Board of Education 2-08-22

001good evening everyone as you are coming in um just want to let you know that if you're here to speak at unscheduled audience participation uh there are some cards some forms on the back table the round table right in the back that you would fill those out please look at the back side it has some instructions on how that unscheduled all see audience participation flows and then you would get those to angela angela with your hand there she is over there uh by the tv and she'll collect those cards um and give them to me at at that time here [Applause] let's rise for the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice

002for all community members fellow board members um welcome to a regularly scheduled uh board meeting just for some uh announcements again if you're wanting to speak during unscheduled audience participation there are some white cards in the back that you can grab fill out and get those to angela also uh know that right at the beginning of our agenda we're going to be going into closed session with an attorney to talk about some things and then we'll be coming out to do our regular business so there will be a time when you're here and we're in the media room or somewhere having a meeting so just want you to be prepared for that it's all on the agenda but just in case you you didn't have one um mary would you do attendance please certainly president

003donnelly vice president griffith your secretary hanser present treasurer bailey here trustee de alessandro he's absent trustee foster here trustee schaefer all right board members thank you very much um i know that we have one change to the board agenda mary thank you president donnelly uh the agenda item is board of education matters for item b 2022 masb region 8 board of directors elections i'd like to propose that we move that item to the agenda for our february 22nd meeting this is the ocsba oakland county school boards association is hosting a forum for all the candidates for the region that's tomorrow on zoom an email was sent out for that if you want to participate in that but it would be a good opportunity to get a better view of the candidates before we vote and

004i would just like to move it there these ballots are due on march 2nd so i've already spoken with angela and she thinks we'll be able to still make that timeline from the 22nd meeting all right so your point is is that if we voted today we would be voting before we got a chance to meet these individuals but if we wait until february 22nd we will have had an option to go on this interview or watch watch their introductions that is correct all right is any i don't doesn't need a motion but is anybody uh opposed to moving this to the february 22nd i don't see it so uh let's just do that and and um maybe what we can do instead at that point is maybe american once again instructionally talk to us

005about when that interview thing is when we can get in and watch it and and it'll be more informative and prepare us for the the vote on the 22nd sound good sounds good all right very good thank you has you thrown any changes [Applause] all right we move on to the consent agenda uh we have the minutes of the january 31st minutes of the february first minutes of the february third bills payable uh for january would someone please put this motion on the floor chad move to approve the consent agenda as presented is there support eric's support discussion all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries we have the force a motion to go into closed session would someone like to read that motion heather move to meet in closed session pursuant to

006the open meetings act section 8c for the purpose of strategy and negotiation sessions connected with a collaborative bargaining agreement and 8e to consult with our attorney regarding trial and or settlement strategy in connection with a specific pending litigation very good is there support chad discussion seeing none roll call vote the shaffer yes mr foster yeah yes mr bailey yes mr griffin yes mr donnelly yes so it is 6 35 we're going to move into closed session um thank you for your patience all right everyone thank you for your patience we have uh ended our closed session it is 7 we're back into open session so we are on number four letter b right but you're going to just spend a second reminding us when it is that we can um meet these candidates thank you

007president donnelly uh so tomorrow night the oakland county school boards association is putting on a meet the candidate's night it's a candidate's forum for the four that are in our region it is at 7 00 pm and they did send out invitations to all of us if you don't have one in your mailbox please feel free to give me a call or send me an email and i'll send you the zoom invite it's all via zoom if there's any pressing questions that you would like to ask any of the candidates you can send um a note to um the reply to the ocsba email and they are gathering um information for that so that's tomorrow that's tomorrow evening all right thank you mary item five curriculum and instruction i don't see anything under mr weaver

008finance and operations uh mr barna a 2021-22 amended budget report good evening [Applause] i am yeah so the first thing before we get into the 2122 general fund amended budget i first wanted to address a couple questions that one of our trustees had with some of the expenses for the return to school ohs due to the tragedy and so i wanted just to go over the set statement of loss form and just kind of go over you know some of the main high level items that were done to the high school in addition to what was covered and what would be the responsibility of the district and so really what i want to just show you here as a description is just the coverage here and again very high level categories the mitigation um at

009first also the demo of carpeting ceiling tiles so on and so forth um then we have the cost of the carpeting for obviously the corridors that were directly impacted in addition to painting all of the interior of the building and again just all of the demo that occurred within pretty much six weeks and so the costs that you see here are the costs that were fully covered by setseg and what it did is it amounted to 720 as of approximately three weeks ago so we are still waiting for further invoices obviously there were two holidays during this time and during the rebuild the refresh and so we still are waiting for some other final invoices in which a portion will be covered by our insurance provider and again a portion will be covered by us

010as well if we go down a little bit further within the spreadsheet i'll reference that actually there are the costs that we are going to bear as a district and specifically these costs are related to a portion of the demo of carpeting and other materials ceiling tiles so on and so forth and paint that were within the classrooms uh specifically 58 classrooms in addition to several offices within the district um that we are actually paying for ourselves again they they weren't theoretically directly impacted by the tragedy and so that is why they're characterized here and so what we have here is a net district cost of those changes those enhancements to the school of 475 little over 475 000 and again i referenced a little while ago that we do have some outstanding invoices that

011haven't come in yet from jarvis and other contractors and i estimate at a very high level that we will probably have another 125 000 of additional costs that the district will have to bear and obviously a portion will also be above that that setseg will still cover but i look at our net estimate as about 600 thousand dollars of cost and so i just wanted to go over this with you i wanted the public to see in a very open transparent process as to what these costs were to obviously get our students back into it into the high school so this will play a part in my overall budget discussion of the general fund for the amended 2122 budget but before i get into that i wanted to also address actually the covid related costs

012as well or covert related revenue bear with me one sec i'm just trying to find um so this covet spreadsheet is a combination of the past two plus years of coveted related funding from the federal government state county and so what we have here is really what we use here in my finance department within the district to really track the revenue but also track the expenses that are associated with those streams of revenue in as clear of a manner as we possibly can from an accounting standpoint so it isn't technically pretty to look at but it's something that we use internally within our department to help manage the funds coming in and the manage the funds and expenses going out to match that revenue and so i i don't want to go over in the

013gore detail of these financials but i just wanted to show that these first several as you can see the oakland county coveted relief fund we received approximately 756 000 and then underneath we have the use of those funds such as device purchases um obviously we have protective you know equipment and supplies so you kind of get the point that there are several items here for these revenue streams that the district spent money on and again i don't want to read to you i believe that we have this document also on our website i asked danny to post this so that it is made public as well but really what this does is you see a pretty good detail as to how these funds are spent i believe that there was some comments at some past

014board meetings that the district wasn't being transparent and and frankly from my perspective that is that's that's inaccurate um i have no problem sharing these revenues and costs it's you know obviously it's it's something that we have to utilize every day in business services here in the district in order to properly account for these funds i'll go a little further oops a little further down than i would like let me go up a little bit and show you some of the funds that we're receiving this year this is the second page of the document this gets into the detail the first column here just shows when that grant period is it shows you when the dollars can be spent and what time frame the dollars can be spent in it also goes over the skyward

015description that we have in our system but also the federal government description and and the state description of what these coveted relief funds really are and so as you can see here and again i don't want to read to you in in detail but you know the first one summer programming second one credit recovery as an example and it shows the revenue coming in the door and then underneath some of them it shows what we plan on using those dollars for and where um again if i if i go to the section 23 c gear 2 funding teacher and support staff payments you see that teacher and support staff stipends paid for summer school last year and working with students on credit recovery 29 500 was received and we're looking to spend fully spend that

016out so again i really just want to show everyone the public as well as the board that we are doing the best job that we possibly can to track these funds and obviously make sure that we're transparent with the public of how that's done i do want to mention again that we are set to receive a fair amount this year i have in the general fund budget that i will be going over shortly approximately 2.3 million dollars of covet 19 related funds that we're we anticipate receiving this year in addition there is coveted relief funds that will be spent over the course of the next three years and that is uh specifically the sr3 which is the last item on these this page right here it's 5.6 million dollars and so that 5.6 million dollars

017there's some very specific parameters about how that money can be spent as is there for the other sr funds as well and an example of that is basically 20 little over 20 percent of that 10 of that 5.6 million dollars has to go to the implement implementation of evidence-based summer enrichment programs summer school if you will implementation of evidence-based comprehensive after-school programs and a large portion of it over 51 percent are activities addressing learning loss by supporting the implementation of evidence-based interventions and so basically the gist of this these dollars that that are being provided to us is just ensuring that these interventions respond to a student's social emotional and academic needs and they address the disproportionate impact of covid19 on unrepresented students or i shouldn't say unrepresented underrepresented students and subgroups subgroups such as

018you know the major racial and ethnic groups that we have in the district low-income families uh children with disabilities english language learners so on and so forth homeless so i just want you to be very clear that there are very specific parameters that we have to abide by for these coveted related funds does anyone have any questions thus far and i go again i know i went over this fairly quickly but i do have a large budget spreadsheet that i need to go over as well so yes quick question i hope thank you for these forms this is really helpful has all this actually been appropriated yet or is the legislature still holding on to any of this so i just found out today that i think it was the senate michigan senate approved i

019believe it was uh 1.2 billion dollars of funding this year and so um that that is specifically tied to some of this funding that we're speaking of as well um the 5.6 million dollars that i'm referencing at the bottom of this spreadsheet we um have not received that those funds yet they are not in my budget right now and so again many of these funds as you can see from my spreadsheet have a period of time that these funds are can be spent and and most of it has to be spent by um september of 24. anyone else chad [Applause] thanks sam um so he answered one of my questions um [Applause] i think the other one is besides being able to reflect back to us back to the community where these funds are being

020spent we have that so we have a certain level of accountability back to the government to show absolutely we have to be able to show that we've spent these dollars the way you've allocated them yes okay these are federal funds they come with federal guidelines of spending we have board policy in regards to federal funds that we receive and we must account for them separately obviously and that's why you see a lot of detail that is at nauseam here because that's what we do in accounting and finance obviously is we we have to abide by these these obviously grant codes and in our financial system and hr system this is how we actually account for these funds both in terms of revenue received and expenses paid out thank you sir thank you anyone else all

021right sam thank you so the next item on the agenda is what uh is really the general fund amended 2122 budget and uh again i just wanted to go over this and just show you the increase in revenue that all public school districts in the state of michigan received and how that compares to our original budget that the board approved for this year back in june of 21. so if you look at the column that is column e it is actually looks to be almost a yellowish or a pink it is the 2122 original general fund budget and again that is right here the enrollment projection that we had was 6866 fte we also assumed a 200 per pupil state foundation allowance increase from the prior year which would have brought us to eight thousand

022three hundred and eleven dollars per pupil if you look at the column f this is the amended budget that we're going over today and as you can see the state aid per pupil foundation allowance actually exceeded our original estimate and is actually at 8 700 per pupil that's what we're currently getting today in our district we actually ended up with an enrollment from our fall count audited of 7076 fte this represents a 3.1 percent increase or 210 more students than we originally budgeted back in june of last year so all this translates into predominantly a 5.3 million dollar revenue gain year over year or budget over budget again original budget versus the first amended budget that we're discussing today so specifically 76.8 million dollars compared to 82.1 million dollars if we go a little lower

023here and we talk about why before i move on i should i should bring up again the coveted relief dollars that i spoke to in the previous spreadsheet again 2.3 million dollars is part of the 3.8 million dollars of federal funds the majority of those other funds in federal funds are ida grants for special education so i just want you to be aware that's that's the difference and that's why you're seeing a higher number than the 2.3 that i referenced earlier but now if we go down to the expense side of the equation obviously there are some some costs here that i want to specifically speak to so that you have an understanding of why the costs have increased fairly dramatically if you look at it overall and you know we look at obviously our

024basic programs and again for those that are uncertain as to you know what basic programs are what these high level functions i want to just refer back to our legend up on top just so that you have an understanding of not only what local state federal and other revenue represents but also our expense side of the equation what are the high level explanations for what are in those expense categories and as you can see in basic programs as you see here from the key is general ed teachers and parapro salaries and benefits stipends subcost textbooks teaching supplies over dual enrollment fees over tuition costs etc you know within all of these buckets we have over four thousand accounts within our general fund and so we have to have some manner of grouping so i just

025want to remind you of that we have a much larger audience today and so i want to be as clear as possible with them if they're paying attention to me that that is why we roll up our accounts into a more succinct level of reporting because if they're not already sleeping they would be if we didn't do that if i go down a little bit and we start describing some of the increased cost components again you know we look here um at the first line item which is if i go over here you look at instructional staff salaries and i'm sorry pupil pupil uh costs and really the additional um you know four percent increase is is really due to our school psychologists um at ohs an additional dean of students uh positions at both

026oxford high school and oxford middle school so those are really the key drivers of those additional costs if we continue down further on the page again i don't want to read to you but the next estimate is 400 000 for an independent third-party review you know i had to put an estimate i really truly don't know what a third-party review is going to cost but i'm also an individual who has a finance background that is very conservative when i budget and so i i'd rather go high in my opinion then go low and then be surprised and so i just want you to be aware of that's why we put four hundred thousand dollars as an estimate uh we also have an increase of 250 000 for legal fees again an estimate in addition to

027a pr firm that we had not previously been engaged with so there are costs there again specifically that are over and above what we originally budgeted uh obviously in the summer of of 21. if we go down a little further and i'll i can skip over some of these these higher dollar ones as well but i'm not going to skip over the one here that is maintenance and operations that is a dramatic increase you see 2.8 million dollars and i want to specifically speak to that approximately eight hundred thousand dollars of that 2.8 million dollar unfavorable variance year over year for a budget perspective was specifically related to our american rescue plan special december payment to staff that was made in december of 21 so literally a month and a half ago that was a

028payment that was an acceptable payment that we put in our budget when we put together the esser spending plan that is also part of that spreadsheet that i shared with everyone earlier and that is where a bucket of dollars sits and that is why that variance is partially as large as it is is due to that as well that represented 1 250. per person and it will be allocated during my final amended budget when i come to you in june but right now it's sitting in maintenance and operations for clear tracking of that expense and then we will distribute it amongst the other functions later in the year we also have our land balancing of the 13.6 acres as many of you are aware we started that land balancing over the summer there was a

029small portion of that expense that was expensed for clearing the trees for last year but the majority of the expense of that land balancing is approximately 475 000 and it's going to be hitting this year we've already paid for a component of that 475. if you're looking at the totality of spend for this fiscal year it is approximately 475 000. so again that is contributing to that 2.8 million dollar unfavorable variance for this category of spend furthermore we have custodial service services revisions to our contract as many of us are aware in all industries not just custodial services it is extremely difficult to find staff and staff fully and so we are experiencing issues with custodial among other employee groups obviously as you're all well aware our abm staff they're they're key stakeholders with us

030they're our partners but they are not directly employed with the district and so we are looking to do some negotiations and i basically put in a few dollars more for this year whether it comes to fruition or not hopefully it does i needed to make sure that we had dollars set aside for that furthermore we have additional security private security as all of us are aware we have uh ess security and they are district-wide now several fte within all of our buildings that comes to a basically a six-month cost to the district of approximately three hundred thousand dollars and then we have our additional school resource officer uh that we're adding in totality we're estimating a four hundred thousand dollar increase for security this year um and so that really is the gist of that

031there's also uh there's another component to that spend that 2.8 million dollars we have building materials at all of our schools we have a higher cost for our gas and electric and so i i probably budgeted a little bit too conservatively but that is represents the additional 2.8 million dollars of again negative unfavorable variants if you will for that category if i move down a little bit further along here um you know really some of the big items here are the revisions to the to the to the high school as i mentioned earlier um we looked here at that six hundred thousand dollar estimate that i mentioned in the other spreadsheet um basically in this outgoing transfers and other um that is where these dollars are represented for the rebuild of the high school so

032you see that uh my original budget for this category last june was 500 and almost 600 000 right now we're tracking at around a million dollars and again that's because of the estimate primarily um of of the high school expenses that we we will bear the cost of as a district when you whittle down all the way to the end for the general fund um we still feel that uh you know we're going to be having excess revenue over expenditures of approximately 433 000 um and a transfer to the general fund i'm sorry to the capital project fund of three hundred thousand dollars we originally estimated we would have a hundred thousand going into the capital project fund so the addition to fund balance estimate currently is a hundred and thirty three thousand dollar addition

033to our general fund fund balance thus increasing it from eleven point two to eleven point three seven one million dollars so again i apologize for getting into some of the nuts and bolts this is partly why we're here tonight and i will accept any questions that you have in regards to this budget let us come back up [Applause] thank you sam um thank you school board members uh anyone have a comment or question for sam on [Music] the amended budget mary but of course thank you sam for a thorough budget report could you please just explain to our community why it is where we put money in this fund balance and what this fund balance is all about and why do we want it absolutely so really msbo which is the michigan school of business

034officials gives basically a parameter for all michigan public school districts that you should maintain a healthy fund balance just in case there's unexpected you know takeaways from the state in terms of per-pupil foundation allowance decreases that has happened in the not so distant past um and basically if there's any um run on costs that are unforeseen it's basically just making sure that you have a decent piggy bank if you will to handle unforeseen circumstances and it involves the operations of your district so again if you have a boiler that goes out in a school and that boiler cost three hundred thousand dollars well you can't just go to your voters and obviously get a a bond quickly you need to be able to service that service that expense and that general fund fund balance theoretically

035would enable you to do that okay so that general fund fund balance is a cumulative if you will balance in your checking account that doesn't directly showcase your actual cash balance in your bank for the district but it's relatively close and so again the positive fund balance that the msbo recommends is between a 15 and 20 percent of your expenditures each year of your general fund and as you can see we are estimating that we're right around 14 so you know our budget has increased substantially over the past 10 years primarily due to our virtual program and all the students that we have in our virtual program and so um you know if you look back several years ago we probably were closer to 17 but again we've been growing so much that it's been

036reduced you know by a couple percentage points still a very healthy general fund fund balance thank you mary anyone else [Applause] sam thank you very much thank you very much number seven is human resources i'm imagining we have nothing mr pass this evening all right uh jill lamont student services good evening uh at our last board meeting i asked you to review the schools of choice dates and i would ask for a motion tonight to accept those for the 22-23 school year if you have any questions or anything else to discuss let's put it on the floor uh so so if we have some discussion we can have that please heather move to approve the schools of choice 2022-2023 school dates as presented you want me to read them off yes please first semester trimester

0372022 developmental kindergarten through ninth grade unlimited unlimited school self-choice enrollment will open on may 1st 2022 and close on august 18 2022. hold on no just go back to uh we'll open on march 1st not may 1st i'm sorry sorry i think yes sorry about that i'll read it unlimited school of choice enrollment will open on march 1st 2022 and close on august 15 2022. 10th and 11th grades unlimited to ib health science engineering academy and dance conservatory early college unlimited schools of choice enrollment will open on march 1st 2022 and close on august 15 2022 developmental kindergarten through eighth unlimited ova unlimited school of choice enrollment will open on march 1st 2021 that's a typo okay so let's change that to 2022 correct jill yeah yes march 1st 2022 close on august 26 2022

0389th to 12th grade unlimited ova unlimited school of choice enrollment will open on march 1st 20 and we'll change that again to 2022 and close on august 19th 2022. thank you very much uh angela you've got the two date changes yeah all right very good is there support eric's support is their discussion [Applause] seeing none all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion carries safety update i just have a few items for you tonight so um as the board is aware and i want to make the public aware we have moved to an id system at the high school for our students so as they are entering every morning we have increased the number of security that members who are there in addition to cabinet and other administrators from throughout the district who are

039checking student ids at the doors it's been pretty fluid but we've also had a lot of extra help that helped some of it comes at a cost as you saw some of the ess costs here we are looking at a potential long-term solution of a digital way of doing this so i don't want to promise that's going to happen but that's one of many items we will be discussing at our semi-annual safety meeting so that is my second item to share with you tonight we had had one of those scheduled with our village leadership village pd oakland county sheriffs oakland township officers we also have our fire chief that comes and several different administrators from different representative levels alternative schools within the district we normally meet twice a year and we had that meeting scheduled

040for the first week of december we had to reschedule that given recent events it is now scheduled for february 23rd at the performing arts center at the high school and so the electronic card reader is one item we're discussing along with several others just with the scope of safety not finance not all those other things but just safety in mind so very good any comments or questions jill thank you very much all right um we're just going to take a three minute break let me get ready for unscheduled audience participation and then we'll roll into that if you are still wanting to be involved and haven't brought a card to angela during these three minutes please get a card to her and then we'll regroup in about three minutes thank you all right everyone we're

041going to enter into unscheduled audience participation there are two items that i would like to address to the best of my ability because they seem to be connected to the most questions that i receive or emails that get sent to me the first is that we would want to know more about what occurred in the days around november 30th [Applause] and the insinuation that potentially [Applause] there's hiding behind something or that we're just not being transparent and i want to be very clear there's a lot that we want to say the prosecutor and the sheriff's department are in the process of trying to make sure that justice gets paid and they have asked us one simple thing stay out of our way don't say anything that will affect us let we're the ones that investigated

042the situation we're the ones that have all the information and we will over time allow that information to come out and it will come out in a trial so i just want you to believe that i just want you to believe that we're not being quiet for any other reason then we too want justice and we want to be out of the way we want to allow this process to go wherever the prosecutor and wherever the oakland county sheriffs feel it needs to go and trust that they're going to bring this whole thing to some type of legal justice so that's that's subject number one subject number two is the masking issue and the call to have a vote because we talked about having a vote and somewhere again were hiding and lying and not

043having a vote and i think somewhere we've missed in some of our communication so i want i want to reiterate that although we've never had a vote i don't know that we even know what each other thinks about this issue this board has agreed for every challenge every question every resolution to get clarification from our oakland county health department this board has approved every one of them wanting to know more wanting to get answers even to the point where we wrote a resolution because we felt that there was a unconstitutional crisis between house bill [Music] 82 i think it was and the mandate because one seemed to be saying one thing and one seem to be saying another and how do you i hope some of you recall this it is this board that drove

044a resolution to the oakland county health department and drove up drove it to the attorney general and drove it to places to try to get an answer we didn't receive any but one when contacting my own representative in our in in our area and trying to find out who the writers were for that house bill 82 and trying to understand whether that was a law that we needed to abide by and we were somehow put into this contradiction it was clearly stated to me and to the board that that bill doesn't apply to you it applies to two parts of our government it doesn't allow it allows the legislative branch to audit the executive branch to see if the executive branch gave any money to oakland county and hence then could penalize them financially for

045doing so and if you recall the governor said that she felt that that section was unconstitutional but regardless it sits there in law so i said then you're telling me then that it's not for the average citizen it's not for us absolutely not my recommendation to you is follow the mandate so what i want you to know first of all [Music] is that on behalf of our community we have attempted to pursue clarifications and answers i have put out requests even today to have phone conversations with people high up in the county who have not returned my request i have sent out emails trying to get clarifications due to different things that universities are saying and the cdc is saying and i'm not getting responses so number one you'll hear me say [Applause] that if

046there is an issue or if there is a battle or if there is a concern over the constitutionality of an amendment the fight is with the oakland county health department who made the mandate but let me be even clearer two and a half years ago the only way for oxford to get back to school was to get six feet away mask up our kids buy a bunch of plastic and we did it even people who thought it was wrong and stupid teachers and staff who felt like ah they did it for the one reason because we need to educate our kids and the number one purpose of a school board is to make sure that kids go to school and learn and that's what you pay your taxes for so what i'm telling you is

047two and a half years ago these same issues existed and people sucked it up and did whatever they needed to do so that our kids could go to school we had teachers that didn't want to wear masks we had teachers and staff that felt that it was stupid because the school district is just simply a small cross section of what our whole community is it's the largest employer in our in our in our area [Applause] so why do i bring that up [Applause] because two and a half years ago people thought something was right people thought something was wrong but they did it anyways because they wanted to follow a rule and make sure they followed the rule so that they could have class that's the point i want to make so what does that

048have to do today there's people on this board that probably think that the mask mandate should be rescinded there's people on the board that think it shouldn't we know that things are happening out in society we know the cdc is saying things we know that masked mandates and vaccine mandates seem to be falling around the world and in different places [Applause] but we have a county that's telling us that we have to mask up and just like two and a half years ago we have people that think it's stupid and we have people that thinks it's the best thing to do and we're doing it because we gotta follow the rules so that we can have kids in school the accusation is that we're hiding because we don't want to have lawsuits we're hiding because

049we're worried about money so let me be very specific theoretically we could vote today theoretically and end the mask mandate and everyone or some people applaud and say finally then there is a portion of our community our school community who believes that we just did the worst thing we could ever do maybe some because they're what we call pro mask or simply because they think it's wrong that we're breaking a rule because we teach our kids to follow rules and we followed rules when this whole thing began and so we all pass a rule that mass are dropped on tuesday only to find out that on wednesday we can't have school because our union workers are seeing how many six day sick days they are and then you get two or three percent of our

050union workers beginning to take sick days so that a school can't open because they're making a point that they disagree with breaking rules you see we have to do things as tmo we cannot do things as seven people on a board we've got if there is a battle to be won you got to win the battle and the war we don't have enough substitute teachers to keep our schools running now we don't have enough bus drivers all you have to do is have two or three percent of the employees of our district start to say no you're breaking rules we don't think you should break rules and they start figuring out how to take time off and we can't open a school did we win if we've learned anything is we got to do this

051as a whole community it's how we did it two and a half years ago and it's how we have to do it now agree or disagree the whole system has to move in one direction together or we are going to implode you have to see that this is bigger than a political or or or economic or even a moral ethical religious it's more it is about the fact that we're designed to make sure kids can go to school and learn and what if we vote something in that causes us the inability to have school for the rest of 2000 and 22. [Applause] this is the stuff that keeps board members up at night this is why i keep pointing you to the right place for the fight if you have one heck you might find

052that there's board members that will join you in that because they can do that as their civic duty if they can do whatever they want is that as a citizen of the state but in this position you vote us in office to think a lot broader and a lot deeper than what i think you're giving us credit for there's a lot of variables that we measure because our number one priority is to make sure that your children can go to school and we can educate them that has been true throughout the whole pandemic and as we're getting tired and weary of the issues and you still got fight in you why bring it to us replace all seven of us and seven of you vote [Music] and you don't have school for the next four

053months did you win you'll be the next group recalled be careful we're not your enemy we are not your enemy we have personal opinions about these things we have professional opinion scientific opinion medical opinions you elected us to make sure your kids go to school we're not the ones forcing them to wear a mask oakland county health department is period they change something we all change understand that if the oakland county health department someday lifts this mask mandate there's a whole portion of our working community that's not going to like that but they're going to do it because it's the rule [Music] they're going to do it they'll fall in line but break a rule go against a rule we teach our kids to obey rules that's what teachers are designed to do so that

054is my preemptive conversation on at least a couple of the items that you might be wanting to address as i've done in the last couple meetings i want to reiterate right from our board policies that participants are supposed to direct all comments to us as the board and to me not to staff not to participants not to anyone else in the audience i as the presiding officer can prohibit public comments which are frivolous repetitive or harassing i'll note the word repetitive the presiding officer can interrupt warn terminate a participant's statements when the statement is too lengthy you have five minutes and there's a light right there that'll light up and tell you uh one minute four minute warning and then and then you know that you have one minute left and then finally again at

055five if your comments become personally directed abusive obscene irrelevant i can request people to leave the meeting when the person's behavior is in a manner that is disruptive to the orderly conduct of a meeting can request that assistance of law enforcement officers in the removal of a disorderly person when that person's conduct interferes with the orderly progress of the meeting can eventually just call a recess or adjourn a meeting if the the decorum of the meeting cannot be re-maintained we've done a really good job in these uh unscheduled audience participation um of just being empathetic and and and and talking from the heart and making sure this is your chance to let us know how you feel your anger is not going to help me understand language is not going to help me understand you

056talking clearly from the heart is what's going to help us understand if somebody's already said something that you were going to say let that be said repetitiveness if it's something that we don't know then let us know but if it's something you've told us six meetings in a row it's going to be declared repetitive and i think that's it so let's begin jeff weaver you'd like to talk about volunteers at the high school [Applause] how are we doing tonight i'm good jeff how are you i'm doing good um i was wondering about parents getting involved walking hallways you get him vented checked out like you do with poor sports just let the kids know the parents are there you know they feel more comfortable because of all the little things that happen we all know

057about i'm just thinking kids know parents it's a good thing you know and that's one thing and then um alumni maybe look into the zen den from college say that again you know alumni the kids that graduated yup a lot of them are going to community schools local schools maybe see if they go to zen den get some credit hours in you know like public service because the kids would love that and then um the zendin is that where the kids go if they're stressed out is that what it's called isn't it i'm sorry don't they have a place where the kids in high school go and what do you guys actually call it i think i thought it was then correct what is it ken am i right there's one of those yes one

058of them they call it yes the zen den yeah all right i love it yeah i was looking like oh god everybody's looking at me but no that i didn't see it on the door no but uh because i pay attention i'm boots on the ground anybody no good good good good thank you i'm a parent that cares you don't care about everybody's kids here that's why i come all the time that's one thing and then another thing is uh i i just think hopefully the future of all the changes here hopefully people can start coming together as a bond i just wanted even for parents maybe have a thing a social thing at the school where they could talk because there's a lot going on with their kids maybe at the cafeteria at night

059have a night that's open and um just i just come here and i see how bad it is here when y'all we need to come together thank you thank you and stay there for a sec because i do want to a couple of these things i can talk to one is much discussion is happening about getting parents back in like we've had in the past i understand kovid shut that off yes right and and we are and i think in the next safety meeting that's one of the topics is going to be we have a lot of parents who want to be involved this is a great way to get them involved get them as hall monitors get them involved in some of these things um and so i'm not guaranteeing you anything except that

060i know it's on a top on the docket for discussion because it's the most obvious fix to even some things that we might be paying for yeah we may have volunteers that will be trained and do some of those things and those parent presents as you said the kids know them and so that that gives them that level um and there is discussion about how to properly create a parent forum okay getting together that it's not a board meeting yeah it's an open forum discussion talk to the kids about it right and it's good to talk to other people so we're working on it we're working on it because i know that we have some parents who just want to be heard want to be part of the solutions and so we're working at some

061type of a forum maybe even someplace other than in a school building so it's not seen as a meeting okay but where i work on both of your items and then i'm not getting the politics part i want to come to the mass and the only thing i i worry about is i like to have more relaxed with the teachers if they could with the kids because it's a challenge just being in that school the last thing is they don't want to be hassled hey get that up or do this i mean come on it can't be easy we're growing people and we have troubles going in there that's all i got to say heard you and the third one was the masking that that that that this morning right now i'm just saying maybe

062have the teachers relax a little bit on it just okay let's get the kids through the year all right thank you jeff thank you [Applause] catherine hill wanting to speak to a defense response [Applause] um before i address the defense response i would like to hear an update on the status of the third party investigation we are over two months out and i have not heard anything um as to where we're at with hiring a firm to perform that investigation and number two how was the security company ess vetted to perform the security at the high school was there a bidding process in place and where other candidates for security vetted against this company number i want to speak to the defense response to the france case item number 19 reads defendants will show and

063rely upon at the time of the trial that plaintiffs had pre-existing medical conditions which are a contributing proximate cause of the injuries complained of i was shocked and appalled to read this statement when a person or an organization hires an attorney that attorney is their representative this district's attorney is representing the district's thoughts and opinions number 19 in the defendant's response is telling every parent student and the world that the administration of this district blames the victims who are the students that it was their fault a 2019 gallup analysis found that 43 percent of american households have someone with a pre-existing condition and oxford community schools is telling us 43 of the households impacted could be at fault by that statement my son has my son has a lung disease um he will have it

064his entire life and we have to deal with that pre-existing condition every day and i can tell you for a fact if he were ever shot it would not be the fault of his lung disease that he were shot and injured by being shot or are we talking about the plaintiffs having a mental health diagnosis as their pre-existing condition i'm sure no credible trauma expert would ever say that it is appropriate to blame the victim that has been a victim of a random act of violence for an exasperation of an existing mental health condition condition it is also just i i am just in utter disbelief that the district would blame a victim in this manner while also focusing on therapy and trauma recovery the last two plus months and as i have said my

065son has a lung disease and previously i've really strived to make sure all of his medical information in his 504 plan is up to date and accurate and now my trust is broken yet again and i have to wonder would this information be used against him you know i'm giving medical information to keep him safe and healthy at school and you know now i have to you know have that in the back of my head on top of every other trust issue we've had that his medical information could be used against him by having a pre-existing condition if he were ever injured or harmed at school so much has been said about trusting the district as we move forward unfortunately every time we turn around we've been given more and more reasons not to trust

066and i just it's truly shameful that we're blaming a victim and a pre-existing medical condition in this scenario one could say that things get nasty in court proceedings but when the victims here are students we have to remember that and that's what the students are hearing and that's what this community is hearing when we respond the district responds in that manner captain thank you stay there for a second a couple of these i can talk to uh there has to be some misunderstandings on the third party review because there's people who believe that this is something that is supposed to be imminent and happening right away when that is not the case we have to allow elite we certainly can identify a company we could certainly identify a an organization that would be leading it

067but nothing can happen until this trial is over because they have to begin to work their way out backwards we are not asking someone to re just re-look at what the sheriff's department did what we're looking for is someone to go nat to go from a state level board of education to child protective services to a school district counselor to this that and the other and start to look at where our weaknesses and communication systemically within a state structure so that we can look at across the whole country avoiding something like this are there things that one agency might know something that another agency doesn't are there things that we could do in in elementary school that would begin to give us triggers of how a child is being treated at home and and so

068so this thing's gonna take months it's gonna be a year or two probably before the results are in because we're not just redoing a trial we're going to have that's just a launching pad to look at something hugely systemic and if that's been misunderstood that has been stated over and over and over again we have a committee on this on this particular uh board three people that are now looking at three or four different companies and that's it that's we're in the process but for people who think we're hiding something or trying to lie because you said tim throne has said and i have said repeatedly what this third-party review is we're not just looking over what the what we're we're assuming the old county health department or the oakland county sheriff's department and the

069prosecutors are doing a better job than anybody could do because they've got to prosecute a case we want to launch off of that to something much broader and and if somebody wants to talk about that later i we can but please understand what we've meant from the beginning about what a third-party review is i will get the information for you for the vetting and the bidding for the company but would you please give your contact information to angela because i don't see it on the bottom of here um and oh wait a minute there i see it um [Applause] the free press article do you have the do you have the the original um i looked at the actual court filing yes yes did you see because the language you read was right from the

070court filing is also in the free press free press only puts five or six words in quotation marks but i'm not i'm not citing the free press here i'm citing the actual court documents the actual i read the intensity of item 19. so don't forget about the free product okay so so let me let me say it this way one of the things that we were in closed session for was to get an update on lawsuits and get an update on things and because they'd like to clarify and state what this is is that in the process of civil lawsuits attorneys have to create a presumptive list of potential things that they might want to use in the future and they're always stated legally in the affirmative i understand that slow down let me finish

071we do not have anyone's medical records we don't know whether there's an issue or not this is what attorneys do to keep a door open in and and he might have 18 of them he may never use any of them but if he doesn't put him out now in the first level he cannot put him in later he waves his ability to do so so i don't know the exact term it was affirmative something but let me just be clear we have not as a school district and are not as a school district blaming any victim for what happened are not in a civil case things get argued differently than an illegal prosecutor case and so then monies that are sought can hit a lot of different buckets and so attorneys go out there with

072these assertive affirmative things the defense attorneys i mean the the the ones filing a suit do the same thing so i just i guess i want to say that there's probably over 15 of these affirmative assumptive things that an attorney puts in as a placeholder that aren't stating any fact they're a placeholder to keep something open in case something were to come up that we would know that we in in in discovery so that's it that's it and i guess i guess that's all i can say and you can agree or disagree with that but that is um that's that's what it is it is a placeholder and it's a process that attorneys go through in order to list things so they don't lose the ability to use them in the future if something comes

073up and goes ah i can't use it that's it we're not we're not trying to assume anything we're not trying to at all [Music] have our families or our children uh being held responsible for what they've experienced thank you [Applause] darren um school superintendent selection darren all right thanks again tom just trying to be brief got three quick nuggets here um the first one um when i came here i didn't know the power of the school board um i've done a lot of research over the last couple years and i understand all the hard work you all do it's a lot of work that i never imagined a lot of ungrateful i imagine from some but great grateful from others however at the same time with all the power i've also found out all the

074power that you don't have the little power to know power that you have and that's been determined over the last couple years and it's unfortunate and it's sad because to me the power that you don't have hillsdale college has power they don't they don't take one dime from the state government or federal government that's power they didn't miss a day of school either but they were never subjected to the federal government oxford school district is total suburban suburban to the states to the state of michigan and it is by the budget most states in the country over 50 percent of their budget is directed to education the dollars unfortunately restrict your ability to make the appropriate decisions that's facts it's it is power i would disagree on on your intro where you said it's not

075you know all about politics but that's not exactly what you said i would say the mass mandate is all about politics it's been all about politics since day one and switching over to that to masks i'm frustrated as is a lot of your a lot of the citizens of oxford um everybody does have decisions everybody does not have and i don't i don't think you meant it this way i don't think everybody doesn't need to just suck it up i think most did suck it up that first year because we didn't know what we had we know what we have now and we know what it is we know we know about the mass we know about the injections the second year we don't have to suck it up march first we don't have a

076suck it up a lot of people a lot of people the big decisions going to be made to some march 1st because not only does our virtual schools open the hybrid schools are open the private schools are open some have options to make the major significant change and move out move out of this district or change schools unfortunately as with the injections some are forced some will be forced they don't have a decision their kids will be muzzled again my guess the muslin was going to go away in a couple months there's an election in november my guess it's going to fall off the radar in about two months and then it's going to be quiet for about six and many of our politicians are going to be re-elected like it never happened we'll see

077but as with injections with the masks people are being forced forced by tyrants to do stuff they shouldn't be forced to make some people can't go to private schools and afford private schools pay seven to twelve thousand dollars in this county as the same with mass sums don't have the options of choosing them to go to other schools they don't have the option they're gonna they're gonna be muzzled they're gonna be muzzled and i hate it when i pick up my daughter and see all them kids coming out muzzled it is frustrating as i know it is it you all think it's it's frustrating as well all i want is choice so understand the power mass i'll just leave it at that and the last thing i got is with respect to your selection this

078next selection you're down to the final two to me what it comes down to in the end and i haven't i have not been at them boards i have not watched your questioning your questions um but if you haven't i would ask you to ask one question to the two cant remaining candidates do you support 1776 commission or do you support the 16 1919 project do you support the 1776 commission or do you support cr support critical race theory [Applause] i think that's the next battle in oxford when all this other stuff has come and gone the 1776 commission if they haven't read it they've done it i i'm sure hope the two remaining selectees have read these two things the 1776 commission covers america's founding and full scope of our nation's history and treats

079america's past even its most difficult aspects in a reasonable respectful and unbiased way it was made up of a commission of democrats republicans liberals conservatives president aaron hillsdale college over oversaw that commission critical race theory is a marxist space theory and it seeks to replace the american idea of equal individual rights with the revolutionary idea of unequal rights based on group identity and i'll just leave it racism and bigotry are unacceptable period end of story people should be held accountable uh if they're racist or bigots period there there's a difference between crt and time's up comes up point number one obviously that that public school system different than others the powers in the budget and who controls the dollars um [Applause] traveling through the mass mandates and and injections and all all you and others

080that are been asking is for choice and then thirdly as we look at our two final candidates uh where do they stand on the 1776 commission which looks at american history in contrast and and i know you mentioned crt but what was the the the title you gave it project night project 16 19 16 19. thank you those two programs whichever one they choose will forever change the education of oxford period and thank you darren thanks a lot thank you courtney grabowski third party review hi hello you answered some of it um i actually was really happy to hear that there was money in the budget for the review because we got a let me see on december 4th superintendent throne wrote a letter that said he wanted to review on december 6th you wrote

081a letter that said you wanted to review on december 14th you voted not to have a review but to have a committee that would talk about hiring somebody to talk about hiring somebody to have a review um which was kind of a frustrating process but for us it was the only way to have it independent it can't be us doing it so we have to get somebody to get somebody to do it or else it's not independent i'm sorry i didn't hear you okay um so it was heartening to hear about the 400 000 in the budget at the same time it was disappointing that we didn't yet have any idea how much it could remotely be um because i don't necessarily think it needs to happen like we need to have the response from

082the independent review tomorrow but kind of going back to transparency and having a little more conversation with the public it would be helpful if we could hear from you what the process where the process is because this is about best practices this is about no parent anywhere in this country ever again ever again and there are a lot of us frustrated because there's that's where it stopped we haven't heard any more conversation about it and this is meaningful to us not just because there were children in the hallways that day but because the parents were rushing from other places to find out if it was our baby and then horrified because we were believed that it wasn't our baby and we need to hear from you the process we don't just need a pat on

083the head to be told don't worry about it we're taking care we need the conversation it's important that you include us in the conversations and i think that this follows not just from this but also the rest of it there were a couple of groups who talked to our representative to the house it was the first time that most of us had talked to anybody of any authority anywhere who could affect anything we have not had a conversation and that's disappointing we elected you to represent us how can you represent us if you're not talking to us and listening and processing and answering it's disappointing so we would like to hear where you are in the process for the third party review who you talking about hiring how many people have you looked at those

084are things that would help make us more comfortable i heard a kid say you know they're doing a lot of talking about making us comfortable we don't feel safe how are we supposed to feel comfortable if we don't feel safe we don't feel safe putting our kids in the school we keep hearing this word safe safe return safe soft return safe safe safe safe safe we don't feel safe we're not part of the conversation our kids don't feel safe they're not part of the freaking conversation it's time it's been it's been more than eight weeks it's time that you don't just talk and then tell us and tell us to do what we're told it's time that you listened and processed and continued to have a conversation with us that's it thank you um courtney

085um obviously appreciative that the 400 000 was in the budget um i can tell you that we just simply formed the committee at our last regular board meeting um there have been i think shared between myself and that three-person committee [Music] three or four companies a couple have been used by other places that had shootings a couple were suggested by somebody else that committee has yet to have its first meeting the committee to have its first meeting and so i think they're hoping to get that in before the end of february and then again there's a process of getting quotes in then we'll start knowing what the dollar figure is right for the expansive thing we're trying to do um yeah so just like i'm sorry to interrupt but just like once you've once once

086the meeting at the end of february happens yeah hey these are the this is the timeline now this is the next timeline and so i wrote the term progressive transparency that as we hit stages of development to be communicating and and i but also that we still have to as many have asked uh create some type of public forum where we listen and you speak and i and and i'm working on that and not just listening though but like processing and saying okay this is what we always processing always processing this is help the answering not just like sitting and staring at us while we talk or receiving emails that we you know and i know you probably have a million of them but getting the response is part of the helpful um part of

087the helpful part of process and it's one of the reasons i probably and dangerously saying more than i should today so i am trying to listen and process and answer okay thank you thank you [Applause] christie oxford school district tolerance etc [Applause] hi i'm christy i'm a oxford 2015 alumni my brother is also a junior at oxford i wanted to speak a little bit about the zero tolerance at oxford high school i know that it was reiterated that there's zero tolerance after the six uh incident that happened i know that it was zero tolerance allegedly before but i see my brother come home when he came home on that day and he's telling me about it about how his bully from middle school is in his class how that bully was told that he cannot

088be in my brother's class in middle school he said that that bully was there in his same classroom cheering saying things that i'm not going to say because it is hurtful [Applause] and how we've gone to the school we've asked for him to be out of those classes with him i believe if i'm correct that they said that that was not an option and i want to be completely transparent with this yes my brother's bully is on the spectrum and that is a part of why they say they cannot do anything but when there's zero tolerance and they can't make it an exception for my brother to be away from his bully i i don't understand how that's a thing that can happen i don't understand how this kid can still be allowed at the

089schools after an incident that same day where there was the student that came on into the school for about 20 minutes without being escorted went to two different classrooms they said that same day that that same bully that my brother has made a threat and i assume you guys know what threat that is i understand that this kid is going through things too and what i can't help thinking is that this kid isn't getting his help that he needs my brother isn't getting the help that he needs and that's that's something that i just don't quite get and i just feel like there needs to be a change there there needs to be an absolute reason why and that's just one thing that i can control that i can help i can at least try

090i think that's all i want to talk about today i would plan on christie i just want to make sure i understand some of the details because so you have a brother that's a junior yes and that brother has had a bullying experience that goes all the way back to middle school yes okay um and it's with the same student yes okay all right which one of them is on the spectrum his bully his spectrum my brother is in special education uh not necessarily special education but he has dyslexia which we fought for for a long time to get involved and there was a time in which it was decided by the district that they wouldn't be in the same classroom yes that was kept but then that has not been maintained correct yes so

091your main question is how is that possible that that that that's there was an issue it was resolved by doing x but now x isn't happening and now you're back to the original problem let me investigate that and we can get back to you okay thank you thank you [Applause] i think what we're gonna have to do is make sure that they direct it to their mouth because if you're off if you're off at all it doesn't work very well lori questions to the board hi thanks for giving me time tonight it's a little hard after that one sorry that was my daughter so um first based on something you said earlier today yes um i don't think the investigation we want is the same investigation you want um we want to know what's happened

092in more than just two days at the school we want to know what's been happening what the policies are what the procedures are and we don't think that investigation should wait there's people that need to be talked to when their minds are fresh and when they're thinking about what happened recently to them and they don't need to be talked to in two years they don't need to be talked to next fall [Music] there's investigations that need to start soon and so while we can appreciate that maybe answers can't come to us immediately there should be questions being asked now um i'd also like to present a letter that from a group of parents uh there are multiple parents who have signed it so far additional parents may be added to it as they email parents

093of oxford gmail.com to be included in this but i'm going to go ahead and read the letter and then present it to you guys today i'll also send it by emails this is to the oxford board of educators superintendent throne and deputy superintendent weaver we the parents and community of oxford feel the oxford school district needs to communicate with us and provide answers through sources other than lawsuits and prosecutors we understand no one wants to affect justice in the ongoing criminal charges but there are answers we are due which we can be given without hindering justice below is a list of questions we request you respond to with direct and factual answers number one what is the employment status of fine hopkins and ejac if they're still employed by the district what is the district's

094position on why what decisions do these three people make regarding ec on 11 29 and 11 30 30 and yes i understand you may not be able to answer that just at this time but as best as you can were those decisions supported by school policies and procedures if so what are those policies and procedures and where are they located please provide the source number two we are aware the board of education rejected the michigan attorney general's offer to start a full investigation immediately which may have shaped all michigan school policies to increase the safety of our students why was that offer declined what is the status of the third party investigation supported by the board of education will said investigation when will said investigations start and what is the projected completion date and when

095or will the full unredacted report be made available to the public it's the most important question i have regarding that three when the incident with the bird was found what was the investigation procedures and findings again the best that you can answer with that i would like to know what the investigation was like who was called why did parents find out from our children instead of from a school communication why didn't the investigation narrow down a list of suspects leading to a watch list for additional concerning behaviors if cameras were effective in other incidents why wasn't the same methodology used for that number four who are the experts that the school keeps referring to and communication to us please list their names professional certifications and affiliations to us they're just [Applause] i don't know what

096they are i'm very confused when we're told that our kids can't be talked to because of the experts and we don't know who they are number five we hear at least one person with previous experience working with school districts affected by similar tragedies offered to assist the district with items such as communications but the district declined that offer please tell us all the professionals that have offered assistance since that date on november 30th which offers were accepted which were declined and why number six what is the district's position on mandatory reporters does the employee handbook have a section regarding reporting what training does the district require or provide regarding reporting were there any verbal or written orders to deviate from standard reporting policies seven what is the districts and the high school's plans for security

097guards officers how many have been contracted to be at each school daily what is the security schedule where is the security team hired from where what is ess are they affirmed and then we look forward to following your answers you're going to give us a copy of this right yes team has received this already confirmed all right very good thank you um [Music] i think we've talked about the employment status but yes we can lay out policies and procedures i think we've addressed the attorney general i will [Applause] it's okay like i said i've got in here how to respond with an email which is definitely what would be preferred all the parents on here would like to you can send it to that email address and it'll be forwarded to them and anyone else

098who's right just give those to angela and and we'll go from there thank you thank you [Applause] chris pence uh school legal responsibilities good evening everybody first of all tom thank you very much for kind of your opening remarks there even though you and i may disagree on some things the fact of the matter is i i could see that where you're coming from is a genuine place and that does mean a lot so i appreciate that you know i don't envy anybody's position sitting up here um none of you signed up for any of this okay any of this any of this craziness all right and uh and of course i'm you know sorry that it happened our thoughts and prayers are with the families that are affected in our whole community now i

099don't know all of your guys qualifications or your passions or whatever the case may be and i'm not questioning those okay but i will leave you with a question uh to ask yourselves and that is do your qualifications and your passions make you good leaders for the specific challenges that you're in right now and i want to know who exactly it is that you guys feel you are most accountable to do you believe it's the insurance company the district the voters are these really who you fear retribution from if i was you that's not what i would fear the basic facts of what happened at least what's been laid out are pretty clear cut and dry the teachers they drew on hindsight from things that they had seen over the course of 20 years they

100took that information to somebody and it failed there it doesn't sound like you need a really high level view of this sounds like it was very very low level issue now the counselors can't claim the same thing because you could say hindsight is 20 20 if all of us stood together in front of a stove and i went over and i touched it and i burned my hand and then i said okay you go next and then you burned your hand you couldn't say oh i wouldn't hindsight's 20 20. we've had 20 years of these problems those teachers drew on that and they took action because of it it seems like the primary concern here is a corporate body and i do understand on some level that you have to think this way but on

101others not and it seems your primary concern has been liability uh even before all of this when you know everything was going on with the mass mandate and stuff like that you guys kind of stepped out of your lane and started to indulge in this stuff that i don't think you really had any business in doing as a matter of fact i mean when the question is how liable am i going to be i'm not sure about you but if any of my friends ever said hey if i do this do you think i'm liable the answer is usually yeah probably bad idea don't do it okay so if you're asking yourselves about the liability of a thing just don't do that thing okay i often ask myself when it came to the whole pandemic

102issue uh how the district would react if ignoring of experts and their political and social pandering to a loud minority would end in disaster for my vulnerable son what would happen well thanks to the district's attorney i now have an answer to that question and we'll go over what you said tom the district will grasp at any straw in order to do things its way while skirting legal liability i want to impress upon you that your lawyer paid with tax dollars drafted a legal document denying the district's liability for injuries sustained by a student because of their pre-existing medical conditions they wrote this on paper and sent it to somebody how did that even get past you guys now i understand that they've got to list out all of these things that might or may

103not come up but if i was you i'd stand back and go uh there's probably some things you shouldn't touch i really wouldn't like to know as a parent of this disaster to know maybe the defense attorney will bring up my son's medical conditions it's terrible does any of this i mean could the kid just not get away fast enough because he was in a wheelchair or did he have a heart attack because he was freaked out well none of this matters what kind of person does that matter to and the only person that would matter to is someone who really didn't know who they're accountable to the failure here is that you guys have unfortunately then cavalier with the most important responsibility school has and that's safety you can't be educated if you can't

104be safe and you guys set that tone and your tone over the last couple years has been we do things the oxford way we do it our way are you guys a private school or a public school a lot of the questions that you guys ask sound more fitting for a private school and even some of the complaints that i hear that come to before this board are for a private school so i'm just going to leave you guys with the question and then i'll wrap up to whom are you most accountable whose judgment and liability are you most concerned about and how low are you willing to allow this district go to avoid that liability thank you chris um [Applause] i've got your three points um wanting us to reflectively ask the question for

105ourselves those questions for ourselves uh main concern is that we're more concerned about liability than the one number one thing which is the the safety issue and that we have skirted i um that you've attempted to yes okay i got it thank you [Applause] is it angie reed [Applause] [Music] [Applause] good evening good evening so based on your earlier comments i myself was pretty much dissuaded from coming up and even speaking tonight but i am not here for myself tonight i'm here for the students and i had to write this down so i wouldn't forget anything so forgive me if i'm reading uh i'd like to take a minute just to introduce myself my name is angie reed and i am employed as a substitute teacher in the district i'm also the boys and girls

106jv tennis coach of the high school i sub in all buildings but i'm almost exclusively at the high school my daughter and stepdaughter are both ohs grads graduating in 2020 the first year of the pandemic my son is currently a junior at the high school i have the distinct honor of working with an abundance of amazing young men and women daily i love my job tonight i'm speaking on their behalf many have entrusted me with their stories and have asked me personally to be their voice this is what they ask please allow us to finish out our school year without having to hide our faces any longer the seniors especially one student said we just want to go back to feeling normal as seniors i feel so bad for the freshmen and sophomores because the

107pandemic they have never had the chance to experience what high school is really about i loved every minute of it excuse me every minute of it before we were locked down since the beginning of the pandemic which for this year's seniors began for them on friday march 13th 2020 of their sophomore year this was the last time those students felt normal these seniors have not had a regular year of school since they were freshmen they have had to forgo dances assemblies even sporting events we will be doing them a disservice if we continue to force them to live a life without the interaction so coveted with something as simple as a smile think about that the last time these kids saw each other smiling faces was on march 13th of 2020 if you've had the

108recent pleasure of coming to the high school you will find that many new safety measures have been implemented most recently students are now required to show id to enter the building backpacks must be clear and no sunglasses hats or hoodies are allowed to be worn this is done in an attempt to be able to confirm the identity of each student just this morning a student noted in class so my face has to be covered below the eyes but my hair will prove who i am seems ridiculous [Applause] the students understand why the additional safety measures have been added the events of november 30th go without saying but they know that just last week one of their own a fellow student who did not have permission to ban school grounds made it all the way to

109his first hour class without being stopped they also know that if this student had not been wearing a mask he never would have made it as far as he did so the oakland county health department reported in 2020 and this is their information that there were zero deaths in oakland county attributed to covet and school-age students up to age 18. however the county did report that there were 21 suicides documented this speaks to mental health and healing and and its importance outweighing the fear of a virus for this age demographic is there a possibility that this board could ask the ochd to allow our students to have the choice to aid in their mental healing maybe just oxford kids i don't know and finally this was uh just a couple of examples of direct quotes

110from students the first one is the best part of my day is walking into a classroom and seeing my teacher smiling at me and finally my last one was written on the day of november 30th and the student wrote we are no one to anyone anymore we are not a smiling face if we have are having a bad day a kind expression as we walk down the halls we are blank robots with peering eyes maybe if we could see each other as humans things might have been different and that's all i have thank you angie thank you um thank you your number one uh concern is the students um and and and you're quoting them and the quotes allow them to finish without the mask um let us just get back to normal nothing's been

111normal since march 13 2020. correct um why do we have to we got to take a hat and sunglasses off but we can we have to wear a mask and how are you going to do facial recognition in that sense and then referencing the the child that made it into a a classroom a bit ago um zero deaths from covid but 20 some just under 30 suicides in that same period of time why doesn't someone ask the oakland county health department to consider these things we have um with no response i want to see a teacher smile and i think i'll have no one to anyone in my mind for a bit yeah thank you thank you [Applause] yes sir all right so let's get to the point on the masked issue so just catch

112me kelly ford um mask vote we were promised okay [Applause] bobby roop the masking of our children good evening thank you and i'll try not to repeat what's already been said um my topic was the illegal masking of our children so i wanted that to be on the record but i want to talk about a couple things and first please no one on the board take this personally because you guys are a team don't take it personally but you keep talking about these excuses at first it was we can't make a decision because it's the oakland county health department's order we have to follow the order right so it take your direction take everything take your focus to the health department we've done that we've seen where they stand on it that it's they just

113write the orders they don't they don't enforce them the next excuse was that there's lawsuits that if you step away from this you might get sued from somebody the next excuse was that johnny might get sick at school and go home and get grandma sick and grandma might die [Applause] now we're hearing the excuse that teachers might quit none of this has happened yet the health department hasn't come at you guys they aren't enforcing the order the lawsuits from some other group hasn't happened yet in fact the opposite has happened johnny hasn't gotten grandma sick right can you prove that that hasn't been proven anywhere not once have we seen a lawsuit or a case where johnny got grandma sick and their family sued the school show me a lawsuit that proves that you can't

114prove it teachers quitting i've got a very reliable source that told me at church on sunday pray for our high schools our high school staff and teachers why because they're ready to quit why are they ready to quit not because we want them unmasked none of this has happened in fact all of those things are rooted in fear just like all of the rules and mandates rooted in fear if you don't do this somebody could die if you don't do this somebody might get sick it's all these mites my grandpa 87 years old says mites don't grow this time of year ever hear that we can't root our decision in mites and fear that's what we're teaching our children it's not about following rules we're teaching our children to root their decisions in fear and

115these rules despite their constitutionality or legality just follow them right we've done that for the last two years we watched our homes be shut down our businesses shut down our restaurants shut down our churches shut down when are we going to stop just following the rules because the rules are bad there becomes a point where we see and we know that the rules are bad and i believe that you guys know that so we're just going to keep following them though even though we know they're bad we talk about security issues these masks are causing a security issue in the schools we know that we see the mental health issues in the schools with the students and the staff i don't need to repeat what she just said about suicide rates we know for a

116fact that suicide rates have tripled in oakland county the mental health and the staff again you guys need to look into the staff the teachers in the high school are burned out the person that told me they said that they are burned out they were super thankful for the the snow days that occurred so they could have a couple day break [Applause] these teachers are going to walk away this is what we do know these are the facts and the truth must outweigh our fears there's no unity in fear fear drives division and it says right there together we are oxford strong there is no strength in fear fear is a weakness that's all i have thank you bubbe um that the progressive arguments that we have used are excuses not arguments because according to

117you they're rooted in fear not in rules um not in fact that uh when do you stop following rules because they're bad rules and then that effect is the following of those rules are creating security issues suicide rates have tripled teachers are getting burned out just enforcing [Music] and so hence asking the board to look at the idea of having truth drive out fear and base your decision on that rather than yeah on truth rather than fear yes sir thank you thank you [Applause] kit kit grabowski [Applause] hi hello again this will be short and sweet since we don't want to be repetitive um however this is about masks it is about safety of our kids it is about the health of our kids there has never been any reason for the mask mandate we

118have all been most of us i've seen at the oakland county health department numerous times cannot say i've seen any of you there i can't say i've seen any of you there supporting us whether you do or not i have no idea however the masks throughout history masks have been used to hide identity they have been used to rob banks murder people the security issues at the school are not 100 percent the mask issue however the masks do not help these kids need to see faces you want them to be happy and healthy they need to see faces they need to not be breathing their own germs in because in all honesty they're losing their immunity to everything the cases of rsv should be very poignant of that i have seen several studies and commentaries

119in the last two days with regards to the fact that everything that has been done during this pandemic has been backwards um from the fact that they have never ever used a lockdown for anything they've proven the lockdowns don't work masks they help yes however based on the current seven day rolling totals from oak from the state of michigan wayne county kids with masks .11 cases washtenaw county also with masks in oakland county with masks are at 10 percent their total cases have been anywhere from 19 to 22 percent macomb county without masks is also point 11 lapeer county which obviously is a much smaller and they are much more spread out has not had masks on they are at 0.08 percent genesee county which has been inconsistent with masks since the beginning of the

120school year is also at point 11 what does that say about the masks for starters if the masks were so important why are the children the only ones that have to wear them and why is it only at school they are not getting coveted at school they are getting it everywhere else because the minute they walk out the door they take the masks off because they can't breathe they're getting sick my daughter my 10 year old daughter i get a phone call 30 minutes after she gets into school she has a headache two hours later her throat hurts by the time she gets home she is so stuffed up she cannot breathe and i spend the next eight hours getting her so she can breathe getting her throat to stop hurting all for it to

121happen the next day this is constant and she is not the only one we need you guys to go with us to oakland county we need you guys to demand not ask they need to give us an ending date what is their pro what do they need to end this mass mandate because originally they stated that it when it got to moderate to low levels that the mass mandate would end um i'm thinking when it's less than 10 or right at the 10 mark i'm really thinking that's not a moderate level and when i say percentages that's of their county populations when you get into the state it's the same thing there is no cause for these masks anymore for our kids i'm not saying that people that feel they need to wear them because

122they need to protect themselves shouldn't wear them but these kids are not at risk the studies have shown the people at risk are the elderly the ones with severe i know this one for a fact because i lost my dad in december but he didn't die from covet he died because of his comorbidity of a 15 functional heart that had been going six years get rid of the masks kit thank you um safety issues hiding identity but actually some of the negative effects of the mass losing immunity headaches breathing sore throats um [Music] and then i think uh one of the things that you wanted to lay out as a kind of a compelling argument is that when you lay the counties that are mass mandated and those that aren't the percentages all fall in

123the same category they're not so in that sense it's not making a difference so and also the last thing is um for those of us on the board to help and join you all in your efforts yeah thank you it needs to be demanded not yeah thank you [Applause] diane mask mandate stepanovich did i get it right okay all right marcy and payton marcy and peyton i see one of one one of two and two of two so yeah if peyton will speak on her own she's gonna okay yep as usual and again like bobby said i know some of you and i have a lot of respect for you we disagree in some things here so let me just start out my name is marcie andrikis my daughter peyton and i have been speaking

124at these meetings for quite a while and it's getting very disheartening because while you have been saying all the right things we are trying we hear you you are not doing the right things it's not to hide behind the fear of a suit now you're saying that's not it it's not the immunity anymore it's more you're worried about staff calling off and hiding behind the unions so i want to share a story with you i was asking my daughter what she had been working on at school she said she had to write about someone that was a hero to her during these coveted times i said did you write one about daddy because he's always your hero and he gets a lot of stories written about him i was surprised when she said no i

125wrote about you i said well me why this is the part you guys need to hear she said because you never panicked about anything even when there was people tons of people shopping not a lot of food you made an adventure you always had her cupboard stocked this next part makes me cry she said that you always worked very hard to make sure i stayed connected with my friends arranged times to hang out and socialize so that i wouldn't have to be by myself anymore a lot of my friends and the other parents weren't doing that this last part really says a ton and these are kind of more her words this last part is why i come here she said it's because you've done the research found out how bad masks are and because

126of what they did to me you worked hard you got me an exemption when most kids can't get exemptions or their parents weren't trying to get them one and even though peyton still doesn't have to wear hers she says you are still fighting for all the other kids you know we don't think kids are always listening but they are and they are watching i'm so proud my daughter sees knows and appreciates what i do for her and her dad does for her but at the same time i'm so sad because you the board have said peyton we hear you we know this is about you and we're proud that you come and you speak on behalf of all the other students but then you don't take action and this is what she sees [Applause] i'm

127sure you've heard about the girl that she had a mass exemption at the high school that smiled at the shooter as she walked by or as he walked by her right as he went past her he shot the kids directly behind her she thinks and her counselor has confirmed that smile saved her life i've heard you're now banning hoodies sunglasses and hats because that can't because that can conceal someone's identity as i read this do you hear how ridiculous this sounds take the mask off of our kids let them smile at each other let them see each other's emotions that will save more lives than banning hoodies and hats will ever do and not just because they can smile but because now you can see their faces you know how they're feeling you may be

128able to help a troubled child before it goes too far i don't necessarily mean another school shooting but how about another suicide because we missed what's really going on with one of those children [Applause] and we miss those signs of them being in crisis so i have to ask you how do you go home live with yourself knowing you could have made a difference but you chose not to at this point in the name of mental health and safety take the mass off these kids and shame on the people in the district that will play a game of calling in sick or using the union when our kids mental health and safety is at stake which you are afraid of will shut the schools down shame on them we don't need them in our districts

129anyways thank you [Applause] we as a board are listening and hearing we're just not doing the right thing um what an honor it must be to have your daughter write about you as a hero that's cool that's good um [Applause] take off the mass so that we can see these kids and maybe we won't miss some of the signs whether it's signs of depression anxiety fear hurt whatever it might be um we have to be missing some things if the kids are masked all the time um all right peyton um hi my name is peyton i'm an eighth grader at this school and i've kind of i guess we haven't been able to make it to the past two meetings because of the incident and stuff um but i'm still fighting for my friends about

130the masks even though i don't have to wear one anymore because um here are a few things that i heard before everybody started talking that you guys kind of presented as something that we should know before we start sharing what we think um you told us that or thinking about the wearing or not wearing masks like trying to like you have your opinions in uh the health important or whatever is is stopping you from being able to do that and that it's keeping you up at night and it's a lot to think about and stuff but i would also like to tell you uh back when i was wearing my mask and i know for a fact that my friends who wear their max thinking about having to wear masks the next day and failing

131grades and not being able to think well because they're focusing on breathing is keeping them up at night too i personally my bedtime is like 10 o'clock and i admit that i thinking about my friends i'm up to at least probably about two in the morning every night because it stresses me out not just like my own grades or whatever but about my friends having to wear masks and not being able to breathe as well because their parents like can't find a place to give them an exemption or stuff like that when i was wearing my mask i ended up i ended the semester or the school year with a's bees and ice during the school year i had some season d's because i couldn't keep up on my work the mask was definitely stressing

132me out i could not i i was focusing on breathing more than on the lesson and i am always an all a student so luckily i was able to end the year with a's and b's but this semester when i when i got my mass removed at the beginning of the year i was able to finish with all a's and two a minuses i almost had a 4.0 this first semester when i didn't have my mask on um people as you say that like you never know the opinions of other people like if you did if you somehow were able to get the masks off or whatever that you don't know how the public and everybody would react but if they were really that concerned about their children wearing masks or whatever they would be

133at this meeting right now speaking up about it so like my friends my my friend's parents like my mom had told them about the meeting and asked them like hey why don't you come because we know you don't want your kids wearing masks anymore they they're they're i believe that they are more scared to share their opinion because they are scared of being judged because that's a lot of judging is going around in this world i said this last time and i'm going to say it again america is not feeling like america very much anymore because free will and stuff is kind of being put away um and you you you're telling the health department you're asking the health department like why don't we why can't we remove masks and stuff rather than like i

134i rather than just removing the mandate like rather than saying you ha you can't you don't have to wear method anymore why not make it optional like if if if parents are so scared of their kids getting coveted or whatever why don't they just not send their their kids to school there's online there's hybrid there's a ton of different stuff that they can do if they were really that scared of their kids getting covered their kid would probably not be at school and in the beginning of the year when we had that three days of optional mask wearing i saw over at least 90 percent of the school without a mask on and maybe 10 percent of the school with the mask on and i believe it was more because of them highly recommending it

135so it kind of made them made parents and stuff a little bit nervous and about the vaccine clinics i don't know if those are right i don't i don't think those are right if they're if their kids really wanted to give or really need the vaccines or whatever they would they should take it to like a professional doctor at a s at a doctor a place or whatever i am not vaccinated i don't i am not boosted i have none of that i don't even wear a mask and i haven't had covid since 29 2019 maybe early 2020 and it's in the winter so people getting sick is probably not gonna be always covered it's probably just gonna be the flu or whatever because it's in the middle of winter it's cold outside people are

136cold waiting for their bus and stuff um and my my mom there was this lady that her kids were coming home crying every day her sorry her little kids were coming home crying every day and my and she was begging for a mass exemption my mom helped her get one and she sent this big paragraph about how she was so thankful and her kids literally came home saying it was the best day of their lives because they didn't have to wear a mask thank you peyton thank you here fighting for your friends kids are stressed out it's affecting them it actually affected grades concern for freedom in general in america why not optional you touched on the vaccine clinics for for a bit and mentioned that fact that you know isn't it wintertime aren't people

137sick anyways with flu colds and and whatnot but i think the main thing is you're fighting for your friends and [Applause] want us to realize that this is negatively affecting them and that we should do something about it thank you [Applause] mark students [Applause] my name is mark james gillum and i'm representing my 14 year old daughter who is in ninth grade here she's a six-year student of the district and we came here because we love this district and mr donnelly i don't think we even knew each other until we ran into some major problems and things that were kind of show stoppers and one of the things that just off the top of my head surprises me is you know i don't know if dan's on vacation again or not but corey and and

138yourself that you're trying to silence the parents we have five minutes to talk and communicate our concerns to you and you're telling us you don't want us to talk about specific topics you know a teacher gets up here somebody who works with our kids every day and is representing the interests of the kids and reading their statements and the second she gets done corey says oh we're talking about masks too often if that's the best you have i think you should leave which point mr throne i want to commend him and i think he's a really smart man to step aside and i think it's best for the district mr donnelly as you know i've also recommended that you step aside now more than ever and we had an incident at the legacy center where

139mr donnelly and his wife kimberly and one of their agents todd called and told the police that i was in the parking lot creating a threat we're done oh this is we're done no we're not i have five no it's gonna shut me up you can't personally assault you can't personally i'm not assaulting you're taught you've used my name and corey's name already twice you're not talking you called my wife enough please so we're not allowed just that he gets removed so the parents are not allowed i'm leaving and it's on the record this is on you i will leave willingly i'm happy to do that out of respect for you and the law enforcement in this community but the parents are not going anywhere and you cannot silence me and not your people can

140silence me it's enough thank you [Applause] andrea jones safety hello uh i am going to finish laurie's letter since she was not able to the one that was being read correct thank you um and i think were there i'm sorry i'm going to move along because i only have limited time okay go ahead okay so the last question was what is the district and the high school's plan for security guards and school resource officers how many are contracted to be at the school daily what is the security schedule what is the security teams hired from does the district work with a uh hand what will their new roles be and be tasked with this being the important part at the beginning of this you stated that the prosecutor asked you one thing not to talk

141about anything but we also got an email from the prosecutor as parents because we are victims of a crime stating that if we wanted to make a you know a statement out in public whether it be social media or to the actual media that we run it by them so we did so we submitted our questions to the county prosecutor and we did get a response back and nothing in this is a conflict of interest for the criminal cases so that will not be an acceptable excuse to not answer our questions that being said to ensure these answers are provided within a timely manner we request the response by close of business wednesday february 16 of 2022 the email address is provided and we welcome any additional information that you would or you feel should

142be made aware of in the response so again we will give those to you the next thing i'm going to read is from my son and another group of students who met with alyssa slotkin my son has been trying to get a meeting with the principal of the high school uh since you went back to the high school the first day he was told he wouldn't be able to see him that it would be two weeks i'm gonna repeat that again two weeks for a student to have a meeting with their principal that's absolutely ridiculous but he was able to meet with alyssa slatkin and this was his statement about that he finds it really odd that alyssa slotkin who is way more important than wolf took the time to come and talk to the

143oxford students and during that meeting he made it very clear that it's really hard to learn when you don't feel safe and that oxford schools is more concerned about making you feel calm opposed to feeling safe um so the kids came up with a list of security changes that they feel are appropriate i feel are appropriate so a minimum of four police officers stationed in the high school as there are four different quadrants in the high school um they would like metal detectors on the first day of school my son chose instead of going to class that he would go to the office and ask to speak to his principal he was told it would be two weeks so instead he sat in the office and waited for the next available person to speak with

144which was the vice principal mr nas when he asked mr ness about metal detectors he was told that well you know we're looking into it but the overall problem is the image that it would give the high school i think the image was lost on november 30th or to be quite fair before that i don't think there's an image problem with metal detectors um [Applause] where is the information when you guys say you're looking into it how much do they cost who did you talk to when did you do this this is information we have a right to know as parents and certainly our students his statement about mr wolf i see one minute he needs to be more present come to the classes in the lunch in the hallway he's been non-existent since they've

145come back this is the leader of their school same with throne he's not here tonight during public comment he was gone the first week we went back to school he was up in lansing seems like it would have been important to be here better communication period during ellis lockdown according to the kids where was the person on the speaker telling them where the danger was so they knew which way to run they had no idea they don't feel safe and you don't listen to them you've yet to ask them it's their story it's their trauma and you've taken that away from them by not giving them a town hall or anything the only thing i will say on that is in the middle school when they were there he was given a survey by one

146of the teachers on a scale of one to ten how safe do you feel my son i didn't know he had done this had written a 2 and then below that there was a line for a comment so in his own words he wrote and i'll be careful how i phrase this i don't effing feel safe and he said mom i did it on purpose because i wanted to force them to have to ask me how i felt i wanted to look them in the eye and tell them how i felt your time's up we never heard back never thank you [Applause] sir all right i've finished out that document that we're all going to get right we got one for each of us okay um but then went on to talk about your your

147son and a conversation uh with our uh slotkin um and and specifically how he feels and others like him feel at school uh whether it's metal detectors or whether it's the fact that we're not seeing key people in classrooms or lunchrooms and we just just don't feel safe and that maybe some comments that were put on a survey were never followed up on and so thank you brian cooper hello hi brian there's a few a few different topics a little bit scattered and i know we've talked about a lot of things tonight so um one of the things i was hoping to address that we talked about early on was a secondary uh notification system for the the lockdown at the school we were talking about that there is an audible one but we needed

148a secondary one as well something visual i was wondering if there's any input on that moving forward and if we're going to have anything in place before the end of the year that's one point okay the the second thing i was a little bit discouraged and i just want to give feedback and again i don't want to be destructive i want to be constructive with feedback is that when i was kind of touching base with my daughter coming home from school this was the second week on tuesday so the second day of the second week and i was just trying to get a vibe and ask how things were going and her impression of what was said in the class and again i say her impression because i wasn't there to hear it but it's

149it's 14 year old ears versus in adult ears but the fact of the matter is that this is her perception of what was said and essentially it was the teacher was letting them know that it was time to accept it and move forward i felt that that was a damaging comment for a 14 year old that was in that hallway to hear that and that that worries me because i'm i'm concerned that if not all teachers are instructed in a particular way to handle trauma that they may respond in a way that might not be appropriate so i was hoping that we could understand what training has been done up to this point and what will continue to be done moving forward that was the second thing the same day we were having that conversation

150i was even more discouraged when she told me she went into the bathroom and there were two girls vaping in there that offered it to her the reason why i feel concerned about that isn't so much so to to be foolish and say well kids aren't vaping and doing things like that it was more so because of the respect for the level of security at the school it didn't seem to phase them that on the second week second day they're already back in the bathroom vaping to me if they can get the vape in it doesn't seem to me that they would hesitate to bring whatever else they want in um so to me that that's worrisome and i do worry about the status of the bathrooms i've also mentioned that i mentioned it at

151the last meeting time when we talked about it afterward again as i do want to be proactive as a parent help facilitate communications with the staff and work with teachers that's still important i haven't heard a great deal back on that yet in regard to both parents having a voice or an informal forum that we talked about and we didn't get to again say that publicly but i want to say that again publicly that i would like to see an informal forum for parents and students as they see fit secondly with sam barna said that we were asking for transparency and they were being quite transparent we asked that question quite a long time ago so i found that to be frustrating and the transparency that i see with that to avoid miscommunication was that

152it's very difficult to find that was the first time we saw that broken down on paper and i'm glad but when it comes to sr3 for instance the fact of the matter is is that it's encouraged that we have communication from the community perspective and i know an email went out asking for a very general questions on how people would like to see that money utilized but again i do feel more communication is warranted and the communication we're looking for is transparency before allocation not once it's already been decided how it's going to be used we as a community need to have input on that for the mental emotional and educational components that need to be addressed thirdly in regard to money i don't know if you guys had an opportunity to read it but

153if you didn't i would encourage you to miguel cardona the union the united states secretary of education on december 16th wrote a pretty fantastic letter talking about how to use the money to blunt the staff's shortage and breaks it down on all levels encouraging districts superintendents and communities to use that money to blunt the staff shortage that's what we've heard is that we've had a problem with staffing from day one i i strongly encourage you guys to read it because he breaks it down step by step how to get more people in here but not only get more people in here and help retain the staff that you have pay them what they're worth and get them the support that they need which is the point that was made at the last meeting that's a

154lot of what i have i do have to say i know taking the memorial down was needed at a certain point it was deemed appropriate i guess i didn't realize i was i was heading back after dropping off my um my middle school or high school i can't remember picking up or whatever it may be seeing the four flags down i thought that was i thought those should have been left i feel like that's trying to erase those children that have been taken away from this family and i think that should have been considered as a simple gesture to acknowledge the children that were lost thank you thank you brian brian to your first question the safety committee is looking at a a visual secondary announcement approach [Music] you mentioned um potentially a teacher responding

155to students about accept it and move on the bathroom vaping um every time you've come you've you've been asking for proactive communication that that we open up some parent forms and student forums and allow that communication um let's do some of what we did with sam barna as before allocation versus after allocation um you mentioned um the gentleman who who wrote how to use money to to blunt staff shortages and then a concern about the four flags that were removed at the memorial site thank you heather thank you firstly i wanted to offer my condolences and i wanted to attempt to couch this in a way that hopefully encourages you some may have already made up their mind that speaking about mass at a time like this is insensitive in poor taste or even wrong

156but for those of us in this room who have been unrelenting in our pursuit of choice we do not what we see are bureaucrats who have failed the children in this country county and this town because of the political allegiance and myopic lens in which they viewed coveted it's the end result of potentially a crowd of people who are maybe a little louder maybe a little more incessant with their need to control others but we are seeing community events after community events or even they are relenting on the narratives the narratives that are crumbling faster than they can keep up with your community needs from you in regards to your advocacy um to legislators to to ochd as opposed to a vote because i understand that that's not going to be happening is bravery for

157you to stand up for the dignity of choice for you to give your students and teachers the relief and healing that comes from seeing each other you can and you should and let it be said that at this time in your life you didn't cower you stood up you spoke up [Music] our children their children and my children have sacrificed enough unelected officials charged with this mandate have let you down they've not heard your advocacy but they'll tweet about it if it serves them i'm asking you to do what no public school in oakland or wayne or any of the counties that are currently under mandates have really had the bravery to do and that's to advocate for a return to local control i'm asking you to unmask oxford now thank you working backwards be

158brave enough to stand up for the choice allow these kids to heal um advocate for local control parental choice yeah thank you that's it can i get my three minutes back since you didn't give me a reason i don't i have five minutes dude no first amendment here okay all right that's all of them i don't have an i don't have another one so uh we move on to clarifications item number 11. while you've got scheduled activities don't miss those and we also have some board meetings coming up so make sure those are on your calendars final board comments all right i think in in the in the hearing of some things to leave you with some information so it doesn't get misconstrued [Applause] there was some implication that we moved from fear of liability

159to this to this to this to this no they're all there they're all present but maybe not all set at one time so it's not a board shifting it's a board maybe stating some things that it hadn't said before and finally wanted to complete the list i would say that dr henry has been one of the largest advocates and instructors on the social emotional side of the recovery of this process and guiding our administration our our cabinet and and into how to do certain things a certain way he's the same man who spoke to all of you through video he has tirelessly been in our district amongst our kids he's trained our teachers so so i guess i want you to know that um so that you don't think that we just came back to

160school without a plan um it was a guided plan a strongly guided plan and i think other than that yeah i don't think i want to address anything else at this point um appreciate your your involvement uh appreciate um your approaches to how you've dealt with some of your concerns or questions um so thank you i don't think there's anything under other i don't think there's anything new to address so um it is 10 21 and we're going to adjourn this meeting it's a great day to be a wildcat thank you