Jamestown School Board May 15, 2023

001no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no thank you I'd like to call this regular meeting of the Jamestown Public School Board to order it is 5 PM May 15th and we're in the Thompson Community room of the Middle School please note we did have the 4 pm new member board member orientation in the district office conference room I'd like to welcome all those in our audience today and thank you for coming please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance foreign Melissa would you please read the school board norms the board developed Norms are to share and respect opinions and speak with the United Voice once a decision has been reached execute all duties of the school board in compliance with

002North Dakota Sentry code properly prepare for meetings and to commit to assessing board Effectiveness and ensure high quality governance for all stakeholders and those are our new board Norms I'm getting used to the new ones nothing under Public Communication are there any changes to previously declared conflicts if there are this would be the time to state that Gail I declare conflict of interest for the resignation of Leah Nelson and I undeclare my conflict of interest once that's uh approved for executive sessions for negotiations thank you gal Aaron no change to my account no change okay thank you any other conflicts of interest any other conflicts of interest or changes thank you moving on to our consent agenda at any time a board member can remove something from the consent agenda it does not need a

003second is there anything you'd like removed from the consent agenda anything you like removed is there anything you like removed from the consent agenda if not is there a motion to approve the consent agenda motion by Aaron second by Gail we have a motion in a second to approve the consent agenda any discussion any discussion there being no discussion assuming roll call vote all those in favor say aye aye oppose same sign motion approved moving on to our regular meeting do we have recognitions so nothing under a recognition I want to make sure I didn't miss that we have people here correspondence we have no court cards today under reports Mr Will Nelson would you please come forward and restate your name and give us your student council report which is probably your last report

004I'm actually not giving the report I'm Will Nelson I'm the current executive president of the Jamestown high school student council and I'm here to introduce the co-presidents of the Jamestown high school student council effective our meeting on Wednesday so we'll hand over the gavel I'm off to cut it in half and hand it out but they will give you the report and this is the last you'll hear from me so thank you thank you will for all your reports thank you and welcome and please state your name and we look forward to your report I'm Gabby tweeten and I will be a senior next year I'm Hattie McDonald I'll be a junior next year last week was teacher appreciation week and student council held a breakfast for all the teachers and along with that we

005made cards saying thank you to appreciate all the teachers this Friday we will have college merch day so those graduating will wear a shirt representing what college they are going to and the current president and vice president of student council will be the speakers at graduation any questions thank you and we look forward to seeing you next fall thank you [Applause] moving on we have SRO report please come forward good evening how is everyone good uh I was told the main trying to topic tonight is dare the Dare program I'm not certified to teach there it's a 40-hour class I believe with how busy I was this year it wasn't something I was able to get to so there was no dare classes taught this year um but aside from that I can't remember the

006exact numbers but I think I topped between five and ten classes from um like bicycle safety arson awareness classes of of that sort those were taught throughout the year and a few of them were with uh firefighter Sheldon Moore with the Jamestown Fire Department aside from that I can't remember my last count of sporting events I went to I think I'm in uh I'd rather I'll be in the 20s maybe 30s sporting events between starting with soccer and football all the way through I just went to the Duro softball team a couple days ago I'm not quite sure what my numbers are on that um I just pulled up my calls for service for the year the numbers aren't going to be necessarily accurate because I only took a call for service number if I

007was taking some sort of paperwork or enforcement action I was at 225 calls for service for the year um but if if a student was having a tough day and just need need to be talked with or talked to I wouldn't take a number for those um because I felt that was just more of a well PR isn't the way to put it but personal help in uh instead of enforcement or education on top of it so um yeah and then the two well the one hard lockdown and then the one shelter in place and that's pretty much been my year without getting into any of the criminal investigations that I've done because some of them are still active so is there any questions from the council any questions from them oh Dan hi go

008ahead thank you very much um you you can't imagine how much we appreciate having an SRO because there was a time that did we didn't have one for a couple of years but sure um I had two questions one is can you give us any any theme that is coming through on the calls you're receiving and the second one is as far as dare goes from what I have heard and read that is a bit of a controversial program in that it's yesterday's news and there's probably something better that could be put into place how do you personally feel about dare I actually not you have a personal opinion on dare because I haven't researched it fully uh to be honest I haven't had time it's been a pretty busy school year um I've heard

009both sides of it in all honesty just in passing I've heard that it's a you know still a relevant program and I've heard that it's uh you know there's other programs out there um but I haven't done the personal research on it to be able to do an accurate answer on on it um as far as the calls for service this year um it's been anything from a tobacco violation uh to a crash in the parking lot to um some pretty in-depth investigations involving I would say felonies that's about as far as I can get into that one we're trying to anywhere in between it's time to just like to work in the road but instead of a road I have a cafeteria so any other questions from the board or comments Diane go ahead

010I do have a question that I think the public would be interested in you know it's probably true in every small community that there are those that say oh you just cannot believe what's going on at the high school would you would you say that in general our high school is fairly healthy or are we in a bit of hot water well the City you gotta it's Society you know the high school isn't any different than any of our community out here right it's just a little bit more condensed um I personally love our high school I have a blast going to school every day um just like when you're you know the city of Jamestown sometimes somebody makes a mistake and you know some enforcement has to it has to take place um but

011I I haven't been a SRO in any other schools but I would say it's probably on on par for any any other stool um I said we got a great bunch of kids um and they're a lot of fun and uh just seeing them from you know K through 12. it's it's quite the experience getting to work with them every day uh honestly after teaching these classes I don't know how teachers do it because at the end of a work at the end of a week teaching one class to five different class I'm spent I can't yeah I've really learned a even more appreciation for the stamina of our teachers doing this day in and day out um so the short answer would be I I don't see any and and just to follow up

012I would say I agree with you we have a great bunch of kids in this district and you know everyone focuses on the negative it's human nature but my experience has been it is a great place to raise kids and put them into the school system here well that's why I brought my kids back Dr luck I just have a follow-up question uh Scott would you say when we when you were hired we had conversations about the potential for additional an additional school resource officer based on a what we have seen in the separation of time between different levels would you still say that that is accurate that as you've been in this position uh for the for a year now that you would would you still feel the same that additional time would be

013beneficial oh 100 percent 100 I think well me personally from a the conversations we've had and how safety oriented I am I love to see an essro on each stool yeah I know that's not at all a possibility but um yeah I think and just as a police department being having more time to provide the service you know that we do I think would be very beneficial and maybe for the the benefit of the board and maybe even the community that's that's listening or watching and I know that not any day is typical for you but can you talk us through what a typical day may look like for you sure uh well a typical day as far as the way I would like you to do absolutely uh so I try to be up

014at the high school by 7 30 have my cup of coffee made by 7 45 and then out the door at 7 50. um I now that the weather's turned I like to go down to the elementary schools I all pitch one for the day and I'll go just read the kids when they're getting off the bus stand outside drink my coffee it's trying to become my trademark with the kids they always ask where my coffee cup is um from there uh I usually try to make a few laps around the high school just the hallways checking checking doors saying hi to classes I'm still in a debate with the chemistry or not chemistry Mr Coastal at the high school over I uh I disagreed with something that physics says happens and I say I

015don't believe physics on this one so we're still working our way through that but you know I like to step into classrooms and then I try to get down to the middle school here at least once a day get through all the hallways you know step into some classrooms say hi to the kids and then I'll move over and check my emails and just kind of see what the day's doing bring me uh being present is very very important to me I think and I think begin the year the parents were they would call and say why is the cop car outside of the elementary school because I'm saying hi uh but at this point it's just kind of normal I think for parents to see me out there um you know and I said

016whatever happens throughout the day you know if I as much time as I can spend in the schools walking around and not in my office I think it's a great day so and then during when school lets out I try to do a drive around do school patrol make sure nothing too crazy is happening during pitch up but comments Jason so is continuing with dare or researching a new curriculum if you will on the agenda right now with our staffing levels um I'd have to talk to the chief to answer that for you [Music] but we are as a police department we're trying to transition period right now with Staffing and stuff and maybe things will change once we do a few new officers up to speed but to give an accurate answer I'd have

017to talk to the chief for you on that one Jason I can follow up with that too I think a an important aspect of the SRO is always going to be you know Scott talked about visibility but prevention is always going to be a big piece of that and whether it's dare another program or some other area prevention is still going to be important it's just that we have to get to an appropriate Staffing level and we have to have training in place and all those things and have the right curriculum but but prevention is always going to be something that's a a pretty key piece for us thank you for the work work you've done I also and maybe some of you saw that in the paper but got to be part of giving

018you a customer service award yes ma'am the Chamber of Commerce you were nominated for a chamber of commerce customer service award for a month and and as part of that and and that was just for for building relationships with kids and and I do see you out and about and at events and and that's all about building those relationships so I appreciate that work that you're doing so and I'll tell you this is I got the best job in the department so you'll never hear me complain I know I'm not complain about so okay any other do you have anything else all right very good thank you very much thank you thank you for your time our next item in the agenda is our board education education competency policy review Meredith vukilik and Dr like

019you have part of this in your superintendent's report maybe I'll have you lead off with that sure you have a the presentation and a handout provided and if you want to pull that up that might be an easier um a thing to follow although you could certainly look at the the presentation as well this was based this board education was based on board Direction Meredith works with Pearson Derek and we were asked to provide board education on policy review the varied roles of board members and administrators uh in the in the investigatory process execution of policies and then in uh uh a policy review are those policies or protocol chain or any changes to policy or protocols appropriate and so Meredith will go over some policies in more depth than others and we have had

020that conversation that policy AAC and kacb AAC AAC is the non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy kacb complaints about Personnel to focus more highly on those and so with that I think I'll turn it over Meredith hi thanks for having me as Rob said I'm I'm out of peer steric law firm in Bismarck my colleagues and I represent over the last few years approximately 80 public K-12 educational related entities so a big part of my job is speaking to individuals Like You on topics such as this and I want to preface this by explaining that you know if there's been any questions about how how things have been handled this year in particular with regard to incident that happened in January you all are not alone maybe in some confusion or questions or concerns you might have

021about policy implementation so many many poor board members across the state have have very similar questions so don't feel bad about that so while our office does have an attorney-client relationship with you today we're talking generally we're not talking about any specific matter so I just wanna um caution with that so today I'm going to go over these three items as I just referenced there was an unfortunate incident that occurred during a basketball game earlier this year there may have been questions from the public maybe even questions some of you had about whether or to what extent school boards are going to be getting involved with situations like that so we are going to talk today a lot about policies that apply with that situation and and some others what those policies say about board

022involvement and then I'd like to go over quickly when school board members get involved with employment related matters it sort of relates to the other topic and then we're going to end with a brief explanation about public participation at board meetings so I'll first touch on a board policy that explains the board's role um and then I'm going to go through some of those specific policies that that Rob mentioned and a few others it's really important for all of you as board members to be really aware of what policies and regulations your district has adopted and it's especially important to know because you might have people from the public coming to you individually with concerns you might run into people at the grocery store and other other public places they might have comments or questions

023for you if you have in the back of your mind some of these policies you're going to be able to perhaps get out of a question that you feel uncomfortable having to answer but also just an ability to direct people to the right policy and procedure where where they will then feel you know appropriately heard so this is the list that we will be going over let's start with the school board pledge of Ethics this is coded ba so all these policies to originate from North Dakota school boards Association so I want to give them credit where credit is due and then the language has been adopted by the Jamestown school board over the years so in this school board pledge of Ethics policy there's a list of items that you have all pledged to

024follow and I wanted to touch on just a couple since they are most relevant to the presentation the first one you have pledged to be aware that the strength of the board is as a board and not as individuals individual board members have no Authority or power to act on behalf of the board therefore a board members should never make out of meeting commitments so this one if anybody does come up to you individually it's a really easy one to reference to let them know you know if there's a complaint I can point you to the right complaint policy otherwise if it's just a general comment or a concern I can perhaps refer you to Administration then the second one that is on that board pledge of Ethics policy that lists things of things you've

025pledged is that you will be cognizant that the primary function of the board is to establish the policies by which the schools are to be administered but that the administration of the educational program and the conduct of school business shall be left to the superintendent so that is a big one right that's that's one that the public often has a really hard time understanding the public often thinks that school board members are the last stop and everything will go to the school board if they're not satisfied maybe with how something's been handled beneath the school board and it's just simply not the case and we're going to get into that with some of the additional policy policy language that we will get into all right you have a general Patron complaint policy I have all

026the codes on the slides for you this is a very general policy it isn't specific to any type of complaint and for this reason we don't often see reference to it but I want you to be aware of it we might not have need to reference it because we're going to instead be referencing a different specif more specific policy that is more applicable to a given situation but be aware of this one and what it states so a few of the key Provisions from this policy again individual board members have no authority to resolve complaints and complaints should be resolved at the lowest level of authority possible whenever a complaint is made to an individual board member or the board as a whole it will be referred to school administration for processing at the lowest

027level of authority possible if all other remedies have been exhausted a complainant May request that the matter be placed on the agenda of the next regular school board meeting however the board will not hear consider or act upon complaints that have not been investigated at each appropriate level of authority nor will the board here consider or act upon complaints for which specific complaint resolution procedures have been established that do not allow for Board review of the complaint including but not limited to complaints about personnel and complaints about instructional material which are two policies that we're going to get to so as to that last one that last provision on the slide here that's going to be relevant to the investigations that unfolded after that January basketball incident since those incidents were investigated using specific resolution

028procedures that are addressed in other policies that was the reason they did not ultimately come to the board for discussion one other provision that I didn't include on this slide but that is in this policy good for everybody to know is that parents of students are treated the same as patrons so parents will follow the same channels for processing complaints as any other citizen would okay this is a big one schools across the state are using this one very frequently your complaints about Personnel policy this policy is one that would that should be referenced anytime somebody might come to eat any of you about an individual School employee a concern that they might have and that person complaining can be anybody it can be a parent a non non-parent Patron another staff member any of

029you so let's go over some of the important Provisions from this policy complaints should be resolved at the lowest possible level of authority if either party is not satisfied with the handling of the complaint the matter can be appealed to the superintendent for final resolution so final resolution means final resolution so typically it's going to be a direct supervisor that will handle a complaint about a about an employee and then there is this possible appeal to Dr lek board members sell refer individual complaints about District Personnel to the superintendent or the designee complaints about the superintendent and business manager shall be directed to the board president and this one's very important you maybe I'll have a good understanding that the board as a whole supervises the superintendent and in most districts the business manager as

030well as at true here some some boards have given supervisory authority to the superintendent but here the board maintains that supervisory authority over the business manager so oh you do sorry okay Dr lack has that Authority so uh scratch that that third one's a little bit different for you all but if there is a complaint about Dr Leck that complaint shall be directed to your board president and your board president only this is another one that's a little bit you know difficult for for everybody to understand there's a reason for it um the board president will be tasked with investigating a complaint about Dr luck and I realize no complaint will come against you Rob but um it is only if the board president has a finding per that investigation that requires action by the

031board that the board president would then bring that finding to the board with a recommendation for Action that action potentially being disciplinary action of some sort if there isn't the need to come to the board for Action it likely won't be discussed Beyond a report that the investigation took place it was completed and there is a finding a letter of findings you know in the file so at some point a school board member may need to review such a letter of findings because you do supervise the superintendent and that might be real relevant to your evaluation but aside from that even a complaint about the superintendent is not going to become becoming to the board for discussion a lot of this I I maybe can preface by also saying it stems from legal protection for

032you all so that you don't have a claim for defamation by an employee if you're talking about something related to Personnel there's no executive session option under North Dakota open meetings law so you're going to be talking about it in the open and you don't want to be um having somebody alleging that you have slandered their reputation this policy and Rob mentioned it earlier but this policy was a big one that was used after that January incident there was a complaint part of the complaint was that staff members were not um essentially that they they maybe weren't doing their jobs or not doing their jobs very well at that basketball game so that was a Personnel complaint investigated it doesn't go to the board for the reasons that I just explained okay another really important

033policy you all have non-discrimination and anti-harassment Meredith before you continue on kacb can we go back to that just for a second I know that one of the and I don't mean to speak for the board but but I know one of the questions the board had related to these the policies that were enacted or do you see or recommend any changes to policies or protocols based on anything that we found uh in terms of this policy the words the policy policy you know at my at my direction Rob did not bring the determination letters to you after that investigation again if there would have been the need for the board to have taken some action against that individual then it would have come to you and I have a slide adds to that in

034the kind of the back end of my presentation but I'll just mention it now this is completely hypothetical but say Dr Leck had determined that and I'm just going to throw out a position the principal at the game you know did something or did not do something that they should have done and that it was serious enough that Dr Leck felt as though that individual needed to be recommended for a discharge for cause that individual is a certified employee with continuing contract rights under North Dakota law Dr lack didn't wouldn't have authority to terminate that individual himself he would have to bring that recommendation to you all so there would be a recommendation to contemplate somebody's discharge for cause if you also moved there would then be the right to a hearing for that individual

035before their contract could end their employment with the district and um and so when there isn't the need to bring such a recommendation to the school board there isn't a need to bring the information to the school board and again that's to protect people from having sort of dirty laundry aired I suppose you could say and to protect the district from a potential defamation action if that all makes sense so I like this policy the way you have it and I would not recommend any changes okay non-discrimination anti-harassment policy all school districts are required to have this policy you have um a version that I would only recommend a few very minor changes too and it's nothing substantive my changes really relate to some new Title IX regulations so not applicable to tonight this policy

036protects your staff and students from discrimination based on a protected status so what's really important with this one is that the conduct the alleged conduct needs to have some relation to the alleged victims protected statuses which are listed in that first pull-up point but things such as race religion sex gender identity um this is the policy that's going to apply so even if the complaint is against an employee I just went over the complaints about Personnel policy even if it is against an employee if it relates to the protected status of the alleged victim the district has a responsibility to instead use this policy and investigate the allegation excuse me using a grievance procedure that comes with this policy okay so District employees are required to report any discrimination or harassment to the appropriate grievance

037coordinator when they knew or should have known something in violation of this policy was occurring grievance coordinators are almost always administrators they should never be board members if the appropriate grievance coordinator assigned to con assigned a conductor oversee the investigation is the accused the superintendent or the board president if they superintended is the accused shall designate a different individual so there again only the board president might have some involvement so as it concerns that January incident this policy was was certainly considered um it's very technical in my legal opinion this policy didn't necessarily apply to the conduct because this policy protects Jamestown students and Jamestown staff more technically the Bismarck Public Schools non-discrimination anti-harassment policy applied to the conduct that doesn't mean we didn't consider this policy we still obviously do not want students or

038anybody engaging in discriminatory conduct so it was you know very relevant that students receive some education training on this policy but by the technical language in the policy you know it's questionable that it applied and I want to mention too that my office the way this policy is worded stems from a multi-year back and forth between my office and the US Department of education's office for civil rights another school district had had a complaint filed with the office for civil rights completely unrelated to this but um this was many years ago at the time office for civil rights determined that District had not technically complied with one of the anti-discrimination laws they required that the district overhaul its policy and procedure and my office worked with OCR to get a policy and procedure written in

039a particular way that OCR says complies with the various laws so the way your policy is worded is you know stems from that we we then gave that version to North Dakota School boards Association so because of that I I still feel as though the policy language is what it should be and here again a school board as a whole is very rarely going to hear about anything stemming from one of these investigations does anybody have any questions on that one before I move on and then just real quick again this is something that is not going to have board involvement but I want you to be aware you have a violent and threatening behavior policy Administration is going to take care of any potential threats if any of you board members would ever come

040to hear about a threat or a possible threat we would want you to immediately report that to Dr lacro principle and then by law as you probably know you are required to have a bullying policy you do have one your bullying policy has North Dakota Century code definition of bullying in it so one thing with this policy the first bullet point there says that it addresses allegations that a student or staff member has bullied another student or staff member I don't love that language it's how it's how you all received the policy my my one slight maybe change to it would be that staff conduct against other staff likely don't fit well under the policy based on how bullying is defined in Sentry code it's largely defined as conduct against a student so technicality and

041I could talk with Dr luck about that but if you have staff complaining about other staff's conduct I think it better fits under the complaints about Personnel policy here again this this policy has language in it about a board president potentially being involved if there is an allegation against a superintendent okay and then reviewing complaints of instructional and resource material just a good one to be aware that you have I don't know if you all have had to utilize this one anytime recently of course Across the Nation we're seeing more schools getting complaints about instructional material so it's good to know that you have this there's a grievance procedure you've already adopted for responding to criticism about materials used in schools you also have some exhibits on your District website that go with this policy

042and then I think this is the last policy that I'm going to go over and just real quickly teach agreevances you have a specific policy on this sometimes language is included in the teacher's negotiated contract you have it in policy these are going to be very specific to a teacher's complaint that for example something within the negotiated agreement isn't being complied with so this is very specific to that if it's a teacher that has a complaint about something else this policy won't apply but just be aware that this one exists there is a procedure for dealing with these types of complaints that procedure is summarized on the slide here and there is a review process available to them by the board so there's a chance that there would be board involvement with a teacher grievance

043under this policy okay so quickly let's go over the topic of when a School Board gets involved with employment related matters and and there's a lot of confusion across the state about this it comes up a lot we often see for example there's a complaint by the public about see it a lot with coaches you know people are mad about a coach and that person needs to be gone type of thing and and people think that they should talk about that at a at a board meeting that's just one example but um now that you're you know maybe more familiar with some of your complaints complaint policies you already know what I'm going to say about this but um let's get into it so under North Dakota Century code and I apologize I have missed

044my point one it's ndcc 15.1-09 a school board has the power to contract with employ and compensate School District Personnel the board evaluates and supervises the superintendent sometimes the business manager but it is it is the case that all their staff are going to be supervised and evaluated by somebody else so ultimately if if somebody comes to any of you with a complaint about a staff member no matter what that complaint might be you are best to refer to one of the policies that we just went over and or refer them to Dr lacker another administrator for lower level handling of the situation at will employees so your your teachers your superintendent your principals these are the individuals I mentioned earlier that have continuing contract rights they're what we usually call Certified employees they are

045not at will because of that right to a continuing contract but everybody else technically should be treated as an at-will employee you have your policy dbaa that addresses superintendent having the authority to hire those non-licensed staff members um that specific policy says there is no action of the board necessary so long as the board previously established the position and hiring is within budget limitations and then that policy specifically also says these positions are at will these individuals do not receive contracts so I think that's something to to always be keeping in mind um one policy you do not have adopted that you may consider adopting is it's called a DED it's an administrative leave and suspension policy so ndsba's version of that policy explains that a when a certified or non-certified individual can be placed

046on administrative leave paid or not or suspended usually this is pending the outcome of a district level investigation or sometimes a criminal investigation so that policy a version you can adopt of it would give the superintendent authority to to do that to place people on suspension or paid admin leave without a policy you know I think Jamestown generally has given the superintendent that Authority and that that's fine too the policy might just clarify that for for the public and everybody involved and then the last bullet point there superintendent is authorized to discharge at will employees and just needs to notify the board you do have that policy so that language is already specifically in a policy so he comes to you to notify you that that has occurred at those meetings there generally should be

047no discussion as to the underlying reason for the reasons we've already gone over then we have the license contracted staff here that I've already mentioned so the only way to end the employment relationship with those individuals is should they resign retire pass away and then by way of non-renewaling renewing their contract or discharging them for cause which are those very in-depth procedural routes that have a lot of legal requirements attached and the superintendent will be bringing a recommendation for a non-renewal or a discharge the board isn't taking it upon themselves to to take that sort of action and then I have a slide here that very generally goes over the difference between non-renewals and discharges um and and this is where I was going to explain earlier the reason you didn't receive a report from

048Dr lack about the outcome of that underlying investigation with the basketball situation and the complaints about Personnel that came from that was because there was not a recommendation to non-renewal or discharge without that recommendation there was no need for Dr Lech to bring the findings you know the details of the findings to you all for discussion anybody have any questions about that yeah go ahead next excuse me back to the at-will employees and consider DED um the the the concept of admin leave is that embedded in another one of our policies or we just kind of uh do you understand I'm going throughout your list of policies and I don't see that it would be in and there's um this is kind of a standalone policy that touches on the topic but I am aware

049of school boards that have by motion um at prior meetings and you know even maybe years ago meetings have given their superintendents the authority so the fact that you don't have policy on it doesn't concern me in any great detail I would just want you to know and for Dr Lech to have Clarity that he has the ability to do that and it is the procedure that I I propose I would rather a superintendent be making the decision to place somebody on for example paid admin leave instead of taking that to you all as a recommendation to place somebody on paid admin leave and again that's because I don't want you all hearing about some underlying concerning conduct of a certified employee if at the you know end of a situation you might be that

050you know unbiased jury who's sitting at a non-renewal or a discharge hearing on that same individual and yeah good point Jason um part of the reason we're doing the review is just seeing you know and I think we'll take a look at some of these policy recommendations of course Diane I was thinking about um in our community when we say you know this didn't come before the board the the incident because there was no recommendation for termination many in our community would then say well what did happen and I would like your opinion or suggestion on how we would answer that sure I think the the best thing for the board members to do would be to refer any Community questions to Dr Leck or Administration more generally and then Dr Leck had you know

051figure out a an appropriate way to answer a question such as that um you know whether it's that investigation or others um under North Dakota law investigations you know certain information can become public record so there's times when information is divulged that way it's just that you're not discussing it at a board meeting um because there's nothing necessarily that can be done and so you know I was thinking on my drive here what what might you do you know in a situation like that um you as a board might feel really helpless and you know wish you maybe wish you had a little bit more involvement or ability to do something I think it would be a really good time excuse me to maybe reaffirm for example your non-discrimination and anti-harassment policy even if there

052aren't necessarily changes to the policy you could maybe have a board agenda item that brings up the policy again and a discussion about the importance of the policy and that you all strive for Jamestown public schools to be an atmosphere free from discrimination and harassment and things like that you know I think that is completely appropriate without going into the specific incident underlying the discussion and just like to add to that and there's there's different strategies we strategies we could use Meredith talked about one providing board education which is something we have done in the past when there has been um issues or a need to reaffirm a policy or discuss something that board education has been the way that we've done that um in this instance if you remember we had a number of

053communications some of which are reports some of which were Community Communications in a typical situation those wouldn't probably occur but just because and this was a conversation Meredith had and I had a lot of times was regarding at some point it raises to the level where you simply have to provide more information than you might in another because there are so many questions uh in in concern or misrepresentations or misunderstandings the things that we had to be able to address and so in the most serious of circumstance you might see something like what we did a few different Communications out to the public or reports to the board in terms of General comment but not the specific not the specifics of what we're referencing of a findings report where if that was a different scenario

054if there was a different outcome that would have and that's what Meredith is talking about would have come before the board in a much more detailed process because there would have been a board action associated with it but we did feel like there was a need in the community and at the board level to provide some level of communication so there was assurance that actions were occurring and we did talk about process and we did talk a little bit about the situations but these are just become very complicated when situations are out in the public before we've had a chance to investigate and as I've said shared to the board before sometimes and it's unfortunate that this is the case but sometimes the absence of a report assumes that nothing has happened uh and that

055was couldn't have been further from the truth uh in it here we were talking days and hours and weeks of work associated with doing this uh in a in a manner that followed policy in a matter that was comprehensive but in absence of that final report or or when there's a community conversation around those things you know unfortunately sometimes it appears that less is being done so that's why we felt the need to to bring a little bit more information that we might in a typical circumstance I would just encourage us as a board to remember that this opened up a conversation about school culture and the need to change it and if the community has the idea that we are no longer talking about any of this it all just went away and we

056are just moving on with the status quo that's not what we wanted to impart so it is a tricky thing here and I would encourage us to those in charge that that put together the summit Leadership Summit to continue to stress those things that we are doing that are obviously a result of wanting to change School culture without getting into the details of policy and who violated what and what happened to them in disciplinary action I think we can still have very positive conversations about what we what we gleaned from this and what we are doing about it but it certainly shouldn't be that we are not talking about anything anymore because it gives the appearance that nothing ever changed and that nothing ever was done about anything and that's not a good thing for

057a community to think I'm going to kind of put you on the spot a little bit um but I think from a board if I can speak for the board um from a board standpoint in the board are representatives of the community and I think they're we can't talk about specifics and we've talked about policy and you don't recommend policy any necessarily policy changes but as you review the process that we used um to investigate to come to findings can you talk about your level of comfort that you have with the process that was used any potential changes we should be considering things that you know in hindsight boy we should have done this in this way instead of this way anything that you can provide in a general sense that would help the board

058understand if this was handled in a process that supports is supported in policy in a good practice but generally speaking I was very impressed by how it was responded to and in particular how Dr Leck handled his role in the situation he was the one that had the idea that there should be some level of community statements provided kind of at the outset and then at the conclusion as well and I I we spoke about it I read through his his proposed you know comments and very impressed generally speaking so you know understanding that the board likely wanted to have more information or or maybe was getting some pressure for the from the community to provide some level of a response I do very much empathize with that you are in such a hard position

059when it comes to that that kind of a scenario um I I don't have changes I have you know I think I mentioned it to Dr Leck I have some very slight suggestions maybe for how the underlying investigation into the the students the interviews of the students you know were conducted not that anything was done wrong by any means but you know just maybe some some general tips for for next time but aside from that um I really I don't I I think it was it was thorough it was necessary that it'd be thorough which is why um some time took you know another part of it was Dr Leck was often waiting on information from parties to the complaint itself so he was not able to finalize it more quickly mostly due to that

060so even the length of the process wasn't concerning to me because of the the need to be thorough and accurate provide everybody a fair chance to provide their version of the events and their side of the story so for that reason um and I I didn't mention on any of my slides but these complaint policies they generally provide a 60-day window for an investigation period similarly there's a 60-day reference in state law when it comes to a public entities investigation into its personnel and then another thing I haven't really touched on but disciplinary conduct sorry disciplinary action given against a student that too is never going to come to the board you know a general statement like Dr luck put out that um some students were found to have engaged in conduct worthy of discipline

061that is perfectly fine to share but a specific student's disciplinary con disciplinary action is never going to come to the board with only one caveat and that's under your suspension and expulsion policy Dr Leck is the hearing officer for any expulsions that might occur because the superintendent is the hearing officer the policy provides an appeal right to the school board I don't know if you've ever had to sit down on any of those I hope not but that's the one instance when the school board would hear about a specific student's disciplinary action so I really don't have any any comments as far as how that could have been handled better Jason go ahead excuse me I agree everybody wanted it resolved the next day and that's just not going to happen my main concern was

062was the amount of Dr Lex time it took away from the district um and I don't that's not really a discussion for here and yes it went a lot of days a lot of hours um is and we don't need to discuss this here but I would like I would like to research or know ways we can maybe if that happens again and there's four things going on in the district how can we circumvent just the time suck that he should be doing other things to forward our district um I don't know if you have a legal opinion now or uh if our new higher uh hopefully by the fall of the year um that that going through that whole time that was just my only concern was just time away from student achievement things

063and I'll leave it at that I think that's fair and and um you know from a generally the policies are going to dictate that and I'm their direct supervisor or at least somebody in a supervisory capacity is the person that's going to investigate those an option that is in these policies is that a third party could be designated so for example you could um pay an attorney at a law firm or some I think there's some superintendent former superintendents that have maybe kind of gotten together and have sort of a business where they do investigations that is an option um you would always to me it would depend on what policy is implicated so for example if the if the alleged conduct falls under your non-discrimination anti-harassment policy and it's a violation of Title IX

064which is the law that prohibits discrimination and harassment based on sex you in my opinion would need to be hiring a third party who has been very well trained on Title IX because there's a lot of procedural requirements that go into those investigations I wouldn't want you to just willy-nilly decide so-and-so should do this to save us time um and then the other of course issue with that is your pain and they can sometimes become incredibly costly but I understand your concern any other Aaron yeah just to clarify you know my from my perspective and um and interest in this while it was occurring um it wasn't so much that I wanted to get involved with the details of the investigation and see who's whose kid is it and what are we doing about it

065and what teachers involved in you know I had zero desire to get into any of that but what was interesting was the this watching this play out in the uh in the court of social media and that whole investigation that was occurring in parallel with your investigation and the national news media and just the general visibility that was being spotlighted on the Jamestown Public School District Nationwide and that needed to be in my opinion was in your your response and communication to it I thought satisfied my concerns 100 it was basically we need to have some level of board education for you know what is what do we do and simply stating that you know we have to follow policy AAC and that doesn't cut it so and what you did put together you know

066kind of describing the process and and what that was I thought it was um was spot on and that that's really what addressed my concern um so you know that I don't know what um yeah I guess I'm not concerned about these policies per se within here um in you know having that investigation done and then pausing and reflecting and not looking so much at the reactionary policies but more so do we have the right preventative policies in place how did we allow for an environment like this to to perpetuate itself and those are the ones that have more interest to me not not the you know here's how you do a complaint after it occurred what in policy what should we do we have any gaps for those preventative ones and that's kind of

067where I'd like to you know continue the conversation much to you know Diane's Point worth Leadership Council and whatnot that's that's not a policy item but is there a policy item that we could adopt to to help help that so that was just from my perspective I pulled up the non-discrimination policy again that middle bullet point and again this policy is multi-page you know there's these are just a few of the most relevant Provisions but because District employees are required to report any discrimination or harassment if they have any knowledge of it um along with that is a requirement that all District staff be trained on the non-discrimination anti-harassment policy what it means what does discrimination mean what are the protected statuses what does it mean for them to have knowledge that something may be

068happening um so there is a requirement for that training um and Dr luck you'll have to remind me I I've created an all staff training for many schools across the state for them to just email out or however to all staff so staff get trained on that because that's required by policy and I don't remember if I did Jamestown okay but separate from that what I I would really want to see more schools doing is training all students um you know before something's happening this is a policy you might not know students is in place you know a blurb about it I'm sure isn't a student handbook but are kids really diving into the specifics of a student handbook you know I don't probably probably not um but but also for them you can read

069this language that's in this policy and it's pretty Technical and what does all this really mean what am I as a student protected from or prohibited from doing I think that type of a training however you know lyceum or however however it can be done would be a crucial one I think there's so much focus on bullying appropriately um but this one is different than the balloon policy and and especially now with all the things that are going on socially with um lgbtq and you know all that it's just a very very relevant topic thank you I think it's good to just make sure we have the foundation and and it sounds like if you if possibly a few little tweaks but what we have in place is is solid policy and so that's good

070to hear um and I I also am on board with Aaron and Diane just continuing to see how to move forward and in a positive manner with some of the initiatives that Mr Gaylor has started and has continued to work on is great so thank you if I can just make one comment you know I think the policies still serve an important piece uh you know they are reactionary but sometimes they're related to judgment and we have to be able to go back and say you know what that judgment didn't follow this policy we have to have an accountability we have to have an ability to react to react to What what did occur and I agree with you completely let's be proactive and what can we do to build capacity so something like this

071is far less likely to happen again but I think the policies exist you know they are reactive in nature but they have to be and they are judgment focused so we want to make sure that there is something that we can be very clear with what our expectations are but if those aren't met then we have something to follow fall back onto I just had a couple last slides here and kind of bring it all back around to you know whether something like that would be discussed at a public board meeting we've talked in depth about the outcome of the investigation itself not necessarily being discussed by the board or by Dr lek to the board but what about um patrons who realize something's going on and and they want to address the board you

072have a public participation at board meetings policy that dictates um you know the fact that the public can speak to you all and the procedure from doing so so I want to just remind maybe everybody of the language that you see on this slide here that the public will be prevented from commenting on topics that fall under for example the complaints about Personnel policy and and a big part of this is prevented from commenting it's not just they're allowed to comment and you won't respond it's an actual prevention from even allowing the discussion by the public to take place so again very iffy we want to be transparent to our public we want the public to have the opportunity to share their feelings with the district and that's why you have this policy in place

073um but it's also important you know to to some extent to protect your staff um they've been adjudicated under policy already in a situation like this um and there's there's just not anything further that's going to be done so um I guess what you all have already been talking about though what what can you be doing and what can you be sharing with your public to let them all know that you take these situations incredibly seriously you know let's just find a different avenue for doing that that is all I had thank you Meredith anyone else have a band did you read Dan go ahead yeah thank you thank you for the presentation and thank you Dr elect for making this possible because I think you explained very well you know why we have these

074separations why we at the board can't know a lot of the details I do have a question because no the official in conducting the investigations really funnels in on the superintendent and um I know in this case Doctor like you brought in a lot of voices to to so we know it was a very well thought out there was more than just one person making this decision but if you just look at the policy according to the public you could theoretically do whatever you wanted so how do we handle that from a you know assessing your Effectiveness and oversight is that something that we would have to you know make requests saying look we would like to have you make a report on this with non-privileged information is that part of our um it's not

075necessarily part of the policy but that would be incumbent upon us to ask for that information in order to assess his effectiveness at handling these um yeah I don't know how best to answer that question you know essentially when you hire a superintendent you are entrusting that they are going to um implement the policies that you all have adopted that they're going to do that well or if they are not the ones to do it that they're going to designate somebody who's going to do it well uh so you know I I guess generally speaking your ability to address something like that would come with the evaluation period if for some reason you know you determined however that might come to be that Dr Leck does a real poor job with an investigation like this

076um and you know there was some reason to issue some sort of disciplinary action or want to place them on an improvement plan or something like that I mean that would be board action right you would all and typically that would come by way of the board president having investigated a concern such as that so same you as a board member had a concern that Dr Lech didn't do a decent thorough job that of that January incident it would be the procedure that you would take your concern to your board president she would look into it and she would determine if there's anything to substantiate that concern and if there is which in this case I don't think there would be but maybe in another situation there would be then she could come back with

077a recommendation to the rest of the board that you know I found XYZ was was awry here and as a result I'm going to recommend to you all that we issue Dr luck a letter of reprimand or whatever the seriousness might be that would be a possibility I don't know how you would otherwise learn that he was ineffective in in that area which is a struggle for you you know generally speaking I'm sure when it comes to evaluating a superintendent you're not there day to day to see everything that's going on um but I that would be your appropriate route if there's a concern bring it to the board president questions in the morning comments all right well do you have any other comments okay yes we really appreciate you coming yep and uh and

078walking us through this and and taking taking a review of our policies and um I'll have Dr luck be in touch with you for those uh um a couple little recommendations or of minor things and and maybe take a look at that other policy um for um just just so we have it in in true policy not in some old board minute somewhere that we'd have to dig out and so so that might be helpful for the board to to look at and review so appreciate your time tonight and and traveling here so thank you very very much thanks everybody thank you thank you mm-hmm okay moving on our agenda we have the superintendent's report Dr luck thank you you have my written report we have some hires coming up I've given that biographical information

079I wanted to touch briefly on House Bill 1205 there were two bills that related to libraries and prohibited or prohibitions in public libraries it is important to note that the the that Governor burgum vetoed one of those two bills and one of those uh he he signed the one he signed was 1205. what I think is important to know about 1205 and I've given you the Sentry code to be able to look through that as well that does not relate to school libraries uh it the the definition of Public Library uh in the sense of that's represented in 1205 is not a school library uh and you can you can Define you can look at that definition yourself too uh but I do believe that it's wise and I've had conversations with library media as

080already that I think we need to be proactive with review and a selection procedure for Library materials and we're going through there isn't the same level of urgency that would follow a deadline that's established in law but we just do I do still believe that it's important that we have those proactive conversations about selection and about what does a review process look like and um you know making sure that that we are consistent with the values of what our community standards are if you look through House Bill 1205 and I don't know how much you've ever looked into this but the house bill 1205 really follows the Miller test and you can look up look up the Miller test but it really what it says is that material if it's appropriate or not follows the

081definite or follows the the community standard you know what does the Community State what does the community say about that text or that topic or that area and uh if there's consistency between what's expected in the general public in your community and that's acceptable material and that's really what 1205 says and I as the the conversation has been held you know we believe that we should be looking at what those materials are and what is our selection process I think if we fail to do that a 1205 a a different bill will come in the future that says well this is what you shall do then I think as as a school district we have a responsibility to look through those and I don't think from a library media specialist standpoint you would get argument

082from that we all have different standards and I think we all have to be careful about legislating or making our own beliefs into policy or law but I think those are choices that happen at the parent level but I think we would have a missed opportunity if we didn't have these conversations about review and selection uh we certainly don't want to be on the wrong end of a bill moving forward because we chose not to do that in public education so we'll have those conversations there I just wanted to pass that along with 1205 that I that it doesn't follow the standards School library but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be having appropriate conversations I've included a job description for the continue well all positive they're questions for two on on this one first before

083I move on okay I have a job description for the continuous Improvement director I did have a board memo in the past but I wanted to put that into a job description so that'll be up for your approval uh later uh Mr Armitage will be here to present the technology plan uh and he'll be available for questions uh in the past we talked about title the title programs and how there was discussion about changing the allocation procedure that would have been a harmful to the district but other districts as well and so we did oppose that with the department and they agreed with us at least for now that this isn't a an allocation strategy that they're going to use or allocation procedure that they're going to use for next year although that could come

084up but I think that's a big win for us it would have been a would have been harmful to us but much worse for others and I outlined we're talking small Class A schools smaller Class B schools that have a high number of open enrolled students from larger districts but but really it's the tribal schools that were impacted so negatively from that shift that it would be hard to support something like that that had such a detrimental effect and so I'm glad to see that we were able to get that get that eliminated for now but I think it's still something on the horizon that we need to keep watching for but based on that we did get our preliminary title allocations and I've included the the two the preliminary and the final we see

085a small decrease in title one which we expected because our Census count was down but I was happy to see that we saw an increase in Title II title two is mostly for our professional development and title IV that's safe and healthy schools a few different other areas I love it's title four is my favorite of the federal programs uh and and anytime we see increase in title IV I think that's a really good thing so that is that overall we saw a net increase in funds for title one for next year substitute teacher pay rate later on in the agenda you'll also be acting on a recommendation I'm hoping my recommendation will be and I'm hoping that you approve 150 increase that is a substantial increase to where we're at but I think it

086I think it's a direction you have to go we simply can't compete when we are so far below the average range I think our substitute teachers do an amazing job they're they're great Educators and we want them to keep coming back to Jamestown so I think that's an important commitment we had that 92 thousand dollars in requests that was mostly Mr hagland and Mrs grounds who worked on that allocation that request I should say for additional comprehensive literacy State development Grant funds so it's about ninety two thousand dollars that were brought back into the district from the sederer that we're applying for I should say and most of that is instructional materials at the elementary level but then professional development devoted to literacy and writing you've heard about Steve Dunn before you know that's to

087make sure that we have the funds available to continue Steve Dunn writing at the secondary levels the last I think it's the last thing I have uh yes the last thing I have is special education tuition deduction if you look at the um the the Snips I took of our foundation Aid payment worksheets at the bottom of this document you'll notice in line 35 there's a pretty significant difference meaning that the adjustment that is is coming out is is much less in the past it was about 150 000 our projection for next year is 17 000 that means less is coming out of the state aid and that is a result of special ed contract change and so now that will no longer be deducted at 75 percent so that you know it's about a

088hundred thousand dollars difference that you'll see that will that was money that what in the funding that in the past was deducted from us now it won't be deducted so that'll stay to be at state to be our money so long story short net increase of about a hundred thousand dollars to revenue based on this change which I think is a positive thing so with that I would stand for questions Jason the the decrease of five thousand dollars to Title One that's not going to impact our just so we're clear at not going to impact the services we can provide not at all we're we're anticipating the same cert being able to provide the same Services the the impact we'll see is um in title two and title four a greater portion of our SRO

089will be able to be funded through title IV uh and uh in Title II mostly professional development we'll be able to cover all of our professional development costs some staffing costs that can be that can come out of Title II but all good stuff any other questions or about the Supreme Contender moving on nothing under old business under new business nothing under activities nothing under buildings and grounds nothing under curriculum assessment and instruction under Finance a approval to set substitute teacher pay at 150 per day is there a motion motion by Gail second by Jamie we have a motion a second to for approval to set substitute teacher pay at 150 per day any discussion Jason excuse me do we do we track or have any idea on an annual basis how much is going

090to sub pay um I'm not necessarily saying now but I think that'd be an interesting number for us to see it was 15 to 16 000 a year right that was the amount thank you yes Christy tracks that so that fiscal impact that's the net above what we're currently pay so that's the that would be the differential from the difference total cost s so so that calculates out to be about like nine substitute teachers per day across the district roughly so I was wondering if we know like for this school year per se or spice master how much we're spending to higher Subs and not critical just I just think that'd be interesting to see sorry I heard your questions that fiscal impact so my apologies uh yeah we we track the total allocation or

091total amount that's something we could gather okay so you have a motion a second okay yeah yeah we'll bring that to the next meeting or Dr luck will have it and the superintendents report any other but yep Chrissy does track track that for us um any other discussion so we have a motion in a second for approval to set substitute teacher pay at 150 per day and remind us where it was and where it's coming from where what it was set at it was a hundred and it was 120 and the recommendation is not for 150. okay other discussion discussion I'd like to thank 's also brought this forward to seeing you know we want to be competitive in this market so my discussion on that there will be no further discussion all those in

092favor assuming roll call vote say I I oppose same sign motion approved under BNC you have the general fund balance in the monthly financials for your information five under Personnel a ratification of Master agreement for administrators is there a motion motion by Jason is there a second second by Steve we have a motion a second for ratification of Master agreement for administrators any discussion Dan okay we did approve a raise based off of an investigation of where the administrator stood across multiple student schools and of similar size and similar uh activities and and job description the the investigation was really very thorough when they came up with a very reasonable number for the for the raise and then we also put in the reference to the policy ddaf for sick leave Bank policy so that

093that just is by reference in the master agreement now so our next step will be to ratify that revised ddaf sick leave Bank policy to include the discussions that have occurred in the last year comments yeah just um I feel good about the the agreement the four percent from the state is obviously making a difference on both on all of our our negotiations so that's nice to see but normally I'm one who would say can we can we vote on the agreements all at the same meeting but considering the World we're in and the job market we're in we want to get these uh approved as rapidly as we can thank you and thank you Dan and Jason for your for your work on this we have a motion a second for ratification of Master

094agreement for administrators any further discussion any further discussion they're we can do a roll call Vote Yes we certainly can Christy are you ready okay Jamie bear and Diane Hansen Heidi Larson yes Jason Rohr yes Gail Nelson yes Dan tweeten yes Aaron Roberts yes Jason belt camp our Steve fell Camp I'm sorry and Melissa Gleason and inanimously approved one for B approval of a job description for the continuous Improvement director is there a motion motion by Aaron is there second by Dan we have a motion a second for approval the job description for the continuous Improvement director any discussion any discussion there be no discussion assuming roll call vote all those in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion approved C approval to hire for the 2023-2024 school year upon a successful background check

095appropriate licensure was salary to be adjusted upon completion of negotiations we have number one Jalen hillstead JMS math salary 45 207.77 Caden Maring elementary teacher salary forty five thousand two hundred seven dollars and seventy seven cents Allison best elementary teacher salary forty five thousand two hundred seven dollars and seven seventy seven cents is there a motion motion by Dan second by Jamie you have a motion in a second to approve the hires one through three any discussion Jason General general question I've noticed on some of these new hires were just listing elementary teacher is that in is there is there you know we used to say fourth grade at Lincoln or whatever just some thought on that yeah I I keep that that's still in the biography that I put in the board report I'm

096just trying to make the agenda concise but that information is still there yeah is there any need to speak one other comment with that too it's you know we hire people into those positions even if we place them in fourth grade you know I think it's it's better to approve a contract for the elementary teacher right you know rather than approving a contract in a certain position so I just want to make that designation of one of the other reasons why we made this shift we have a motion a second for approval to hire for the 2023 to 22 for school year upon a successful background check appropriate licensure with a salary to be adjusted upon completion of negotiations number one Jalen hillstead JMS math salary 45 207.77 to Caden Maring elementary teacher salary forty

097five thousand two hundred seven dollars seventy seven cents three Alice and best elementary teacher salary forty five thousand two hundred seven dollars and 77 cents any other discussion they're being you know further discussion assuming roll call vote all those in favor say aye aye oppose same sign motion improved D um there's a conflict noted on one of these so I'll separate that one out to be voted on later the approval of resignations at the conclusion of the 2022-2023 contract year number one Jacoby Lloyd JMS reading two haneloid family and consumer science number three Heather Ani Elementary music teacher and director of choir and sixth grade music teacher and number four Ashley hoquelter fourth grade teacher is there a motion motion by Aaron is there a second second by Dan we have a motion a second

098to to approve one through four any discussion Dan um with these resignations were now over that 10 percent attrition and it's that's concerning uh so I I guess this may or not be the right place to do it but I do want to have that discussion about no is this is there school culture is it Community culture what's what's driving this and if you have any information on that sure and I can bring a little bit more information to the board in the future but I I actually did a little five-year analysis uh on uh resignations and I don't have them all in front of me now but it actually the outlier year interestingly is our covid year when we left in the we didn't come back for the fourth quarter that was the year

099we had the least amount of attrition we had five I found that to be interesting I would you know I would have assumed that was a little bit higher than the norm but it is significantly lower the other years uh the year before that and the two years right after that were both 14 and 14 or 15. so fairly consistent in those years this year a little bit higher right now it's 21 I believe so it's higher than that average but still within there but if you look in the the I believe that it was 10 of those 21 were moving or we're related to moving and I can only I mean I can only tell you the same amount of information that you already know from looking at resignations but a lot of the

100and of course we have an exit interview process that helps us to glean more information but a lot of what we see are are people moving um different opportunity in a larger School District moving out of state for various reasons that's about half of what we've seen are people moving for those types of reasons I don't know as I looked in and I could categorize those things and say where I believe that they're you know what they're leaving for although what people put on paper may not be the same but as I looked through that five years of data I don't know if I saw outside of the number like an alarming trend of oh this is happening so this is the result I think a lot of it has to do simply with the

101common attrition of you know people moving on to different career paths or people moving to different communities uh and I wouldn't see a significant number in those five years that I would say would be attributed to work expectations culture environment anything like that but again I couldn't speak to that other than what I see on the same resignation letter that you do or what I can glean through the exit interviews well I think anytime we focus on the after the fact either through the exit interview even the resignation letter we're still doing somewhat of an injustice to our current staff who may be experiencing things so I still think that a discussion on on assessing analyzing the culture of the district top to bottom inside and out is is something we need to do because

102I'm not saying we there's a lot of awesome things going on in our district and just because we want to look at those and others does not mean we're we just want to make everybody better and that's the that's what I've been you know uh preaching and hopefully we can have some discussion at some time about about that and now would be a good time to do it because it's summer thank you Jason any other oh Jamie yeah just to kind of reiterate that I I don't know that we get a lot of information from those exit interviews or the letters of record recognitions um I wonder if we if there's a possibility that we could maybe come up with some sort of unan anonymous survey that goes out throughout the year once or twice

103so we could the board could get some feedback as to you know our our our District staff happy are there problems that maybe they're not comfortable sharing with us or sharing with people I don't know something like like you said we want to be proactive because once that exit I mean they're gone they're they've already resigned and they're there's nothing more we can do or improve on for that particular staff but we want to maintain the staff that we currently do have and I think anything that we can do you know to get some insight from them in the meantime would be a good good option thank you Jamie Dan uh my only uh comment was going to be uh we talked when we talk about school culture there's a lot of it that we

104can maybe help but we don't control the culture around us and so you know there's going to be limitations on what we can can do to address address issues on that front but it was just that comment thank you Dan Aaron yeah I think we want to be a little bit careful here and that we don't start bridging into the administration of Staff as a board that's not our job our job is to you know provide the oversight but we don't need to get into the nuts and bolts of surveys and stuff like that with with the staff this is where you know I think our role in this is should be more from a strategic perspective and that we set goals for the district and then we measure our performance against those goals and

105then it's up to Dr Lech to administer that and Achieve those goals that should be our role not in administrating relationships between staff members so I think we need to recognize our boundaries here when we get into this stuff so but that does bring in a point and I'll bring it up again later under a different agenda item is our lack of a strategic plan I think we as a board need to be more active in that and not just simply leaning on somebody else to do it for us I think we have powers that we can leverage and help facilitate the progression of that plan and I think we need to engage in that yeah I agree with you Aaron thank you for that last thing absolutely right on the Strategic plan I'm going

106to push back a little bit on the our job is to is to direct student outcomes and and I'm not I'm not saying that we're going to get in the way of Staff relationships I'm talking about if there are things happening within our district that we can do better if there's not great but if there is something that we can do better as a district not a school not a whatever then that's something that we should look at any other comments before we move forward oh Gail go ahead I like to think of this more as opportunities for improvement sometimes when I worked with seniors at the end of the year we do a survey where were things that I might have missed where did I hit the mark and not as a critique of

107myself but sometimes in the busyness of doing a job stuff gets missed so I don't want us to look as this is we're wrong we're opportunities for us to improve where are things we may be missing because we're so passionate about education and working so hard and those things just happen because it's the nature of the Beast so I always like opportunities for improvement just one comment I think one of the responses one of the responsibilities I have in the district I serve on the Central Valley Health Board they do uh and I and I was actually thinking about this uh recently but I think they do a nice 10 000 foot View survey in a number of different areas that give us as a board kind of an idea it's not the specifics but

108it gives us an idea of contentedness in a number of different categories and maybe that's the middle ground that we're talking about not the minutia of how those things work but maybe we can get a better sense of you know what is the level of contentedness or are we in this certain area extremely happy or are we just sort of happy and you know that could give us some direction on are there things we need to do better are there things we can do better not necessarily the the ins and outs and the real particulars of it uh but at least give you a sense of the pulse and maybe that's more along the lines of what um you know could happen so just a thought I can you know I was talking I was

109thinking about getting a little bit more information from Riley on that night I think I might do that so we have a Motion in a second for approval of resonations at the conclusion of 2022 to 2023 contract year number one Jacobi Lloyd JMS reading number two Hannah Lloyd family consumer science number three heatherani Elementary use a teacher and director of acquire sixth grade music teacher number four Ashley hoquelter fourth grade teacher any other discussion the other discussion they're being yeah we'll do that yep we'll wait till we get to the mall and there being no further discussion assuming roll call vote all those in favor say aye aye oppose same sign motion improved and number and D approval resonation of the conclusion of 2022 to 2023 contract year number five Leah Nelson English learner teacher

110is there a motion motion by Dan second by Melissa we have a motion a second to approve the resignation at the conclusion of 2022-2023 contract year for number five Leah Nelson English learner teacher any discussion discussion there'd be no further discussion all those in favor say aye aye oppose same sign motion approved yes welcome to the district for our newcomers and for those that are leaving our district we appreciate all your your service and and dedication that you have given to our district it's very much appreciated so number six policy and procedures number seven tuition a approval of a tuition agreement for a Pre-K student to attend Pingree Buchanan school district for the 2023-2024 school year is there a motion motion by Aaron is there a second by Melissa we have a motion a second

111for approval a tuition agreement for a Pre-K student to attend pinkery Cannon School District for the 2023-2024 school year any discussion I mean any discussion there be no discussion I'll resume a roll call vote all those in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion approved eight under other a approval of the 2023-2024 handbooks number one Jamestown Middle School handbook number two JPS Elementary handbook is there a motion motion by Genie is there a second second by Yale we have a motion a second for approval of the 2023 to 2024 handbooks Jamestown Middle School handbook and JPS Elementary handbook any discussion there being no discussion assuming roll call vote all those in favor say aye aye oppose same sign motion approved B presentation and approval of 2023-2024 Technology plan Mike please come forward and discuss

112the plan with us thank you I'm sure Dr luck has shared with you the technology plan for 2324 for your approval uh this year most of our discussion was about the cyber security standards and how that was going to be taught in the district we're still working out the fine details on that um we've got some ideas obviously we're waiting for Mr haglin's replacement to come in and help us with that decision as well looking forward to an exciting year we've got a lot of stuff I've been working with Christy we're going to be doing a lot of e-rate stuff this year so we're going to be doing some a new Wi-Fi upgrade controller some new switches Dr luck has put a line item into the budget now for security so we're looking forward to

113increasing uh basically a part of excuse me the bulk of that is going to be into camera rotation because we've got some cameras that are getting pretty long in the tooth at the high school and also we're looking for we've got people coming in on May 30th to start looking at some access controls uh Quentin and I had a zoom meeting today with irca we've got a vigilon coming in Markle is their representative coming in to help the do the control access there we've got some details to work out do we want to do keys do we want to do fobs we want to do Locks we want the buzzer are we going to use Panic buttons all the questions we asked back in 2005 in a remodel it'll be time to answer those questions

114again I know we plan on talking with Mr Gaylor and his office staff and some construction we want to do up there to secure the festival up there at the high school as we lock that at the CTC and the transition house as well I have visited with the ladies at the D house they're excited about the proposal have that locked down so again we've had a little turnover you know Jada became a principal now so we have to find a new representative I believe Chief Olson found us someone from up but she knows that the childhood Care at CTC to help us out there that's pretty much what's going on what can I answer for you and I make I think there's two board members also that are assigned to the committee that might

115not be listed so we'll want to update those talk a little bit how the plan comes together throughout the year okay uh we basically you know once upon a time this was required by the state that we do this now we do it for our own benefit it's not required by the state anymore gives us an idea of where we're at what we're doing allows us where there's approximately 31 members give or take on that committee so we have a lot of inputs from all of the stakeholders across the the community teachers administrators parents Community leaders Business Leaders fortunately you know we did a good job in the past we've got a pretty good foundation now we pretty much just consider it a living document and bring it current looking at some of the stuff

116things that have changed like we now do one-to-one devices where we used to have cows so we've had you know bring the plan up to date where we're not doing callousle much anymore is a few here or there but by and large with all the kids being one to one K to 12 now it's a lot a lot easier that way not so much in the backside but it's all good so uh yeah we just continue and ask for continuous input and we meet four times a year and Nathan and I usually sit down discuss what we think we need to highlight but we're always asking stakeholders what do you think we need to talk about what do you have concerns about what do you want to know more about what can we do different

117so questions Aaron so there's just to confirm my understanding of this so this is this plan here has been you know the structure of it's been in place and it's basically going through a periodic or annual update is it so is that generally accurate yes okay so we're just doing incremental things in these updates I'm moving forward but the big one in this one this year being cyber security okay um yeah so when I was looking over this and and going through it um I kind of got that impression um which you know made me raise a point that are we in the same position as far as it you know from a district perspective in terms of the strategy that we want to try to Implement and does this align to that strategy and

118the answer to that question that I came to is I don't know are we spending the money on the right areas to achieve the goals that we want to try to achieve I don't know and so when I'm looking at this plan and saying you know it's a we can spend a million dollars on something and I'm not sure if it's to write something right so I understand you know and appreciate the work of the committee and and looking at bringing that input and I understand the legacy of what this plan brings which is why you know I'll support it but I think we need to get to a point where we align these types of operational plans to the Strategic vision of the district again I'm a little bit frustrated that we haven't gotten

119there yet when we had our board retreat back in January we said we're going to be there by July it's getting close and we haven't started yet so I'm going to just take this opportunity to raise that frustration and I'll leave it at that for now thank you and Aaron I do agree with you on that and that has been brought up um even at the this this is has a little bit of legacy to it as well um I think even sometimes when building administrators would meet first and then the committee would meet after it some of that even Blended together and it was more just general admin stuff versus strategic um strategic plan or you know moving forward for a technology plan so my hope is the same that we can um the

120dollars will align um where they're being spent to align with a strategic plan and once and um yeah still are on track for for July but yes we have some work to be done and just to bring up some specific examples too you know working through looking you look at the consent agenda and the bills paid and just stacking up all of the the different items that we spend money on for multiple software packages and how those all tie together and what are we buying all that stuff for I you know I don't know um it would be good to have an understanding of you know what is again what is that Vision what is that strategic goal that we're trying to achieve with you know all the with the dollars that are associated with

121this um and then you know is there a tie into you know we're looking at virtual learning at a much higher level how's that in here I don't know so um just you know those are the kind of things that I think come up from a from a practical standpoint that having that linkage into that strategic plan would help uh in in the review and understanding where we're going with this and I think the technology plan helps out because it is a living document and we are free to change and move as we decide the way we're going to go yeah right right would like beans to have one consolidated absolutely any other questions okay so Mike anything else to add on the uh looking forward to the next year we got a lot of

122challenges coming up so we'll be exciting yes so we have presentation approval of the 2023 to 2024 technology plan is there a motion motion by Jason a second by Dan we have a motion a second for presentation approval of 2023 to 2024 technology plan any other discussion any other discussion if not assuming roll call vote all those in favor say I I oppose same sign approved items for future agenda thank you Mike thanks for coming tonight and staying tonight items for future agenda any items for future agenda if there's any items like Dr luck or myself know meetings to be scheduled a teacher negotiations meeting on Tuesday May 16 2023 in the Thompson Community room in the Middle School GED graduation Tuesday May 16 2023 at 7 pm the career and Technology Center transition house

123graduation on Thursday May 18 2023 at 11 A.M in the transition house High School graduation on Sunday May 28 2023 at 2 30 PM in the Jamestown Civic Center school board meeting on Monday June 5th oh my goodness hardly it will be June at 5 15 in the Thompson Community room in the Middle School we may also yes Aaron what time is the teacher negotiation meeting tomorrow bye thank you we may also um beings we are in negotiations we may also need a special meeting and if that's the case we'll have Amy contact you um possible executive session to discuss negotiation strategies is there a motion if not monthly superintendent evaluation section 2 board relations and section 3 human resource management there be no further business before the board the meeting is adjourned thank you

124everyone for seeing foreign