PLCS Board of Education Meeting June 26, 2023

001all right good evening I'd like to call to order the papilliona Vista Community Schools Board of Education meeting for uh June 26 2023 under a call to order item a please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance all right thank you very much roll call please here thank you I'd like to call everyone's attention the open meetings law up on the entrance to the room and with that we will go into section two Communications the first part uh Dr rickley recognition thank you very much uh Mr Bailey members of the board uh welcome for our community members that are watching online and here in person as always we appreciate you engaging with your school district and your board of education for those of you that attend these events regularly you know that at least once a

002month we try to provide some type of recognition for students that have done something on the field of play in an activity academically same rule applies for our staff and for our teachers and tonight's kind of an interesting thing the timing's not perfect since we're in the middle of summer so it was it was difficult to get teachers and students here we'll bring them back at our earliest possible convenience but we also didn't want to sit on this information because it's kind of exciting we received word last week that our Career Academy program one of the things that we're incredibly proud of received an award from our peers it's our health systems Academy in particular there's several Academy programs Health Systems Academy which is split into two parts patient care and bio Ed they received

003the Nebraska Career and Technical education outstanding rule 47 Career Academy program that is a state award we did not apply for it we were nominated by our peers in fact frankly I don't think Miss Siri can correct me if I'm wrong I don't think we even knew it was coming it was announced and it caught us a little bit off guard but at the same time our career academies are exceptional and as a parent I can personally attest having watched my oldest daughter go to the patient care program it prepared her for life after graduation exceptionally well so very proud of the award Shireen hats off to you and Ms jabins and all of our teachers that make this program happen and we'll try to get our staff and our students in at a later

004date to properly recognize him so congratulations and with that Mr Bailey I would conclude our recognitions for the evening all right thank you very much next up our military advisor Colonel Cooley for the last time colonel all right good evening ladies and gentlemen indeed my uh my last trip up to the podium here so I appreciate the opportunity as always uh we packed at our house on uh well finished on Friday uh so all of our truck our stuff is somewhere in a truck somewhere across the country have no idea where yet but we're going to the Pentagon uh for our last assignment so we'll hit 30 years there and that will be that will be that so again appreciate the opportunity uh base has a big inspection coming up starting on the 10th of

005July it's called the unit Effectiveness inspection uh so we're looking at compliance whether or not we are uh upholding our bylaw requirements policy requirements uh that does start four days after my change of commands so I will I can say not my problem but with the base uh my team and the base in general are working very hard to be prepared for that inspection uh we are in permanent change of state station season so lots of kids moving around uh so through throughout this summer uh through the last of May through uh mid-august is about half of the permanent changes stationed and most of the most of our kids move in that time or obvious reasons for the schools but a lot of kids moving around we appreciate schools uh the great efforts that we

006have from Papillion Lavista to make sure our new our kids come into this district and get settled in very nicely uh other changes of command uh Colonel Christian Thompson the previous Wing Commander has departed and Colonel Mark Howard has taken command uh Colonel Aaron gray is the new Vice commander and uh we had our first big meeting with them uh today uh we have operation backpack on 20 July it's a great opportunity for our kids we have a very generous donors throughout the community who provide school supplies to get all the military kids ready for the new school year we get several thousand that go through there we've got great school support in the past with information tables making sure that our new students and and returning students know what their no other requirements know

007what they're getting themselves into and as a repair for the new semester we have the uh air show coming up 26-27 August down in Lincoln uh it can be a pretty good presentation we have the Blue Angels the the second best aerial demonstration team in the country they're Marine Corps bringing in Fat Albert of course we have s16 demo team F-35 demo team ea18 demo team and also a Navy Legacy flight including Smith 86 and some other historic aircraft uh Air Force Academy wings of blue uh parachute team will be jumping as well uh no huge construction updates we are moving forward I have a few delays unfortunately the uh the Lake Campus is delayed quite a bit however the uh the Nayak National Airborne operations center Hangar uh is nearly 100 repaired they're operating

008out of it the Jets are being maintained in there but they have a punch list of things to uh to get wrapped up uh but moving along acceptably uh and uh I went to grad school at Florida so uh Florida LSU playing tonight you can you know what I'll be doing later on this evening if you're a College World Series fan uh once again it's really been an honor to uh enjoy this partnership participate in this partnership we have with the schools uh fantastic uh granted I don't think I'll miss the 4 a.m uh text messages with uh with Dr rickley as we talk about road conditions whether or not we're closing the schools but uh nonetheless I really do appreciate this partnership what you do for our kids what you do for our base

009our community our military families uh help helping us with Readiness when our families uh are are have robust support mechanisms and our military members can deploy and go forward and uh uh and not have to worry about what is happening uh back in the rear so again really do appreciate it and depending any questions that's all I have Colonel did you say where your next Duty station will take you I will be in the Pentagon with 25 000 of my closest friends enjoying public transportation to get there every day so outstanding and if anyone has a house we could rent I would really be interested in that because we are still homeless that is a it's a pretty wild housing market out there so we're uh we're uh getting a little more anxious as we

010get ready to uh to arrive real estate in the Beltway I'm assuming is at a premium right now so good luck with that they're quite fond of their houses yes we do we do want to thank you for this partnership as well I'm sure our audience and people watching at home up uh approaching 10 percent of our students are military dependents it's a big part of who we are it's in our DNA so to have this relationship with you the Airforce stratcom means a whole lot thank you for your service and Godspeed on your next leg of your uh next leg of your service Journey we really appreciate all that you do thank you sir ladies and gentlemen I appreciate your time I want to say thank you thank you thank you [Applause] all right

011next up is uh public comment for items not on the agenda I just want to remind everybody you will the individual when I call you up to the podium please state your name and address you'll have three minutes uh Miss Branco will keep the timer as always the first one you'll hear two minutes and 15 seconds and then three minutes will be the next one we won't exceed 30 minutes I think we're good we don't have uh enough here so we should we'll be able to get through everybody I've done this once I'll do it again I'm just kind of mixing them up so they're just kind of random in here um I do want to say one thing last meeting I was asked by a number of people including people on the board and

012plenty of emails about it we do have a procedure 8420 talking about decorum people who are disruptive to meeting proceedings laugh at Heckle and other speaker or District Personnel any of that kind of stuff if I hear any of that tonight or if you hear any of it out there anybody that's at this table because sometimes it's a little hard to hear up here please let me know I will give whoever it is one warning and then after that I will ask you to leave the room if you do not want to leave the room we have now two police officers here and so I'll make sure that one of them escorts you out of that room so just do me a favor let everybody speak I know we have a lot of passionate people

013needing to speak about a lot of items and that's fantastic I appreciate that let them speak they don't need your help either way please allow everybody to speak and give them their time without making any comments or doing anything like that okay so that's what I asked tonight all right with that being said items not on the agenda here first up Ms lowen EB yeah whoever's phone's going off could you please silence that I'm not sure whose phone that keeps going off like that I'd appreciate it I can't talk let me start again hello my name is lo and EBY my address is on the form I submitted in light of the national assessment of educational progress long-term Trend assessment in mathematics results released by the national Center for Education statistics on June 21st 2023

014I created charts for our district in English language arts and Mathematics as well as the district's ACT scores using data from the Nebraska Department of Education I have packets for each board member and four extra copies for anyone interested in reviewing the material if anyone is interested in an electronic copy of the packets and wants to talk with me about the charts and the data please email me at lowenl-o-a-n dot EB that's e-b-y gmail.com if I may be of service please let me know thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening foreign thank you next up is Sarah Laura Tony um Sarah larotoni 8816 Granville Parkway so I spend a lot of time in this chair speaking to you guys about the greatness of Parkview I love Parkview Heights Elementary we are fantastic um

015the staff administrators and teachers the fellow parents who welcomed our family into their Community two years ago and have made us part of the fabric of this amazing School I imagine that it's easy to get bogged down in The Narrative of everything and everyone at our schools being terrible so it's important to me that you as pcls board members get to hear real examples of District employees being great we recently had a kids club staffing change at our school and as such we will have a new staff member working with our son at kids club come the fall I'd like to take a moment to thank our outgoing director and her staff who still work at Parkview Heights we have come to know them over the past two years and what they do in terms

016of caring for our kids and living up to the plcs motto cannot be understated our director Sarah was as much part of the Care team for our son as was Miss brakefield Miss Plymouth Mr Gus Miller Miss Watson Miss bolby and Miss Susie whose last name I am probably mispronouncing my apologies um Sarah is where she was our first Contact in the morning to pass on critical information about our son's day did something happen overnight that the teacher needed to know was dataway on business did the dog get hurt did he not sleep well whatever was happening in his life um and she never failed to listen and take this back to his classroom to ensure that he got his day off to the best possible start she would check in to his class throughout

017the day making note of any struggles that might impact his time after school she worked with his teachers to make sure he would complete class work that may not have been completed during the day ensuring he wouldn't fall behind every day at pickup we knew we could talk to her and get his day was like and any struggles we might need to work on at home to continue working on with him and on top of all this she made the kids club program something that he wanted to go to she planned activities and outings that sparked his interest every day even during the summer when all he wanted to do was sit at home on his Kindle and play whatever the game of the week was and if I have to feign interest in Minecraft

018or Roblox one more time I'm going to just be miserable um for my son that's no small fee so I would like to thank Sarah the plcs foundation and you as the district for your commitment to our kids and being great and my family wishes hers the best on her future and just know that she will be deeply missed at Parkview thank you guys all right thank you next up Mr David Metcalf foreign I'm David Metcalf at 1409 East Gold Coast Road Papillion I wasn't I had a I was one to talk about the lb753 today but I did want to mention uh kind of echoing something that skip said I started coming to these board meetings in February and I wasn't expecting there to be like applause and things like that Applause booing everything

019and it's a board meeting and that is one thing that kind of surprised me so it's hard for be able to concentrate you know whenever there's a lot going on and everything and if there's less of that that can probably allow everyone here to concentrate a little more but anyways I came here to talk about lb 753 so I never heard a lb753 until honestly like a few hours ago I'm not the most informed citizen of our school district but I got an email from uh I guess they got I guess they got my email through my local the elementary school through my school district but saying uh please sign this petition the repeal lb753 and all this stuff so I started looking into it uh so I first I just searched in Google what

020is lb753 according to google lb 753 commits 50 million in tax credits for scholarships to kids across Nebraska with priority for scholarships going to kids who live in poverty foster care experience bullying harassment or other victimizing behaviors or have a parent or Guardian who is serving in the military well I know that's pretty broad I just literally search like what it is uh so I had time to read a little more on it and I guess there's some saying that it's a a money grab trying to give take take money away from public schools and give it to private schools but then I'm reading that it's it's more for the scholarships and for these kids and that how in like North Omaha is going to be impacted greatly by it allowing them the choice to

021to go to private schools instead of their local public schools but anyways I've been coming here for since February from what I understand that seems to be a good thing I don't know I know there's a lot of passion against it especially in our local education system but uh I I would love to hear more about the opposing side on it if anyone wanted to email me Dave Metcalf at live.com but that's that's kind of it thank you for letting me speak all right thank you all right next up uh Mr Daryl lechner I don't know if I never look great sometimes it's nice to start out with the good news we have a lot of great people and great teachers here and uh I've been oh sorry about that my name is dura Daryl

022lechner my address is on the form as before um one of the things I'd like to bring up first off again is we do have a lot of great staff here we have a lot of good teachers and what I come up here isn't really to lay more blame but I try to find Solutions so we can move forward and to make our school district even better I mean we can sit here and make accusations and hate no one accomplish anything but hard feelings I'd mentioned before about a month ago putting cameras in the classroom holding our teachers accountable for their actions the reason being I brought this up was because we do have a variety of activists who are coming out of colleges that are being put in positions that are our teachers and

023this doesn't mean a lot of we have some really great teachers I was a school bus driver 13 years I worked hand in hand with principals and other people I was a prior foster parent I worked with project Harmony I worked in areas where I seen children abused horribly I didn't what we can do to make a difference to hold teachers and protect our children and satisfy the parents who are trying to ensure their kids are protected is put these cameras in the classrooms with audio I was a school bus driver we went from school buses with nothing to having the cameras and that and it saved my job at one point because of accusations flat out I had a parent come on my bus accuse me of beating her child and I had other

024students on the bus who I was suspended for three days without pay until the police looked at it my safety department looked at an office looked at it and then I was cleared but I wasn't ever compensated I didn't have the additional resources teachers get we don't get anything you want to be a bus driver ask a teacher they'd say I'm never going to touch that which is fine I mean it's a labor of love but one of the things we can do as a community to really move forward and protect your children I would really feel that that would enable us to where and this doesn't have to be open to the public where anybody can go into it but we could have it locked down to where if a preparer has an issue

025parents come to school we could go go to the through the you know principles and that we could sit down together and work through these things I had a situation where prayer where my daughter had a recording device which he recorded her teacher on two separate occasions where we went into and the teacher was claiming this was a book ban I have a problem with that I addressed it principal approach the teacher about it the next day the teacher was trying to uh was it acquire all recording devices in the classroom I was like No my daughter's a minor me as a parent should be able to protect my daughter because I don't want it to be her word against a teacher and then me had not have anything this way it's a teacher's word

026against the teacher my daughter's protected the teacher can answer for it and the principal wouldn't hold that teacher accountable that's why I thank you do you have any questions or anything no okay have a great day and thank you again for everybody thank you all right next up uh Ms autumn drickey hi my name is Autumn drickey um I guess the thing to say is my address is on the form I do not live in your District I'm going to be very honest with you I have been watching your meetings because I have friends who I consider family who have kids in this District so I like to be informed um and I think that for the most part you guys are doing a really great job and you should hear that from an outsider

027who has absolutely nothing to gain from it you're doing a good job when I hear things like let's put kids first there are things that I wish would be different and that would be free breakfast and lunch for kids that would be a great place to start the great equalizer is to make sure that all kids don't have to worry about their basic needs because when kids are too preoccupied with where their next meal is coming from they're not able to be the best learner that they can be so I would sincerely hope that that benefit would be able to be given to students in your District because that would really help I used to teach in a different district and I did after school programming so I say that with lots of training and

028lots of experience that when their basic needs are met they do generally behave better because they can move up Maslow's hierarchy of needs um and then they can learn and be successful I would say that I I would Echo the statement someone else said you know just having the structure I'm a big rule follower so the fact that there are rules I would I always love to lean back on policy um because that's your best defense against anyone saying it's not fair or it's not Equitable because if everyone is treated to the same standard then no one is really um gone after or attacked and I really just I really hope that there are some things that you guys consider just going forward to make sure that the kids are first and that the teachers

029are supported because the teachers who are here want to be here I know when I was a teacher I applied to be here um and it was a really strong Market um in that everyone wanted to be here everyone wanted you know the ideal situation where parents supported the teacher in the classroom because that's everyone's ideal and we know that that's not necessarily always the case but it is something that everyone strives for in their classrooms um and it's only helping all the students be successful um and you know I didn't get to work here but if I was I would be doing my best every day to make sure that those kids are fed that they have the things that they need the school supplies I know you guys opened a house I think

030for all of the other materials and I just think that's so amazing because there are so many families that can't afford it and just being able to provide those things it's yeah I'm like I don't think the the timer went off but I will go um but yeah just keep doing the good things that you're doing oops sorry about that glad you backed it up oops all right well hopefully we can do better the next time sorry about that all right next up Mr Ralph Tate does this mean there's no there's no three-minute limit just kidding good evening my name is Ralph Tate and I live in Pavilion some people think the opportunity scholarships act or lb 753 that was recently passed by the legislature has gone too far by taking money from public schools

031I encourage everyone to go to the Nebraska legislature website and read the bills for themselves the opportunity scholarship Act is initially capped at 25 million dollars for tax credit scholarships for the first three years and then increases to an annual level of 100 million dollars the bill provides qualifying children a scholarship for High higher quality education than otherwise available as determined by their parents or Guardians allowing eligible children to attend a privately operated School of their choice eligible students include those from lower income families students with special needs students who experience bullying students for military families students in foster care and students who are denied option enrollment in a non-school non-zone public school the average scholarship amount is capped at 75 percent of State per student funding which is approximately ninety two hundred dollars the

032Nebraska State Education Association opposes the bill and is currently engaged in the Grassroots initiative to overtune the bill and it is certainly the right to do so but consider the following it's not the parents of eligible students who are protecting who are protesting the bill it's bureaucrats who are interested in preserving their bureaucracy not in providing quality education options for children when public education is substandard their concerns are that the ACT takes money away from public schools and they do not want competition for students there are several issues with that position first the money taken away from public schools doesn't belong to Public Schools it is taxes collected from taxpayers we are the rightful owners of the money given to the state to act in our best interests allowing taxpayers to redirect their money to

033obtain better educational alternatives for their children is their right it is taxpayer money secondly Public Schools still win because they still receive 25 percent of the funding for each student in the program without having to provide teachers or staff to teach them because they aren't there and thirdly competition for students should be a welcome thing it's a good thing competition makes us better makes us work harder and results in a higher quality product those who cannot perform at an acceptable level do not deserve taxpayer support the total adjusted expenditures in 2122 for all 244 public school districts was over 3.7 billion dollars even at the 100 million dollar level we are talking about 2.6 percent of the overall education budget hardly an impact the opportunity scholarship acts as a good start providing additional quality education

034opportunities for all students in the state is in the best interest of all our children thank you for your time foreign thank you and next up Ms Dorothy Reyes hi Dorothy Reyes Papillion Nebraska um I'm just trying to figure out how last board meeting we took four thousand dollars of taxpayer money and funded a trip to St Louis for miss eyman and miss green to attend a conference and after researching found that miss eyman is going to be giving a workshop on how to successfully run a school bond campaign in my opinion Mrs eyman is inflating her resume through taxpayer dollars this is not a benefit to our district or our children we should not be funding this if they wanted her to be a presenter then they should have paid for her expenses and

035not the four thousand dollars from the taxpayers I think this Board needs to reevaluate the frivolous spending that it that does not benefit our school district next is on the 5000 series I just wanted to put a reminder out to parents that the covid-19 injection is not required it is only a recommendation also a reminder that the covid-19 shots do not protect against immunity nor transmission please do not be coerced into thinking that you have to get your child injected because you do not another reminder the state of Nebraska offers religious and medical exemptions from all vaccines on the childhood schedule finally Mrs holtmeyer thank you for all that you do for bringing awareness to parents and the community as to what is going on within our district I commend you for all your time

036and all of your effort thank you all right thank you all right that takes care of the items not on the agenda uh next up superintendent's report thank you very much Mr Bailey members of the board again welcome everyone who has joined us for public comment and to hear the reports we are thrilled to have you here this evening I hope everybody is enjoying summer so far uh we have almost a full month under our belt it doesn't seem possible that we've been out of school for four plus weeks it always seems like you get to the Fourth of July holiday and we're getting ready to bring staff back Canada getting ready to start a new school year first day of school is August 10th by the way just around the corner I also wanted

037to remind the board and the community that while our central office remains open during the summer hours we will be closed next Tuesday an observance of Independence Day celebrating this great nation's birthday so if you do need to transact any business we are open on Monday and then Wednesday through Friday but we are closed on the 4th building projects Mr Richards isn't here this evening but we continue to do a great deal of both summer work with concrete renovation painting interior next year and on several of our buildings and wrapping up some of the 2018 Bond alternate projects including five projects five elementary buildings which involve both irrigation as well as playground enhancements so we're really excited uh the three buildings that are still kind of hanging on Liberty Rumsey and Lavista West should be

038wrapped up by the end of this current uh summer so we're on track to open this fall with all of our buildings online and ready to go uh also on behalf of the Communications office wanted to thank all of our staff and all of our parents who participated in the recent surveys with the parents we had the 3000 Mark we have approximately 7 500 families across the district we had 3 000 over 3 000 participate we'll be sharing those results at a future board meeting staff survey also came in and I don't have the response rate at my fingertips but it was very very high so for all of our staff that participated thank you for taking the time to do that Ms Ayman did brief cabinet on the staff not the parent but the

039staff results so we'll be bringing the staff survey results back to the board in July to summarize those results then we'll come back the following meeting and do the parent we've we've done in the past parent and staff at the same time frankly there's so much data it gets to be almost too much to make sense of it so I think we're going to break it into two separate meetings so we'll do Staff first and then follow up with the parent and if board members have any specific questions after presented the data we'd be happy to go through it I also wanted to remind the boring Community summer school is wrapping up this week at both the elementary and the high school level thanks to miss Siri and her team for leading that there's a

040lot of teachers out there that sacrifice a good part of their of their summer break so that we don't see that summer slide with some of our most vulnerable learners so thank you for giving of your own personal time during the summer to to spend time with with our kids that need it finally wanted to remind the board it looks like we have settled on a board retreat date of Monday July 31st that is a Monday that we do not have a board meeting because it is the fifth Monday so please let Ms barranco or Mr Bailey know if that date does not work Miss barranco previously sent out a survey so it looks like Monday July 31st is the winner but if that doesn't work we can go to a plan B as a

041reminder to our community community members are always welcome to attend board Retreats we do not transact business we only have discussion items we do not take action on anything which is what makes the retreat different than our regularly scheduled board meetings where we do transact and take action so if you'd like to attend more details to come but Monday July 31st and with that Mr Bailey I'd conclude my superintendent's report all right thank you very much next up item e board reports thank you all right um I do have one thing I need to bring up and I hate to bring everything down I'm sure a lot of you know Scott Wellman he was a long time sub in the district he does a lot of things for Carriage Hill he has been he and

042Lexi his wife have been family friends of ours since our kids were probably six seven years old when we started playing sports together and um Lexi texted me and a handful of other people and then put it out on Facebook that uh recently Scott was diagnosed with stomach cancer so like I said for those of you that that know their family very very tough they're very active they're very fit and everything else and have something like this that came up is is very very difficult for them her what she said both on Facebook and in her text I think probably sums it up because we asked what we could do a lot of people haven't and her two words were pray boldly and I thought that was pretty indicative of them so um because she

043put it on Facebook I thought I should bring it up like I said he is a huge huge supporter of the district and the schools through his church and also through being a sub so like I said sorry to bring that down but like I said I think everybody should know it like I said you know I think that's what they're looking for prayers prayers and support Lexi's also participated in a number of District level community yeah she has yeah absolutely all right I have something to add with that there's going through something or if they're sick don't we have like a fund that can help them and support them Mr Bailey uh thank you for the question Ms holtmeyer really important it's a labor of love for us this is something that that we

044started the district started with the foundation oh I don't know probably three years ago give or take we called the plcs family fund um it is funded uh by private donations and by our teachers and and our staff who have the opportunity at the beginning of the year to do like payroll deduct I want to give five dollars a month or ten dollars a month and it comes right out of their paycheck and it goes into the family fund and then uh if somebody's going through a rough time cancer hits you know that the house got knocked down by a storm life happens they have the ability to make a confidential application to Dr settle's office two people and two people alone see those applications Dr settles and myself and we sign off on it

045and we try to give a direct gift to help people out so what you're talking about is is absolutely something that we do so thank you for bringing that up much appreciate it foreign anyone else okay um next up uh item F committee reports buildings grounds and finance we have not met since last meeting we have a meeting coming up here in early July so all right July 7th thank you human resources and student services we have not met as well but we will be scheduling a meeting in July all right thank you and curriculum and americanism we did meet last week we had three items on the agenda we were provided an update on where we are in the book review list from those that have requested a review we talked about the statement

046of assurance and the committee signed it as required by the state so that's an annual thing that we do so we did that as well and then we reviewed the policy 6000 uh different requests that had come through for potential updates as well as some of the thought process that the administration had for us on that the statement of insurance and the policy 6000 are both on the agenda this evening all right thank you very much all right uh before Let's see we get into action items and discussion items um we do have some uh folks make some comments for items on the agenda uh the policy is still the same when I call uh call you up please proceed to the podium state your name and address and you will have three minutes hopefully

047without technical difficulties um we'll stick to three minutes sorry just had to give you a little trouble there and what we'll do it like we've done before I will have when we get to that item I will have the speakers speak first and then we'll present on that item and then have board discussion is the way it'll work all right that being said moving on to uh number three action items item a action by consent all right we have a uh sorry I lost my place there most of my Miss witness second by Ms Fisher roll call please yes all right thank you next item are the board meeting minutes of June 12 2023. I'll make a motion to approve the the board meeting minutes of June 12 2023. second all right thank you uh

048motion my Ms Fisher second by Mr madler roll call please yes yes yes all right thank you the third item under our action items the city lease I'm a plhs baseball in freaky field before we begin we do have one speaker and we'll call up Ms autumn drickey my address is on the form I promise I won't be long I'd just love to see Partnerships with the community and any opportunity where positive caring adults are allowed to or enabled to be a positive impact for the kids because you never know who it'll matter to most so I'm excited to see those relationships develop and also kids learn new skills all right thank you sorry but here's let's see so normally this would be Brett so are you taking it okay then I will go ahead

049and let you thank you very much uh Mr Bailey uh what we're asking the board is to take action on an agreement with the city of Papillion regarding Fricke Field just a little bit of context not so much for the board they'll recall this from our Monday meeting two Mondays ago but for a community we were going to take action on two different leases memorandums of understanding one between the school district and the City of Papillion regarding Fricke Field uh for us to lease that facility for our baseball program the second half of the action item was to take action with the city of La Vista for the city fields which provide the softball complex that Papua Vista High School plays on these don't really impact the point La Vista South because they have a

050baseball field and a softball field on campus but because of space constraints Monarch has had to sublet its its two programs out Mr Richards wasn't able to make it tonight he did successfully get the contract with the city of Papillion modified so that it reflects questions from the board about vandalism section 12 under premise repairs outlines just some very slight modifications so that the board could hopefully feel a little bit better about if there was vandalism that occurred at Fricke here's who's on the hook for so please but top part of page four section 12. still working with the city of Lavista on the softball complex I don't anticipate there'll be any issues I think it was just timing issue they weren't able to get it turned around quickly enough but at the end of

051the day we'll bring back the contract with the city of La Vista at a future board meeting probably July and we anticipate that it will also have language in there about vandalism so if it happens who's on the hook so doing a poor substitute for standing in for Mr Richards but I'll do my uh best answer any questions that's all I have Mr Bailey I want to thank Mr Richards for his work to update the contract I'm happy with the clarity and he was very communicative he sent us the information and we could review it ahead of time so thank you I'm happy with the changes I'd also like to add that I appreciate it his quick response because this was very important to me but I did go back and look at some similar

052type of agreements and see that this has kind of in keeping with the same type of flow that we see in others so I feel more comfortable that this is a standard approach to that so I've just appreciated the time that was taken to get us that information and to make the updates needed I'll make the motion to enter into a 25-year lease with the city of Papillion for the use of freaky field as presented a second all right I have a motion for Mr madler in a second for Mr Lotus any other discussion all right roll call please yes yes yes yes all right thank you very much all right that completes section three moving on to section four discussion items uh first up is our legislative update Catalyst public affairs Catalyst public affairs

053joined by Melissa Fike Melissa does a lot of the work and I think you've met her a while back uh okay Melissa and Caitlin do a ton of work for us behind the scenes and others as well but I wanted to bring her because she's kind of like the old phone a friend when you which was but the reason also is oh sorry so the other reason is also the legislature this year is unique is the way I would put it so it hasn't worked the way in traditional years you have a hearing you then debated on the floor of the legislature and you figure out what's going on and this bill passes and there might be one or two other bills attached to it so that didn't happen this year with the filibuster going

054on I don't want to get into all that because we've read about it and uh go from there but what what happened then they put all these bills together so she's the one that gets to sort a lot of this out so and does a great job so uh and then but we have that can you click that so just real quick so I should wrap up um as I said earlier this big funnel I always like to describe maybe that's not the best way to put it but it Narrows down as you go through the legislator 800 bills were introduced um that's pretty unique last time it was 850 in 1980 so a lot of things going on what that did was prompted them to go to all day hearings um again it's different

055and unique because they started right away on about the third day and the hearings kept coming so a lot of the public sometimes didn't get a chance to respond and put together read the bills put together their ideas and thoughts so early in the session it was kind of really convoluted what was going on they tried to do a good job the Senators and the committee chairs of keeping it somewhat not controversial but they didn't so anyway about two weeks in everyone kind of gotten a rhythm going to this and following the bills um as you can see the one thing on there too seven bills passed with less than 40 votes the rest of the bills got 44 votes or more so it's pretty much just voted yes on a lot of things I

056wouldn't call it a consent agenda session but kind of was um so again not a lot of discussion um I want to talk about Christmas tree bills that why that's a problem just so you know is when you get rolling like that and you have all these different bills into one bill it really diffuses any opposition because there's something in it for every one of you and you all want to see this bill passed and maybe not debate a particular issue with that other bill I didn't like so we ran into a lot of that and I personally following this stuff and being involved in it's probably not the best way I hope that doesn't continue in the future but it's anybody's guess if it will so and I know there's a lot of people

057behind us so I'm going to try to sum up you know five months in a fairly brief time and the way I'm going to do that is kind of stick to that package we talked about earlier the three big big bills that the governor was introducing that I'll cover a few others but and then they had the education Omnibus Bill I'll call it so anyways we'll start with that Kathy can you go ahead with the mermaid bill so oh sorry so anyway this 705 was the education committee's bill that they threw I'm gonna phone a friend on this one how many 20 24 bills I think it ended up at 27 right 27 bills in this one bill and so germanus is I guess you could call it education and that's about it so what

058they did they threw these in we highlighted some of these for you that that are in there and if you have we'll leave time for some questions at the end but some of these bills that were in there a lot of the teacher recruitment retention that was debated everyone seemed to love that idea like let's pay more let's get a recruit and have you get more teachers for obvious reasons the student discipline I thought was pretty important that you should know about those things are happening about suspended students and I know you know you keep track of that but those are some of the the key ones that maybe weren't very well thought out and they they just passed because I don't think they had enough input from from others on that discipline and how

059to do it so that was on there some of the teaching certificates and and things like that and then Vargas the FAFSA one is a big big one I think do you do that already to be safe we do not require the FAFSA that we track it and for those in the audience or people at home that stands for free application Student Financial Aid it basically is that Federal paperwork that students must complete uh before they would qualify for federal aid like a Pell grant for example federally subsidized student loans for example on its face it sounds like a good thing but uh as you see some board members shaking their heads it can be problematic for lots of different reasons it puts the onus back on the parent rather than the student because you

060have to submit tax information to complete the FAFSA yeah sorry no no thank you for that so basically that's a big requirement you have to start doing but of the other bills we have gone through all a lot of these bills directly with Dr rickley and the staff and kind of going back and forth when we were talking to other people and I talked like School boards and all that you when you go to your meetings you're probably going to hear hear things people are still sorting this out literally as the Department of Education has a big chore ahead of them because it's not like they put any of these bills here's 225 and here's all the things in 225 they're all intermingled and you've got to sort out how 225 would even work so

061when they get doing that we were talking to other colleagues and other people and they're still sorting it out too so I would put that in there that give us a little Grace if we find out different information we're sure to call Dr rickley first but work with Dr titles of the screen and all that whoever needs help Brett and kind of guide them yeah no problem uh and then let's go to oh okay so 753 they talked about that earlier a couple people in the audience and they're they're on there's a lot of confusion on there but the the different ideas and of course there's petitions going on and sign it or don't sign it whatever I'm not going to get into that but the priority system is important and you have these slides

062I'm not going to go through every single one this is a very busy slide but who can get those tax deductions and the amount what they can go to is in here as well the key on this thing just there was a lot of debate on this one by the way but the key on this uh particular bill is on those on those priorities however who's going to engage them and who's going to decide who gets accepted or not or whatever so they wrote the law now you got to go implement it that's going to be interesting to see how they do that because what they'll have to do is go through a non-profit it sounds like and then it goes from there and then they can decide they can raise the money and give

063the scholarships out so I'm sure there's people right now probably already exist that are doing this or going to do it because they're fairly well organized on that so um the other thing too and all these bills are severability Clause so if something is wrong on one of the bills it it doesn't kill the rest of the bill so if if they made a mistake they kind of covered themselves with the severability clause in there and that's what they're doing so I won't get into the merits of the good bad or whatever these are what's in the bill you can take a look at it and then like say I'm sure they'll be a discussion on these kind of things as we go forward so let's go to the next one this is so bad

064we did include this in your package this shows the poverty levels as they gear up and go to 100 300 percent 185 percent we don't have 185 but this is the the what the Medicaid looks at for poverty levels that's a good gauge but you can kind of see you know we're not talking a lot of money on some of the families you know the 100 of poverty level but even at 200 percent it kind of gets you know it's Dipper you got to have quite a few kids in there to or household members I should say I don't want to get too far into that but I did want to show you kind of the numbers they're looking at who would possibly qualify income wise on these things so let's go to the next

065one than the package this is what we talked about or if one of these failed they'd all fail so all the sponsors of the bills was we're going to give this future fund a billion dollars in the future fund we're going to give money for uh special needs kids the school districts to supplement your special needs and then also we're going to get the fifteen hundred dollars per kit so if any one of those would have failed then they were going to pull all these bills so they had to all be held up till the very end so the 583 you know you see the fifteen hundred dollars in its foundation Aid and then also the and Brett's not here I know to cover this and I don't want to get way over my skis

066on this but the uh special education is going to be a big opportunity one thing on that special education is if they don't let's say they say okay we have this amount of money and in the general funds we didn't have enough they have to then cover the special education gap of lack of funding through the future fund so the education future fund would then cover it so it's not like Hey we're going to give you this money but oh sorry this year we don't have any money we're going to take it away so that other fund should cover that going forward which is really a good idea on their part if they're going to give you that kind of money then they also looked at lb 589 and they said okay we're not just

067going to give everybody money and good luck have at it so there's lids and the different Lids that are in there uh the good thing probably for your District right here is the bonding doesn't count so that's outside the lid limit and that's a big big deal in a growing District so the schools are growing really needed that in there because for obvious reasons so part of this was I'll call it a soft cap because over the years last four years or six years Sarah Breezy and others have said well let's put a little late in strong lid strong lid and to Senator Breezy's credit he's always open for discussion and I think he was very wise here to say hey okay we'll give you some flexibility so the flexibility is that the school board

068could over could see the property so you can increase if you wanted and you couldn't make it fit but you won't have to do it sounds like the voters could say Hey you need we need to do this and they'd need 60 percent of eligible voters on a petition in any election to do that so that's a little hard one and then um so like I say some of these out then there's growth potentials is that on the next slide so the girl I don't think I went that far into it but anyway there's growth potentials based on the size of your school district so if you're a small district and you need to do it you get a little more to cushion to bigger districts it's like three percent or four percent right in

069there um but there's some flexibility on the size of your District because a larger District get a three percent is a good amount of money versus a small District generating three percent couldn't be that much at all so anyway the devil's in the details on that Brett has worked very hard on that paying attention to what's going on and again still sorting it out what everybody has but so that's the big part and then the school funding I don't think we have a slide on that next one on the actual budget so the billion dollars was in the budget and it's like an LV 814 so that budget says we're going to put it all in for the cash Reserve fund which they were lucky they had a huge cash Reserve fund this year and

070then going forward they're going to put another billion dollars in in equalized payments is the intent of the legislature to get to two billion dollars so um that like I say going into it you can budget for two years and then the next couple years but budgets or budgets they can be changed you know this isn't a constitutional amendment or anything it's kind of a legislative intent so once they get to that next year you know we'll pay attention see how the budget's going um and I'm not going to predict how their budget's going to go in the future but you know that'd be foolish so anyway a lot of good moving Parts on that Governor's package that did stick together I thought and you know I I thought they did a really good job

071of that as far as trying to please everyone that Pride pass 48-0 I think so who doesn't like that so anyway that's kind of the big big things going on uh right now what we're doing too is there's interim studies that are being done so anybody can look at those we've identified some of those studies we then talked to Dr rickley or others and follow those as needed continue to meet with Senators they're now candidates popping up as well in different districts as well so we always stay informed of those things we're always available as you know to get way deeper into these as you hear different things how can we help Melissa has so a 15 years experience eight of those were with Governor Ricketts in in his policy she's a committee a clerk

072and a committee Council or not Council but legislative Committee Member so there's a lot of Caitlyn same thing worked for eight years in the legislature so we have some really good people following these that can kind of get in the details of when we're scratching our heads like what did they mean by this it's going to be hard because again you usually you go back and say well here's what they talked about they didn't do that again so now we're all going to sort it out a little bit so Department of Education will be busy this next few months or a few years probably for that matter so anyway that's uh what we have did I miss anything probably no so yeah in a shortly I know you got things behind us but happy to

073answer try to answer any questions you might have uh thanks for the presentation and the overview of this last session I know you guys said you're you're still uh diving into some of the details and still waiting on the specifics on what was passed for the ones that do have to go to the Nebraska Department of Education and so on to get more specific rules and regulations behind it but for the next session which I'm sure you're already thinking about uh what are those bills that maybe got held up this time around that we should be keeping a close eye on for the next year's session and is there anything on those bills that we can be doing now to to try to influence one way or the other um yeah some would be one

074that we've talked about was to keep make sure that the their Awareness on the budgeting I doubt they're going to look into the tiosa formula after this for next year however it's a good time to be talking about the teals of formula and the unique situations that face fast-growing school districts like ourselves because a lot of sometimes the members of these education committee they're from the small town they don't understand that you're putting in 500 a thousand homes over a course of a few years it's a lot of kids so so sometimes maybe we'll do a good job educate on that there's some controversial issues you know that are going to be out there that are in education now that didn't get passed that probably how they deal with those going forward I don't want

075to speculate um and I don't even want to get into what those might be but they're I don't want to avoid your question because there's bills that are carried over and can be heard next year the one thing about next year that we are looking forward to is if if they don't introduce 800 bills again which good you can introduce a lot of bills and those will have to have a hearing if they tone it down and just go to public afternoon hearings then they will debate in the morning but I'd be speculating I have no idea so a lot of times we just audible it's like what's going on it's like they're going to go debate so the proper procedure would be debate those early and then in the morning go ahead of your

076hearings in the afternoon and then about on day it's a 60-day session short session on about day 30. go to full day hearings but I'd be really speculating on that of what's carried I could get you a list and we we can get a list of Dr rickley of the bills that we didn't get through and are carried over they didn't kill any bills so we started out with 80 some just education bills and probably half of those might pass I think yeah probably 35 past okay even the ones that don't get through committee they aren't officially dead right the committee could still bring them back up and not redo the whole hearing process they could just pick it up from where they left off yep if they if they had their hearing they had

077their hearing they won't have another one now there could be a bill introduced that's similar and it's up to the committee chair to well they introduced a brand new bill and it'll be 800 or 900 because you stop where you stopped and then you go on let's say they introduced the bill that's pretty damn similar it's going to be yeah let's have a hearing on that one because you have to if it but you don't have a hearing on the ones that have already had a hearing so but let's say you want to change two or three words or whatever or an effective date or something like that you have to have hearing and that's the uniqueness of Nebraska and no other state do you have to do that but since we have the unicameral

078of course we have to do that so um yeah I would also say just referencing the interim studies that we flag for you guys for education purposes that's a good sign of bills to come um not every interim study will have a public hearing during the interim if it does that's even a bigger sign that they're going to try to carry that into the session to actually become a legislative bill so we'll be watching those real closely for you guys yeah oh and one more thing on that too so because they did not have good debate on a lot of these bills it's I get almost guarantee you that there's going to be a bill to clean up a bill and it will be a major bill and it's kind of like oh gosh we

079how could we leave that out well you did because no one had a chance to talk so they can come back and change any of these bills so what we just showed you they probably left out some pretty important things is what they're going to find out because there's just no way the bill drafters and the lawyers and all that could have kept up with all these changes that were going on even though you say oh it's slow what are they doing they're having a filibuster all those staff people have to get keep working on all the Amendments it's not like those are fake amendments that you're just throwing away they actually have to do things for them so the staff is unbelievably good this year under a lot of pressure on the finance and

080everything else but those will be the key things I'm sure they'll go after right away too and say hey how can we fix these bills because it's not just in education that would be another things too but education will have a I guarantee several of those fixes all right appreciate it yeah Tim and Melissa I uh this is oh Sue Ann please I jump in sorry I'm just a observation maybe a question the FAFSA law or public school students to complete that form does that apply to the kids who receive the scholarships to go to private schools because it's public funds it could be one of the things I don't know if there's a question or not but well if you say I don't believe so I believe that only applies to pk-12 students in

081a public school I'm Serene shaking her head at me it will we can take a look at that but I you that that is to me the biggest concern about public funds go to public school students and we have a lot of rules to follow but they don't seem to apply to the kids who go to private and that's fine that's a choice for the parents to send their families there but if they're going to receive public funds in my world they would have the same rules to follow as we do in the public schools and and I don't want to I'm going to tell you sides on this one or another if somebody who's against that or for it they're probably going to find flaws in that bill and I don't mean anything against

082people writing it or whatever they're just going to find technical flaws in that bill or because every big major piece of legislation is going to have a oh gosh we need to tweak it to make it work so there will probably be battles both ways on that and uh you know whatever so that that that's just one example you brought it up but that would that would be a pretty good example it might be having to get fixed nothing it's just we're all human you know people make mistakes on these things instead of Rush and it's tough environment so um I do believe in that FAFSA they can opt out of applying them doing it at the end yes I do have a question um I went to the legislative update that was held with

083the nasb um and they were talking about the TOs and I have the paper in case anybody wants to make a copy if they didn't go to it Mr kowash said that he was really fighting for the growing districts because this would impact them like negatively I believe that's what he said and it was Gretna Elkhorn and Bennington how how would that affect growing districts and which number was it uh 583 the to do you want it look at this well I think they fixed it with first forgiveness of not being in the formula so some of the formulas probably when he says fighting for the largest districts I don't know what exactly is fighting for or what he's talking about in that we do work closely with him I'm going to talk to him

084oh the foundation yeah that would be you know because I guess some of the when you get your property taxes coming in probably what he's saying is is they got a huge property tax base and it's it's unequivalent to what we would have so we'd be paid more in our property tax base possibly so it is also needs minus resources the resources might as needs equals the funding so a lot of times they have huge resources and now they're still getting Aid Foundation Aid that could affect the districts long term with a ton of kids that aren't getting the aid but I don't want to get too much into that because he's the expert on it it's a great question Ms holtmeyer and um basically 583 Sanders Bill adds Equalization made fifteen hundred dollars per

085student it would be basically budget neutral for us we don't gain we don't lose budget neutral we don't gain we don't lose the reference to the fast growing districts your bennington's your alcorns your gretnas those districts are like papilloma Vista that are expanding and they're larger and we get Equalization Aid the purpose of 583 is to start funneling State money into some of your smaller rural districts they're getting state aid special education Aid Transportation Aid typically they get some type of meal reimbursement but they're not getting the to Equalization Aid so 583 is designed specifically to address those smaller in some cases not only those smaller rural districts not growing they're going backwards so it's whether you like that component or not again there's good reasons on both sides but 583 was specifically designed to

086get fifteen hundred dollars per student some of those smaller rural districts whose enrollment may have been stable or declining I hope that yeah that so I apologize so the answer within the tiosa formula but the problem was they don't think they're getting you know oh we got a bigger burden than you do on our property taxes when actually they have larger resources but unfortunately there are resources in their mind but not in their mind it is it's AG land so fewer people are bearing a huge brunt where ours is more spread out on the property tax level because we have a lot of homes well a farmer were three or four thousand acres is paying a disproportionate amount of taxes is in the rural areas so that's why instead of breezy who writes all these

087things is a large farmer so he's very familiar with what's going on so then the rural districts do that but anyway that within the formula but the good thing that's what we're talking about there's well it's another bill out there that next year when we're educating them we need to educate them about the growth the growth factors and how much we're growing because I say they they sit down there and they don't really see it so we need to do a better job probably of getting them here and same this just came in in the last two years and we just had to build six schools or whatever the case may be because look all the bonds that are going on for schools so anyway all right sorry for the length but thank you very

088much appreciate it thanks Melissa thanks Tim appreciate your hard work yep all right next we have the Athletics and activities yearly report uh Mr van Akron and Mr I'm gonna say govier did I say it right govier close enough well thanks for having us uh glad to be back Mr govier's first time so he wants me to take charge so I'm going to take charge show me how it's done um this is just recap of the year with both schools and for athletics and activities we had another good year all the way around um it's our general slider talks about our relationship with the NSA and the National High School Federation as well all have common approaches and goals student-centered educational lifelong values opportunities to grow and develop well-rounded students involved in multiple activities and

089multi-sport that's probably one of our bigger challenges at both schools to get is to get kids out for more than one sport two is doable three is very very hard so recruit and retain those students and coaches and sponsors working together we have some overlap with a lot of training especially in the off season and especially this time of the year and to get them to work together sometimes can be a challenge but our coaches do a pretty good job of communicating with each other so here's the enrollment um when I have at the top what we have at the Top Class A 32-34 schools it really kind of depends upon uh the sport we have some some growth in Ops we have some now Gretna and an Elkhorn and so there's depending on the

090sport but we're right around 34 schools and Class A so that was our enrollment last year we were 13th monarchs were 16th and then heading to the next year we're 12th and 14th we're a little above the middle there um we had a great year on on for with both schools the NSA has has a ward called the NSA cup which you get points for anything that you place in in the postseason both Athletics and activities so it has to be NSA sponsored so the Titans finished ninth monarchs finished eighth we're both in the top ten which is very good and there's the girl and boy breakdown so we both had a great year go ahead you ready I'm ready okay I'm warm now um just write down of some of the successes we had

091uh monarch-wise we were journalism state champions for Mr rahajek and his his crew will have a picture of those kids here at the on the slide um multiple individual state championships I think you saw that with our spring Seasons it was good to see a couple of our track tracksters come in here um and uh celebrate that with you guys um and then also along with that many many All-State all-conference Award winners as well so we'll have some additions to our our wall of fame there Titan wise then they were champions in in two sports as well volleyball they beat us in the semis so that stung a little and then girls track they had a very successful year very strong team and won that as well so Very Good Year on both sides um

092the activity side of things obviously there's there's a lot going on with activities with uh cheer and dance and choir and um band and deca and skills and all those types of things in our play Productions and so um you know it's a lot to keep track of at times but there you can see I'm not going to read all that for you but um ROTC had had a good year as well we kind of were under the radar with ROTC there for a while um and we're low on numbers and we've now jumped back to where we we have been we had to bring back uh the Old Guard to help us out a little bit but Mr Nichols did a great job of getting their numbers back up again so uh you know

093I I think if you look at our two schools we have some good success with our activities and our Athletics which is sometimes a little bit rare and we're very lucky in that area yeah on our end then for the monarchs at the uh the Big Fish musical that we had we had two outstanding performers that are awarded their um they were finalists they had opportunity to go to New York City James or Asser and Sahara Pandit um so to see both those finalists there they they competed at the Orpheum at the end of the year that was kind of a cool thing and unique for us to have those two there um one thing that I realized when we're putting this together that wasn't listed then was Mr van Akron was region two um

094athletic director of the year two so I'll give him a little credit thank you um celebrations for the year uh this was year two for girls wrestling Foley sanctioned 2122 monarchs had a tremendous year in girls wrestling uh we're still trying to grow our numbers at our place we had six or seven this year girls wrestle we're hoping to grow that and maybe double that number next year I think we can we use the landing both schools use a landing for winter conditioning and spring Sports use it as well we do have our softball tournament out here September 1st and 2nd you guys have one in September as well so the landing is a good use for us it's a good partnership Unified sports continue to grow soccer it sinks in the NSA and track

095swimming uh what am I missing bowling yeah and then we have we have some individual things that we do I play children basketball and which is a great event it's always a good crowd and kids love it and then we had three state championships this year in our team um with journalism and volleyball and track so challenges for us then um scheduling it's tough lower level there's some different Dynamics in the Metro finding teams that have competitive levels in certain Sports all the way through makes it a challenge for us to pick up some of those we're very fortunate that we do have a lot of people who participate we fill in all those positions to so to find and fill an 18 20 game schedule is a challenge for us coaches and sponsors as

096you know even with teacher shortage that carries and trickles right on on down to us best case scenario is we have our teachers and coaches in the building at the same team with our kids so they can can be with them throughout the day and be more than just a coach but it's it's very very difficult when you are short short teachers and tough to find find those people to find them to coach as well for us official shortages depending on the sport it's it's a real concern how that impacts us we have to schedule differently double headers combining games things like that um and maybe sometimes forcing people to play earlier and what you normally would ideally like those are some of the situations that you see when you kind of wonder why they're

097playing so early or maybe so late it's it's just because we needed officials cost just like everything else costs are rising so running those events and things like that it's very very difficult um it's it's narrow we we don't make a lot of money we're lucky just to break even with some of the things that we have so costs are a real stress for us as well and then just adding other clubs and non-non sanctioned Sports outside the building those are all facility demands we want to support our community and in our feeder program so putting a strain on us in our schools to schedule and accommodate all those people as well as is another challenge for us um as far as Jeff and I um what we're in charge of and what role we

098play within our conference in the state we host Metro cross country out of Walnut Creek every year in October we also host Metro volleyball Baltimore schools do in October we help with State baseball tournament in May and then throughout the year we if we're fortunate enough we host District events so pretty busy all year long we play a pretty good role an important role in the Metro and in the state other roles I'm on the NSI AAA board supposed to be a four-year term this is year six now for me so this will be my last I can tell you that I'm also part of the Metro conference executive committee and then we're part of District Two and um again the state baseball at the NSA is is takes up a lot of our time

099at the end of the year so all right moving forward you know the Metro is growing um we welcomed Gretna East into the conference there'll be a little unique this year we're in our scheduling cycle we have one more year where we're going to kind of stay within this little modified schedule that allows Grant the East to still compete at a Class B level because they won't have a full school there yet but then following that will be in a two-year cycle we're looking at expanding and adding teams elkhorns the benningtons and those will expand hopefully our conference down the road Class A is growing um budgets trying to figure out ways to to get our facility facility out um you know using comparisons going through covet it's just difficult people aren't aren't using our

100facilities as as often as we'd like that's a great Revenue source for us so let's challenge it for ourselves to to get that out there and make it a little bit more accessible and available um cashless events we agreed to disagree on that it's a unique thing um you know football games large events like that if you go to a state tournament that's what they're using so it is something that's out there I still like like to have people and go old school with cash so but it is something that you're seeing when you go to those events Mental Health Training for our athletes both schools have plans um to bring in and incorporate Dr Woodman has a program for our school specifically and he works and helped talk to our athletes about mental health

101parents and things like that to help support them we also brought in some outside people and supports as well that talked specifically to our PL Club it's just the other side of Athletics that's there it's real um and trying to get get them supported Beyond just what you would see in a classroom on their athletic Arena and then going forward we're excited about the model getting passed you know that's that's a cool thing for us it's much needed you look at the comparisons and the growth especially in the new schools that are there we've always taken pride in our buildings we have two beautiful high schools we feel the equity is exactly where it needs to be now and to Showcase all those schools and those things that we have in our district the Athletics

102and Facilities that are there where communities out in in these Arenas is equally important to us so I feel that this is a chance for us to to get back to where we need to be or where we always have been as a district and some of that we can continue to be proud of here's some pictures we picked out throughout the year now we have volleyball there for us and and track I love the picture in the upper left it's one of my favorites probably that's our girls wrestling coach um and there's there's a state champion hurdler there as well is that right here's the Fine Arts side state journalism Championship down the bottom left all of our choirs on the bottom right our band um and then that's your young man of drama

103there in the upper left so questions all right yeah well I have a comment first I absolutely love the emphasis on both Athletics and activities and the success that we're seeing across both of our high schools whether it be Athletics or activities we all know not all students want to be athletes they want to be they want to have the opportunity to do other things we also have students who want to do both and I think both schools do a great job of of allowing students to be involved in Athletics and activities or one or the other just I can't say enough about how many times I hear parents say I love the fact that my student doesn't have to be one or the other so that is a credit to the two of you

104and the school district as a whole so thank you for that um you did mention I do have questions see uh you did mention um what's the the official shortage and my question for you would be what's the biggest challenge with the official shortage we hear a lot in the news all the time about what creates it but what do you both of you feel is the challenge for that um probably a couple things one one I would guess would would be parents I think you'll hear that a lot I don't know that coaches are there's probably some coaches out there too that make it difficult um money is another one for the work they do the time they put in it's probably not a lot of money yes and so when they have a

105normal job and they want to go home at night and they decide they want a referee or officiate something they want to be able to do their job and walk away and it doesn't happen all the time too so I I don't know anything else like Youth Sports in general you know basketball wise you can go out on a weekend and you can you know officiate six games and it's ease the convenience it's during during a time where you might be around 50 to 100 parents is all so there is a saturation of Youth Sports more so than even when when I was coaching and so to be able to officiate in a different atmosphere that's maybe not as Intense or doesn't have as much meaning you know that that pulls a lot from us

106as well you've you've mentioned several things there that I think are are things that this District as well as others we need to focus on that and see what we can do to help with that um it is a shame that the current environment is keeping some people away from being officials because this is really all about our kids and you can't have gains without officials so thank you for that information you mentioned also the cashless events um trying to move away from taking cash and forcing other opportunities my biggest I'm a cash user as well I do like having cash with me however what I would say about that is there is nothing worse than going to an event and finding out once you get there they won't take your cash so it is

107imperative that if we ever move that direction that communication about that be preemptive and very clear to people so that they don't get to event find a great parking spot and then have to leave because they don't have cash and maybe they didn't have their card I mean they have cash but they didn't have their card with them so I think communication is incredibly important but I like cash um I just wanted to say my son I said it last meeting but my son attended the baseball camp and they were fantastic with the kids the I don't know if they were Junior seniors with the boys but he was ecstatic that he was playing on The Big Field and with all the big guys so I just wanted to give a shout out to them

108because they did really good um another thing I have seen on Facebook the uh Firework tents some of them are going to support the athletic department do you know which ones those are so people can go out and support them I know band has one on our side I'm not sure I don't know that any of our other sports do to be honest with you I thought I thought I read Papillion South athletic and then Monarch athletic athletic or the boosters okay Easter Club yeah okay I just didn't know if you know which one it was so people could go support them I'm not sure okay no it's okay thank you Eva thank you oh I have and I think I say it every year but obviously with a new face in the seat um

109I love that you know we are a competitive District we always have competitive matches between our programs but what I love is the collaboration I know uh prior ads going years back I mean that's that's been uh yes we're we're competitors on the field but we are one District after after the match after the game and to see you guys you know how hard you have to work together and utilize each other's resources and bounce ideas off each other you know it just says a lot for for your character and how you want our programs to be run in this District so much appreciative as a parent uh and watching a lot of activities in athletics to know all the work you guys do uh and how many hours you put in but then you're

110also willing to professionally collaborate to make this whole District great it's it's very appreciative thank you I will tell you Jeff's first year in this position it's different it's a lot and um he relied on Jason a little bit and Jason would take on a new role so he and I have talked more probably in the second half of the year than we did talk early and it's great it's great to talk and you know make sure we're on the same page and we're doing we're doing the same things for the most part so thank you very much thank you all right uh next up is uh item C statement of assurance americanism and multiculturalism education uh Miss Siri yes good evening Board of Education um as you may recall in January we had our

111American Civics hearing and this is a follow-up to that six months later as we are delivering the statement of assurances so kind of uh tonight I put together a folder I'm going to call it a folder of reminders because these are all things that you've seen before but they're all things that relate directly to this so in the board summary sheet I also listed out some examples but basically this is a requirement of State Statute 79-724 and this is where we take all of the requirements of rule 10 that's in Rule and we outline those to ensure that we are getting those completed and doing the best that we can for our students in playing La Vista Community Schools and then at the end of the year I send out a checklist to our principals

112and they go through and check off that they have completed every one of those rules so tonight what you're going to find in the folder like I said kind of reminders is that statement of assurances so if you haven't seen that because I know Brittany this is new for you so that way you have a copy of it there for you that you can see I also included the policy and then I always try to provide an example of the American Civics the social studies requirement and the multiculturalism piece so for multiculturalism I included a copy of our textbook one of our textbook instruments that we use and you can see in there that we do make sure that when we're selecting a resource that our students can see themselves in that resource and that

113it doesn't have bias so I included that for multiculturalism and then the social studies you'll see the last page I included the secondary so you could kind of see keep in mind that that's old that's not the current changes because it's from this past current school year and then in this folder I have the assurances signed by the principals so it's that same document where they have said yep that this year we met rule 10 in those Assurance statements so you're welcome to look at that afterwards if you'd like but otherwise I'll submit it and Kathy will file it as we submit a rule 10 report here June 30th so questions on that particular piece I have a quick question I had emailed you before I don't know maybe a couple months ago about a

114multicultural class is this the one where the parents have to sign off on it for their child to take it so the Multicultural classes in English language arts class it's just the title the word is kind of the same it's just a literature class that represents a literature of all different types of cultures and parents sign off on the registration when a kid signs up for a course so of any of any okay thank you there we go all right no other questions thank you very much all right item D under the discussion informational items is a police policy 6000 instruction and I do have a number of comment sheets so I had to kind of mix these up and so we will start with those and then we will uh go from there so

115um and I'm gonna screw this first one up so it's Linda is it vermuda or vermutan am I close good evening my name is Linda Verma and my address is on the sheet pornography in the schools you got to be kidding me that was my reaction when I heard this was going on what this is supposed to be a safe place where we do all in our power to protect our children this is removing a protective barrier when we expose them because they are crucial long-term effects irreversible long-term effects on children when they are exposed to pornography early and repeatedly I don't know about most of those books I just started a little research I wonder how many parents are even aware these books are there now let me talk to you about some of

116those long-term effects what begins to happen is you physically change the structure of the brain of a child when they're exposed to pornography early on now you say well a book can't hurt them but a book can because once you read those words and you have that image in your mind you can never erase that ever we're putting ourselves on a trajectory for porn addiction like we have never seen in our nation having sat with people that struggle with addictions of many kinds particularly pornography it is extremely difficult to help those people lead what we would call a normal life how does this change the child it changes like I said the neural Pathways so first time you do something it's a little pencil line second time you do it it's laid together and twisted

117together third time it's twisted even more so over time you no longer have a line but you have a huge cable that without even thinking your mind goes down that path so it impacts every area of your life because it changes a child's thoughts about sexuality what is sex it becomes seen as something selfish it becomes seen as this person is an objection of my gratification not of an exchange of Love consent isn't even something that is needed when we look at the world of the offenders and we talk about juvenile sex offenders what happens there is when we were conducting some research there 15 of these young men every single one had been exposed to pornography early in their lives about 10 or 12 years old so now they are 16 years old they've

118been prosecuted for sexual assault on somebody else because they act out what they see it treats it changes the way they treat other children because they want instant gratification we already seen the impact in our nation from these kind of policies and these kind of books being in our schools there's three states already that have had people that have been attacked on school grounds one young man attacked a lady in the school bathroom was moved to another school and did it again thank you ma'am thank you for your time all right next MS Laura Bartlett hello my name is Thor Bartlett my address is on the form and I have two elementary kids in the district recently I've been watching the school board meetings and hearing a false narrative that porn is being allowed in

119our schools these claims are not only ridiculous but they're generally brought up by parents without kids in either the school library in question or even in the district these claims are generally a copy paste from the right wing hate group like mobs for Liberty the books in question are overwhelmingly about LGBT lgbtq populations and are being parented out of context by these extremists the district already has mechanisms in place to allow a parent to ban a book for their own child as the board is working to revise this policy I would suggest that book submissions only come from parents who have children in the school that has the book in question having other parents especially those without kids in the district dictate what my kids can have access to takes away my rights and Liberties

120as a parent related to only allowing actual parents in the district to submit these requests I also have concerns that members of the community and a member of this board are here spewing hate propaganda put out by moms for Liberty for those who don't know mobs for Liberty is a group who has been deemed a terrorist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center this group promotes far right-wing extremist views that Target lgbtq plus individuals these values should be nowhere near a public school board allowing individuals in groups like this to have a say in matters that relate to our district is politicizing our district if these individuals want to promote white nationalist anti-lgbtq plus values they should do so at a private school not within a public board let parents who are against these books

121ban them for their own children not mine book bands take away my right as a parent and remember the Nazis didn't start with gas Chambers they started with book bands they banned books that spoke out against the Nazi party and books that discussed lgbtqs and yes lgbtq books were around in the 1930s please do not make policy changes based on allowed uneducated group of people who do not have children in the district all right thank you next uh is Kay Wagner hi how's everybody I was um getting a little tired there for a minute excuse me before you start too much can I get your name oh I'm sorry Kay Wagner sorry sorry um hi I'm not from um and my address is on the form I am not a parent in this District I

122am simply here because I've been hearing a lot about the things that are going on in this um Papillion La Vista schools and I wanted to um quickly just kind of say some of it's kind of embarrassing I have a friend who was looking to move to Nebraska and I said you know maybe look in Papillion good schools great Sports and um it was automatically oh my gosh is that that one school district who has that school board member who spoke at the legislature and I was like oh wait maybe so anyway really quickly I just wanted to um remind everybody because it's we're talking about libraries and your policies that there is a school board member who actively um is is not being as supportive probably towards her school district in public places as

123maybe some parents would like to see and there are parents in other districts who are paying very close attention they're watching right now on on YouTube live um so just showing support to the really good parents of this district and to the wonderful board members of this District the Omaha Metro area is aware of what is happening the good parents in other districts want to show our support so we will be actively attending meetings and making sure that the voice of reason is heard and that um you feel the support and the love from your communities around here um and so that's about it I just really wanted to let you know that that um that it's incredibly important to listen to well-educated um professionals who who understand Library policies and who understand the importance

124of diversity and books that reflect a student's self and that's it so thank you [Music] all right thank you next up Ms autumn drickey hi Autumn turkey and my address is on the form um so I had intended to come up and talk about how important it is to let the professionals not the self-identified professionals but the actual professionals be in charge of what is and isn't productive in schools um but there's just a lot so um I would Echo the desire not to take away one parent's rights because people don't like something for instance the Bible has plenty of stuff that I might not necessarily want my kid to read out of context but some people like to go to church every week and read the Bible and I wouldn't excuse me and I

125wouldn't want to tell them what they could or couldn't do with their child because it's their child and we really you know as much as we want kids to be the focus there are parent opinions and as long as there's things in place that allow the parents to have that control of what their kids do and don't read or see or whatever let them use those Avenues and not um put their beliefs on others who don't agree thank you okay thank you next up Mr Ralph Tate thank you again my name is Ralph Tate I live in Papillion as we know the district has spent a significant amount of time resources and effort in getting the recent 130 million dollar school bond approved that was a tremendous effort on the part of the Administration staff

126and volunteers to coordinate meetings chat rooms mail Flyers into a hundred other activities that were needed to be successful the key was communicate communicate communicate it truly exemplified the district's Mission as an organization dedicated to Greatness to prepare all students to realize their unique aspirations delivered by highly qualified passionate educators through bold Partnerships with families and community as you're also aware there have been a number of parents and community members over the past several months who have expressed deeply held opinions regarding the appropriateness of certain books and school libraries and even the very process for selecting books some District members consider books in question to be acceptable and see no issue with them some of us find them to be either pornographic obscene or age inappropriate regardless of which side of that discussion you are

127on what has been repeatedly requested has been an opportunity for dialogue and discussion with the board and the administration looking for solutions to differences in a reasonable path forward what we have heard so far has been deafening silence what happened to the organization dedicated to Greatness preparing students through bold Partnerships with families and Community where did it go is that just the mission when you want it to be but otherwise you turn it off like a light switch if the prime motivation for these bold Partnerships is money then perhaps lb 753 hasn't gone far enough to provide educational opportunities outside of public education when public education seems to be focused more on ideology and indoctrination when we see educational standards and performance slide year over year while the bureaucracy needed to support the system continues

128to flourish regardless of performance then perhaps it's not just those parents and Guardians who have financial hardship that need alternatives for their children outside of what public education has to offer this past spring Iowa's Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law of 345 million dollar program creating tax-funded education savings accounts that will be available to all K-12 students Statewide with no income limits money deposited into those accounts can be spent on educational expenses such as tuition and fees in private and religious schools Margaret Mead said never depend upon institutions or government to solve any problem all social movements are founded by Guided by motivated and seen through by The Passion of individuals the choice is yours but the time to make that decision is short thank you for your time all right thank you next Ms

129Sarah lartoni thanks for letting him know about the mic by the way we couldn't hear him so I appreciate you telling him to to speak in in there that was very nice of you uh Sarah Laura Tony oh sorry I don't think I know I'm not doing it technology can you hear me now awesome um Sarah Tony 8816 Granville Parkway um I worry that book bands are becoming trendy buzzwords and the Boogeyman of board meetings this board meeting also um But like everyone else who gets up here and speaks as a parent I'm deeply passionate about this um I I do not believe that banning books and restricting the ability of our Librarians to do their jobs and choose appropriate diverse and interesting material that our children have access to in school libraries this is

130just too important to not speak up about the district's policy 6202 Multicultural education this is not explicitly about books but books are there if you read between the lines and I know pun intended on that sorry um a memory of Ozark hunting culture is really a lesson in the value of hard work compassion and empathy towards others Piggy and Ralph epitomize Justice loyalty on honesty honor in the face of peer pressure Jim burden spends a lifetime relearning deep-rooted prejudice against his neighbors simply because they did not emigrate from the correct European countries as does Adam Trask who is finally able to see Lee for the person he is rather than who society says he is after a lifetime of tragedy and violence Jim Nolan and Mac guide us through migrant Camp life and The Strife

131of organized labor in the 1930s while Amir and Hassan rodian reskolnikov come from cultures that demand sacrifices in the name of family himself and tell us about the toll they take and how much of ourselves we are willing to give away the books of my Elementary and high school education feature Heroes that are overwhelmingly white so they do not necessarily speak to this policy goal of multiculturalism but they do have examples of racism Prejudice bigotry discrimination and gender biased my favorite book of all time is East of Eden and this one work alone contains all of these examples within its pages and yet I have yet to hear it discussed as a work that our children need to be protected from I believe it's because these characters are white are protagonists and antagonists are white

132and the secondary characters are the right color of non-white that make protagonists comfortable interacting with them I urge the board to not make changes to policy 6202 and leave and place the authority our school librarians have to choose materials whose narratives reflect the diversities within the schools themselves please do not let a group of adults transform our libraries into homogeneous shelves filled with these so-called Classics let our students see themselves find themselves question themselves in the works that are available to them it is our responsibility to encourage them to seek out these narratives ask their questions and provide a safe space for their learning experiences our kids are telling us who they are we need to show them that we are listening and accepting of that thank you for your time all right well thank

133you um after that uh I guess we'll let's see all right good evening um so as I included in the board packet uh tonight I was going to give you an update on where we are in the 6000 series um so the first thing I would like to share with you is uh Valerie reported earlier the subcommittee did meet last week and we began to process those policies I did collect all of the feedback that we received from patrons certified staff parents and students and collected that and aligned it with each policy where they documented their input and so we began to go through that we did make it through all of the policies one time there are several in the 6000 series as you know and so right now I'm working on taking those

134changes and making a first draft that I will share back with the subcommittee there were a couple of one ones that we still need to finalize decisions about but that's where we're at in the process and my hope is that at the next board meeting we'll bring those draft changes to the school board and I will share with you what each of them are and then we would hope at the next board meeting we could move forward with those changes if that's what the board wishes to do kind of an update of where we're at so questions that I could answer on that or anything I forgot subcommittee members that are processing through all of that I just want to reiterate that it was a very thorough process of going through those and the way

135you documented it was very helpful to understand all the different contributions and how they apply to each of the sections so thank you all right thank you very much I appreciate the update you're welcome all right well that finishes up section four section five the future board calendar as you mentioned earlier Dr rickley July 4th a office will be closed for Independence Day and our next board meeting will be July 10th here in central office at 6 pm so unless there's a there isn't any other business then I will adore adjourn this meeting at 7 54 pm thank you very much