced many people begin to breathe through their mouths to alleviate the situation this is a subconscious action one of the problems with mouth breathing is that the air does not pass through the nasal cavity which bypasses multiple layers of defenses against pathogens in particular that nitric oxide is a major player

164in the antiviral response to stop infection to maintain healthy immune system response once infected and to repair to repair from damage caused by the virus nitric oxide is produced by the by nose breathing and i will forward this information to you so you have this the the studies that he's referencing here also called mass also increased the chances of lili which is influence a like illness coronaviruses are classified under l excuse me under ili in the following study it was found that the cloth mask arm had significantly higher rates of ili compared to non-narrow gas burning controls finally manuscripting is harmful to the psyche of children facial recognition is one of the fundamental aspects of neural cycle emotional development mirror mirror neurons are responsible for us mimicking what is going on in others if someone

165hurts we see that that and feel the hurt in the same way that you've gone you see another yard this is a basic foundation for empathy when you cannot see another space you are unable to understand what is going on with them this is dangerous territory for children not to be able to see their teachers let alone their peers faces anyway so i know my time is up i would like to forward this information to you and from the bottom of my heart i would ask that you please take the power that you have and enable these children these families to make medical decisions for their own family there's nothing preventing somebody saying that they would like to wear a mask let them wear a mask but please let those who don't be healthy thank

166you for listening thank you to all of you for coming and sharing your appreciation with us this evening it has been a very long complicated difficult uh 15 to 18 months i don't think anybody wants to be dealing with the situations that we're dealing with um please know that we are making the very best decisions that we can with the information that we have which is voluminous and thank you for being with us this evening uh the next item on our agenda this evening is item seven business matters and we're going to item 7b approval of architecture and engineering firm prove that the board of education of the open public schools district approved the recommendation of the owner's representative plant marine crescent to award the contract for architectural and engineering design work for project one

167renovations of existing facilities and air conditioning upgrades to french associates in rochester michigan in the amount of four million four hundred eighty four thousand nine hundred eighty dollars and for project two additions and renovations to the robotics program and early childhood center to tmp architecture inc the field hills michigan in the amount of 1 million hundred and forty six thousand five hundred dollars and authorize the superintendent for her designee to negotiate and execute final contract we have a motion by mr johnson supported by mr centers and we have mr francis thank you very much i believe we were going to have heard i'm not certain that paul farrell is here this evening no no you're not you're you're stuck with me we're perfectly right with that okay um to be fair i did ask that

168i told them that we had a good conversation last week as those who tuned into last week's meeting no the board was here and um i just basically told them you know i'll go through it that's perfectly fine the architectural firms both were interested in joining he said you don't have to um it's okay the board knows you are excited there's some conflicts in a couple of their schedules as well so i said we understand you're excited we're excited it's okay and so uh i am both the standing survivor of that and i will be happy to talk about it a little bit um and as you said we've discussed this that multiple years before we got to tonight anyway so we're fine correct the board was extensively involved as we went through this process

169because because we have discussed with the board on multiplications the process that we outlined and wanted to follow the board had input on that process and long story short to boil it down with the board's input the district bond team may come up with the process with regard to inviting architectural firms to too big and then reviewing their bids and narrowing the folks uh to come in for an interview we had uh folks from the the voting public schools we had folks from the owner's rep platform presa we had district attorney on that interview team we even had a board representation on that interview team so we had quite a process to go through and we actually in the bid as we discussed last week have broken into two projects project one as was described

170with the existing facilities and project two the additions and renovations so we are very proud and excited to recommend to the board of education for your vote this evening both french associates for project one and then tmp for project two as the architectural engineering firms the architect and engineering firm is a vital piece it is our first piece in this puzzle we will begin this week if the board approves both of these firms to be meeting with them on a regular basis we already have planned out schedules so it is the first piece in the puzzle it is a very important piece they will be our advocates they will be our help they will be our team of members moving forward with the 2021 bond so we do recommend both french and tmp for each

171phase one and phase phase two as recommended in the resolution report okay great are there comments or questions from the superintendent or board members and again this is as you said this is a sizeable item to vote on but we have uh studied it and discussed it at multiple meetings prior to this evening all righty see no other comments or questions this is uh we have we have a motion by mr johnson supported by mr centers for the approval of architecture and engineering firms for the 2021 bond this is bradford but you can state the role mr johnson yes mr center yes mrs acosta yes mrs jarvis yes mrs bradford says yes mr farmington yes president yes and that motion passes we're very excited to delve into the work we are we we've got a

172lot of work to do and i drove out the a lot because it is but we we have a great team we have the owner of the plant marine crescent we have two fantastic architectural firms we have all of that that really have been are fantastic it was a difficult decision and all of my colleagues here we like to pull everybody in and get get all of backgrounds experiences and input from my colleagues as well all righty um uh okay we are on to the next item which is item 7c approval to purchase maintenance plow truck vehicles uh may i have a motion please president burke mr centers at the board of education of baltimore public school school district approved the purchase of three model year 2021 ford pickup trucks with plow and toke packages

173from gorno for woodhaven michigan for a total cost of one hundred twenty five thousand two hundred ninety eight dollars support we have a motion by mr centers the support of emesis jarvis mr friends thank you very much we had a very good conversation last week about the tow trucks um and we found that we had a couple of items and i sent uh some information to mrs milquist and i think she shared it with the board with regard to the typo and it was just that typo said money or 2019. frankly i emailed the rep back and said but we want the 2020s right he said really you're getting 20 so accidents happen and unfortunately we were always getting the 21 model of your items the athletics way we also had a nice conversation about

174what to do with the 2015s versus the 2009's and as that update the 09s are the oldest ones in the fleet the next oldest ones are actually the 15s and those will be sent down to the three high schools so they have a more up-to-date model and we will get the trade-in on the 0-9s what i have in front of you at the 125 298 is the full price for the three um 250 f-250s with the plow packages on them in in reality it'll be slightly less than that because of the trade-in value but right now obviously we have a form the board's approval and that's the purchaser we'll create we can always go under a purchase order we can't go over without board approval sounds good um comments or questions from the superintendent or

175board members all right um seeing that we have a motion by mr center supported by mrs jarvis for approval to purchase maintenance plow truck vehicles mrs bradford mr centers yes mrs jarvis yes mr johnson yes mrs bradford says yes mrs acosta yes mrs barron yes or president yes and that motion passes uh the next item on our agenda is item 7d approval of resolution to ratify the sale of bonds may have a motion please president mrs grant move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district approved the resolution to ratify the sale of the 2021 voter approved bond support and we have mr addressing decided we had a very exciting day here uh today with the president for our first series of bonds for the 2021 21 and uh so we

176saw really great interest rates we were you know the district was happy with what we saw our financial advisors are happy with the numbers that we saw so i'm very excited we're about working on those final numbers right now and i think the update is working to get that all summarized for you but it did go really well so we are recommending that the board approve the sale tonight and we move forward with this opportunity thank you are the founders of questions from the superintendent or members no we were just very pleased very pleased with the timing very pleased with the initial initial sale okay great off to a great start and uh this has been these are gonna be sold in two series three series okay great okay any other comments or questions on

177excitement um we have a motion by mrs bradford seconded by mr johnson for the approval of resolution to ratify the sale of bonds this is bradford please say the goal uh mrs bradford says yes mr johnson yes mrs jarvis yes mr centers yes mrs bonifield yes this is a coaster yes frozen river yes passes thank you very much uh the next item on our agenda is item 7e adoption of the 2020-2021 final budget amendments may i have a motion president burke this is bond deal move the board of education of the livonia public schools adopt the attached amended budgets for the 2021 school year general fund funded projects fund special education fund debt retirement fund old safety fund 20 20 60 fund technology fund 2013 bond fund capital projects fund food services fund health and

178welfare fund scholarship fund and the school activities fund support we have motioned by mrs bonfield supported by mrs bradford thank you president burton and again thank you for the opportunity to talk with the board his death over the last few months as we prepared the silent budget amendment because we've gone over the detail i'll be uh brief this evening um just to remind the board of the community we started this school year off with 33.8 million dollars we estimate our revenue uh to be 155.2 million dollars and estimate our expenditures to be 158.5 million dollars which will lead us uh leave us with 30.5 million dollars or 19.2 percent to start to the next school year off with so again that's a great spot to be the michigan school business officials recommend fifteen to twenty

179percent and that's where we all find ourselves up at the school here uh their comments are questions from the superintendent or the board of education and we're thrilled to have a fund balance that's helping enough to add in a lot of these supports that we're able to add in for this coming school year to help our students so it's a wonderful thing any of the comments or questions seeing done we have a motion by mrs bonfield supported by mrs bradford for the adoption of the 2020 2021 final budget amendments uh subscribers you can say google mr battlefield yes mrs bradford says yes mrs acosta yes mr centers yes mrs jarvis yes mr johnson yes yes thank you that motion passes thank you the next item on our agenda is item 7f approval of 2020 2000

180i'm sorry 2020 2021 2022 proposed budget and miller trades uh may have motion please president burton mrs jarvis move that the board of education of the livonia public schools adopt the attached proposed budgets for the 2021-2022 school year general fund funded projects fund special education fund debt retirement fund 2013 bond fund 2021 bond fund 2020 sinking fund capital projects fund food services fund health and welfare fund scholarship fund and school activities fund support we have a motion by mrs jarvis supported by mr centers this is it thank you president um again we discussed the sibling at a number of meetings so i'll keep it brief this evening but um i just want to point out again we think it will be ending with about 30.5 million dollars worth of fund balance this school year um

181we do know that we can't spend a dollar more than what the board is authorized so we do anticipate that expenditures will come in uh favorably and so we've been proactive and added a million dollars into the beginning fund balance for our next year to take that into account we anticipate revenue next year to be 152.5 million expenditures to be 159.2 million which will leave us with an ending fund balance in june of 2022 of 24.7 million and still within that 15 to 20 range at 15.5 i will mention um not only is this included on our website on the board information debt and the agenda you can also find it the um you can also find it on the transparency page so if you look for the icon on our home page and click

182on that this budget will get uploaded there once the workflow thank you i wanted to just take a moment because i think um over the past couple the past several uh weeks we have had many extended discussions about the budget and i think collectively we are extraordinarily proud of what we're bringing forward not only to close out this school year but the recommendations for the general fund the essers two and three funds the equalization payments and we have spent quite a bit of time talking about the direction of those dollars to support our students to support our staff and to provide the resources we need to move forward next year in a way that will allow our students to continue to flourish give the all of our staff the support they need to be able

183to do that important work and when we shared last week well both at the study session and at the committee of the whole meeting we spent some time looking back to where we started with the enhancement millage in 2016 when it was first passed and we took each department and spent a little bit of time talking about a then in that slide and it was extraordinarily illustrative of the commitment that the board has approved year after year in our with our budget recommendations to really focus in on the needs that we are hearing about and so while we're covering it rather briefly this evening i did want to make note that we will be sharing with our staff and we will be sharing with our community a summary of those slides that we'll talk about

184the enhancements that have been made since 2016 through the wayne county enhancement millage and specifically what we're looking to focus on next year you remember with the three buckets of the academic and learning support the social emotional and student re-engagement efforts and then that last piece of district-wide resources that impact across the board and although although you know there may be some hearty folks that stick with us throughout our entire meetings of committee meetings or join their study sessions i think the vast majority do not and understandably they they tend to go on quite a while but the reason they do is because we're really delving into those decisions and you've allowed us to make recommendations and approve a number of decisions and modify those along the way to really reflect on what we've heard

185from our parents from our staff from our school leaders and so what we're going to be doing is putting out a summary of information that will highlight um and i've been told if we keep it under three minutes we might have a strong chance that folks will watch uh the uh the powerpoint with a little bit of a voiceover and we're going to get that out later this week once the board has made their final approval so we really have the opportunity to collectively as a district feel a sense of pride of the continued reinvestment in our staff and our students in our schools so i think we are pretty excited about this coming school year we are so tremendously proud of what has taken place this year now does that mean it was it

186was smooth and it was easy not by any stretch but the efforts that have been made throughout this school year by so many um are worthy of being recognized and i think it's worthy of reflection about what we've what we've learned it's one of the one of the things we continue to look at is what what do we need to continue to bring forward because we've learned even more and as they say when you know better you do better we like to believe that some of the things we're bringing forward are very reflective of that but they are also continuing to address the needs of our students and our staff in the important work we have to do so that will be coming out and we hope that will be a digestible way for folks

187to know the commitment that this district is making as we move forward as we close out this school year and as we look to starting a wonderful year next year comments or questions for other board members thank you president uh mrs smith i know we've we've asked this question before in the past and i think from time to time it's important that we put these numbers into perspective and look at a a 30 million dollar front balance or a 19 percent under 20 fund balance but if we were to lose all of our funding how long could we operate with that amount you know it boils down to actually just a few weeks i want to say maybe eight weeks ten weeks worth of funding and i agree with you i think um it is

188a big dollar amount and you lose sight of that when we talk about it so i always like to refer to the percentage because i think that's more digestible and again 15 to 20 is what they recommend and we've seen the reason why we've lived through it over the last decade we've experienced about 400 and was it 70 dollars in the middle of the year which is devastating to districts and thankfully we did have funds to rely on we experienced it just recently with the pandemic and the potential impact on sales tax revenue that we didn't met our district and they were saying greece for 650 for people but not only or 1920 but for the 2021 school year and again that's devastating to the districts especially when it comes to you know five weeks

189before the end of the school year when you don't have time to make any shifts in your spending and so it's because of that fund balance that we were able to ride that storm out and thankfully those cuts didn't come to fruition but if we didn't have the fundamentals to rely on we wouldn't have had that opportunity we would have had to talk about what has to go what you know what can we live with that which um because of those 470 dollar cuts and years ago there's really nowhere to go there's no easy low-hanging fruit every decision is a challenge because you know budgets have really been strict over the years and so you know it's the fundamentals that helps us weather these storms we also see it you know just the uh i

190just said earlier about our bond sale we've been upgraded in the last couple years and they point to our financial stability that's grown over the laser so our bond rating has gone up and that ends up saving our community and taxpayers money because we're able to get better interest rates on these lending opportunities so just a myriad of reasons why uh having that fundamentals is so important and while we're so excited to be where we are right now and again the fact that it's not at the expense of the students in front of us today we made a number of recommendations that we're so proud of and so happy that the board is supportive of and yet we still can maintain that some financial position as well and it's i think it's also important to

191understand that we've never really been compensated back for that 470 dollars when you take inflation into consideration we are not back to where we were pre-cut um and it's been through the hard work of your department making necessary cuts and protecting our milk where it needs to that we've been able to at least weather that storm as you said so we appreciate that thank you one question for you the three-minute uh synopsis that you're talking about is that going to be on our website is it going to email out to families how can they access that well now we're definitely feeling the pressure of the three minutes uh yeah now that we can put that out there uh but that will be great we'll just call it a brief brief summary it will be emailed

192out to staff and uh it will be emailed to families okay great any other comments or questions from board members seeing them we have a motion by mrs jarvis supported by mr centers for the approval of the 2021-2022 proposed budget and village rates uh mrs bradford mrs jarvis yes mr center yes mrs donovan yes mr johnson yes yes mr bradford says yes president burton yes that motion passes you know we've planned for a lot of things tonight the next item on our agenda is item eight destruction matters and eight a is the reconfirmation and invention and benchmark data for the extended and coping as the extended copen 19 continuity of learning plan this is not needing a motion this is just an update and we have this burden um yes so this is required and

193a part of our return to learn plan that we presented back in august of 2020. the state of michigan requires that we presented publicly and post to our website our mid-year benchmark assessment results which we did on february 8th at a committee of the whole meeting and we are presenting at our very last board meeting of our school year this evening our i-ready is our benchmark assessment that we put into our return to learn plan and it is testing students from kindergarten through eighth grade this year we also gave it to ninth graders because our eighth graders did not take it last year but their scores are not a part of our return to learn when we wrote our goals we wrote a reading goal and a math goal that are aligned to our school

194improvement goals so what we did is we said we wanted students to reach their 50 percent individualized growth at the mid-year and 100 of their growth at the end of the year so i already testing closed on friday and some students didn't get to quite finish because we um ended the day early and there are people like me who might wait to the last minute but we also have to stop and think for a minute before we look at the data of the different platforms students took it and how really muddy this data is this year the first time we took it at the beginning of the year we were remote for the month of september and so some students took it at home who were in-person students and then our virtual students also took

195it at home so the younger the student the harder it is maybe to let them struggle on a test that's diagnostic in nature so diagnostic means it continues to get harder and stops once they hit their threshold and the more they answer questions and it's easier it keeps getting harder so if somebody's helping us a young student then it might take them farther an example would be that i have a friend who's a kindergarten teacher whose student was at the fourth grade level at the mid-year and the mother said that the child couldn't do the end of the year assessment well they weren't really quite at a fourth grade level on their own independently so i shared with you the data so have that lens in your mind that our students this there's many reasons

196why this data is not good data and we are looking forward to the fall when we have our normal testing schedule when our students take it in the classrooms with our teachers so underneath our goals i i recorded just the straight achievement of our students both in reading and math so we had growth in reading and math in every area so all students grew from fall to end of the year mid-year assessments some went up some went down but by the end of the year on i-ready it's looking at if you are at grade level you score mid or end of the year on the assessment so all students grew in reading and math our economically disadvantaged students grew our special education students grew our english learners grew so our scores are in the range

197from from 20 proficient to 43 percent proficient in reading and or math and that is an improvement from our fall score so knowing the different places students have been this year we really look to hope to recalibrate our assessment in the fall and really look at where students are as you can see our demographics also break out our scores for females and males and our demographic groups of our white students and our black students our asian students and our hispanic students the very last two rows show our virtual students and our non-virtual students we did not have that information in the fall they were not identified and i ready as being virtual so you can see that actually our remote students their sports are stronger than our own person but that might make sense with

198some of the idea of students who had some help with this assessment our original goal was growth on their own individual growth targets and on the second page of your assessment results it does show the percent of students that met a hundred percent of their typical growth targets through iraq and and that's probably a better data piece that's individualized and each child has their own growth targets based on their previous assessment and so you can see that our students again range anywhere from 45 to 61 percent of our students hitting their growth targets in i'm ready for this year so again i'll just recap this is required by the state of michigan we'll be posting it to our website last month was our last free confirmation we reconfirmed for the month of june that we

199are offering in-person and virtual instruction so we are not reconfirming because we've already done this last month but we are required to report on our benchmark assessment results thank you very much either accounts or questions from the superintendent or the board this is a close-up um and i don't know if you have this information but do we know where we stand in relation to other districts or the state in terms of benchmark data i can i can give you the national norms for irani um and that comparison so we just finished testing on friday so mr hillard really did magic to give us our data for today but definitely i will share with you the national norms and then one of the nice things about curriculum associates is they do have a relationship with the

200michigan school data hub so our scores will be uploaded to that directly and we'll be able to see other districts that use it um as their benchmark data for this year so that will that'll be the first time we'll be able to have that comparison based on the same assessment still knowing it's a little monthly i'm making this that this has been the case for other districts so just knowing that we're at part of what's going on yes i'll make sure you get that thank you any other comments from board members cnn thank you very much and thank you for continuing this all year long my pleasure thank you in it i'll just know that at this point i don't believe mrs o'brien or i have information about whether or not this will continue to

201be a requirement going forward hopefully we will know that before the start of the year but one never knows the next item on our agenda is item eight c uh recommended expulsion of one secondary student manual motion please president burton this is a costa move that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district expel one secondary school student for violations of the livonia public schools board of education policies support we have motion venice as a coaster supported by mr johnson and we have mr william tonight good evening good evening i have explained to each of you in small groups or individually over the last several days or last couple weeks the regretful circumstances regarding this decision i can assure that our policies our procedures have been followed and the time for an

202appeal has has passed and we're recommending this expo permanent expulsion thank you arnie are there any comments or questions from the borders pretend this is a question thank you um just the clarification so i know that he was saying that it's permanent but a student has an opportunity to yes there's permanent uh actually does not mean permanent it means that there's a possibility for reinstatement after 180 school days of suspension you have to come to the school board for them for a decision if they put in that petition for reinstatement and that would not be an automatic that would be then up to the school uh discretion to take a suitcase that's that's correct we have three decisions three options on how we handle that after 180 school days okay thank you any other uh

203we have a motion by mrs acosta supported by mr johnson uh to recommend expulsion of one secondary student mrs bradford would you please take the role mrs acosta yes mr johnson yes mrs bradford says yes mrs jarvis yes mr fanfield yes mr sanders president yes that motion passes thank you uh the next item on our agenda is ida thank you mr william um next i have my urgent is a number uh nine hearing from board members and nine a's the second reading and adoption of board bylaws i may have a motion placed president mr johnson president move the board of education of the livonia public schools school district accept the recommendation of the policy committee and adopt board policy language per the attached document for board bylaws board operations b b d board superintendent functions

204b c a c special meetings b c a e public hearings bcaf committee of the whole and study session meetings b c b general order of business at regular meetings b c b c preparation of agenda we have a motion by mr johnson supported by mr centers are there comments or questions from board members i do have one suggestion that somebody else have comment or suggestion or anything good for us right now uh one uh on board bylaw bcb this is uh the the bylaw that takes that uh sets the general order of our meetings um i would like to suggest that we flip instructional matters and business matters and the reason for that is because especially with our bond coming up we're going to be having a lot of uh of architects contractors etc

205uh owners uh representatives presenting to the board and if we can do that we can get those folks put a little bit further up on our agenda um and bless the heart of our cabinet who does a lot of our instructional uh matters our candidate needs to stay to the end of our meetings anyway um but if we can uh can do a courtesy of to those who uh can get in and out of our meetings and get them home a little sooner on monday nights i think they would be courteous um this uh what are their thoughts on flipping instructional matters and business matters mrs bradford thank you mr burton um i don't have any uh problems about that i think it's a great idea i also think by moving the order uh business

206up front and then you have um what's the personnel and then instructional then personnel they kind of go hand in hand anyway so you could just move that up higher i think so i don't have a problem with it at all any other comments or questions on this suggestion mr johnson i'm fine but i think it's a good suggestion okay i think our folks who deal with our school district will be most appreciative the other uh wording suggestion that i'm going to change is something that that had kind of unintended consequence uh with audience communications we handled that near the beginning of our meeting after district update for the superintendent and then if it exceeds 15 minutes uh the way we have it right now it says uh limited to a total of 15 minutes

207with remainder following personnel matters and that works out perfectly fine unless for some reason such as tonight we move personnel matters if we have a principal appointment or such and we move first now matters then it kind of puts that into the middle of the meeting which is not what it was really intended to do i'd like to suggest that we change uh with the remainder following personnel matters to uh with the remainder proceeding hearing from board members uh it's it means the same thing under normal circumstances it doesn't mess it up if we just alter the schedule or alter the agenda in any way is everyone okay with that okay so it would read audience communications limited to a total of 15 minutes meaning at that time period at the beginning of the meeting

208with remainder proceeding hearing from board members are there any suggestions uh or comments on any other board uh bylaws that are up for review for secondary this time seeing none we have a motion by mr johnson supported by mr centers for second reading and adoption of board board bylaws b b d b c a c b c a e b c a f b c b b c b c that's it this is important it's not a question for um purposes of voting uh do we can we still go ahead and vote for those changes tonight we can okay thank you and that's what the first and second readings are for so we can make sure we really flush things out okay mrs johnson should we indicate that it is um several of these policies

209as written and bcb has revised that's good and that might clarify that very good i'll put that down here yes so we need a revised motion for that yep we would mr johnson can you re-read that because it's the emotion as it is spoken not as not as it is written so can you bcb um yes you see me okay we'll just do the whole motion move that the board of education of livonia public schools school district accept the recommendation of the policy committee and adopt board policy language per the attached document for board bylaws dash board operations bbd board superintendent functions bcac special meetings bcae public hearings bcaf committee of the whole and study session meetings bcb general order of business and regular meetings as amended bcbc bcbc preparation of agenda support okay so

210we have a second motion by mr johnson supported by mr centers any other comments or questions um this is seeing that mrs graduate would you please take the role mr johnson yes mr centers yes mrs bonnifield yes mrs jarvis yes mr bradford says yes mrs acosta yes uh president burton yes and that motion passes takes care of a lot of cleanup on those thank you folks uh next item on our agenda is item nine b establishment of dates for organizational meeting and first regular meeting of two thousand twenty one twenty two may have a motion please prove that the board of education of the lilonia public schools school district holds its annual organizational meeting at 6 45 pm on monday july 26 2021 and that a regular board meeting be held directly following the organizational

211meeting commencing at 7pm support comments or questions mrs bottiel [Music] the district holds its annual organizational meeting at 6 15 and then the regular board meeting be held directly following the organizational meeting commencing at 6 30 which is our new start time for regular meetings yes and of course prior to that we will have a study session um but that does not need to be upon mrs byrne would you like information thank you prove that the board of education of the livonia public schools school district hold its annual organizational meeting at 6 15 pm on monday july 2021 and then a regular board meeting be held directly following the organizational meeting commencing at 6 30 simply okay so we have a second motion for mr center supported by mrs jarvis good catch folks are there

212any questions or comments on this item seeing none this is bradford would mr centers yes mrs jarvis yes this is acosta yes mrs bonnifield yes mrs bradford says yes mr johnson yes president burton yes the motion passes thank you very much they will come to the last item on our agenda which is hearing from board members item 9c are there board members who have things they would like to share this evening mr johnson president we have just warmed up what has been an extremely difficult year i mean last year we had approximately three months at the end of the school year when we literally had to shut down and the district mobilized very very quickly to continue to provide the education to our students via a virtual platform then a significant number of people became

213involved in how do we continue that in the fall when we knew what we were up against and the number of people that were involved literally from the ground up and i'm talking custodial staff bus drivers teachers cabinet board members parents students the number of people that it took to get us off the ground and get us back into an educational standing by september was monumental to say the least and we've been able to continue that through this year hopefully we'll never see another year like this but i just want to say thank you to all of those people that were involved that made this year a success notwithstanding the significant obstacles and hurdles that we had to get over and hopefully come this fall we won't have to deal with this anymore we'll keep

214our fingers crossed but again a heartfelt thanks to everybody that was involved to get us to where we are today thank you so much comments from other board members mrs bradford well said mark i think that you echo the sentiments of all of us on this board tonight um it has been a tremendously difficult year but such a proud year i look back at so many of the activities and everything that went on this year and i am truly proud of our district and of all those who worked so hard on behalf of the students to make their year special for them and to get us through some very difficult times so i'm really appreciative of that and it just is a testament to what a real solid district i think we have in the

215moment here and i'm real proud to be sitting on this board and working amongst uh the superintendent of the cabinet and all of our staff and and teachers and everything and and that hearty thank you to all our families who really had to pivot and were asked to do some pretty hard things on behalf of their students just make difficult decisions and we know it wasn't easy we really appreciate the partnership of our families and to the students boy we know how difficult their year was and they just are so resilient and really proud of just everyone's efforts to get through this year so i agree with mark i'm hopeful that next year things will be looking different and just we can continue what our main job is educating our students to the best of

216our ability and um and keeping our district uh running smoothly so thank you to everybody thank you any other comments from board members um i hope what was very well said by both mrs bradford mr johnson absolutely um kudos to everybody involved our students our staff our parents our families i'd like to give a special shout out to mrs oakless and our cabinet team they will not sing their own praises but uh we were one of the rare districts in our region that went back into school in october excuse me um but we were able to accomplish that with as was said hundreds of people working together to make that happen um it was led by andrea ogust it was supported by our cabinet team you folks are second to none uh it's not just

217us singing your praises for those who don't know uh by about march when the state decided that everyone ought to go back to school we had been back in school for a good six months almost by then we had numerous districts contacting andre opus and livonia public schools saying okay guys how did you do it we said well we started last summer if you guys are starting march right now holding tivoli uh but on our andrea and our cabinet team spent time reaching out to our neighbors as they contacted her for help uh and helping our other uh our other educators in our other communities around us try to quickly get their kids back into school as we have been doing for the last six months so kudos to you andrea you are superb you

218are second to none same for our whole family we are very proud to work in lillian public schools it's been a difficult year for everybody i hope everyone continues each day to help the next person next to them in the education world and in any other world that you all find yourselves working and living in to help each other just to make each day a little bit better it's been a very very difficult year we've gone through it together and kudos and thank you to everybody involved uh any comments from any other board members or superintendent uh it's maybe one of the longest meetings of the whole year i'm very happy to say we are adjourned have a wonderful evening and a wonderful summer everybody you