Oxford Schools Board of Education: 2/25/25

001good evening everybody Welcome to the February 25th school board meeting you could please rise for the pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all all right in James abson Mike would you mind taking [Applause] attendance president mcdonal here vice president aldrid out secretary Summers out treasure Whitney here trusty Gibson here trusty aderson here trusty Captain joury here thank you any changes to the board agenda okay we'll go right into our school presentation for Crossroads [Applause] people the community see good luck to hello and good evening everyone how are you tonight good good glad to hear it I'm Don Masco principal of Crossroads uh and it's really an honor of and a privilege to

002be here this evening to talk about Crossroads okay these are a few things that we're going to talk about this evening uh the history in Camp Oakland partnership our Crossroads staff some recent updates and changes a little bit about our students and their AC mic progress and some of the data that we use and then a few points of Pride that in include some of our um initiatives that we've done with the students's fall like field trips student of the month our staff wellness and a little bit about our campus so just a little bit of a history I'm sure most of you all aware but Camp Oakland is right over on draer road about a quarter mile east of the Oxford Hills Country Club it was founded in 1951 it's approximately 160 Acres it's

003a beautiful setting in years past there probably were more students than there are now so there are a few buildings that are on campus that aren't actually occupied but we do have a number of buildings that obviously are still occupied our mission is for edicated youth working towards community reintegration Through emotional and psychological healing programs we want to empower our at you risk youth to evaluate their own behavior and their actions um a lot of our students come from many different counties throughout the state we have a young lady from Benton Harbor we have students from Wayne County Washton a county Oakland County so we have a variety of different students and once they come to our to the campus at Camp Oakland they are our residents they're residents here in Oxford therefore they are

004students of ours so they use our curriculum and our standards and our benchmarks and things like that that we use in the year 2000 the community um did a little collaboration with the nonprofit and opened Oxford Crossroads Day School the nearly 8,000 square foot school was con constructed so our students would have uh a center campus to use now today there are two separate buildings so there's a a building for our female students and there's a building for our male students and so myself and our staff will go in between the buildings to educate the students we're committed to maintaining a strong partnership under Camp Oakland and its president and CEO uh and his leadership and that's Mr Mark Porter Mr Porter has actually worked at Camp Oakland for about 30 years so he's quite

005a historian and knows obviously a great deal about the camp and a lot of the the changes that have gone on through the camp he's been a very significant part of go next one on this slide this is the people that are involved in the staff uh myself included uh Miss suder happens to be here this evening and so does Miss schwagel we're glad that they're here our Crossroad staff is very compassionate and very empathetic and they are extremely patient people they build strong positive professional relationships with their students the students develop trust and really appreciate their teachers a lot of times the students haven't had a lot of success in school so the type of instruction that they receive from these teachers is extremely beneficial to the students and they are very appreciative of

006that they are very dedicated to educating our students they're able to teach the students at varying grade levels and they deliver quality instruction to our students recently one of our Crossroads teachers told me how it really feels good making a difference in our student lives every day and that's really a profound statement that every day they feel that they are making you know advances in our students lives I'm very proud to work with our Crossroad staff good evening um I'm here as Don's wing lady I should say I'm Janet sh executive director of innovative and alternative programs so I had the pleasure this year of working with Don and Crossroads and it's just such an honor and a privilege because I mean Don is amazing and all that he's brought to the school but I

007started at Crossroads so it's my home and I love it it's we always said it was the hidden Jewel and um I said who knows in retirement one day I might go back to Crossroads you never know um it's just such a great place so it's just been such a pleasure so for me um you know Don coming in we really were focusing on leadership climate and culture just trying to bring some stability and structure um to Crossroads we had a couple Rocky Years and we're really committed to improving School culture super important um with these kids with all students right but um and then the connection with Camp Oakland the community of Camp Oakland they um there's a you know a whole group out there that are so dedicated the therapists and all the

008the folks that help these students um you know in their personal life where they live on the campus so um that was really important that we really Shore up that commitment to that relationship so and my other um driving Focus just my personal as as a leader in the district was um student academic and wellness Focus so living into the continuous School improvement process um it needed some Shoring up and we Dove right in and um we brought some of the models from what we use at OVA um over to Crossroads and it's been such a pleasure to work with Don and the team over there um building um professional Learning Community capacity so there you know we brought some of the structures and the the documents over and they were able to make them

009personal and you look at the data and look at how you know we can bring Improvement and um one area that's been I think we both been working really hard on are the Intervention Program so and I think Donal hit it a little bit more but through star fuckle and the online learning support best practices because they have a lab they don't have um a lot of electives and that's super important that the online learning is done with Fidelity and um that our students are learning they're not just passing through these classes um and the other thing is bringing social emotional learning and mental health to the Forefront and they do that so well they you know they have good partners but we are instituting Renaissance fundamentals trails to Wellness a social emotional learning curriculum

010and Sabers so the social academic and emotional Behavior risk screener so that's just a high level View and Don's going to talk a little bit more thank you Michelle just a little bit about our students uh many of our students uh come as I mentioned from different counties throughout and they live right on campus so they walk to class they live right there uh they refer to it as their residency or their unit um so most times they're not late for school so that's always kind of special uh in the morning we they do uh we have chickens on the grounds that they take care of and in the morning we do a pledge allegiance together and then we start our day um when they do arrive many of them are not your traditional student

011most of them are very credit deficient some may not even have a lot of high school credits um they're typically between the ages of 17 and 18 18 years old but we do have students as young as 14 that are in the program they many of them have uh or all of them have an adjudicated history and that's why they're there and so from their education and their experiences they lack confidence um they're probably have a lot of absence of Role Models um that they or trusted adults that they've had so um a lot of them are again quite a bit behind there's a lot of gaps in their learnings um they've had very minimal success in school and they're overcoming a lot of Life many life challenges and so our staff does a great

012job bringing them in and helping them along currently we have 19 students uh between our female and male populations and as I mentioned there's two separate buildings for those uh and they are in grades 9 to 12 uh and again they their ages are 14 to 18 uh in most cases these students are only with us for 6 to n months so they they're not with us a great deal of time and it's difficult on a lot of our staff because we make great connections and see great progress and then they leave and a lot of times actually having a student leaving Friday and he started this right at the end of August so I started in August and he came in shortly after I did there's really only two students that are there now

013that were there in August when I arrived so most of them have gone through the program already and you develop relationships and one key we talk about is that transition back to their back to their home and to their school and what are they going to do differently to make sure they're successful and they've gone through the program of Camp Oakland with counseling and therapy after school and they've been with us being educated and it's they they're amazing individuals when they when they leave us so it's actually really hard when they leave U because we you're so we're so close to them at that point um so they're successful we've had some you know others that actually complete the program but they don't graduate um so you know once they're through with their program then

014they go back to their school here's just just a little information about our our star screener in Freckle the students are screened when they arrive in reading and math um usually we do it right at enrollment and then mid year and then we do one at the end of the year so you can see from their results from mid October to February we've had quite a few students do lessons there and you can see the grades that the how much they've improved uh with the instruction of our staff and have done very well um in ela and also in math in their academic success this slide gives you an idea of where some of them came in in the fall and then when we took the test in the winter now again some may have

015come in in the fall and then left us because they were completing their program so not everyone would be in here that started in the fall but as you can see a lot of them on the far left where they're grade levels were with the ELA and then where they were in the winter and 63% of our students improved their Ela intervention levels and 37% stayed at the same that's in our Ela in the math you can see the same type where the students were where their grade equivalence was when they first arrived and then where they were in a recent when we tested them recently so 40% % of the students in increased their math and 60% stay the same so they've really done an excellent job with their testing and just a couple

016points of Pride uh that I'd like to mention recently uh our January 20th PD we celebrated MLK and did restorative practices we do have done a lot of collaboration as Michelle has said working on School Improvement uh during our early release Wednesdays we have early release the high schools do a late start we do an early release not every Wednesday but Mo many Wednesdays they're through at 12:35 and then we get into our professional development um we've also used a number of Staff members for the from the OIC including Janet um Mr Matt santel is here tonight he's done a lot of computer technology for us Mr Neil perusi has done a lot of data analysis Caitlyn Martin has come over and worked with our staff on online best practices Amy Greenspan has helped us

017with GED Amy writes as our school psychologist and she's helped and Miss Christine Russell is here tonight and she's worked with PBIS as Janet has mentioned our field trips um we did a couple field trips our students had Camp Oakland had never done field trips and I wanted to see if we couldn't get off campus because they don't get a chance to leave campus they're not like our traditional students that come home every day or go to their practices or to their plays or their musicals and uh they don't get those opportunities they don't work after school they don't go to the local store to pick up a soda or a bag of chips they're there so I really wanted to have them get some outside experience excuse me so we went to the seven

018ponds Nature Center which is up in Metamora and many of them had never been there we went to Blake's Orchard and we picked pumpkins and we picked apples and went on a hay ride and while we were on those ride I ask you know how many of you have had the opportunity to do this before and no one had and it just kind of broke my heart uh think that those students had never had the opportunity to to go to a Nature Center or to go on to a the apple orchard uh we actually went and did a field trip at the Township Park and we did frisbee golf there and Michelle was a part of that and she has some stories about vocabulary words that she was working with the students that day so

019it's just it's Priceless to see their smiles when they uh were on field trips like that the student of the month we select by the staff these students are selected and we actually had a couple attend a board meeting back in December I believe it was December during our student recognition month we utilized PBIS initiatives including rewards for students we've had breakfast and lunches for them um we've had one Crossroad student passed the GED this fall and one student graduated on January 29th and I'm kind of proud to say I believe that's the first Oxford graduate for the year 2025 so that's pretty exciting that we have a graduate already um a couple other points of Pride we've updated our library a little bit adding some new resources and furniture and recently held the graduation

020ceremony in the library um we've placed some new signs around campus and in the building uh regarding our student L conferences we had those in October and we actually are having tomorrow night is our next student Le conference and our parents are able to come and attend those conferences usually when our students are with us for 6 to 9 months they don't have the luxury of going home very much they have to earn that through their camp and their regulations so many of them may spend as long as three to four months with us before they get the opportunity to go home their parents do get a chance to come and visit them um but that's part of their program that they work with so uh we have a very flexible staff we've completed all

021of our safety drills and we do have a tornado drill scheduled during the severe weather Awareness Week on March 19th um all of our staff is CPR and AED certified and they've also participated in the resiliency Center for wellness um just a couple other things we've had representatives from the Air Force speak to our students lesie Fleet Meer from OS spoke to the students on Career Cruising and possible future options that are available to them all of our students took the ASVAB test this fall and got there and received their results we recently had an artist working with the students to make their own diary and paint a postcard to be mailed um and last week I presented to presented Crossroads to our ohos leadership class regarding charity week and today I was informed that

022the o s leadership class selected Crossroads for their charity week donation so really quite an honor because there is quite a few people that have uh were there trying to Res for their groups and and I'm just honored and thrilled that our students would see the need that our students have for that so we're very appreciative and grateful for their considerations sure um here's a few pictures of our school um um and then also we have a lake that was that wasn't recent trust me that was in the fall but we do have our students we uh actually had gone fishing there with them and these are a couple of our field trips where our students were were at uh some of the areas there so these are a couple of our staff and students

023again and also the students that receive their Board of Education recognition so so thank you for allowing me to um speak today about Crossroads in Camp Oakland and we really appreciate your support and all you do for our community and thank you for your time this [Applause] evening thank you both I love hearing about Crossroads does anyone have any questions or comments I have one um for the students that have to stay because of whatever reason do they have an opportunity to go to church on Sundays I know that sounds weird no that's a that's a that's a great question in case you didn't hear it there asking if some of the students have the opportunity to to go to a church or setting on on Sunday and typically that's always up to the camp

024that's not something that we provide um and it's not normal that they all go out but there might be someone that comes and speaks to them periodically okay that's good to know thank you anybody else yeah just want to make sure that uh I heard you correctly you said all safety drills have been uh uh I guess uh taken care of for this year except one you said yes we we have a tornado drill and there's a our severe weather awareness week is usually a time that we do that one in the spring especially with our students a lot of them leave and so the ones that we did the tornado drill with in the fall many of them are not here now so March 19th was kind of designated as by the state of

025Michigan as the severe weather awareness week and so we'll do a tornado drill that day yeah um we also participate in all of the threat assessment training suicide assessment training all the safety Dr William and I are over there for all of almost all of the meetings I attend she's there um we have a team all the drills that are required are done loged just like any other school there might be a few more still to come I think two right you have you'll have a few more but very much in alignment lack Stu with what's expected at any other school in the district just because they live in a different en environment doesn't mean that we don't align with all the best practices and policy board policy and procedure yeah I guess that was

026kind of my followup was with such high turnover with the students it must be difficult to ensure that all the students are up on the latest like safety protocols and and things at the school so I'm sure you guys that's another great question and the the campus Camp Oakland has their own drills that they do as well so they're not only done in school but they're done at The Residency so they get them in both areas and a matter of fact two weeks ago we had the ox fire department out and we did a drill an AED drill with our staff with them just a couple weeks ago okay great thank you you're welcome I'll just point out Dr Willman reminded me that we also meet with Camp Oakland about the EOP and safety so

027that's the I think the that's been so good is that we have connected the two together where even in our some of our approaches and how behaviors we're we're using the same therapies and safety and all of that it's all you know collaboration is key right now thank you you're welcome anybody else okay well thank you again appreciate you being here tonight thank you we appreciate all the work you do thank you very much thank you all right next we are moving up to the LCA presentation Miss Chandler is here she's going to be meeting us virtually and I need to reog into to zoom so give me one moment I apologize understood thank you is that what that screen was did it time out I didn't see it so I think you're good though

028oh okay like Now's the Time while we have some downtime we're just chatting about the fact that they do still do the uh firewood program there so all community members looking to buy firewood don't forget to go visit Crossroads they do a great job Beth can you hear us I can can hi everybody hello all right so I launch in or was there an intro or anything that was I need to wait on I'm going to introduce you one second okay I don't John do you want to come up too or okay um next on our agenda is Beth chanler from Lighthouse Connections Academy she is our kind of liaison between the two she serves as our director of charter schools for the district and she and I work alongside with Dr Milligan and John

029um as we are the authorizer for that and some of you returning board members you're familiar with having to approve the board and we went through the reauthorization process and all of that fun but this is our lady behind the scenes so with our new board we wanted to familiarize all of you with what Lighthouse Connections Academy is and allow Beth this time to be able to speak on that okay thank you I'm going to try to share my screen now at the moment it tells me I can't share so I'll let somebody very techy try to make that happen um real briefly hello to everybody a few new faces there I know you haven't some of you have seen me some of you have not um just has has anyone had a chance to

030look through the slide deck that I put in the board or that was put in the board packet if you haven't that's fine I intend it to be a resource for you to be able to go back to um so there are a lot of links in there and while some of those slides are a little bit wordy I'm not going to read them to you uh so have to worry about that but okay looks like I can share um can everybody see the slide deck now okay perfect perfect so uh as Allison said thank you Dr Wiman um we're an authorizer right what is that mean some of you have an idea of that you've been through some of this but some of you it's kind of a New Concept um and so I

031just want to give you a brief overview like I said leave you with resources that you can dig into a little more on your own if you'd like and um hopefully answer any questions that you might have uh tonight so on the um basically uh I guess I just went through uh this introduction but I've been working with Oxford for the last couple years um um closely with Dr bman and now Dr Milligan and um just want you guys to to know that there's a lot to be proud of as far as being an authorizer there only about 10 public school authorizers in the state you have universities like CMU and Grand Valley and fair state that are authorizing schools but you're one of a kind of a rare breed and um there are some

032things to be proud of in the way that Oxford is is doing their authorizing so um authorizer Basics so a Michigan authorizer is responsible for making sure the academy that they authorize is in compliance with the contract that we've executed with them and with state law and so this first image you'll find a link there um that'll take you to the Department of ads Charter Public Schools page so that'll give you some basic info but the document I really like is this overview that the MBE has recently come up with I think they drafted it in November um and it's it really does a nice job of outlining all the responsibilities and roles of an authorizer of a charter school and goes into specifics of a Cyber Charter School which is what Lighthouse is um

033so I would encourage you to go through um those documents that if you have curiosity beyond what I present to you tonight um but again good resource there for you just to understand authorizing in Michigan one of the things the MBE uses to make sure an authorizer is doing what it's supposed to do is um this assurance and verification visit they're on about a threee cycle and our last visit at Oxford was in 2024 so I joined in 2022 and so this was my first visit with you guys and it went very well Dr meligan and Dr Bowman were both part of that visit but I was able to um kind of lead the presentation to the Department of AD and they were very pleased they kind of had to nitpick to find things to

034tell us to improve on these two links on the slide are going to give you our presentation to the mde um and this Oxford AB self- rating is going to be a concise kind of listing of all of the indicators that the mde looks at there at this time there were 22 separate indicators that they kind of audit from things Financial things how we make sure the academy is uh the board is doing things correctly other compliance all sorts of compliance and submissions that we track to make sure that our Academy that we authorize is doing what it needs to do so you can look at both the document here and you can click into the um self- rating which shows how we rated ourselves then we got mde feedback after the meeting again on

035each of these um indicators and how we were doing our job um and so you can link to that feedback and our response um it'll give you a lot maybe more information than than you really want um you know the authorizer role is not to necessarily micromanage we're more of a supervisor an overseer but it does help to know um some details about what's going on and and that's part of my role for you I go to all the academy board meetings I visit the school office at least once a year um and and in constant communication with the academy folks Pearson who is the um educational service provider and the academy folks uh specifically so um one of the tools that Alison and I have been bringing on we've been getting some training in

036is something called epicenter um and so epicenter is a program that was developed for Michigan authorizers in order to help them keep track of and keep a close eye on all the compliance submissions and items that they are tasked with keeping an eye on uh this is a link to the epicenter website they are now Across the Nation being used by by um authorizers they were developed for machine authorizers specifically so it's it's really a good tool for us to be able to um keep track of everything that we need to keep track of and kind of keep our our level of authorizing at the top where it is uh the MBE actually used the term gold standard uh when they were referring to our practices so I'm proud of that and and I think

037Oxford you as a board should be proud of that um just as as an example here's a screenshot of the compliance Center in epicenter so this is not interesting to you all I'm sure but for me um this gives me a spot to go look and see are they behind on any missions have they been on time have they certified the things they need to certify so this is a nice dashboard for me to be able to say o here's something we need to drill down on and and really focus on with them um and let's see I guess before I go on to talking about the academy itself does anybody have any questions about all this this barrage of authorizer information you've gotten so far anybody Sarah Beth yeah um I'm just wondering are

038you guys like a private company that works with the state to authorize us to have stuff outside of seated schools so the state developed the idea of again allowing public schools to have unseated options for um you know a charter school authoriz a charter school with you know not typical in your seat options um I I am a consultant and I make sure I come in and make sure you guys are uh staying on top of the things the MV is going to audit you on make sure you are keeping track of all these compliance um documents and submissions um and having your finger on the pulse of the Academy's operations how the board governance is going all those little details so that's where I come in I work for Oxford I don't work for

039the state though I feel like one of my main jobs is to keep a good relationship with the Department of Ed for Oxford so that they are at ease they are confident in what we're doing um and and I feel like we've established that Dr Willman and and Dr Milligan were a part of that a visit I think think they can speak to that as well but using epicenter is another way to set the mde at ease that we are doing um a topnotch job uh at what we're doing so I don't know if I answered your question I am not with the state I don't I don't um do anything to allow you to authorize but now that you've authorized I make sure that you guys are in great standing with the Department Ben

040thank you thank you I just had one if we could go back to the response indicator 1.5 could you just give us a a brief overview of how um you know we're going to the mde gave the recommendation right in response to special education and IEPs and that was one that came out in the audit and there was our response can you just go over the protocols that are put in place to ensure that we're in compliance with that so um I I will probably defer mainly to the academy because they have all the the details of how they do that I do know that we have a that the academy has a robust special education um program and provision for these students there are probably if I read the lat lest um information uh

041correctly there are probably 3 to 400 students with either an IEP or some other disability that are being served that are choosing Lighthouse to be their education provider um so as far as going into details if you'd allow me to I would um I'd like to kind of compile something for you that I can send via email to Allison um if that's okay and then I can get you a more thorough response I just most of what has to happen on the um response is going to be from the academy level what we are going to do is um uh the site visit that I do I go into the academy office and I meet with the school leader I meet with the principals special ad director they're all there and so those those opportunities

042to discuss hey how's it going there is always a special ed report in the OR at least reference to how things are going in the board meetings so I am there witnessing that and have the opportunity I have a spot on every agenda for the authorizer report so I'm able to ask further questions on that um but if if you'd like me to kind of get you a bullet list of what we're doing as an authorizer um along those lines i' be happy to do that through Alison if that works yeah that's great thank you okay perfect anybody else up till now no okay we're good to keep moving okay so one more slide um The Academy let me see if I can there we go so Lighthouse Connections Academy on this slide you guys

043have the ability to link to their website and I encourage you to go explore that to see what their all about um because this is what you guys are making possible by authorizing um this school is run by um managed by Pearson Education which is a major player in the cyber school World um very solid and very on top of um everything they're supposed to be doing they're across the country they have a team dedicated to to Michigan and and so they're very they've been very responsive to me when we were going through the AV process we had to get a lot of information from them and I had to ask them to start doing some things um so they're very responsive they're doing a great job but they aren't uh they aren't up there

044saying hey we're doing a great job leave us alone they're very open to what we need from them as an authorizer which is um is great we have a great relationship with them and by extension the academy um but the thing thing I wanted to talk to you about if you get on the website you'll be able to see some sample students who go to Lighthouse who chosen Lighthouse as um their educational option and you know we've seen over the years that being in a seat all day is not a good fit for all kids and so this option because you guys authorize louse a child who is a comp of the dancer let's say who has performance and and training demands or a child who is extremely Advan or gifted and kind of needs

045a different pace or a different challenge um a child who has severe anxiety and just being in a classroom with other kids is a is an obstacle to getting their education or a child like we talked about with some form of disability um who many of them are served at lighthouse those kids all deserve right a place to get their education where they can focus on their education and for some of them that's not a bricken mortar which is fine what you guys have done by authorizing this Statewide cyber school is especially during covid uh you've given that option to more than 2,000 students a year across the state Lighthouse brings in kids from 82 of the 83 counties in Michigan and like I said you'll see little snapshots of the kids that are choosing

046Lighthouse and it's a great fit for them and it's something that if you weren't doing this they might not have access to so I feel like that's kind of the intangible value to what you're doing by authorizing Lighthouse John Fitzgerald of course can speak to the the financial benefit to the district and there is one but that's not that's not why we're doing this and and if you um you should kind of get the feel from their website but certainly if you ever had an opportunity to engage with the folks running the school at Lighthouse it's about the kids and this is just another way for Oxford to do what's right for kids well beyond your school walls well beyond your District border um and so you you really should be commended for taking the

047initiative to to to do this to authorize the Statewide cyber school um I will point you to these two Links at the bottom there's the most recent state of the school report that was presented at uh the December board meeting for Lighthouse and then um School leader Teresa Woods actually gave a subcommittee testimony um in 2023 to the house in Michigan and that's pretty power pretty powerful it's the script of it so it's not her actually speaking but both those things will help give you a picture of the academy and what it's doing out there in the state um for our students and families so any questions on the academy or anything else any questions or comments okay well thank you again for joining us this evening and I appreciate your presentation and all of

048the links that were very helpful all right my pleasure and I will get to work on a a bullet list for you Alison you'll see it coming through um I'm not sure which board member you guys are in a small little image on my screen but uh I like to pass that on to uh the folks who were interested thank you thanks everyone have a great night you too okay we're going to move into the next agenda item scheduled public comment we have three this evening and we will start with Marissa Prince hi I'm here to speak about the um agenda item which is the letter to Governor Whitmer so so the last meeting um it was also on the agenda and we saw a lot of really strong opinions and some really serious statements

049made about the content of this letter and how it could adversely affect Oxford's students and staff so um I got the letter I printed it out at home it's about half a page like not not very long so I read it um it begins with a little refle reflection some gratitude and then some advocacy and then an offer to meet it's pretty simple well written straightforward there's an emphasis on 31aa and 31n funding which is support for things like paying the salaries of school psychologists School social workers and school counselors among other um ways to fund School mental health and safety costs so as someone who chooses to stay um involved in the ongoing recovery here and as someone who cares about the safety of my children but who also really cares about the safety

050of my children's teachers work such as this letter is important to me I care about my children's teachers I want them to be safe I don't want to ask them to ever EXP experience something like the shooting again this type of Outreach is not only within the board's scope it is very relevant to students and staff as far as its relevance to the efforts for the new strategic plan I just want to let you know I will personally reject any District strategy that does not include goals related to student and teacher well-being meaning Mental Health and a feeling of safety I'm not you know we're not asking you to testify in front of a subcommittee like lious did we're asking you to send a half-page letter to the governor to fund mental health and keep

051this at the Forefront what happened in the last meeting was unbelievable so I encourage the board to engage in regular ongoing advocacy which is actually in your operations man man manual as one of your required roles there's no shortage of educational work that deserves your time and advocacy this brief letter should only be a very small part of your Collective efforts and finally just if any of you are going to be visiting legislators on your own I think it would be appropriate to just provide a written summary of your visit in open session for transparency since there was a a lot of referring to former board members visiting legislators but we don't really know you know what the result of that was so um I support sending this and voting for it tonight thank you

052thank you Marissa move on to Danielle croac good evening I'm speaking as a concerned parent and resident of the Oxford Community School District regarding the conduct of a trustee as it relates to the letter to the governor I have filed a complaint but felt it was necessary to bring transparency here publicly to the community I believe this board member has violated ethical standards by failing to collaborate effectively with fellow board members and the community thereby undermining the integrity in function of the school board it is a fact she attended three meetings between January 3rd and February 11th also attended by the superintendent at least one administrator other parents including myself and a few other board members these collaborative discussions included topics of school safety Mental Health Resources fi financials communication and advocacy at the state

053and federal level the specific action to to Revis and draft a letter to the governor advocating for safety legislation mental health and the investigation was absolutely discussed at all three meetings she was well aware of the revised letter and the expected intention to review but instead was dishonest with the board and this community pretending not to know about its intention or its origin creating a spectacle these actions were calculating and the perception as she aimed to destroy the reputation of one or more board members page 15 of the board of operating procedures reinforces standards of behavior including advocacy quote it is the responsibility of the board members to be Advocates not only for Oxford Community Schools but for all public education when a board member fails to uphold these ethical standards it erodes public trust

054and negatively impacts the district's ability to provide a quality education this board member demonstrated concerning behaviors during their election these violations were raised to the board at the time and she was given Grace the patterns of violations and unethical behavior is concerning and cannot continue per board policy 2300 board member conduct I respectfully request again a review of this matter and ask that the appropriate action be taken including the removal of committee assignments the Michigan Association of school boards promotes code of ethics that includes respect Integrity commitment to collaboration and advocacy for all of our students and staff thank you thank you Danielle buckmir good evening I hope everybody's enjoying this little Heat Wave we're getting here um so I'm here to talk about um this letter as well not put it in my wife's

055words what's the big deal here like that's a great question Sherry it's a great question I don't quite understand what is so controversial about our state investigating this preventable tragic shooting or this letter to the governor I don't understand why our government sits in silence and chooses to do nothing about the shooting you are all okay with that I don't understand why the AG played the board and our community the AG never needed an invitation to investigate the shooting she played us you okay with that this is what our government does sits in silence and lets the people fight with each other let hate and division rule you are okay with that and you choose to sit there and take the bait all in the meantime they get away with murder and are not accountable

056for running a better business they don't care about the kids I know the argument that you don't want to put staff and teachers through another investigation what you need to understand is our state government does not recognize the guidepost in investigation they don't recognize it there has to be a state Le investigation that is our best shot at driving change from this tragedy throw some mental health stats at you nearly one in 10 kids was diagnosed with anxiety problems in 2020 a 21% increase from 2019 44% of high school students reported they persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year in Michigan in the past year 16.55% of youths ages 12 to 17 suffered from at least one major depressive episode 59.7% have not received mental health treatment the data doesn't lie we are

057in a mental health crisis Oxford Schools should have been ready for this so you need to advocate for change you need to join us in this fight and advocate for change I want to talk about an example of potential change that happened on November 30th so this is what we knew about the shooter one his saber assessment which is a mental health evaluation was flaming red two he was caught searching bullets on the phone on his phone three he was caught watching violent videos on his phone four he was sad that his friend moved away five he was sad that his pet died six the picture that he drew that everybody has seen blood everywhere my life is useless in a picture of the gun Oxford Community Schools knew guns were in the home and

058we know that because of the voicemail that Pam fine had left with the mother he quit the bowling team Sean Hopkins diagnosed him with suicidal ideation that's number nine number 10 the bird head incident that was dismissed as a non-credible threat well we all know now that that was credible and 11 is the shooter had fetal alcohol syndrome so Oxford Schools is in a business of kids it's what they do it's what it's what they do right on November 30 the shooter was at the top of the mountain in crisis nobody noticed you're okay with that so let's talk about the change that can come from this using the shooting as example those 11 data points that I just talked about what do you say we put in place a student well-being support Software System

059a database and schools are already collecting all kinds of data you can add well-being surveys into that you got grades attendance disciplinary action participation in activities you have this database School District hires a well-being coordinator okay this well-being coordinator assembles a team with a systematic datadriven evidence-based approach to evaluating a students po the students population well-being in a techy way while making interventions per give you an example we do this with 42 strong with one data point we have the kids take a monthly survey and we review it in a graph format of the current month with a couple months prior so we're kind of we're able to see where a kid is trending right and if we see that a kid is continuing to Trend downward we make an intervention it's simple and then

060the and then the starts coming back up again right that kid just needed a check-in so we're so we're preventing we're in prevent mode we're trying to keep kids out of Crisis schools are in a very unique position they're a funnel they're a Cornerstone of communities schools are not the reason for our Mental Health crisis but schools need to adapt and change to help prevent school shootings they need to join the fight after they do that now the schools need to stand up and put pressure on the system to start to solve this well-being issue Upstream with preventable measures the system reacts to tragedies with no focus on preventing them I'm going to leave you with this Michigan schools are ranked 42nd out of 50 in United States and last in our region so we're

061not giving our kids a quality education and we're not providing a safe environment for the kids November 30th is the proof of that the data doesn't lie stop talking like you're about the kids the data shows that you are not you're a unique position to Advocate and drive change from this tragedy this will be your once in a-lifetime opportunity to drive real change in our world you are part of the system and every District in our state is waiting for you to stand up and do what's right your jobs aren't on the line their jobs and their lives are they can't stand up and speak in fear of Retribution 400,000 kids in the United States have been affected by gun violence think about that that's a staggering number so we need to get off you

062need to get out of the sidelines and join the fight with us and drive change thank [Applause] you thank you Buck moving into the consent agenda see we have minutes from the last board meeting bills payable and HR updates would anybody like to make a motion I can move to approve the consent agenda as presented can I get support Mike Whitney thank you any discussion all those in favor I any opposed motion carries thank you all right our superintendent's report Dr meligan all right good evening everyone my report is going to begin with something that is very important um to Bucks point safety is a critical component that we cannot afford to get wrong in any way shape or form and so so uh one of the things that we have been working very hard

063on um is the prepare training for any type of Crisis that happens in our schools um I had the opportunity to go through this training uh with Dr Willman and with Todd barles uh it was very intense uh 7 hours large workbook that we went through and it was all about preparing the team for any type of Crisis and to be vigilant about um situations that could potentially become a crisis so I wanted to say first of all thank you to uh Allison and Todd it was very intensive but very helpful to Think Through crisis situations to ensure that we are being very intentional about what we do and how we do it um So currently um Incident Command Staff every school has an instant com uh commands team that are comprised of very specific

064people with very specific roles in order to coordinate any type of crisis situation so right now 98% of our ICS staff are trained um we actually had this training set up months ago but because of multiple um challenges it had to be rescheduled um but we were able to hold it yesterday uh it was really incredible it was a great opportunity to go through uh preparation and specifically how we uh how that works in tandem with the um EOP um the goal of the prepare training is to build a consistent Crisis Prevention that is the key is prevention through recovery framework um and the goal is that once you go through this training everybody on those crisis teams are speaking the same language so when we call a drill or call a situation by a

065specific terminology everybody's on the same page with that it enhances collaboration and communication we had several opportunities where we did tabletop activities where a situation because a crisis could be the milk that we received was spoiled and people are getting sick all over the building that is a crisis right it's not something you necessarily think about as a crisis but from a school standpoint there's a lot of people that have to be taken care of immediately and how do you navigate that you navigate that through your Incident Command Staff everybody knowing what to do how to do it in terms of communication in ter terms of facilitating uh safety and wellness all of those pieces come together in this type of structure um it connects physical and psychological safety obviously that there's the physical safety

066that we want to be mindful of but in terms of kids seeing others getting sick kids being worried staff being worried staff being scared that's a huge psychological component and so it combines both the physical and psychological training to support you know um navigating through a crisis and it provides long-term sustainability so there's a train trainer model so Al both both Allison and Todd are trainers but we also have I think Bridget is also a trainer is that correct for Workshop to so we have yeah so we have several other trainers um which is great because the goal is to build capacity within our school district so that we can sustain these initiatives and then there is a legal requirement um to create positive safe School climates and this is a part of that initiative

067so again kudos to Allison and Todd it was a an extremely intensive training but definitely very valuable um and this is what I think was extremely helpful obviously we're educational institutions but we can't educate if students don't feel physically or psychologically safe and so the goal of the prepare training is that everyone involved in a crisis knows what to do how to do it and how to support students in a situation so that we can take care of them we can take care of the staff and with the ultimate goal of getting back to learning as soon as possible here are some um responses from participants they report reduced anxiety and fear associated with school safety planning um it's pretty nerve-wracking to make sure that 400 500 a thousand kids are safe and you want

068to make sure you get it right and so having a plan in place can reduce that anxiety increase knowledge and confidence associated with Emergency Operations planning and multi-tier CR crisis response it's nice to sit down with colleagues that have similar responsibilities and go through okay what what would we do if this happened you know if we had this situation if we had you know X Y or Z crisis situation they had all different types of scenarios and we talked as a group what would we do how would we handle this how would we communicate um what would those Communications look like um and talk through all the different aspects of that so it honestly it does build confidence Once you walk through it with your team so it was really helpful um balanced comprehensive approach

069to crisis preparedness and how important those aspects are um incident command system and again that's the IC chart um everybody has a role everyone knows what their role is and how to go about enacting that and identify key components of effective School Emergency Operations plan which is the EOP um EOP for us that is an incredibly important document and it's very very thick right and so having time to sit down go through those resources collaborate with colleagues to ensure we understand when situations happen how do we handle them right so again it was it was a very intense training but it was extremely helpful and I'm glad I had that opportunity to go through that with my colleagues all right changing gears um we are going to propose tonight to shift some things around we've

070been talking about this for some time now we really want to have more opportunities uh for our community members especially at specific schools to feel comfortable coming in and be a part of the conversations with myself my team board members um it can be around the facilities around safety around curriculum any questions you might have so we're requesting tonight that the board consider Shifting the March 11th meeting to Daniel Axford Elementary Chad will be uh doing his presentation that night um so we're asking to push the board meeting to 7 o'clock so that we can have a community meeting from 6:00 to 7:00 we will have light Refreshments there um come for the refreshments stay for the conversation that's okay with me um so March 11th we're hoping to switch that um and then April

0718th we have our OS uh presentation that evening and so we're requesting that we do the same where we shift the time to 7 o'clock so that we can have our community conversations from 6:00 to 7: um at ohos so hopefully we'll have an opportunity to discuss that further in the agenda we have something exciting to talk about I'm very excited about it uh Christy Smith and and colleagues she's leaned into all sorts of um support including Community Support to revamp our website so it went live end of January yes yeah yeah so I wanted to have an opportunity to have Christie not just talk about it and show some show some aspects of it but I also wanted to say thank you I know how stressful this was putting this together um clearly you

072know a a Department of one um but I appreciate all of your efforts so I'm gonna have christe talk a little bit about the website yeah so I'll just give like a quick tour um so I'm excited about the new website um it's the same URL so it's oxfordschools.org and um before I jump in I do just want to thank people who volunteered to help um we had some on the front end giving ideas of layouts that would make more sense um or things to avoid or things to you our the company that we were working with ap moved all the data over and it we didn't necessarily want all the data over so we there's a lot of organization broken links um so people were going through suggesting you know fixes and things like

073that so I really do appreciate and then I have other volunteers still waiting that are going to contribute more pictures and things to pretty it up a little more as we go um so I was hoping actually today to talk a little bit more about the mobile app that's going to come with this too it is live I met with them yesterday they're like good to go and then today they said we're getting ready to roll out an update to the app so maybe like put the brakes on telling everyone to download it right now so um as soon as I get the green light on the app I'll send out a video with instructions and overview um the app is just going to really be the communication tools of our website and just a

074super easy to use um you can get notifications sent to your phone you can click on a calendar link and pop it right into your own calendar um it's just it it will be like a a very quick um thing to just get what's going on in the district um so if you do have the old Oxford Schools app you can go ahead and delete that there's going to be a new one coming out so um I will jump into the features of the website obviously this is the desktop version um it's also very mobile friendly you'll see if you're using it on your phone it works very well um so just from the homepage here if I scroll down we'll get back up to that fun stuff at the top in a second um

075but I wanted to point out this live feed so one of the things that I heard from a lot of people is that you know there's things shared on social media but I'm not on Facebook I don't use social media I prefer not to because there's a lot of drama there and so um this live feed is is basically what we're pushing out to social media it's coming to our website and you can get to it without having to have a Facebook account you can see it without any of the comments or things like that so it's just you know for example this post was from yesterday if you click you can see the photos larger um so it's anything like that that we would post to social media um or things that eventually schools

076will start to push out will show up there too um there's a section below called news and these are a little bit longer stories like more like articles um right now each of the buildings has pretty much the same news stories but as I get working with the people in the buildings these will look different depending on you know which School site you're on um and then the district site we can pull all of those in um the event section is one that I am actually probably most excited about um um because we're g to we're going to start using this a little bit more but from the district homepage here you can say see all events and it has four District calendars that are checked off and then it also has the ability for

077you to check specific buildings so if you have a student at Clear Lake and Ms and you want to look at everything together you can click on those and see them all in one calendar together um so I do have trainings coming up in early March with the buildings and we're going to really start getting everything populated in these calendars moving forward um so let me go back so the top of the homepage here um some of the buttons this was through feedback from surveys and things where you know people are saying it's really hard to find a staff directory or we're always looking for the printable calendars so some of those things that were most important um to people wound up kind of in more prominent places on the website um those are also

078if you click on menu at the top those are in the site menu here and so um if you scroll down one of the things that we were trying to avoid that our last website had was um menus nested in menus nested in other menus so for the most part um you're not going to see that here there's a couple with little plus signs that go you know one step deeper but we don't have you know three or four different layers here um which is going to make it easier to find things um also going to make it easier to find things this is my maybe second favorite was events my favorite um this little magnifying glass in the top is a search feature so instead of clicking the menu when you know you're looking

079for strategic plan and having to scroll through okay what section is it under okay there it is um I can just go to the magnif glass and try to type onehanded strategic plan okay so then it comes up with any of these types of things so this is an actual web page that has information on strategic plan um if I was looking for a news article there's one here um the cool thing too is it will pull things from our staff directory so if I type in transportation um and I if I want just phone numbers and things like here's the main office or if I you know want the transportation page I can click page and that brings it up here so it really does make it easier to find things very quickly on

080the website without having to search through menus um speaking of staff directory we do have a functional staff directory um if I type and this is something I wanted to point out to parents oops if I type in like attendance it will pull up all the different attendance lines at the schools they're also in the in the contact information on the school pages but um same thing if you type in you know um bus garage or Schoolboard um you can search that way you also have the option in our staff directory to to let me boop these and these these icons they're required by the state to be that large that wasn't a choice I made but we can kind of move them over um you can select the department so if you want to

081see everyone in you know associated with maintenance or my favorite is the Oxford Wildcat pack um you can see the staff filtered that way I think I just have like one or two more things um if you go to to the schools drop down at the top you'll see each School site is slightly different but and they have things that are more geared toward parents and students so they have the class link um extracurriculars Power School staff directory supply list um these were things that came up high with parents that they wanted easy access to for each building um like I said at the bottom in the footer there's an attendance line here with the contact info for the school um and basically I just want to encourage people to explore I did add a

082link at the bottom of each page that says if you found an issue if you have a suggestion um if you click that link you can looop it into the little form and um I can't guarantee we're going to make all of the suggested changes but um we definitely take them all into consideration and if it can make the site better we're gonna We me I'm gonna do it um so it's definitely a work in progress this is always going to be something that's changing updating um but yeah it took a little while to get here but I'm happy we're here so do you have any questions s yeah um first of all I want to commend you that is beautiful I've been playing around with it a little bit good thanks but I used

083to be I could pull up the community vendors um because even though we homeschooled we still use the public schools and I I highly recommend some of our fun um classes that the homeschoolers can take um and so but when I click on it it doesn't pull up the vendors so I I thought it might do that now that you told me but I just was wondering if that would change yeah so OVA has been doing some um work on their end that we're going to update but there is the info for future student site still available okay and so all of the the different Pathways and things for that have to do with the community vendors are still here I think they're under academics okay I just yeah I'm I'm Tech challenged so that's

084I thought I better ask that's okay um th this site still had a couple years left on the contract and all the links were set up directing here for OVA you know marketing efforts and things so this site's going to be up for a little while longer that's going to work in conjunction with ours and eventually we'll bring it all under one umbrella okay sounds good thank you anybody else Shane just a quick question regarding the app I know you said there's a new one that's going to be pushed out soon um I guess it's a two-part question do we have an ETA on that and until it's pushed out do you still recommend people keeping the original app open or is it just not usable right now at all um the original app so

085our website and app actually expired already which was one of the reasons for the big push on this the app might still be working um the old one um but we haven't really been pushing anything to it and so um the the new apps if you go to the bottom of the website they're there um if I wanted to go and see if it's blocked not um and download the app I could um I would just want it it would update or I would need to go and update it um they said hopefully by early next week um but it I mean if you want to play around with it they're there they're working um but I think the big push to get people to download will be probably in about two weeks thank you

086anybody else well thank you I think my favorite is the event schedule so it's going to be super helpful such a big improvement from the last one and I know you've worked so so hard on this and I appreciate everything that you've done with it it is it is coming along very nicely and it is much easier for our families to use so thank you again you're welcome thanks chrisy appreciate that um and that was some feedback that we got about um school calendars if we could do a better job of meshing them and now that we have a really good way of putting them all in one place we can see where the conflicts are um so that's going to be a really great tool so thank you christe appreciate that that was a

087tremendous mendous amount of work and will continue to be a tremendous amount of work so I appreciate you all right thanks Aaron yeah all right I just wanted to highlight a few things um Beth with Lighthouse connections um as she talked about being a consultant she has been outstanding I had no idea what this was when I got here and so I've definitely been brought up to speed um and she talked about the mde visit and we did that virtually that was also a very intense experience probably about 3 hours going through they have very high standards for this type of work and we went through and they were very impressed with the partnership so that told me that was a high quality um opportunity for students across the state and we are fortunate to

088have uh that partnership so this was started back in 2018 um as Beth me mentioned we are the authorizer of Lighthouse academy and um also mentioned was the financial benefit um because we're the pass through organization and specifically it's a fee based partnership so we uh try we receive a fee uh to support the compliance component through so through the state and so it is definitely beneficial for our district and Oxford was selected over competing districts so when they were first setting this up they were looking at a whole bunch of different uh districts to partner with and we were the ones um that were able to be selected so this was a great opportunity they were going to find somebody for sure and I'm glad that in you know we were able to to

089get this partnership um and again to Beth's point the goal is that all kids need individualized education that's the reality of it and there is no one format that works for all kids so it's great to be able to provide and support another platform that as Beth was talking you know quite a few students in Michigan take advantage of this and it's great that they have those options and that we can be a part of it um I want to do some celebrations we did have National School counseling week um at the beginning of the month thank you to OVA thank you Janet for sharing these pictures they're adorable um and I just want there's a proclamation in the middle I'm not going to read the whole thing but guidance counselors are so critical to

090the work of our schools and the support of our students and our families so highlights from the proclamation about school counselors they help students reach their full potential are actively committed to helping students explore their abilities strengths interests and talents they help families focus on ways to further the academic career and social emotional development of their children counselors work with teachers and other Educators to help students explore their potential they seek to identify and utilize Community Resources that can enhance and complement comprehensive School counseling programs and help students become productive members of society and counselors are an integral part of the educational process that enables all students to achieve success in school so I just wanted to make sure our counselors know how much we appreciate them um they are truly an asset to our

091schools our students or families it's also CTE celebration month it's February is very busy very busy month um we have an extremely robust CTE um Pathways program at the high school Nita spoke to it I think it might have been the last meeting um having the eighth graders come up and visit the high school and all the CTE opportunities some of them we may not you might not even know that we have them so um business management computer programming radio TV and broadcast technology uh Finance Health Science marketing ises that say Mecca mechatronics wow that sounds really cool oh that thank you Mike um that's robotics by the way close engineering automotive technology uh digital multimedia information research sources so that's for a high school I'm just coming from a large District if my high

092school had all of these Pathways for students what a gift what a gift right because kids have all different types of interest and to have all of these in one high school is incredible so I just want to say congratulations um to our uh CTE teams uh Lisa buts is the CTE director and it just provides such great opportunities for students to explore careers um what they're going to consider doing after high school um so it's it's really awesome that they have so many uh options uh February was Black History Month and several of our schools these are pictures from uh OES and Lakeville uh students learning celebrating all about Black History uh the purpose of these experience for students is to encourage critical thinking learn about contributions of um the black community acknowledge historical

093struggles and strengthen identity and pride I've talked before how important it is for students to see themselves in the curriculum so it's great to celebrate and have students see themselves in history in literature um so great opportunities for kids to learn and thank you for sharing the photos I appreciate it we have some really exciting things going on at our high school so this was our signing ceremony for our winter signing ceremony these are our students who signed on for colleges that they'll be attending uh Drew catd Braden Herring Luke Johnson Patrick wosniak Dominic DEA David Hixon and Jacob K all signed going to college so that's pretty exciting more exciting news our girls bowling um 2025 OAA Champions very exciting and then our boys basketball actually are starting into District um championships now but

094they went 21 and one this season so very close to being undefeated so very proud of our teams and finally I I don't even know what to say about this it was the most incredible experience I think I have had in a theater in a very long time um my husband and I were able to go to the Mary Poppins last weekend um it was just incredible to see the talent and the the scener just everything everything it was a professional show it was incredible so if you haven't had a chance to get tickets Please do they the the students were phenomenal the set was just visually amazing and there's acrobatics they fly I thought well I mean I see the picture and everything but they're not really going to do that are they oh

095yeah they do that's incredible so I really encourage everybody um there is a QR code there where you can get tickets it's super easy to get tickets um just an incredible experience and I know they would appreciate the support so hopefully you'll have time they um there are performances Thursday Friday Saturday and a mattina on Sunday so lots of options left over so that concludes my report thank you welcome anybody like to ask a question have a comment if we could just circle back real quick to the prepare can you give us an idea you know how many in each building what is this uh group consist of how many are our security Personnel part of that teachers yeah so it's a part so each school has its own IC chart so there's an Incident

096Commander there's uh four leaders but then there's it's broken down into a chart it's actually in our EOP so each each school has their own chart that designates all of the roles and responsibilities um we also have a district chart for what everyone's responsible for I'm The Incident Commander for the district as a whole um uh Christy Smith is the communications uh Commander so she would be responsible for all Communications so we have a district structure and then we have a building structure um everyone serves a role but there are lead roles that are responsible for navigating the big areas um so again each school has their IC chart and it is in their and so that's the group that are all training prepare perfect correct okay thank you anyone else all right well let's

097move well we'll stay with you Dr meligan if you want to talk about the right field trip please so we have one new field trip it's not until September um but it is our um our choir camp for our um believe it's our high school yep so yep it's for uh well Middle School and High School uh that'll be going to a choir Camp September 12th through the 14th it is in Fenton Michigan um and it's for team building skill building and performance experience so that adds so we had three last time that we're going to be voting on so this is our first read for this one okay does anybody have any questions for this specific one all right so we'll plan on voting on it at the next meeting and then the other

098three if there weren't any additional questions which we had discussed at the last meeting if anybody is comfortable we can move into a motion for those three SAR oh you want you want to read it go ahead move to okay where is that just read that okay I move to approve the field trips is presented support Mike Whitney thank you any discussion all those in favor I any opposed motion carries all right into policy as you will notice we did pull one of the two policies and there was an email that went to everybody explaining that the esta law there was a change and so we need to bring that back into policy committee so tonight we only have the one but once trun catches up with everything going on plus our request we will

099have a pile to bring you for now unless there's uh any questions on this one we can move into a motion make a motion thank you move to approv the board policies 540901 as presented support Shane thank you any discussion all those in favor I any opposed motion carries all right next item is our letter to the governor and just as a recap from what happened at the last meeting we left that meeting sent out an email once again to everybody asking for any potential edits suggestions I did receive one and I spoke with Shane about that and nobody else had anything to add at that point I sent it off to our legal counsel who you've all seen this I'm just refreshing uh we received the email that they approved of the letter in

100addition to that I spoke and had a conversation with David randles our lobbyist and he was uh very accommodating very nice gentleman and spoke about the fact that he supported what we were doing and and he would help us get connected with local legislators in addition and deliver the letter if we chose to approve it um and he will be following up with me this week on contacts that he believes would come alongside of us so that was productive as well and that leads us to today where we are and you all have that copy in board book so with that being said um would anybody like to either add to that elaborate move to the motion okay I was just going to make motion U move to approve the letter to Governor Whitmer as

101presented support Mike you want to take that and discussion um I just want to say um I appreciate the effort that's gone into this it's obviously important um our community has turned out now uh several times to make make sure that they voice their concerns their opinions um and I think that uh this is I I think this is just step one of a highly productive move forward well said Thank you anybody else I just want to thank you for following up with the lobbyist and doing some digging and research and making sure that this is something that would be effective communication if this is the path forward so I appreciate the work being done to do that I feel like there was a little um confusion as to whether this was going to be

102effective so I'm glad that that now has been clarified thank you for sharing that information that was communicated with you so beyond that that's all I have of course and I have not received an email yet but as you know once I do from him I will share with the full board and we like you said Shane as well this is just step one and I I really hope that we as a board can make an impact on on student safety so thank you everybody is there any anything else okay well all those in favor I any opposed motion carries all right as Dr Milligan mentioned we are wanting to to move the next meeting March 11th and April 8th so we as a board will need to make motions to do that they will

103also change the time from 6:30 to 7:00 allowing us the hour prior to meet with our community members staff anybody that wants to come and have dialogue with us we really appreciate it I know our community uh conversations over coffee were really successful last year and very appreciated I would love to see more participation because it it's always so beneficial for us and and we love to hear it so with that does anybody want to go into a motion or have anything else Mike Whitney move to approve changing the location of the March 11th board meeting to Daniel Axford and the time to 7 p.m. support Shane thank you any discussion all those in favor I any opposed motion carries next one Mike I'll read it but it should be OHS move to approve changing

104location of the April 8th board meeting to ohos and the time to 7 P.M thank you support Shane any discussion all those in favor I any opposed motion Carri is great I really look forward to that it's always fun visiting the [Applause] schools yeah absolutely I just have one clarifying question so the coffee discussions that took place prior to me being on the board are these meetings from 6:00 to 7: in place of or in addition to like do we plan on having any of those coffee discussions in the future I think for now we are going to see how this goes this was a recommendation from our governance committee and we'll see if if it looks like maybe we need more opportunity we can of course ask our governance committee to take a look

105at that and make suggestions then we decide as a board um but for now I think we'll we'll try this um just like the coffee ones we we tried different days and times and and kind of got a feel for where it was most effective and I think that this might be help F especially to Garner more parent and staff involvement at at each school um I think it's a great recommendation so we'll go with this for now okay and great if anyone feels that we want to move with more absolutely okay I know we're all on the same page with that the community dialogue is is very important to us and any chance we get for two-way discussions it's it's always beneficial so thank you for that all right our next next item up

106is letter of appreciation you all have that that is not publicly facing in board book but board members have seen it we went with the same process as the other letter I asked everybody to send in edits Suggestions by a certain time and now here we are and this is the the draft that we have so if anybody would like to either say something in addition or mov to a motion Shane move to approve the letter of appreciation as presented support I'll support and discussion okay I again I mean kind of echo what was the the letter before I appreciate that this being brought forward by an and um James and I appreciate that because I do think it's very merited like certainly our our staff has been through a lot um and continue to

107we see the challenges that are um just in general Across the Nation um the challenges that that our kids are are going through and trying to teach them and and meet them where they're at um and uh and and and still do all the other either Administration or the different as we're talking about through getting through all these policies that changes um just navigating all of that in the background while focusing on our children it's been uh I really I mean really appreciate our staff so I think it's very merited or warranted yeah all right well I absolutely agree I think that any opportunity that we can have to double down on our support and appreciation for staff is is great and once again thank you for bringing this up to the board I think

108that it is you know just one small token of appreciation that we can show to really support our staff and thank them for everything that they do for our for our children every day so with that we can move right into a vote all those in favor I opposed motion carries all right and Dr Milligan you will be facilitating getting this out to all of our staff members so that they will have an opportunity to to see what it is we are discussing this evening thank you all right next up the always riveting Mr Fitzgerald so this this should take what two three hours now just uh um tonight is the second reading related to the uh First Amendment to the general fund F last meeting we went through the presentation and um so at

109this point we're at the second reading request and requesting formal approval I'll be more than happy to feel any last questions related to it all right anybody yeah I think we covered it pretty well last time so without seeing any I'll just go ahead and move to approve the budget amendment one as presented can I get support Mike Whitney thank you any discussion all those in favor I any opposed motion carries all right unscheduled public comment do we have cards thank [Applause] you buckmir all right um just wanted to uh take a little bit of time to finish up a thought I kind of um lost my composure there I start when I start summarizing um when I when I start summarizing how our government has treated us and how our school district has treated

110us and devalued my son's life um you know it kind of starts getting to me so I apologize for that um one thing I wanted to wrap up with on that school safety support software was um you had those those 11 11 data points I was talking about about the shooter that we knew and then you add in all this other data now all this stuff's in a database but let's just say that didn't exist the the other stuff doesn't exist we can't get it past because of the red tape BS the bureaucracy that you all work in right but those 11 data points imagine if all that was in one spot think about that like that's how this this shooting could have been prevented every everybody knew stuff but it wasn't all in one

111spot for a gapo to make a decision that's the type of change I'm talking about right that's that's simple this shooting was preventable if all that information was in one spot it's as simple as that we don't need to complicate it this is why an investigation needs to be done this is why we need to put pressure with this letter on the system this is the system putting pressure on the system this is why this needs to happen because this tragedy was preventable and I'm never going away I got to live with this the rest of my life our family does so does Steve so do the Shilling so do the Baldwins and so do all the kids that were in school that day they're an addition to the 400,000 I mentioned earlier affected by

112gun violence so I'm never going away I'm going to be here and in your ear not stop and I want to be in our government's ear non-stop because we have there has to be a account ability to drive the change so far no change and that should be unacceptable three years later thank you thank you Buck all right our next item close session would anybody like to make a motion I can move to meet and close session to discuss the emergency operation procedure EOP pursuant to the open meetings act section 8K considering security planning to address existing or potential threats and pursuant to section 8e to consult with his attorneys regarding trial or settlement strategy in connected in connection with specific pending litigation case numbers 24-204 988 CK COA number 37341 pursuant to MCL 18e

113support Shane thank you any discussion all those in favor oh no we need to do a roll call I'm sorry I'm on it Mike you want to do that Mr Gibson yes M Von yes m Journey yes Mr Whitney yes president McDon yes all right it is 8:23 we will move into close session all right it is 9:52 and we are coming out of close session as you will see we have scheduled that activities any administrative clarification Dr Milligan I do I have a quick one um we got information back from masb uh legal team Brad bassic um he uh the document that we're using for Q&A the Google Doc um the concern is that that format could become an Oma violation there it is not right now but because the format kind of encourages

114back and forth conver ation right some person could put a response somebody else could put something in there um we're going to shift format um to just a Google form so what'll happen is if you have a question you just put your question in the Google form you submit it it turn it puts it in a spreadsheet and then you'll have the list of questions and responses right so and and it'll be a read only you won't be able to add um statements to it so that'll make it real clean um that was his only concern that um the Google Doc was just too open for that so I just wanted to see if you guys were okay with that does that work yeah okay absolutely thank you for that I think we all appreciate

115the uh digitization of our questions but of course we want to focus on staying away from any Oma violations good to know that we have not and we will not be with your new process so thank you and any final board comments no okay well I just want to say I appreciate everyone working together this evening and uh we're going to get out of here just before 10: so it'll be an early night it is 9:54 and this meeting is adjourned