001I did oh you did something doesn't work I've done this once or twice before you've been here before haven't you thank you Tony right right did you try everything my husband did you try rebooting it no are you comfortable oh go yeah okay okay don't worry about it I'd like to Kyle to order a regular meeting of the Board of Education January 24th 2023 seven o'clock P.M uh Cindy could you please call the roll here Chris Lowe present RJ Mathis here Craig Meadows Aaron meitzler here hey Mrs Meister will you meet us in the pledge please of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign s removed from or added to the agenda for tonight there are not all right so our
002first item on the agenda is celebrating um stem education and I'm assuming Liz mcalpin is our yeah that's okay I knew this we're good um for those of you that don't know me I'm Liz mcalpin um I've been teaching in Batavia for 23 years and the last seven years I have been at the stem school so I was a classroom teacher for three years a teacher leader for three years and then I'm the director for instruction um last year so um part of my role this year while I'm back in the district is working at Rotolo in the morning and then I also work with fifth graders in the afternoon so we're doing a stem pilot program with our fifth grade students you can go ahead um so I am at HC Storm for a
003six week unit and then I go to JB for that a six-week unit back to storm back to JB so I'm currently in my fourth rotation fourth of sixth um so I just wanted to share a little bit of the um what we were looking at is the goals for stem this year so stem is this great big enormous topic and we are um starting with small steps with our pilot and so the focus that we had this year was to integrate the science and engineering practices along with inquiry and resources that we have within the district and that I was able to bring back with me from stem as well as to expand the current practices of the staff so I am co-teaching with the teachers they come with their kids to my class
004and then we work together um another goal that we have is to get the kids to think like scientists and to see themselves as scientists right when we ask them to draw a picture of a scientist they draw a mad scientist with crazy uh hair and lab coat and they just found themselves which um is alarming right because they could be the next people that are developing the next cure for the next the next pandemic or the next thing that we have out there right we also want to increase the number of students that we're exposed to a stem experience that was one of the goals that we had and we wanted kids to view science as a verb now right it's something that we do and live and breathe it isn't something that we
005I'm just reading a book so go ahead um so I wanted to make sure I was asked to share briefly um how it was going this year so I thought the most important part was to bring the kids voice so at the end of each rotation students were either interviewed or completed a Google form they were just asked five simple questions and then the last question they could just give any kind of comment that they wanted to so one question that we focused on was what makes stem different than other classes right so you can see it pushes you out of your comfort zone but in a good way right these are their words these are not mine we come up with our own ideas and create them from scratch and we get to test
006things and see if they work gives you opportunities to be creative we do science with multiple exclamation points right there are interactive activities that help you remember and that everything we do is fun and it gets us um gets our brains thinking another question that we asked students was what have you enjoyed learning during our time together right we're we're only together for five and a half or six weeks so it's not a very long time um but they've enjoyed learning how they are scientists how creative they can be um and they um enjoy learning new things and having fun while they're doing it they enjoy the ability to collaborate and then I just threw in some of their comments about specific things that they've enjoyed learning about different effects animals have on ecosystems I
007was able to bring back digital microscopes that we could hook up to their Chromebooks and they enjoyed using those looking inside parts of a plant when we looked at structure and function so that was one thing that they have enjoyed um another thing that we had kids do was on a scale of one to five right one being low five being high how much have you enjoyed or liked our class and time together 68 of students gave it a five 22 gave it a four so ninety percent of our students gave it either a four or five eight percent gave it a three we had one person who gave it a two and he was like I'm really sorry it's nothing against you I'm just not a huge science fan and not ever right and
008not everybody is which is complete uh completely so um again I think there the next slide just shows some of their overall comments right I shared with them that because this is a pilot this is something that we want to learn from and we need to know what we can do to improve so overwhelmingly we hear that they want the time to be longer um they'd like to like it to continue if they want all kids to have this experience um it should be for all ages right they're learning and watching things at home because of stem they wish that um oh this is a good I think I don't know if it was supposed to be a negative but I wish you would just tell us the answers and said we have to find
009them I take that as a win um so that's one of our big takeaways um and that they just really enjoyed the class so um I did ask staff and administration if they wanted to share any comments about how they thought it was going so the next slide sorry the font is smaller um adults are a little more verbose um so um they've really enjoyed seeing the High student engagement I have had kids ask if they could come into my room during recess give up their recess time to work on extensions or to finish projects teachers have enjoyed the ability to observe um doing science differently than they have in the past using science inquiry um highly engaging lessons they feel that it certainly helps promote the STL SK skills portrait of graduate attributes Administration
010has shared that parents are sharing with them how much their kids are enjoying and going home and telling them what they're doing at school um another comment was that it's moving students Beyond curiosity into action and discovery that they students are loving doing science and that it's been exciting to watch them create and revise in real life experiences so um all in all looking forward for the pilot um obviously there are a lot of things under the surface that we need to continue looking at and explore and that would be increasing the time that we have for stem being able to collaborate with teachers that was one piece of feedback right so I'm only with them for five weeks and they're like so now what like we don't have the same plan time so we
011can't collaborate on the next unit making sure that we Infuse more stem into our elementary curriculum and expanding traditional grade levels and really building the interdisciplinary connections because I think that's been that was one of the greatest takeaways we had from this down school that it was so interdisciplinary that that had a huge impact on the success and on Student Success so there is one I appreciate Liz kind of bringing forward the student and staff voice she did leave off one thing and it's one of the most frequent pieces of feedback that we get from students who experience this is that they love Miss mcalpin and she's doing a fabulous job so a lot of this credit goes to to Liz and to the work she's done at HC Storm and JB Nelson but you
012can see this feedback from our kids and from our staff how successful she's been in that classroom so thank you well thanks thank you and I just want to thank you guys um and thank you for providing this opportunity for kids and hopefully you can continue dialogue to look at what we can do to increase and grow the pilot from this point out thank you that was amazing [Applause] and I know I know there's a celebration Brad I'm hoping that can we add uh Liz had talked about presenting in January and I think board members are excited about continuing so what are our next steps how do we build on that like how would yeah we've talked uh we've had discussions and uh what to do at the elementary level what's next based on our
013learning from this year and then some are discussions that are ongoing about the middle school so we believe we have other phases of learning to do related to Stem and we'll bring those back uh later this spring early spring so you can kind of know what the next steps are for us and these are talking about what we'd be doing next year yep excellent that's awesome perfect um next item on our agenda are our public comments so the first item is comments from the public um so we'd like to welcome everyone to the Board of Education if anyone wishes to address the board this evening please see our recording secretary Cindy to submit a form for addressing the board please put your full name and address on the form as we're required by state law
014to keep a detailed set of minutes of all of our meetings in general we don't answer questions or engage in dialogue during public comments it doesn't mean that we don't take your concerns or comments seriously we value active Community participation and we encourage people to engage with the district through the variety of appropriate channels and systems that we have but we're not involved in the day-to-day running of the operations and we can't engage in District business individually if you do have specific questions or you would like to further engage with the district you can submit your questions there's a link on the website and an appropriate staff member will get back to you so I'm going to hand it over to Holly deachman our BPS 101 Communications manager who's going to explain the procedures thank
015you president Dremel speakers will be will be called up in order when your name is called please come up to the podium so that you can be heard all individuals speaking will be limited to three minutes I'll put a timer up on the board so that you can see it while you're at the podium at any time during the meeting written comments may be submitted to our recording secretary Cindy Rodriguez at my right speakers should conduct themselves with Civility and respect towards everyone in this room that's all I have for you please welcome Rick Lathrop it's all right with you I will speak from the middle of the room I think if you can't hear me just raise your hand actually we'd like for you to come to the podium please because we we broadcast
016this uh so we want everyone to be able to see you want people to be able to hear it thanks I am Rick Lathrop I'm a resident and taxpayer of the district and I've asked to talk to the Board of Education this evening after a six-year-old kid in Newport News Virginia brought a gun to school and shot a teacher some of my friends have said you're reacting to this much stronger than a lot of other people and that's probably because when I graduated from college I became a high school teacher so I've been there I've done that when I left teaching I went to work for the National Education Association and its state Affiliates including the Illinois Education Association so most of my adult life I've been an advocate for public education and for School
017Employees I wouldn't have come to here tonight also if this were an isolated incident but unfortunately it's not in the last 10 years there have been 189 school shootings since hand sand Sandy Hook in which there was at least one fatality 108 about 20 a year in addition to that more than 1200 gun incidents in and around schools have occurred in the last 10 years and you can just imagine how traumatic that is for the parents for the students for the staff for everyone when somebody shows up at a school with a gun I am a member of the Congregational Church of Batavia with me is Don Smith who is also a member and Larry Davidson is from Saint Marks in Geneva both of our churches are involved in an organization called the industrial areas
018foundation and over the last five to six years we have put together a gun safety Consortium which consists of towns cities and police departments and the goal is to build safe guns this is not any attempt to get any law any rule any regulation we want to build safe guns through the free market system which this country has done very well under smart guns are guns that can only be fired by the person who is who is the owner of that gun or that person authorized and that's that's one of the technologies that the companies that were working are are trying to develop three critical areas school shootings 42 percent of the kids of the incidents with guns are students they bring guns to school most of those kids are getting guns from their home
019because 52 percent of the guns in this country are not stored safely according to a recent survey of 1400 gun owners so the kids can get their hands on a gun take it to school and and that's that's unacceptable guns are also taken from law enforcement persons if you remember back in 2017 there was an ugly incident at Del Norte Hospital when an inmate from the county jail took the gun from a security officer and held four nurses captive for a couple of hours until he was shot by the by the SWAT team those nurses collected 7.9 million dollars in Damages as a result of the trauma that they experience so sometimes people do take guns from police officers and they use them on the police officer or they use them on somebody else guns
020are also stolen from cars and from homes a safe gun will not fire if somebody breaks into my car and steals my gun it's useless to them they can't use it uh safe guns have the safety built in people don't have to add trigger guards or anything else to it so I will come back [Music] have a meeting so the district could learn more about this and also to see if there's a way that the district can support what it is that we're trying to do thank you thank you thank you next on our public comments we'd like to invite our BPS Partners first I'd like to start with our students ambassadors we've got Zara ND here tonight yeah sorry you guys are first oh I did um okay um uh us girls and boys
021tracking season track and field season is starting up soon and last week we got our first meeting which I uh which went really great and next week we're starting our first week official week of tracking season um Batavia boy basketball also um started their season and JV had a game last week with the North and they won and I also heard that they've won five in a row so that's incredible um Top Dog also raised over 3 000 for children's Neuroscience research which is amazing and if you guys went it was really entertaining so it was a great event and girls wrestling is also on the rise with many athletes getting proud of accomplishments example is little Enos and she has over 30 wins in just this season alone and even the Scholastic Bowl did
022great because they had their varsity and junior varsity and they both played second at The Duquesne conference um uh the dance team had a compass sectional competition last Saturday and JV dance took place and then there was also a welcoming incoming freshman night for class of 2027 and so many families showed up and 8th graders showed up so it was a great event and there was also the swing swingers had to kick off to their competition season with Rock The Rock and they did pretty good too so it was overall a lot of accomplishments this month that's all that's all thank you thanks thank you super fun let's see what's going on uh next uh person I would like to invite to the podium uh Our Best Buy officers are here tonight I know Kevin
023botterman's here and if he can introduce who else he's got with him that would be fabulous good evening I'm Kevin botterman I'm a secretary for the Batavia excuse education support professionals Association part of the executive board and this is Marsha suster our vice president and Laura vercello Treasurer treasure so um we just wanted to take a few minutes to introduce ourselves to the board I hope it's not late you know this is our first appearance here and I see so many familiar faces around the room and I hope it's not too late in the year to wish you a happy New Year we serve on the Executive Board of the Batavia education support professionals Association the union representing the district's support staff the secretaries the paraprofessionals the kindergarten enrichment instructors the maintenance workers and the
024campus monitors those who all help keep our schools operating efficiently and safely Vespa is committed to representing the common workplace interests of its due dues paying members and those represented by the collective bargaining unit Vespa also is committed to working in good faith with the Board of Education and the individuals who make up the administrative ranks throughout the district we see exciting and challenging days ahead for all of us and finally Vespa is committed to keeping our schools welcoming safe and productive for students of all ages and that's just a general idea and thought that we wanted to share with you this evening as the executive order officers of the organization that represents so many key and valuable support staff throughout the district thank you so much it's nice to see all of you here
025next we'd like to invite Todd Swanson president of the Bea good evening members of the board tonight I do not have a lengthy report to share with you and if you were to ask the members of the Bea they would advise you to Relish in that fact because I'm generally not known for it for my brevity so it's gonna be kind of short tonight uh as we look forward to what is on the horizon we know that April 4th is a pivotal day for our district not only in terms of the school board election but with the referendum question as well when the ba officers met with Senior Management last week smt shared with us the hope that our teachers can be purveyors of information about the referendum it was agreed upon that there needs
026to be a broader scope of information that is shared with staff and Community what are the actual specifics if the referendum passes what are the actual specifics if the referendum fails what will be the impacts of both scenarios either pass or fail to the district to the staff and to the children of Batavia having these clear-cut and direct answers to both sides of the debate will help our staff members have a level of understanding that may not have been present last fall what we ask of you as a board is the same thing that we asked of smt last week in this process and that is to recognize whose voices you are not only hearing from but recognizing those that you are not looking at this issue from an equity lens that we are constantly
027striving to use will help you know if you are not only reaching every possible demographic represented in BPS but answering their questions and concerns in the ways that best help them understand the situation at hand that doesn't mean waiting for people to come to you with their questions or comments we all know that they will continue to be those who use self-advocacy as an Avenue to ask questions to challenge to get information and to form their own educated opinions that will lead them to a ballot on April 4th we don't have to worry about missing those voices as long as their information sources are rooted in fact and honesty as a district we should be doing everything in our power to recognize and to hear the voices that aren't being heard is it a family
028who speaks no English in their home how are they getting all the pertinent information and how are we sure that they are comprehending that information they do receive in their native language is it the family who doesn't have the technological means to receive Communications from the district how are they getting all the pertinent information is it the family that has only one vehicle and won't have a way to the polling places on April 4th how will they be given information to help them cast their ballot regarding early voting or mail-in balloting is it the family who hears that storm and Louise White will be getting new buildings and their kids attend Gustafson and Rotolo how are we being sure that they know what their children will be benefiting from if the referendum passes or if
029not if it fails we could keep thinking about instances and situations like each one of these and if there's anything that I've learned from beginning to use the equity lens in education it is constantly asking ourselves the same very question how do we know every household in our district gets the same information that will help them make an informed decision on the referendum question as a board and as a district we cannot be complacent in thinking if we don't hear from someone they mustn't have any questions I urge you to make sure that we seek out any groups that may be underrepresented or underserved and that they have the same opportunities to be an educated voter in the April election just as much as those who attend board meetings every single month and engage in
030every public forum about the referendum that is offered as a district we owe each and every one of our citizens the right to get the same information as everyone else no matter what it takes to get that information out to them that is what Equity is all about please know that the Bea shares in the importance of making sure our members have clear and concise information and we'll do what we can to Aid in this process the entire way with that I wish you all a great rest of your week and I will see you all again in February thank you very much the next item on our agenda is the consent agenda which is an opportunity for us to approve a number of routine business items oh my goodness I am so sorry you're
031right board member committee comments I didn't have committee this month so I uh skipped on Chris go ahead and start um I had my our rec meeting and we have been discussing our uh goals moving forward and we plan on presenting them next month so that is the big thing that we talked about awesome thanks uh insurance and benefits committee met on January 12th there's really two topics of discussion we were given a presentation on uh the wellness check how many people participated in just so people know this is where teachers and their spouses and families or spouses I should say can get uh preliminating medical information blood pressure glucose levels so the goal is to get better health outcomes so we're kind of getting ahead of any problems that could be determined uh the
032other item was a presentation by Modern Health it was a presentation on providing additional Mental Health Services it's actually something that's in our action items that Tony's going to give a little more detailed presentation on but um it was very interesting I I look forward to Tony's presentation on that quick question Aaron or Tony how what was our participation in the wellness I wrote down it was 635 total 412 employees and 223 spouses is that an increase over last year slightly down totally down that was part of the discussions how we can increase that yeah okay good question thank you this was our was it your second year or third year this is the third year of the wellness incentives but we've been doing the wellness screening for I've been doing it for a while
033but we added in 10 years yeah yeah right okay I had plaque the other day last week because last Thursday um they're working on um professional development plan um doing a great job seems like everybody's communicating well getting along doing a good job and so I think the purpose for that is to kind of communicate to the entire District share the information so doing a good job okay got some good ideas Cat meets Thursday RJ uh next type of meeting is in two weeks so I'll have something in the next meeting for that awesome Erin do you want to talk about big uh oh big meets Saturday not last Saturday especially it's Saturday um the January um Equity team meeting took place last week I believe um they took some time to define equity what
034does it mean to BPS what does an equitable school and classroom environment look like feel like sound like for both students and staff and what should the district do to prioritize and promote equity and how will we know when it is achieved and then there were some action steps formulated um what the actions will be 6 9 12 months finalize the timeline and then research and recommend action steps and that's awesome awesome thanks Erin okay sorry about skipping that um back to Arkansas agenda as I mentioned all of the items in the consent agenda are in the board um in the board book and so Mr Pierce will take us through that yeah 5.1 is the approval of the December 20th 2022 meeting minutes 5.2 is the approval of the January 10 2023 special meeting
035minutes 5.3 is the monthly personal report 5.4 is our monthly payrolls and bills 5.5 is our donations we had a sizable donation from The Mike Park Memorial for the AGS general fund which was very kind in Mike's name 5.6 is our policy second reading 5.7 is the approval of our renewal of our print management software 5.8 is the approval of a purchase of student Chromebooks and 5.9 is our uh outside special education contracts wrapping up with 5.10 the approval of the consent agenda commissioner removal I actually uh spoke to David if he's comfortable speaking about the Chromebook purchases thank you all right so last year I was going to start with that topic first um last year we actually got a bunch of Chromebooks we got almost 1700 Chromebooks as part of a grant last
036year which worked out very well it actually put us in a great spot to actually kick off what I'm proposing today um we're actually able to move to about an 1100 1200 count and we're going to plan on doing that every year for first Fifth and Ninth Grade just to keep an actual cycle instead of randomly picking grades like we've done in the past nine years of Chromebooks we've learned a lot Google has even helped us to the point where they've stretched out their life cycles as well so running a four-year device like this is actually going to help save a lot of money over the next four years we're going to be able to even transition kindergarten basically through fifth fourth grade are going to have a full-blown touchscreen Chromebook with a world-facing camera
037and everything so this is great we've got a lot of requests for it over the years so functionality in the classroom they can do a lot of AR stuff with it and things like that from fifth grade on to senior we're at actually giving them a little more respect to the Chromebook more memory to actually run more stuff as much web development things that are happening these days they're calling for more Hardware so this actually puts us in a great spot to run on that four-year cycle so this will help me budget as well that number is going to just follow enrollment numbers as we go through now instead of just randomly three four grades a year it's three every year so it'll keep our Cycles consistent from this point we do the same thing
038with staff devices for the district too so this helps us budget a lot more friendly awesome you guys any more questions that's it thank you appreciate it so actually just to clarify so kids are all kids are going to get a new Chromebook at first Fifth and ninth grade yep and then I'm going to do that every year yep so we're gonna basically this plan will take four years to pan out essentially love it cool any other questions on anything else in the consent agenda right then I would entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented a second moved by my third second by kilburg all in favor aye aye any opposed right consent agenda passes uh next item on our agenda is our reports I'm going to hand that over to Dr
039Hitchens the first two you see every month and if anybody has any questions I'd be happy to answer them I have a question yeah I'm just looking at this all of a sudden what is service like only because it affects us they wanted School Board information like what is service information how many years you've been on the school board so so they didn't want to know what clubs or activities how many how many years of service yeah like there's a lot but right right yeah what committees do I serve on okay all right that was just interesting anything else all right the next report on our agenda is the Student Services report we've got Kerry Roo and Brad v um Carrie's our director of special ed and Brands our director of student services and I
040think there's other uh student services Administration with us tonight hi everybody um I'm Carrie Roo I'm the director of special education I'm Brad vertine director of student services and tonight we have Chris Payton assistant principal of special education at Rotolo middle school and Paulette Ali who is assistant principal at Alice Gustafson and also Early Childhood director joining us this evening so thank you for letting us have this opportunity to share some of the updates of things that we've been working on this year um the rules and responsibilities of special education and student services is fairly broad we provide an array of Services for Families and individual needs from birth through post-secondary education so that is students that have special education needs that need support post High School where they get services to the age of
04122. um in while the students are here in Batavia we support special education programs or Early Childhood Center at Alice Gustafson 504 plans nursing Services requests for homebound instruction McKenney vento eligible students which some people may refer to students that qualify for homelessness status social emotional learning which includes instruction intervention Home Hospital coordination private and procal services so we partner with a lot of our parochial schools in the area to make sure that those students needs are met when they qualify and we really are a prevention focus and work through our multi-tier systems of support so we want to make sure that our students get access to supports and services prior to that sense of failure every year we come to our Board of Education in January as part of our schedule to report and
042provide an update and give you a story behind some of the numbers that are in that documentation so I want to share a little bit of the changes that we've experienced our response and some goals for this upcoming year so since we met last January we've been working as a division in close partnership with our cni team which is our curriculum instruction team to develop some improvement plans for our existing structures that we have established in Batavia to responsive to the identified needs of our students we want to make sure that our students not only have a positive experience in their day-to-day life in Batavia but that we ensure that there's student growth from our little bitty Bulldogs in early childhood all the way up through high school and then our post-secondary education as we
043shared our strengths in our board report we are moving forward with much excitement a lot of plans that are happening in each one of our levels so we've been focusing a lot on providing training for classroom management at the elementary levels we've been working with our case managers to provide ongoing professional learning so that they can support our special education in the classroom using District resources to align vocabulary instruction and intensify their plans based on student needs our secondary level we've been working with school leadership teams to look at how do we enhance our small group instruction for students in the classroom and how do we really meet those social emotional needs of our Learners when they demonstrate that their days are extremely stressful and that they may need something more than that general education
044experience the public school district so asimatavia our doors are open to all students for immediate enrollment and School staff are often challenged to be the first ones to not only make a relationship with families but they start to identify that sometimes they're students in their classrooms in our buildings that may have needs those could be developmental delays they could be social emotional needs they could be mental health concerns there's a there's a variety of things that present to us every single day and our staff are the key people that help make sure that our students get what they what they need to be successful but over the course of the last 10 years we've definitely seen a shift in student needs not only in Batavia but overall at the national level while we have much
045to celebrate here in Batavia um our our staff are phenomenal they work hard every single day but sometimes you get shown with challenges based on the way that the world is Shifting that our data is not always reflective of where we want it to be and our staff and our Administration from Vespa to Bea to us standing here really are feeling the impact of that change of the world and what is walking in our doors in a public school setting um in the United States the number of students identified with disabilities has increased over the course of the last 10 years it was around 13 and it is up to the last number that I've read is around 14.5 percent there's been a noticeable increase in identification of students with disabilities from birth to five
046so that early infancy range and when you look at special education support that's needed there are different eligibility categories and some of those categories require a lot of related service Personnel that go and collaborate one of those examples is autism and that has quadrupled in the last 10 years based on that rate um our last official report in Batavia our special education population was founded at 15 percent so we are right now above that state average while students are changing we recognize that the response to data and our staff really need to rally and support the students that we have walking in our doors and our support needs to be strategic and very impactful areas that we have had a lot of conversation and focus and reflection on have been highlighted in conversations with our
047significant disproportionality in black males being over identified for emotional disability as well as some of our internal metrics that we have been examining that indicating that there are certain profiles of students or there are certain attributes that tend to be overrepresented in some of our groups some of those tend to be our low income different races and English language Learners are some of the conversations of students in our Forefront of what are we doing how do we support and what do we need to do to move forward while these Trends and student profiles are not isolated to Batavia it does streamline our focus and make us pause and reflect on we are working hard but are we doing the right work and are we providing the right supports that we need to our staff in
048order to make a difference for our students that enter our doors every single day in public school setting as a division we have heard that the Board of Education really wants us to Rally together and our work to be focused on increasing student outcomes and I would say for those of us that we tend to re data nerds and data Geeks in a very loving manner we couldn't be more excited about seeing that turn into a measurable action step to help make sure that we are making the difference that we need to First our division goals are still in draft form but these are the areas that we look to focus in increasing intensity of our instructional practices reviewing our supplemental supports for students who demonstrate needs in social emotional competencies and improving our overall
049knowledge and skill set for culturally sensitive child find practices embedded with asset focused cultural responsiveness for the adults that work with the kids in the building while this work is hard and it's very ambitious I and our admin team and I know our staff are very excited that we're starting to have these conversations and our committees are dedicated to look at our practices and identify what we need to do differently or what we need to do more of to make sure that all of our students that walk into our doors are successful are there any questions oh go ahead Aaron sorry Carrie can you kind of talk a little bit about um outplacement and what that means what that looks like for those definitely students so out placements um in the in the eyes of
050special education what we talk about a lot you'll hear lre or your least restrictive environment and so in um when you think about a special education lens we always want our students to be with the peers that they go to school with and so your your general education with some special education supports starts to be at that least restrictive environment and that works for many of our students but there are students that walk in and it may not be enough support for them so then we look at time outside of that general education classroom which some people refer to as a self-contained program and we have a number of them in the district that support our students at Grace McLean Hoover wood Rotolo middle school and the high school even with that level of support
051which typically involves smaller class sizes that's where a lot of our basketball Partnerships come in and they provide a lot of support through AIDS or different instructional practices there are some students that that still is beyond the scope of what we can provide within Batavia Public Schools and that we look to partner with therapeutic schools or our Mid Valley special education Cooperative to provide supports and services that may be more unique or more specialized to the types of disabilities that students are presenting with and so that number represents right now we have 43 students that are requiring that level of support in Batavia the reason why there's an asterisk for the 28 is that students in our transition program so there are students once they um leave Batavia High School they may not be at
052a point yet where they can be independent or they require Services up through their 22nd birthday and so there are programs out there that are what we refer to as transition Services where it's really working on students level of Independence and their job skills so that they are employable and able to go out and be as independent as possible we in Batavia don't house a transition program as part of our public school and so the majority of those students attend Mid-Valley special education Cooperative as part of their services so that number can be a little deceiving when we say outplacement that's why we spread it out because it's they are um and Mid Valley but they are still a part of our our art district okay and when we say 43 is that um Early
053Childhood to through 12th grade then yes okay and some of them are past post 12th grade because we do have to provide those services to their 22nd birthday so the 28 is over and above the 43. correct okay yeah thank you I had a comment so uh first of all I want to thank you for your presentation and uh reading through the report and uh I appreciate the frankness of it identifying strengths in hospital opportunities for improvement um I definitely think that we do need to do some self-examination to figure out why we're identifying certain groups and and uh looking we're to see you know if we can improve that but I also just want to point out that I really think the work that you're doing I want to applaud the team the 10
054members of your committee because when I think of you know public education is um I think the backbone of a community and for example I was naive but when you think of our mckinney-vento eligible students I mean when I joined the board you know if someone would have told me we have 59 students that are identifying as homes that were providing tremendous amount of services and now it's up to 72 which is a very disappointing to hear but if people actually knew the type of resources they were providing it's a Lifeline for these families it's giving these kids literally an opportunity to escape that situation and then also the families that we're serving that have mental and physical disabilities I mean I think people would be shocked at the resources that the district is providing
055these families I know families they're receiving my families received at my youngest daughter's receivers or services and I know um that it can be life-changing for these families and these children so I just wanted to point that out and say thank you we're very fortunate with the team so we have Latavia and the level of care that they provide is above and beyond what um is expected in a public education setting and I think that is a great source of Pride that um it has existed since I I walked in the doors there's a lot of pride in making sure that every student is taken care of and that teachers go above and beyond to make sure that they get from the basic needs to um they go home safely every single night so I
056thank you for recognizing that because I don't think that happens everywhere and I think that's definitely a very special and unique feature of our teams in Batavia and I just want to Echo what Aaron said in terms of the hard work that you and your team do but also the Partnerships that your team shares in the community um just from you know United Way to chip in um we couldn't offer all these things without those Partnerships and um just want to thank them as well in addition to your team yeah we um it's fun to go to outside meetings and um be able to not have some problems that other districts have because we are able to tap into United Way or make a request to chip in and that's a unique feature that comes
057from the community that just up and down Randall Road we don't have that same experience when you listen to struggles so it is nice for a teacher to know that there's a place to turn to when they see a student struggling and it's a phone call away and within 24 hours something shows up for a family and that is um because of the community that we live in that people um see all the needs and are able to be responsive so it definitely is a very unique place to be Eric can you talk a little bit about McKinney vento and what we're obligated to do as a district and how that kind of plays out for students yeah so McKinney ventil eligible is um the term that we are trying to get used to using
058in Batavia and that formerly was known as students who are experiencing homelessness and there's a variety of ways that students have this experience they could live we have some families that are living in hotels motels we've had families living in cars we have what we also see families doubled up with another family so they may have lost their residence due to some financial hardship and they move into a family member a friend or a friend of a friend and their kids need to go to school the first thing that we do is we talk with the family to understand are they eligible for support because our obligation in a public school setting is not to stop a child educational experience based on hardship that adults may have experienced because we don't want to see that
059cycle repeating itself from generation to generation or from situation to situation because our obligation is to make sure kids are served in the public setting so once we identify that that is a need of the family we immediately enroll the student or we have a conversation of what is the least disruptive experience for that student so for example if they were living in um the Aurora School District and they lost their home but they moved into a family with Batavia we work with that family to say is it best to stay in West Aurora School District and we'll transport your child because we don't want their their year to be disrupted or is it better for them to immediately enroll in Batavia in addition to that we work to make sure conversations happen about school
060fees do they have their school supplies and then we also again partner with different organizations there's backpack meals there's chip in Furniture anything that those family needs but the the key to that is we really partner with the family and the the local school district to make sure that the students education experiences a minimal disruption so some of our students that live in Batavia we do partner with the other school district and we pay for part of their transportation to go to that school district or students enroll here and another school district May partner with us to pay for those Transportation costs that is part of their their rights you do see a big jump this year we have experienced I think the number is 15 refugees that have come into Batavia and their stories
061are incredibly heartbreaking and things that you could never imagine to experience in your your lifetime so members like Amy Nelson our guidance counselors our social workers are key to making sure when the students come in not only are there basic needs met but that we have students available to um begin to work through all the emotional supports that they need whether it's contacting them with outside agencies or working through staff in the district so that they can start to be a kid and just focus on learning we try to take as much as that external stress away as possible one other question Carrie threat assessments and hospitalizations both look like good jobs largely is do we have anything we're attributing that to um we have gone back and forth I think the 17 and 20
062was a covid that was when we were um fully remote around that time and so just access to students in journal was a different feature um we are not sure at this point that's something that we're taking a look and analyzing because it's naughty past Trend it's kind of a blip in the radar that we want to look and see why that's happening but right now we don't we have had conversations around it but I don't think any of us would say we have a hypothesis well I was maybe just one thing that a couple of things we're looking into is increasing numbers in our chronic absenteeism and concerned that we're not seeing the threat assessments and hospitalizations they may be retreating to home as a possibility there was in in as Kerry said there
063there are blips along the way December happened to be a a blip month and now it's getting feedback into saying is that continuing into January or was December the outlier right up into December we were right on Pace with where we were uh previously so well that was we had a blip up in threat Assessments in December um but before that we were coming in even lower so we're like are we just kind of returning to where we used to be so those are a couple of different possibilities but it's early uh it's just good to work with the the school teams to hear what they're saying on the ground and we're just kind of getting that feedback now I do have a couple of thoughts and observations um one I want to Echo what
064Todd was saying earlier um making sure that we're identifying whose voice isn't being heard during this process um when I was looking through the data and by the way I Echo all my board members I think you guys are doing a phenomenal job and working very hard and our hearts are in the right place but as we know sometimes things fall through the cracks and that happens the goal is to get better um so looking through the data I was not able to identify why the over or under representation is occurring so um I think that that's an important question that we need to identify is why are we over identifying some people and under identifying others and as part of that are we getting student and family feedback to make sure that we are
065actually meeting the goals that we think we're meeting so we may think we're providing a service but if it's not actually meeting the goals or expectations of our students and our families then we may need to do more work and then lastly how do we know we're improving are we actually identifying specific data points and are we setting a deadline to say hey if we do not hit this by this date then we know we have to um go back and look at how we're doing things so those are my thoughts incorporate them how you wish thank you I think that's great feedback for us to take back to the different committees in the admin team to make sure that all of them are reflected because I think they're great points anyone else all right
066thanks you guys so much thank you I'd like to just thank Carrie for giving me my first year off it was a big blessing but um also thank you to the board for your support and thank you for letting me be a part of this year so thank you all right next item is a referendum update all right I will pick this one off got your June uh January 10th meeting you guys had a very lengthy discussion about um the referendum and the pros and the cons of asking a question again um and ultimately you did decide to put that question back on the ballot and at the time we talked about um this is you know the the referendum um failed by 24 votes and so we're going to get a lot of feedback
067if we put that question back on the ballot but one thing that we talked about is that people felt misinformed or we didn't do a good enough job communicating and um one of the things that we need to do is we did have a very lengthy conversation we have been as RJ has pointed out we've been talking about this for years and I think that we can do a better job of like re-telling those stories because we've heard them many times but it might be somebody's first time so with that in mind we're going to just speak for a few minutes we're going to recreate why did the board put this question back on the ballot I know you've already gotten an email about it I think it was today why did you put this
068back on the ballot the the community has already said no why did you put it back on the ballot so um Holly I don't know if you got that I sent you a presentation a little bit ago but um so when we met back a few weeks ago we did go ahead and go back and remind everybody that this is the first of all this is the longest Span in Batavia history since the 50s that we've gone without a referendum the way that school financing works we have our operational dollars and really most districts can't afford to do everything that they need to do to upkeep their facilities within that operating cost and so what we're left with is to go to the public and say hey we need to make these improvements and this
069is the longest we've gone in Batavia without doing that we entered then the master facilities planning process way back in 2017 RJ was on that team as a citizen um and that was quite a long process and ultimately made some recommendations to the board so the master facilities plan is quite large and this referendum wouldn't cover that Master facilities plan but it's a dent and so um what we did was we engaged the community for the course of a year many Community engagement sessions surveys and we said help us out here help us prioritize this plan because the plan is massive we know we're not going to ask for all of it but we need to knock off at least a chunk of it so we can stay on top of those annual capital projects
070or those surprises that happen and just keep on top of our maintenance and so that happened over the course of two years all signs were a go it appeared that this was the will of the community so the November 20 um two referendum you can see it fail by 24 votes voter turned out 64 percent a lot of people we spoke with hundreds of people and gave a survey after the fact and asked people why do you think it failed and a lot of people were saying oh it's it's the senior citizens they didn't want it we're like well actually we wanted to clear up that misconception because just looking at the homestead they that they were one of that Precinct where they reside it was one of our large largest supporters of the yes
071of the referendum and so we like I said we talked to many people focus groups we gave you all their feedback um survey results and most of the people unfortunately said you know we we didn't hear from you we didn't hear from the right people and you know we had this website 275 people went to the website but as we can you know 14 000 people voted so where were they getting their information people said they were confused misinformed um they they want us that was me thinking okay they want us to do better so ultimately that was a pretty important reason why the board thought well we can do better with communication and and try to make sure that we are really clear in our messaging and that the right people are talking which
072you heard a little bit about that from our Union president that they're going to help us to tell the stories not convince people what wait which way to vote but to tell people our current reality um Tony and I did a road show we talked to anybody who would listen but people want to listen to they want to talk to their neighbors they want to hear from their teachers they want to you know talk to others not just us so um that was something that was pretty clear and frankly we didn't even do a good enough job explaining it to the staff what the plan was and what the purpose of the referendum was so then in our discussion on the 10th we um asked you three questions the first question was do you want
073to place the question back on the ballot in April and then the next slide shows a couple of the pros and the cons the pros would be well our current bonds are retiring if we don't act now then people's taxes will go down um so if the referendum fails the taxes will go down but if it does pass people have predictability that stability in their tax bill for that part of the payment um should you place it back on well many people felt like they were informed so let's give them the chance to become informed by us doing a better job and putting it back on and then we did give a survey that was um statistically significant number of respondents and the um among all the different sectors in our community and and they
074did say please ask the question again and many of the comments were like I didn't understand it I didn't you know my neighbors weren't talking about it I we need to do better in getting people talking about it but some reasons not to put it on was would be if this is not on your if if you didn't put this back on the ballot or if it's voted down taxes will go down so people would expect about um 10 of their tax bill goes 10 percent of their school taxes ten percent of their school taxes yes just their school taxes not their whole tax bill will um are made up of this bonded interest payment which is a healthy chunk 65 percent it's a huge chunk 10 of 65 goes towards our projects and that
075will go away so people's taxes will go down if we didn't put this on um another reason to not put it on we can take some more time build trust we heard a lot about trust and then maybe that economics conditions would change after a lengthy debate you said yes we will put the question back in April so then the second question is do you want to maintain that tax pledge because you could just say we're going to borrow 120 million dollars and then we're not sure how that's going to impact your tax bill because we don't know what the interest rates are but we know that we're going to borrow 120 million dollars but you decided not to do that you decided to make that tax pledge which is every year the school district
076pays 9.1 million dollars in bond paper makes a 9.1 million dollar Bond payment and so um we can Tony can issue the debt to make sure that that Bond payment doesn't change so that would not impact the taxpayers so ultimately you decided yes we want to pledge to the taxpayers that we're not going to increase that Bond payment I'm pausing in case anyone wants to add anything before we go to question three so then the third question that then once we had those two questions answered do we want to answer ask a different question and um I think one of the things that we heard is really people don't understand why are we rebuilding two elementary schools that were built in the 70s I wouldn't and so that was probably one of the most frequently
077asked questions or the things that people wanted to know more and they really didn't believe us when we said rebuilding these schools is more cost effective than bringing them up to where they need to be and once we start touching a lot of the buildings then of that particular building then we have the extra things we have to do to bring that building up to code really that is what makes our buildings the cost more expensive actually to renovate than to rebuild and so for that and for the reason that um people really didn't understand the first question and then if we changed it then now we have to explain a different question and really we felt like this was the right question to begin with so why would we change it just to try
078to pass something we're not just trying to pass something we really do believe we got the question right but we need to help people understand why we thought we got it right um and so a event uh then ultimately you decided to keep the question the same on the ballot so what's going to look different the word Outreach I think we thought we're just going to hand out information we'll come and we'll talk but really it's that Outreach and having different people different voices talk about the referendum and meeting people where they're at and having you know I have we have groups at each School of Staff members and administrators jointly meeting and they're going to do the Outreach within their school community so they're going to make sure all their fellow staff staff members
079know the the what this referendum means for their building because if our if if a teacher gets asked or a staff members out at the jewel if they're a Community member and somebody says what does this mean for your building um for your school we want them to be able to say well here's the pros here's the cons not we're not asking people we're not telling people how to vote but we want the people what that means and so um there will be some Outreach there's an Outreach team at each building we're going to make sure that our information all the documents the website that no one went to when they go there we want to make sure it's easy to navigate clear and concise and we also have handouts that all of the people
080doing the Outreach can use that just show the um both sides of the the referendum question really and then we'll we'll we do know those FAQs about like do we rebuild tell us more about enrollment why can't we just close a school we can't close this we if we close to school um it's a pretty simple answer we would be above capacity at the other five elementary schools because there's a capacity at each school if we take a 400 student capacity building off and take those students and place them in the other five schools we're going to be at above capacity at those five schools but we need to do a better job of telling the story about some of those FAQs so those are some of the things that'll look different we'll keep the
081conversation going here even though you've heard this many times it's an opportunity for us to tell that that put the information out there one more time I asked Holly to pull this document up just to give folks an idea of what we're working on in terms of communication so we're taking the analysis that we did post the November referendum understanding why people voted the way they did to prevent present the information in a way that is clearly understandable and conveys the message so that people can make an informed decision whether for or against we want to make sure that people understand the facts and and the potential impacts in either way so we've prepared a document that gives a breakdown of what's happening at each school and this just happens to be Alice Gustafson school
082and talks about what condition it it's in when it was built students and then the concerns in the project and the budget and then if you go down toward the bottom Holly we're taking some of the key misconceptions I would call them of the prior referendum and trying to address them in one page which is really challenging because some of this stuff is rather nuanced and detailed in distilling it down to its Essence in a way that is easily digested is it's not easy so here for example is why it matters both for and against reasons to vote for the referendum and reasons to vote against and we certainly would be happy to add reasons to this document if people want to share them with us but in this document by the way is very
083much a work in progress but this is what we're using as kind of the basis to share our things out scroll down a little bit more Holly please understanding the tax implications like what does it mean if I answer no to my property taxes and what does it mean if I answer yes and real dollars and what I can expect um enrollment we get a lot of questions about enrollment as Lisa mentioned like we're losing enrollment keep going go to obviously this is still working in progress but um yeah you'll notice with this graph enrollment's going down but the enrollment declines at the middle school and Elementary level have already happened we're really it's we're at a certain stasis for middle and middle school and Elementary School the declines for the next five years are
084almost entirely going to be at the high school level and that's just how the different classes the cohorts as they're aging through the system are moving and so as we talked about special education and student services we use space a lot differently in our elementary schools than we used to used to be that we outplayed a lot of students with special needs and and we don't anymore we've brought those programs in-house and so we need a lot more space than we used to need and so we're trying to explain those things as well I think lastly Holly toward the end one of the other key concerns is well I want to know the details I want to see a picture I want to know exactly what you're doing and one of the challenges about that
085is that we're trying to hit a moving Target and what you see here on the screen is a graph of construction inflation since 2020 so this is only in the last few years and so when costs are increasing that fast it's pretty hard to plan it makes things really challenging and because we're pledging this tax rate the bonded interest taxes aren't going to increase we've locked in one of the variables we're saying we're only going to borrow so much as that it locks in how much we pay we can't don't have control over the other variable which is interest and if you scroll down a little bit further you see that you know just in the last year the cost of issuing debt has increased by over 250 percent so the last variable for us
086to control is the amount of money we borrow or the principal and that obviously changes the scope of the projects some will say well maybe we should wait well maybe that's a valid argument but I you know costs things to have a tendency to get more expensive in the future and that might just mean that we can afford even less and so these are all things that I hope that we can engage in a conversation about as a community to understand what the impacts are to the bottom line of our property taxes and what the impacts are to our students it's just a and you can explain it better than me but when we take If This Were to pass the way the bonds are issued it's not a one-time so it's spread out over
087three to four years so um we kind of hedge our bets yes we can hedge our bets in a way exactly yes additionally if something catastrophic happens we don't have to spend this money if economic conditions are poor are really poor two five years down the road we can just decide hey this is not efficient use of taxpayer money and allow it to expire and go for another referendum in the future right that's a possibility but once you take the money you have to do what you said you were going to do you can't you can't take the money and then do something else you can't take the money and spend in operations for example it has to be spent on basically fulfilling the obligations of the question that you asked but if we can
088borrow like only 20 million dollars and have the same payment obviously that would be a poor investment and we might want to choose something different as opposed to not take the money right yeah and not take the money in the first place and that goes toward the moving Target yeah so I just want to point out the fact that we don't have to do something that is really bad if when the time comes and the amount of money that we can borrow is not enough to do what we what the community expects the other thing though is that planning a projects of this size is takes a very long time and it's not exactly like you're driving a sports car here we're driving a steam ship and uh turning it is very slow and so
089we have to plan on Long Horizons and people think oh we can just ask later well you can but we're planning on very long Horizons on things that when you're deferring deferred maintenance can get rather expensive I also did want to point out earlier Lisa had mentioned that bringing the buildings up to code is a big part of the expense also moving kids out of the building while we renovate a building is extremely expensive and so it's not just renovating and bringing it up to code but where we put the students during that process so we're going to give more updates every at every board meeting to make sure that everybody hears us it's going to be yeah it's going to be a little redundant and I apologize for that but I think it's important
090so that we as a community can engage in this conversation and make it informed and if people have questions come find us yep yep um right any other questions comments about that next item on our agenda is our two items for Action the first one I'm going to invite Josh Bullock to tell us about the athletic uniform bed all right so just like Dave talked about having a refresh for computers it's the same thing with Athletics there's a cycle that goes through um to outfit our athletes with the best apparel that they can for competition what I'm really excited about this bit is in the past it used to be just one brand name and as a former ad sometimes one athletic style doesn't fit for a certain athletic event so the coaches were able
091to pick which athletic brand they wanted for this so it's either Adidas or Nike or under armor but it allowed it didn't fit them into one um you know constraint which is very exciting so um we re-upped actually with the company that we used last time they switched names so you'll start seeing uh they used to be called The Graphic ads now they're called game one they're the same company it's just a different name but um they came in as the lowest bid and um looking forward to continuing our partnership with them any questions so this amount is Over a four-year span or this is yearly oh no the great question so um we purchased the uniforms and then those uniforms last four for you okay um and then it's a cycle so then that
092Varsity uniform goes down to sophomores after the four years and then we start the cycle again does that make sense so we use the uniform for a total of eight years right no then the Freshman get them then the Freshman yeah okay the freshman and one question that usually comes up is why doesn't it go down all the way to like middle school and partially because they'd be ancient at that point and then the other part is at that point the sizing doesn't work um at all styles change right well there's that you're thinking our sixth graders can't wear our Varsity correct exactly all right then I would entertain a motion to approve a four-year contract with game one for the purchase of our athletic uniforms and spirit wear so move second move by excuse
093me mine's our second by lock all in favor aye any opposed all right thanks Josh next item on our agenda we're going to turn it over to Tony to talk about our mental health support services thank you this is a recommendation that comes from our employee Insurance committee well it's not the employee Insurance committee but it is the insurance committee that's made up of employees and stakeholders from across the district uh and one of the things that as we talked about earlier is an increasing prevalence of Need for support for mental health and our employees need some additional support and this is a new product offering a new service that we are excited to present to you that can help with mental health issues that are available and it's available through basically an app and
094a web portal and it isn't a one-size-fits-all thing which typically is the case with most of these things it runs the gamut of whether it's you know kind of self-guided help where they can do an assessment and determine the level of support that an individual or their dependents may need and then provide it whether that's self-guided whether that might be clinical or you're meeting one-on-one with somebody or you are working with um community-based groups groups in the community where you might be working with others that um that are in the area and so it's kind of an as needed basis you sign into this app you complete an assessment and it walks you through the resources that are available and you can generally you can get support within 24 hours if you need it so
095it's rather fast whereas that is not the case almost with anything else as I said this is new so we're dipping our toe into the water with this service for a one-year term and if it works well and uh and we see value in it and there's reasonable utilization perhaps we'll continue it um but it's something that we think that our employees and their dependents could benefit from immediately typically this is something of the package that we would present to you each year we came across this and said oh my gosh that's exactly what we need to better support our employees and so we decided to move forward with it rather than wait who are the is that a fair description of our conversation Aaron would you say yeah it was I I mean we
096had a very lengthy discussion about what I will add to that Tony is what I learned in my is I did a little research after a meeting is that I think when people think about mental health they I mean I'll speak for my own experience I think of like sitting on a couch with a psychiatrist or a counselor and actually what we learned is most people that's not the perform method of getting mental health there's all these other methods that you can get coaching or other resources so that um maybe when you're going down a path before you actually would need that kind of service you can get services to help get you back on a better path and also that you know again I'll speak for myself but um you know there's still for
097some people a stigma for mental health and in reaching out for help can be a of my generation older than probably everybody in this room uh you know maybe weakness but um it's a we're at a crisis point and so I think um we're hoping that this will be something that people will access and utilize at a higher percentage than perhaps what we've offered before correct correct and thank you for adding those comments those are important points and especially that where you know it used to be if I was struggling with something I had to call somebody and I had to talk to somebody and you don't really know sometimes what to think whereas this it's kind of is low the barrier for Access is very low you can kind of dip your toe in
098the water and figure things out walk things through it and then just if you want to make take the next step or you do need to talk to somebody they're practically a quick away the services are available through zoom and in the app so I don't necessarily to get help so it's much more accessible than anything else we've had in the past and the other thing again correct me Tony if I'm wrong but this is sort of like a one-year trial it's a one-year trial so it's not a long-term commitment so we can if we vote for it I imagine about a year from now or 11 months we'll have another presentation where we're assessing exactly if it were you know how successful it was and then we'll make a decision yes so thank you
099for bringing that up Erin because that's my question so how are we going to what are our success points on this because you know I love this of course but especially the average time for first session I mean that's I've never seen anything that wonderful but what are you know points of assessing if this was successful or not because it's almost all of it is web-based or app-based that statistics are easy to collect and so if we see a high not necessarily high but decent utilization and then user satisfaction that's all we need to know right now with our with our current Solutions it's radio silence you know we really don't know and we don't see and uh you know anecdotally we don't think the solutions that we or the services that we have right
100now are used much this this is much easier for people to use and will know when they're using it not necessarily we'll know who's using it but we'll know that it's being used well and it also is available for dependents so if it's for your children your spouse or your kids off at College it's a click away so will there be data point okay and will there be maybe user surveys within the app like any other app in terms of how people are yeah okay is there a cost incurred to the member no no no the cost incurred is to the board right no it's not this obviously is not cheap yeah but so there's no reason they shouldn't no it's no cost number now however I will mention just so in the in the
101interest of full disclosure um it is limited if you were seeing a somebody on a one to one basis in a clinical setting it's limited to 10 sessions and so anything after those 10 sessions could potentially cost the employee well they could then then our regular insurance right would potentially kick in depending on who they're seeing and those sorts of things but yeah this isn't necessarily meant to be a like a silver bullet for all mental health but more along the lines of a intermediary I wouldn't call it a stop Gap so much as kind of like they another another level of offering so for for kind of buyer insurance or is that not really fluid it it's based off of um yeah if you're on our insurance you have access to this app is
102that what you're asking no I'm asking if the if they choose a service provider that the 10 sessions are free for continuity of care how is that linked to our insurance oh they would probably have to see a different provider but if depending on how acute the issue is you can start planning that transition on the front end okay potentially we also have another service that we've recently added to our repertoire called referrals and it's a little different but it it knows more it's available for students and to staff but it it tries to reduce some of those barriers and getting people into care as soon as possible they they coordinate with the mental health providers in the area and they also do that based off of the insurance information that that particular Seeker has
103and so that they're not sending you to a mental health provider that won't take your insurance or has a two-year waiting list yeah so with all these different services that we have available we can kind of they to some extent kind of overlap and coordinate maybe coordination isn't maybe the best word but hopefully they get people to where they need to go unfortunately as I said there aren't any silver bullets and all these things have to kind of fit together in a certain way but we're definitely making progress in terms of the support that we offer it sounds like it lots of different options to get this type of care which there's lots of barriers out there so there is this makes who are the employees you're speaking of just want to be clear we're
104talking about faculty we're talking about everybody yeah everybody everyone's covered under the theme okay I want that some of the same insurance with that everyone in the district everybody has the same insurance benefits okay compare this to the other companies we don't know of any other company that does this there are other offerings that do online Mental Health Service but nothing like this so this is Best in Class for because there aren't too many but do I guess I'm I'm looking to see if we're Best in Class because do other districts offer this I like to think we're Best in Class I would tell you that we had this part which was part of our conversation uh at Insurance committee uh last month was uh how our benefits are truly Best in Class it compared
105to other school districts our broker says that what we offer to our employees is pretty amazing and this is part of that and well this will be right so do any districts up and down Randall have something like this or is this really kind of exciting there's none Two Towns over okay okay and we didn't on for something like this we didn't we didn't even bother to ask the the neighboring districts we just saw this is the same discussion um we did not have that discussion no we have this new referral GPS that I mentioned that certainly will help um do they have a package like that um I'm sure they'd be willing to take your money but they'd only uh offer it based off of the total population of the employees and so we're
106paying for it's not when you get use it it's people have access to have access to it and they weren't willing to negotiate anything other than that and so it would be exceptionally costly to offer something like this to students many many millions of dollars per year one of the things having sat on the insurance committee Aaron and you probably are seeing this in action now um that I've always loved about the insurance committee is that is a group of of people who are um very committed to providing the best possible uh health care services to our employees but the other thing that I really love is that they are very critical and assessing that we're that it's valuable to our employees so what I love about this is that we'll get analytics that will
107tell us our employees using it and is it valuable before they would bring it back to us again to ask us just to willy-nilly approve it so I feel like they are very very conscious of cost to the district what makes sense for our employees and and they're just very careful about providing the best care possible that was a point I just wanted to say is to the rest of my colleagues on the board that I understand this was not a planned budgetary expense but due to feedback we've had at many board meetings that need for mental health services and because of the management of our health care plan we're living within our means if we were to prove approve this correct that's correct yeah and I'm I'm wondering was there any conversation about how
108this plan could possibly ward off more expensive care down the road yes where we had those discussions and I if this goes well I believe it will and so I would believe so too it to some extent there's no guarantees about that but I think it's a reasonable assumption reasonable risk another question right then I would entertain a motion to approve a one-year contract for mental health support services with Modern Health total cost not to exceed a hundred and ten thousand dollars an enthusiastic so moved second moved by myself give it to math the second by Mathis all in favor aye any opposed yeah I think the entire board is very very happy to see this come across our yeah our desk um the next item on our agenda we do have closed session but
109there will be no action after the closed session so we'll do our um administrative and board comments and then we'll adjourn to closed session but when we come out there will be no other actions uh so we'll start with Lisa yeah I have three quick comments one is a thank you to the board candidates we have seven people um three vacancies on the board and um they all came out to a workshop today asked great questions those who are able to are here with us we have several people in this room that are running for the board on April 4th um and then my next two messages go to people who probably aren't watching this right now one of them would be our maintenance team they will probably be up super early in the morning
110so a thank you in advance to them because there is snow and we will be open tomorrow it's one to three inches but they will be they they will start they will start at three or four in the morning it depends on when the snow starts so I um big thank you to them not that they're watching because they should be sleeping right now as should be the parents of nope no snow day um my final message goes to the parents of the uh almost five-year-olds probably also a little busy right now not watching but if you know somebody who has a four-year-old soon to be five year five years um we need to meet them and there is a sign up on our website it's called meet and greet used to be called Kindergarten
111Roundup because we don't necessarily know who's coming so we just need you to talk to your neighbors and say that kid looks for you need to go show up at the school district they want to meet you you get to meet your principal you're going to meet Cindy she's going to take all your paperwork to make it as Flawless as possible we'll take them anytime between now and August this is just our first time to orient them to the district so sign up on the website it's February 16th here at rjac for a new uh families of kindergartners incoming kindergarten that's it awesome you miss our comments there um nothing for me this evening shockingly but I will note that is the only the second time I've given a enthusiastic so move so I really
112appreciate your work on that what was the last one I don't remember it was three years ago fine it was enthusiastic yeah I I reserved my enthusiastic sometimes so thank you for that Tony RJ no comments um yes just real quick for the Batavia Foundation of educational Excellence seniors can go on the website and apply for scholarships there's also a scholarship for anyone in bertolo or at BHS or a guitar less guitar lessons and a guitar so you don't have to be a senior graduating that one and then also teacher grants are online and open so anybody with a great idea apply thanks so uh so I want to say first thank you to everybody in tennis tonight uh I love to see a full room everyone who addressed the word all the presentations everyone
113who contacts support uh everybody who's running for the school board community community participation is vital to a healthy functioning School District so thank you everyone um I do like to share a story of uh District events I attended saw the our student ambassadors had a little blurb about VHS Top Dog I attended that for the first time I think it was formerly known as Mr BMS I don't even know how to describe it what used to be kind of like maybe like a male beauty contest yeah maybe there was like a wardrobe section now now it's open to everybody so it's called top dog so we had men and women participating I was in the second row and I gotta say first of all holy cow these kids have uh chut spot because I speak
114for a living basically and I could never have done what they did so Bravo all the participants but also you know the whole Endeavor was put on by the Key Club who partners with the Kiwanis team you don't know what Kiwanis does is it's community service and so uh they raised over three thousand dollars for the Neuroscience Research Foundation which is a it used to be called the paralysis Research Foundation basically what it's doing is it's providing funding for kids that have disabilities to teach them or give them their resources so they can be independent so you know I just think our kids every time I see them I am just blown away you know the the sponsors at Key Club to help put it on the whole thing was just a really fun night
115and so I guess once again Bravo to our students and so I would just encourage people if you see events like that and you haven't heard of them or seen them you should check it out because you might be surprising again if you see what our kids are doing I think you're gonna you're gonna our future is very bright so thanks yeah Chris I don't have much just um Batavia has a lot of big decisions to make and this is your opportunity to be a part of it so this is your time to find out the information meet your candidates for school board and I believe the park district also has a contested election I don't believe we have any other contested elections in town get to know your candidates find out about the referendum
116make your decision vote it's going to make a difference in the next couple decades in our town there is our important decisions be involved make a vote thanks Chris as I mentioned uh we have closed session but no uh no activity after that so I would entertain a motion to adjourn to closed session for the reason of collective negotiating matters in the body and the employees or their representatives or deliberations concerning salary schedules for one or more classes of employees so much second move by lock second by low all in favor a couple minutes