001to call to order the Papillion La Vista Community Schools Board of Education meeting for April 24th 2023 first order business call to order Pledge of Allegiance of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice all right thank you very much roll call please here thank you very much I'd like to call everybody's attention to the open meetings act that's posted at the entrance to the room all right for section two Communications the first thing is going to be a recognition and looks like we've got quite a few on the agenda tonight uh yes we do uh Mr Bailey thank you very much uh the Plano Vista Community Schools Board of Education and for those of you that are in attendance this
002evening thank you for being here and thank you for being engaged with your board of education for those of you that are watching from home thank you for engaging in that manner we've got kind of a long list of individuals that we would like to introduce tonight four separate categories which I'll talk about in just a little bit but if you're new to this what we try to do is at least once a month is single out either students staff or in the case of tonight both for exceptional accomplishments that they've done to bring honor to themselves in the school district so the four different categories we've got student council more on that in a bit skillsusa we've got a group from in addition to skillsusa then we've got a teacher that we're providing recognition
003and we'll provide details on all of those things in just a little bit in fact we've got skills USA from both high schools which by the way if you'd like I don't know if we have any moms dads or family members in attendance but please feel free we'll pause after each of the the recognition please feel free to come down we'll take a picture and you'll be recognized by your board of education so the very first group that we're recognized this evening is our student council representatives from Papillion Lavista South High School will be doing monarchs later but we head south available tonight we've had two individuals that have con provided consistently outstanding reports to the community to the board these individuals are busy with activities with academics with trying to balance the the busy
004time involved with being a senior but we're just incredibly grateful for Hallie and Zach the work that you've done and we couldn't be more excited to see what the future holds for both of you Hallie settle Zach Nelson please come on down and be recognized by your Board of Education foreign [Applause] thank you again Hallie and Zach and we look forward to seeing what you do after graduation the next category actually split into two categories because we have both high schools being honored and that skills USA and I don't know how many of you are familiar with our skillsusa program but it's not only an Innovative program in terms of what it offers our students but it's a program that we've consistently as a school district performed extremely well over April 13th to the 15th
00527 papillona Vista Community Schools students participate in over 50 events at Grand Island two students took first place in their competition will have the opportunity to attend the national skills USA conference which is this June skillsusa prepares students for technical skilled and Service careers bless you Miss Fisher in additional in addition to technical skills writing skills USA provides educational experiences for students in the areas of leadership teamwork citizenship and character development our high school students participate in skillsusa at the high school for skill Development Career exposure and the opportunity to compete in our state leadership and skill conference we have two individuals here that we are recognizing from Papillon La Vista High School the event sponsor was Mr Scott knifel by the way I didn't see Scott walk in the room Scott's actually as a
006side note retiring this year you'd be hard for us to find a more skilled teacher in the area of skilled and Technical trades than Scott caniffel so Scott if you're watching tonight we're sorry to see a lead but we're really thrilled with the the outstanding results you produce over the years our two Stu or our yes our students from Papillion La Vista High School was Braden Covington who plays first in architectural drafting Braden please come on down and be recognized by your Board of Education [Applause] thank you congratulations Braden and from Papillion Lavista South uh I didn't see Roger Campbell come in either Roger also he is is Randy I didn't see Randy walk in Randy well Randy okay very good we'll give Roger a hard time for not being here but we'll certainly take
007you Mr stribly Mr stribly an equally committed uh skilled technical trades teacher who's done wonderful things when in the classroom as well as leading our students in the area of skills USA and in that area James strong a sophomore plays first place in masonry for the second consecutive year and before James comes on down uh it's my understanding this is laid information that THC construction has a special award that they would like to present Mr Strawn as well so THC construction and Mr strong please come on down to be recognized by your Board of Education foreign [Applause] and our final category this evening uh have kind of a special award did Lynn come in is here Lynn Johnson fifth grade teacher Bell Elementary my own kids had Miss Johnson so I can speak from some
008personal experience as a parent I braved the weather and went down to the spring game with my son and of course my sixth grade son was just beside himself when he saw Miss Johnson throwing the bones on the turf at Memorial Stadium and her hair held up quite well given the high winds she really looked quite lovely out there so this is the touchdown for teachers outstanding teacher award there was an award presentation at Bell Elementary as well for this but a little bit more about this award Miss Johnson was nominated by students and parents recognizing her as a star educator for creativity in the classroom passion for lifelong learning and dedication helping Nebraska students reach their full potential Miss Johnson was one of five Educators from the state of Nebraska receiving this award which
009is sponsored by the University of Nebraska Lincoln Athletics and Blue Cross Blue Shield Miss Johnson has presented a certificate the University of Nebraska signed football and she got a football and tickets to the spring game and she was greeted by representatives of the athletic department Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska and most importantly the rejuvenated in the renewed Herbie Husker I'm quite excited about that Miss Johnson is also retiring this year please come on down and be recognized by your Board of Education [Applause] congrats Lynn and congratulations on an exceptional career teaching our students making a difference for our families and community and with that Mr Bailey I would conclude my recognitions for the evening excuse me a little bit of a call tonight thank you very much I've always wanted a giant check like
010that next up Item B our military advisory Colonel Cooley I hope doesn't look like Colonel Cooley hello good evening welcome Colonel Howard I'll be cooling Colonel Cooley stand in all right I am the vice Wing Commander at Offutt Air Force Base it's good to see you all again thanks for having us all right as you're aware PCS season is coming in that's a permanent change of station so that you got a bunch of folks coming inbound off at Air Force Base and people leaving uh what we should see is the uh the processing is going to be a little bit of a strain on our members um so you might hear about that in the school boards or in the in the school system about hey it's time to leave and I'm a little bit
011stressed about moving out and my my parents are getting worried about uh you know the the timelines Associated because there's not a whole lot of drivers and movers these days uh out in the system so that could be a uh something to watch out for um we have some change of commands coming up we'll have a bunch of new faces at the at the wing uh our our commander will be swapping out so we'll get a new inbound Vice commander and then also our mission support group from enter Colonel Cooley will be changing out this summer as well um we want to say congrats to all the high school graduates graduation on May 14th we're looking forward to that I think I briefed you last time that we're having the air show this year but
012it's going to be at Lincoln that's the 26th through the 27th of August that's uh guardians of freedom and the Blue Angels are performing the following year we will have our air show at offit and the Lincoln Air Force Base folks our Lincoln Air Base folks will help us out with that air show as well um and let's see oh also April is the month of the military child you'll see us wearing purple shirts for purple up just making sure they feel like they're loved and there are several base white events uh last thing for April with the weather season coming in and I think this is uh I forget if this is a the El Nino year or the La Nina year but it's it's one of those two the other one was last
013year but that what that means to us is more hailstones coming in than than normal and how that affects us as we uh we tend to evacuate a lot of our aircraft so that could interrupt some plans at the last minute for some students with their parents and that type of thing um I think that's what I had for today and I'm open to your questions I recall weathering out plenty of times yeah yes sir definitely thank you very much I really appreciate it thanks no problem thank you good evening foreign next up is a presentation about the Freshman multi-tiered system of Support Program looks like I've got who do I have here Mr bales Ms Prussia I hope I said that right and it's Siri good evening Board of Education so tonight is our
014last school presentation for the school year and we have our high school being represented we have Mr Joel bills from the monarchs and Jessica prusa from the Titans and they're going to visit with you a little bit about our secondary mtss specifically for our Freshmen my name is Joel and I'm Jessica prusa over at Papio South um I'll go ahead and just get us kicked off what's been really cool this year is not only are we doing mtss which is multi-tier System of support with several other Metro school districts but we're also participating in moek and moek is the Metro Omaha education Consortium and we're also partnering with other Metro high schools talking specifically just freshmen and everything freshmen and how to really transition 8th graders into that High School experience and then how to
015make that High School experience really um really fundamental because we've learned that the freshman year is the year that really makes or breaks that four-year graduation rate so we've spent a lot of time looking at data and I think we'll talk about this a little bit later on in our presentation too I'm really talking about data and doing what we can best do to serve kids and make sure that they graduate within those four years and being honest it doesn't look the same for every kid and that's okay yeah and we've been lucky like Jessica said to work with a lot of our counterparts at different districts both small and large schools obviously we represent a very large population of students and teachers and staff so we're very lucky to get to work with the
016schools listed up on the board along with our Metro counterparts um you know Jessica and I have both worked here long enough in Nebraska that a lot of our folks that you know we know work at these different districts and we have had relationships with and although we're talking a lot about data you know I think more often than not it comes down to leveraging relationships Jessica and I have a good working partnership as we do with our Middle School counterparts Dr drachek Dr Carson and and Tim Johnson at Papio middle school so although it seems like there's kind of faceless names of like this is a school these are data points it's really about people and how we communicate to support our kids and our families so when we talk specifically mtss one thing
017we always want to stress to the board to our staff to our teachers it's we're not adding one more thing to that plate what we're really trying to do is to take that play and organize all the things that we already do in order it order for it to be most effective in order for it to make sense for both our staff our community and our students yeah and everything is connected we've been very lucky to work with Dr Judy Elliott she's a nationally recognized person within like a school Improvement she's worked with long I think Long Beach in California their Public Schools she's worked in Buffalo Public Schools she's just someone who is a dynamic presenter and somebody's really changed our frame of focus as we've worked as a school system to support our
018students so again she talks about it's not adding anything to the plate it's about changing the way we look at the plate the tier one that we work on is what comes first she keeps going back to that the idea that we have all these great ideas of how we're going to support that one kid or how we're going to support this group group of kids but at the end of the day it's about the foundation and it's about what we're doing universally with all of our students regardless of their need and how we can support every kid within a within a classroom which feeds into our philosophy of inclusion we believe that every kid can learn we believe we're the right ones to teach them so that that has been a really reinforcing Philosophy
019for us and then for just me personally um I feel like I'm a leader who is very relationship focused and I focus a lot on relationships and I will be the first to admit data has never been like my super strong point and with mtss and with moek it's been so awesome be able to not only look at data but really understand data analyze data and then use that data and like really help our students be the best fit for a certain ninth grade level team that that it can be we really look at that eighth grade transition data and see okay what kids are already struggling at that Middle School level and how can we best support them even before they come into our buildings so that's I think has been the biggest takeaway
020for me as a leader is just being able to use that data more effectively in my position and we we already do a lot of these things in our building um if you've been working in this District long enough you've seen this triangle some varying under levels of understanding of what the triangle means depending on who you speak with or kind of what phase they're in but we've been lucky with with Miss Siri Dr Schwartz before her um Dr Sauer Dr rodenberg have helped us understand how everything works within this structure the essential core practices have been our foundation when we speak with other districts we find this is an area that we lead not only in the Metro but in the state we're very fortunate to have these processes in place that help us
021again as you can see in the graph support tier one support kids across academic behavioral and social emotional needs so when we enter into these mtss conversations with other school districts again we find ourselves as leaders and it's been a great experience in that in that case as we work with our counterparts so right now current practice in both high schools look very very similar what we've done at the ninth grade level is you've really tried to take an extension of that Middle School model so at the ninth grade level you're going to see both high schools have freshman teams um each high school has actually Four Freshmen teams and the value of those freshman teams is so important because it lets a core of four core teachers get to know the kids on their
022team really really well they're going to know what their strengths are they're going to know their weaknesses they're going to know you know hey I've seen this increase of behaviors this is how I know what we can do to really help this student out we also have Team advisement so again all those kids are on those core freshman teams are also with one of those four core teachers for advisement and then they can work on certain skills as interventions as freshmen teams all of our teams have common plan within the team and we find that common plan time very important because what we do it kind of varies from year to year school to school but we do try to meet regular with those freshman teams and that's when you know we really talk about
023kids during that time hey who is doing amazing who deserves some recognition who might be struggling with some things at home what interventions can we put in place to really kind of do those wraparound services for that student and so those right now are kind of the things that Joel and I have really worked on to try to get on the same page and make sure that both students both at Titans and monarchs are really getting those those same core services at the Freshman level yeah in areas that we we seek to improve is advisement we all have an advisement period which is a traditional homeroom but we've we've really repurposed that to reach our different students giving targeted interventions whether it's math support maybe it's working with a counselor or in a group that's
024going to help them academically advisement's the time that we're doing that so we're trying to improve the structure around that adding additional interventions throughout the day study hall is an area again that we feel like we can improve how we're serving our students we every week we get a report of students that are maybe struggling in classes there's a DF list that we we use internally to identify students in need of support trying to funnel that through study hall to make sure we're utilizing that 50 minutes each day in a really positive manner and then making database decision making everybody's been in meetings where maybe we the thread gets lost a little bit about you know what we're working on that day but trying to have something work together too you know the data is
025numbers it's it's hard to argue with a number right and it's hard to reason with the number but at the end of the day those are the numbers we're trying to move um specifically with freshman success we're looking at our graduation rate so at its core our district is doing a wonderful job we have wonderful families and students working with wonderful teachers and staff um where we're going to seek to improve is in the margins right it's a very limited small portion but it's going to make a large impact on the overall success and consistency across our entire district with with um with our students and then lastly is just the communication between both buildings again Jessica and I have a great working relationship Mr Ryan and Mr spilker have that relationship as well our
026counselors work very well together so the more we can work together we feel like we're going to both be pushing in the same direction and learn a lot from each other and other buildings so one of the things that we learned through moak what they really challenged us to do is they wanted us to Define what an on track freshman would be um and I will tell you depending on what school you're in what school district you're in it looks very different depending on where you're at um Joel and I actually went back and forth on this and I think originally when we first started our numbers were a little bit different but we came together as freshman principals and we said no we need to do this together as a team we want to
027make sure we do this right we don't want any in discrepancies between Titan Monarch so what what are the freshmen on track things that we really really want to hone in on and support so one of those was as we determined that every freshman by the time they begin their sophomore year so yes this would include summer school that they would earn 12 credits and that would include all eight core course credits as well so not failing any of those poor classes we feel that is vital and very important in order to have success and to graduate on time another big thing as we look at some of our data is attendance um some of our students attendance is still struggling so really we want to push having no more than 10 absences or we
028also have looked a little bit about attending about 90 percent of of the school days um when we reach that threshold um we've talked about we've got some really good interventions in place for students and families if we notice a pattern of absences and attendance to really talk to those families about what we can do to support them what barriers might prevent them from coming to school and really working as a team um also involving you know counselor social worker other resources outside in the community to see what we can do to support those kids because we don't want there to be any barriers in order for those kids to succeed yeah so the way we're going to do that is through these quarterly check-ins so we're based off a quarter system and understand that
029we've presented this to eighth grade students many of our eighth grade students have seen this already our staff many of our staff have seen this as well um it should be said as pause for a second and just thank our teams there's teachers that are taking time out of their day missing school to to be part of these teams and having to do bring in Subs which you know is really difficult but the work is really important and our teachers are doing a wonderful job so to all those you know over two dozen teachers that have committed themselves to this work we really appreciate that but as the work is ahead of us going into next year I think a lot of us are revitalized re-energized around these core ideas that we're going to check
030in with students and we're going to have benchmarks for our students that at end of quarter one you should be passing Six of your seven classes that seven classes normally a study hall for students so the idea they'd be passing all of their classes and if they're not then we're going to step in with some kind of intervention increase parent engagement Etc to support those Learners and then to have less than three absence after first quarter and as you can see in the chart those those are our benchmarks for each of the quarters so at the end of the day what it really is about is giving Form and Function to the things we're doing every day any person in here that's worked in administration or worked with students knows it can often feel like
031you're reacting to a lot of things throughout the day this is uh seeking to be proactive and to really have a great a better understanding of what our students needs and when they need us to to be there for them um where we've taken the the triangle further I feel like this is uh never mind that it's a I'm redefining the triangle it's really not it's just giving purpose to what we're doing so um as you can see here this is again taking that a step further as we present to our staff and our students what we expect um you know tier one is where most of our students are that's where 85 to 90 of our students um do a great job let's say most of our students have less than 10 absences they
032earn all of their credits um tier two would be those students that we we are saying they're at risk of being off track for graduation if you're off track freshman year the chances of you be getting on track sophomore year are decreased and that's just statistics that's just data so the idea that if you earn all your eight core credits but you're earning less than your 12 credits that tells us that you have failed one of your electives so what is our plan of action to reattane that credit that you've lost having more than 10 absences but less than 17. 17 is 10 of our school days that is a key marker for us as a school if you're missing more than 17 days in this in a school year and then for our students
033that are tier three these are students are going to need individualized support and planning with their families to get those students back on track going into sophomore year it seems very serious because it is it's something that we are intentional and when want to work with these families and students we are very lucky to work in this community and when we reach out to parents they respond and our students follow in kind as well so again we're re-energized we're excited about taking this to the next step and then again this is just another thing what we really want to do um is really increase education awareness about freshman success that's going to be that tier one intervention that's what we really want to do and push forward for everybody so on our social medias on
034you know ninth grade newsletters um as we have those transition meetings as we do those ninth grade orientations you're really going to see both Joel and I and our teams focus on what is freshman success what does on track freshmen look like not only do we want to know this as a team but we really want our parents to know it we want the rest of the staff even the software sophomore through senior level teachers to really know like hey what is it going to be to be on track and then um as we move up the pyramid just making sure that we've are able to identify those students who are in need and be able to put supports in place for those students to succeed so whether that's with their academics Behavior social emotional
035learning we just want to make sure that at every level they can be supported and then that way they can graduate with their with their class yeah so at that point out of our presentation but open to questions from you all and we appreciate the opportunity to share when was this program started sorry if you said yeah no that's that's great mtss so uh if you it's secondary wise was about three years ago with Liberty Middle School so they piloted secondary mtss they started with Judy Elliott last year uh Papillion Middle School in Lavista Middle School began their process I believe it's a three-year cohort and then we as the high schools began our first year this year so I was lucky enough as I used to be the assistant principal at Papillion middle school
036so I started year one with them last year and now I'm starting year one with the monarchs this year so it's been really nice to have Joel as part of the high school team now knowing that he's already kind of been through year one as a middle school assistant principal so I've leaned on him a little bit when I've had certain questions about like hey how does this work or what kind of data points do I need to pull so um him and I were able to sit down and chat and really go through some of that so it's helped me kind of I feel like get a leg up on um year one as well with it starting uh three years ago like with the data like before this program was started was it
037put in place because you were seeing kids not succeeding their freshman year in order to graduate or that's a really great question it really is about how do we move that that number of students so we're talking about 30 students in freshmen in the freshman class and that's kind of year-over-year data kind of it oscillates you know give or take a few but um the idea that okay well with these students where are we may be missing so we have a lot of great programs in place our counselors social worker our special education staff are you know we're so lucky to have so many great talented professionals but how do we get all those to work in concert you know how do we get them all to work together and as school administrators understanding purpose
038behind our work like I said earlier it feels very reactive at times um just that's the nature of the business so we want to be more proactive and and more than anything assure that what we're doing is pushing in the same direction that whatever we do is tied to our essential core practices and these goals Within mtss I think Brittany to answer your question as a district I don't know that we necessarily saw an increase in the number of students that were struggling this was really more about an opportunity to be strategic about the resources that we had and also partner with ESU and I'd also like to recognize Dr Julie Sauer because she's here tonight as well she's supported all of our secondary teams through this process but it's about coming together with that
039cohort so other districts tapping ideas expertise while at the same time looking at the research what does the research say making sure that what we are doing is having the impact to the level that we want it to what I've really enjoyed about it is back to that proactive approach is having those conversations with students and families um before something may happen and what's really nice is that you get a little bit more insight as to what's going on kind of behind the scenes and that can really help tailor a kid and their experience for when they do come to the high school I've already reached out to several parents and said hey you know tell me about your kid what type of teacher does he work well with what can I do to support
040him as he transitions to the high school so it's been really cool just to have those conversations already with those incoming freshmen so I can get a really good idea of what I need to do as a building principal what our counselor can do and kind of what our staff can do to really make sure that student feels supported as they come in with the team uh does one team like specialize more in this and the other team specializes more in like this kind of a behavioral issue we're learning that's a yeah not necessarily no but we know you know some of our students we're very lucky our head football coach is one of our teachers our Head tennis coach is another teacher on a different team um you know we have we're so lucky
041to have just great talented professionals we just know from that like who's going to maybe have a better relationship and have best fit um again we're really lucky to have great middle school principals like I said Mr Johnson Dr draw check Dr Carson who have great relationships with these kids and families um across the board regardless of need but when we talk about data and looking at those pieces we've been having meetings with them going back to January you know and really understanding a game plan to support these kids and maybe what teams they're currently on and what maybe personalities they mesh with currently and who we can replicate that with in the high school and and that's been the approach we've taken but no one specializes any one thing or the other but um
042yeah I will say I have to give a shout out to our special education teachers on the team um traditionally like at Papillion South anyways a lot of our special education teachers will specialize in math and teach several co-taught math classes or specialize in English and just teach sophomore English our freshman special education teachers they honestly have to be experts in all four core areas because they co-teach in all four of those areas so they have to know about Romeo and Juliet they have to know about Algebra 1 and equations they have to know about um you know biology and what they're working on it's just it's insane to me like the level of knowledge those special education teachers have to be able to support their kids and I would say likewise like monarchs they
043do such a great job at just really helping those kids transition too so I just got to give a shout out to our special ed teachers they're just amazing so yeah okay absolutely thank you for asking I just had one uh thing you know you talked a little bit about data and getting comfortable with data I'm I'm a data person but data is only as good as what it is it's being able to then take that data and relate it to the student personally and it sounds like this program is really allowing you to do that in a way that's successful for the student and for the family so it's good to see that interaction between the two because you really do need both sides of that to to make it work and it sounds
044like you're doing that very well so it's nice to hear that but I I'm kind of a data person too so I like that well and I think our hope is too is to be able to have this data and then for it to transition from the ninth grade level um to to the 10th grade level so the counselors at the 10th grade level administrative or the 10th grade level could have a really good idea of some data even before you know those kids enter their classrooms they get to know them and things like that too so I think it helps us not only as freshmen principals and a freshman team but I think as we continue this and down the road we're going to see the effects throughout our entire building not just at
045the ninth grade level so yeah and I'll just one last thing for out of me to keep going on but Dr uh Braden Camp Larson uh Dr Judy Elliott Dr Bruckner all them are data people and they've really pushed us out of our comfort zone we just had a meeting with Dr Bruckner today that's what the bruises are from um where she asks really hard questions and how do you know that and she pushes and pushes and pushes and that's really pushed us as leaders and gotten us to be uncomfortable and um they they make you feel like you could run through a wall when they when they are your coaches and that's been really helpful this year with our teams okay thank you very much thank you everybody thanks for your time all right
046next up item D public comment for items not on the agenda uh remind you that uh when I call your name come up and give your name and address please and you will get three minutes uh the first beep you'll hear from uh Miss branco's time timer down there is about I think two minutes and 40 seconds or so and then the second one you'll never be three minutes so um I think we have seven today so we should be good under our 30 minutes there so without further Ado uh first person up will be uh Ms Jill Frederick foreign Visual and toe tonight hi my name is Jill Frederick my address is 9020 Granville Parkway La Vista 68128 I am here as a proud Monarch Alum a proud plcs parent I'm an educator I'm
047a professor I'm a dedicated Community member who will always be a cheerleader for this District my girls are freshmen at monarchs and I love that Mr Bales and Mr Ryan are here tonight my girls come home with such wonderful stories they are so full of life and energy and I want to give a special shout out and thank you to Mr Ryan Mr Bales Mr Keller Mr buglewitz Mr cage Mrs Hoke Mrs Matheson Mr Ripa Miss Albertson Mrs Hyatt and Mrs Calhoun thank you for the lasting impact you have provided my children this year and for your your other students both past present and future tonight I am here though to speak on behalf of the vote for committee again the cheerleader in action I want to thank our school board for being proactive thank
048you for using data from outside firms to make data-driven decisions on what should be included in this Bond I know it was well thought out and executed our billboard on 84th Street is getting lots of positive attention which is awesome because this bond is for staff and students our facilities are for everybody right when I think about this Bond I ask myself what's my why my girls are freshmen they won't see a lot of this but I instantly knew I was going to support it why my girls went to Parkview Heights the classrooms are incredibly small and we know that education has changed it's individualized it's differentiated as it should be but what that means is we need more stuff and more room thank you for thinking about the children at Parkview Heights Tara Heights
049and Trumbull Park one of my girls is in the marching band we know we have one of the best Fine Arts departments in any public school thank you for thinking about the fine arts department and adding storage and a lifetime ago I was a student at Lavista Middle School I don't think the science rooms have changed since I've been there so thank you for thinking about those it's easy to vote there's one question it takes one stamp to mail it in or drop it off in a Dropbox I dropped mine off at the La Vista Police Station this weekend and there was a constant line of cars I love seeing our community out and voting and I'll leave you with this I love our community I love our schools we are truly we before me
050when we come before me you become the person and team you were meant to be I love plcs and I will always always cheer this community on thank you all right thank you next up Mr Daryl is it lechner hopefully I said it right [Music] I just I would like to ask if I don't have to give my full address I do have it written down in that because I may be targeted and I have minors that are with IEPs if that's okay with my Daryl lechner that's finding call me that but if I can just keep my address I do live in the Vista though I should all be okay please state your name though if you would oh so we have it on Daryl e lechner thank you thank you um I have
051a lot to cover and I'm going to try to do this within three minutes so bear with me if I go a little fast shoot me a question afterwards about a year and a half ago I came to the sport and brought up we had a mask issue we're doing the mandates and everything else that's understandable I'd presented that I had worked within this field before I worked on Industrial hygienists The Masks did not work they won't work they will never work they're never designed that they're for bacterial they are not anti-viral they do not and this I didn't quibble over too much the reason being is I knew it wasn't going to make too much of a difference the only thing that I am disappointed which I didn't foresee was how it would reduce
052the ability for our youngest to be taught I would have fought this tooth and nail if I'd have knew more at that time I apologize for not fighting more for our students in the area because I worked with this I was in the Navy in the safe Department I had 2 000 some plus Sailors underneath me worked with our department and we did this every day to ensure our Sailors lives so they stayed alive I do apologize for not fighting more for the time it wasn't you gentlemen ladies that I was fighting I was fighting a representative that was from UNMC I was censored shut off Facebook removed from the UNMC I used to make deliveries down there to the research departments I could not believe how I was being treated after working with so
053many scientists in these areas industrial hygienists are the one that determine how to keep our hospitals safe it's not the doctors it's not the hospitals it's not the FDA it's not the CDC it's our industrial hygienist and I'm very disappointed that the medical community has silenced them in this way and I'm very upset at that I wish I could have informed you more further in that and I apologize for that that's but hindsight's 2020 and this is another day and let's move forward and we'll move forward and have a better world in the future next year I wanted to touch on is uh let's see I wanted to do the mask vaccines we get let me try to get through this real quick with the vaccines that there has been a we had a rush
054where we're pushing on the vaccines and we're encouraging the boosters and so forth we have a lot of information out now that that is very dangerous for children I suggest we hold often any further the worldwide reports from research around the world including Canada Sweden South Korea is stopping if anybody shouldn't be using any of these it's our elderly these are the people we should be protecting for that I am not a doctor but I would recommend you look into the research if you don't believe me we have a consistent research that is being pushed out right now do your homework follow the data look at the actual research yourself do not do not go into the opinion pieces but I'll tell you that I if you have any questions I'd be more than happy
055to answer you anything all right thank you next up Ms Sarah Lara Tony um it's my bells and my co-workers know that I'm coming um Sarah Laura Tony 8816 Granville Parkway uh La Vista um I am also a proud Parkview height parent um and just before I get going really quick I would like to give a shout out to our Parkview team um Mr guthmiller Miss Watson Miss plymail Miss bolby um Miss Sarah at kids club whose last name I cannot pronounce um but they have all just been spectacular for our family and our son who has consistently increased in both his math MAP or all of his his map math reading and science Testing um consistently this year so we just love them they are fantastic I'm here today regarding um the recent comments
056about um forming committees to ban books from our school libraries the Anti-Defamation League states that books for young people should serve as both mirrors and windows to reflect and represent children and people in our society and world this helps young people see themselves and feel valued while providing opportunities to learn about the experiences of people who are different from them we do not live in a homogeneous society and removing books that reflect the global Community does our children a disservice effectively stating only those who look think act and feel the way they do are of importance or worthy of recognition to encourage such one-dimensional thinking is to discourage critical thinking and this is a valuable skill our children need in the course of their education and their lives we do not have homogeneous experiences and
057removing books that contain varied narratives and experience can be a Lifeline for a child being bullied at school being abused being sexually stigmatized by peers or being silenced and stifled by adult limitations these are the works that let our children know there are adults friends community members who will listen and help them and that can be there be the difference for them between life and death children deserve the right to have access to these narratives and the respect that they have the intelligence to understand them not in a vacuum but in the broader scope of their lives as a parent I have the right to have access to what my child is reading and able to read from their school library Ms holtmeyer respectively after your insistence that our libraries are full of obscene materials
058and our district is full of rumors I read fighting words and I read me and Earl and the dying girl I verified with my school librarian where these books are available within our district what students have access to them rather than assuming they are widely available and then perpetuating that misinformation I trust our plcs Librarians who are known for greatness to do their jobs because that is what they went to school for they took their time and their money and they earned a degree to be educated and ensure that appropriate material is available for my child and every child in our district whatever level they are at and moreover I understand that it is my role as my child's parent to be aware of what they are bringing home from the library and to sometimes
059say no that isn't appropriate other times I say yes and we read it together I will email the board the rest of my statement because I do have some thank you for your time I appreciate it thank you [Applause] all right next up is um is Lisa kukenmeister good evening Lisa cookenmeister 10231 Cimarron Woods Drive I want to start off by saying a big thank you to miss eyman and the communication team for a wonderful time on Friday on the Discovery tour it was awesome to share the hallways with the kids meet some of the staff and see the needs it was eye-opening and solidified for me the importance of voting yes for the school bond after touring the high school I felt tremendous Pride to be in this district for all that it offers
060and to see the previous Bond dollars at work directly benefiting our students and our communities so thank you so much for that and my final comments are to remind everyone that a very important week is coming up staff appreciation week I hope each staff member knows how much they are loved and appreciated I know many I talk to are rightfully upset by the inappropriate and false accusations that Brittany made at last meeting remember she campaigns saying she is just a mom on a mission and just four months in she wants to push distrust in our teachers and our curriculum censor books she does not approve of and she also fails to support a bond that would directly benefit all of our staff and students so her mission is clear to see our district fail and
061to see public education fail I am a mom who actually has kids in our district and Brittany I want to tell you that the greatest asset we have is our teachers and staff they are educated professionals they have a demanding job to educate support Inspire and then wear a dozen other hats in a day I've seen in our our own School Mr strong grab a mop to clean up in a classroom after a child got sick Miss moraski took some of her personal time in the evening to call me and put together a plan for my daughter I could go on and on to prove how wrong you are Brittany so to our staff I want you to hear that the vast majority of us greatly appreciate appreciate you and we know you are the
062reason why our district is great I'd like to ask my fellow parents to do a little homework tonight so please go on the district app to the Gratitude nomination and send a thank you to those who were there for kiddos all year round all right thank you next up is Lorraine reynante good evening Lorraine renante 1108 Park Drive in Papillion so my comments tonight are regarding Lisa kuchemmeister's comments from the April 10th 2023 plcs school board meeting Miss kuchamitor Meister made a comment that Ms holtmeyer had made false accusations on sexualizing our kids and many other terrible things I would like for Miss kuchamizer to Define other terrible things a big thank you goes out to Lo and EB for doing the work that I was planning on doing to show the instances where plcs
063School District had teachers instructors employed that became unemployed due to inappropriate behavior without naming names there was a Papillon coach facing felony sex abuse charges with a student this article was dated March 18th of 2021 a plhs paraprofessional was fired for inappropriate text message to a student that article was dated March 24 20 2017. and the other one facing charges of child enticement a class one 1D felony and was an assistant soccer coach for plhs and that article was dated May 10 my point is is that Miss holtmeyer was not making anything up there is and she brought it to light Miss kuchamitor please go out and read Nebraska statutes 79-879 regarding the definition of grooming and that each School District shall adopt a policy regarding appropriate relationships between a student and an employee Ms
064kuchemmeister please do better and do do your due diligence when you make public comments thank you all right next up Mr Edward whenager Edward winegar 1709 Ridgeview Drive I'd first like to report the book review process has gone relatively smoothly so far in coordination with mystery and Siri I get to see the outcome of the process so that will be a real discrimination of success or failure parents across Nebraska are watching us second it is my understanding that each of the district policies are reviewed at subsequent board meetings and from observing is usually a cursory approval with minimal discussion or changes in light of recent conversations I would like to inquire again about how the series 6000 review will be more in-depth or different this year whether a Series 8000 subcommittee will be put in
065place or something similar and finally I would like to address Ms Switz slanderous comments from two weeks ago regarding myself it was falsely stipulated that I went around the room and asked some members of the audience to leave that is patently false and it is not a good look for a member of the school board from their elected seat to be attacking a member of the public let alone District parent plcs tells itself for Stellar communication so it seems like a simple email would have been in order to confirm the facts and I will email you my phone number so that you have it for future questions thank you all right next up is Mr Michael cookenmeister Michael kukemmeister 10231 Cimarron Woods Drive um to the person prior to the last person uh it sounds
066like our district doesn't tolerate grooming so I don't know what you're implying there but sounds like they took action so I'm not sure what you're going on about but I'd like to say our district has been drawing attention for how entirely absurd these meetings have become seemingly wanting only to stir the pot a few people including a certain sitting board member have been busy manufacturing shock and outrage launching disgusting attacks and making accusations of serious crimes against our district and staff and for what are these genuine concerns because when it's an endless cycle of demonstrated ignorance spreading misinformation and playing victim whenever anybody calls it out or criticizes it it's honestly hard to tell I mean last year you're going on about books right now it's porn supposedly but last year was about nuanced conversations
067about systemic racism so to me it seems like the porn thing is just what stuck it's just what you're going with now but what is it tomorrow um these constant nonstop attacks have been wasting everyone's time and creating an atmosphere of fear and distrust accusing those who disagree with you of being rumors some pushing quote child porn or other attacks of that nature are meant to Foster open discussion this isn't having a disagreement it's simply an attempt to bully others out of having a discussion bullying and intimidation tactics are cheap and tacky I'm tired of it and the other many other parents and community members are tired of it I'd like to make one thing very clear to our District staff and teachers the people coming up here every meeting to stoke fear and distrust
068are a mere fraction of the community the majority of us are not out to get you the majority of us support you they might not always be quite as vocal as those who never seem to have anything positive to say and many people living in our district may not even be aware of what's going on here not that I blame them but I'd like you to know that supportive parents and community members are here and we represent the majority we keep hearing about the 9 000 something votes for Britain or squad's ugly agenda but I want to I want you to remember this number 43 965. 43 965 votes were for other individuals 43 965 votes were for more reasonable discussion and more informed decision making supporters are here for you and we're not going
069away anytime soon thank you for everything you do for our kids and this community foreign moving on to our next item under communication item e superintendent's report thank you very much Mr Bailey members of the board and again for those of you who are in attendance as well as our public commenters thank you for engaging with your board of education as was pointed out by a number of the testifiers it is Staff appreciation week and in fact for everyone around the table it is Administrative Professionals week I believe on Wednesday so if you haven't picked up a special something something for that individual that works so hard to support you this is this is your fair warning but for our teachers our staff our Paras our drivers everyone that calls papilloma Vista Community Schools home
070thank you for what you do to create a special school district a special place for a family it's a special place for our children speaking of special places Dr Myers announced last week that our final Community closet event is coming up uh this Saturday it is at La Vista Middle School I believe it starts at approximately 9 30. our goal is to get rid of all of our back stock due to the generosity of our staff and our community including people sitting around this table we have full shelves of clothing and with summer and fall actually just not that far around the corner we would really like to get rid of all of our clothing and start over this summer with a special shout out to Cavalry Shadow Lake for all that they've done to
071support that initiative and some of our most vulnerable families also wanted to single out the HR team and Dr settles in particular we've had some movement on our administrative team this year due to people retiring and in some cases moving to different positions within the district so we've got three positions to fill we've got Patriot Elementary golden and Anderson Grove and to quote Dr Steele we're trying to do something we've never done before and that is to select three principal candidates on the same day so Dr settles has a really aggressive timeline for us she shared the candidates we have a number of both internal and outside candidates that we'll be interviewing on Wednesday with any luck at all by Wednesday afternoon or by the end of this week we'll have some decisions so very
072exciting stuff also wanted to share with our community that the community engagement portion of the bond is over I don't want to steal any of Ms Hyman's Thunder she'll be talking about that later on in the agenda I think we've learned some some lessons along the way uh you know the face-to-face meetings that we held to be perfectly Frank we generally didn't see much turnout uh I think the one exception was the listening session at Monarch when we had approximately 30 people but otherwise what I think we found is increasingly doing things in an online format just works better with people's schedules I think there was a day and age where you could put a PowerPoint up on screen and you know be a talking head and answer questions for 20 or 30 minutes and
073people would show up for that I think people are just too busy I think the world has changed since the pandemic and people just don't have an appetite for that so as we think about future Community engagement that'll be certainly something that we take into consideration I also wanted to single out buildings and grounds we got a report from Mr Richards and his team this morning we're making quick progress with Rumsey station Liberty Middle School and La Vista West we believe all three of those projects will be punch list by the end of the summer so again we're wrapping up that 2018 bond for a community and for our staff thank you for your support making that happen uh reminder about commencement fast approaching on May 14th I think uh the colonel mentioned that earlier
074uh also wanted to remind the community and it's been said many times many ways but May 9th is the bond election please make sure that you get out and vote we will not tell you how to vote of course that would be inappropriate but it is absolutely your duty your obligation as a citizen in this great country of ours to exercise the right to vote the right that was secured by the lives of many Americans who came before us so we'll be watching those results very carefully as they roll in in the coming in the coming weeks I also did want to provide an update on the book issue we know that's a contentious issue for the community for our board and I think sometimes the perception is items are brought before Administration and the
075board and they go unaddressed and I certainly understand that concern two things that are going on and at least one public commenter mentioned it already four books have been reviewed to the review process we will start with the book sold uh if you're familiar with that that book that will go through the process the process takes approximately 30 days it's not a fast process as you might Imagine by the time you purchase enough books for the Review Committee you give them time to review it you bring them back and you discuss you talk about the pros and cons of the content and the literature itself it takes time so just want to make sure we create reasonable expectations for that moving forward also we want to remind the board and the committee and the community
076excuse me that the 6000 series which includes the provisions about controversial materials is ordinarily reviewed in the month of June and we will absolutely be having a robust conversation subcommittee as well as the board as a whole about that policy series and lastly since it is the second board meeting of the month we always talk about public records requests for the month of March we're doing a Look Backwards as always March 2023 we had two total requests two from mizibi one request required to school attorney an hour and 30 minutes zero dollars were charged for these requests and with that Mr Bailey I would conclude my superintendent's comments for the evening all right thank you very much next up item F board reports and I do want a reminder here that we need to make
077sure that these these board reports are supposed to be what you all are doing out in the community out with the schools these are not to be bringing bringing up or debating items that are not on the agenda uh we get those items on the agenda if we need to do that or we discuss them in subcommittees so please keep your board reports to that I would appreciate it so saying that proves first go ahead and take it I went to the informational session that we had at Papillion South I also watch the Facebook live I think I'm up to seeing the bond uh presentation about 40 times over the last 18 months it gets better and better every time uh I I know you said you guys are done I just want to thank
078the staff for putting in all that work all the scheduling all the different schools all the questions that are coming in all the comments on on Facebook you guys have done a great job getting the information out to the public I don't know what else we can do outside of what has been done so I want to thank the staff for putting that all together I also went last Monday with Miss Witt and Miss Fisher I'm sure they might talk about it as well but we attended the nasb legislative lunch last week down in Lincoln uh it was good just to get an overview of where some of the education uh educational bills are in the session um the session has been moving along rather slowly but just to get an understanding of maybe what
079to expect from some of those bills that have not really been brought to the floor yet for discussion and then afterwards after we had that presentation we were able to go down to the Capitol Building and pull out some of the Senators to chat with them while they were on the floor and so we were able to pull out Senator blood and Senator holtcroft which I appreciate them coming out and speaking with us on some of the issues so just want to thank them for for their time that's it thanks for bringing that up because I didn't have that on my list yes we did attend that it was a great experience there were they had to bring extra tables in there was a lot of interest in that event and I think they're going
080to continue to do that annually so I'm glad for that because I think advocacy is important I did attend a bond form the Parkview Heights one it was there were great questions Miss Siri did the presentation and it was wonderful the parents had some really good questions and um I've seen it maybe not as often as you but yeah in the Facebook lives I check in on that one as well um I think that's all I had I'm not going to add a whole lot to advocacy day although I did think it was a great opportunity for people across board members across the state we had quite a few there from Big districts small districts but it was really well attended and I think it um was an opportunity to really get an update on
081where these bills currently stand I I would agree with Mr madler we all know things are moving slowly and you know when you're this far into the the sessions and we have finally just seen our first bill hit the governor it's it's a little I won't say it's disheartening but it's a little bit of a challenge to be this far into it and still waiting so um but there were a lot of great questions asked I learned some things listening to other districts and how things might affect them based on what may happen so it was a good opportunity for me and I did enjoy the chats with the Senators we were able to get out of session to be able to have a conversation with so all in all I think it was a
082good day and the weather was nice because we did have to walk from the Marriott to the Capitol which wouldn't have been so much fun if it was raining or sleeting or snowing so that was kind of nice for us sorry I'll add on to it because you triggered my memory uh we also had someone from Governor pillin's office uh talk to the board members that were there on his education package and walked through the different uh the numbers uh based on the proposals that are out there and there's a lot of back and forth and Q a from yeah small districts to Big districts on on how some of those proposals will affect them we got to see a breakout of how how it would affect our district as well so they did a
083great job I can't remember the name of the person that came that's part of their policy team but he did a great job and talking to us and and just answering questions and Gathering feedback from us as well I don't excuse me I don't have a whole lot to been attending numerous activities between my kids as three schools or two schools and my niece being a senior so lots of fun activities I think I say it about this time every year but a huge shout out to the teachers that they obviously get compensated for their additional time being coaches or assistant coaches or volunt or doing Duty taking tickets or doing the PA and stuff I mean they are just continually adding to the experience in all activities and Athletics and it does take a
084lot of additional time uh and and so I just want a huge thank you to all the coaches activities coordinators leaders for for what they do to add additional value to our students throughout the school year and it just seems you know spring Sports it's always kind of culminating so nice to see all of all the activities kind of wrapping up here as we get to the year-end graduation type activities that this board has a lengthy list to see how many we can attend so that's all I have foreign I watched the Facebook live and reading the comments there's some very informative comments on there from the other night did the building grounds and finance meeting which that was very informative in the movie sharing tonight about that and then just because there were some
085parents in my school email that were upset I did try to get it on the agenda for tonight the 6401 and 6405 stayed in the library constant and parental involvement but it will be on in June and I will have many suggestions and changes for it appreciate that comment uh Ms holtmeyer and I think our community probably understands this but we go through our entire policy book every single year and we do it in sequential order so we do the 1000 Series in the month of January we do the 2000 Series in the month of February so it's predictable and uh I think Miss holtmeyer's point about this is gotten some people's attention I think that's absolutely true and with that just around the corner we will have a very great conversation about that I'm
086quite confident so thank you Ms holmeyer uh lastly I guess it's been almost two weeks now I went to the title one event that was fantastic everybody did a great job fantastic presentation it was great to see so many families there that place was packed kind of helped serve food thank you to HyVee I think they donated everything hot dogs chips cookies cookies were a big hit as you can imagine um and that was it was it was great to see the energy in that room with all those families and with those children and also the the Educators that were there again you're talking about the the teachers that um in this case volunteer their time to come out to that title one event and and to work it and to see those kids and
087everybody that was there there were some student volunteers that took the kids because it was kind of put everybody together everybody ate and then the kids all went to different groups and different rooms and did activities while the parents received a presentation uh and it was Dr Hyde was talking is that Dr Anderson Dr Anderson sorry gosh what was I thinking Dr Anderson yes and um hide where'd that come from um but yeah she did a fantastic job and it was just it was great to see one other thing kind of on a personal note I know most of you guys know it but extremely proud dad my son who is a cross-country coach for Papillion La Vista South and who volunteers as a track coach for the long distance ran the Boston Marathon last
088Monday finished what I tell you 847th out of 26 000 something so he um yeah two hours and 43 minutes he killed it um it's funny I got some great video him we were about mile 21 22 so if you imagine being 22 miles in I know what my face would have looked like but he was out there slapping hands and uh you know I got a great video of him pointing at me as he ran by with a big smile on his face so um just had to give a shout out to him and and uh because he's uh he worked hard to train for that and he's qualified for next year so I think we're going back next year as well so I also recommend Boston if you haven't been there great City
089all right sorry I had to get that out there so all right thank you all right with that we'll conclude board reports and move on to item C committee or excuse me Adam G committee reports uh first up building grounds and finance yes we had a meeting the Friday after our last board meeting we had my notes in the car Cody was it no it was uh our architect Park heart Pat Carson Cody sent me a note today so I'm thinking of our our bond guy yeah that's our bond guy uh to just kind of go through um some of the additional projects that we're looking on as well as talk about a whether or not we'll do a construction manager which we approved this board approved last year adding that into our policy as
090a as an option instead of build bid or sorry design bid build having a Monday I guess and just going through the pros and cons of each of those two options for us if this next Bond passes which projects would fit design bid build better and which one's maybe a construction manager at risk would would be more beneficial for so we spent quite a bit of time of that and then spent some time as well discussing um some of one of the things on the agenda and some of the things with the additional 2018 remaining bond funds what additional projects we might be able to accomplish pretty good okay especially without my notes oops all right thanks second human resources and student services talking about certified Staffing considerations that are coming up and how that
091might affect us next year the sub pay um and how the different communities or school districts in the metro area are changing their base pace so we may have to raise ours in the future we discussed the 4000 series policy that are in your packet and Miss um settles Dr settles we'll go over that later student service items we are waiting for some changes that may be an outgrowth from the legislator legislation and if anything changes then we'll bring that forward and we have a lot of celebrations coming up most specifically for HR is the educator Signing Day and the educator Academy graduation I attended that last year and hope to go again this year it's really wonderful to see all the kids who are interested in becoming teachers in the future and the enthusiasm
092from not just the students but the staff who who are their mentors and a final reminder school year is almost over but papilliona Vista schools is always looking and accepting applications for Pairs and other classified positions all right thank you uh third curriculum in americanism we did meet last week there were a lot of items on the agenda we did have some discussion around the policy six thousands that um pertain specifically to library books and the process for review we are going to continue to use the current process that's available and let it work its way through the system as we've already discussed that 6000 series will be up for some further review in June we also talked about the statement of assurance for those board members that may not know that's a statement that
093the plcs administrators read and acknowledge each year and it's very similar to the previous year but there are some changes every year depending on any changes that have occurred in this case such as computer science and personal finance coursework we had some conversation about the just the director of curriculum and Elementary education and the position offering we're looking at other places that need to be filled as well as we talked about earlier so that's kind of exciting some discussion was held about the yatp program as we all know that is on the current bond issue so we're waiting to see what will fall out there but there is a need to move the program for where it currently is so some discussion around that and what that will look like in the short term and
094long term depending on the bond and where that process would be in the in the in the list of projects had some discussion about social studies curriculum you can see this was a very involved committee meeting the um so we talked a little bit about the program guide and the for both 7 through 12 and the k-6 documents and then how the curriculum aligns with the state of Nebraska statutes and standards we also talked about the accreditation visit as many know we've been using Advanced Ed what currently known as cognia in the past but a lot of Nebraska schools have moved to the framework accreditation model and there was a discussion about that from this school district's perspective and where we think we'll land with that the accreditation visit for us is planned for 2024
0952025 and then we also talked a little bit about the math Nebraska math standards that was adopted by the State Board of Education they'll need to be reviewed as well for adoption later this spring likely more in May or June Ms Siri did I miss anything or did I get it all all right thank you thanks yes a long list absolutely all right that concludes section two on communication section three action items we do have one uh public comment for items on the agenda what we'll do as we get to that item it's down with the bond informational campaign then I will call you up and you can speak and then we can do our presentation and discuss it so that's the way it'll be uh it's still three minutes uh when I call you
096up and um please give your name and address when you get to the desk all right with that we'll start off with action by consent I'll make a motion to approve the action by himself second all right a motion made by Mr mandler second by Ms Witt any discussion all right then roll call please yes yes thank you very much the next item will be a board meeting minutes of April 10th 2023. I'll make a motion to approve the board meeting minutes of April 10 2023 as presented second all right thank you we have a motion by Ms Fisher second by Mr Lotus any discussion on the meeting minutes all right then roll call please yes all right thank you very much the third item will be our Elementary playground resurfacing bid uh Mr Richards
097thank you Mr Bailey good evening everybody um wanted to give you a little background on this it's been a while since we've talked about it we've gone through some challenges over the last year and trying to get this out to design get it actually bid there's not very many companies in the area that actually do this and they're bidded out for a long period of time we did bid this back in oh probably before Thanksgiving and we didn't get any bitters at that particular time so we worked a little harder with uh you know our Engineers on trying to find some companies that might be interested in this and we did and we got a positive bit out of it so many of our district playgrounds have older black Square rubber tiles that need replacement
098I know you all of you are aware of that as we talked about this last year but I want to kind of bring everything back into Focus here and answer any questions you have tonight seams are coming apart and you can kind of see by this picture here this is an example of that when you see a lot of our playgrounds right now these are at end of life these surfaces um buckling and shrinking you'll see in some of them as well become a safety hazard with tripping that type of thing starting to deteriorate here you can get a good example of of what we're trying to do with these playgrounds on a ADA Compliant swing set with this one there's going to be a little more work that's needed as far as replacing That
099Swing getting curbing in that will hold the poured rubber surface and making that nice and tidy as an example of some of the projects we're looking to do here um so the projects let me make sure I can go okay yeah uh we want to dim all the older sites and tiles that you just saw remove and replace older equipment that are on there that may be deemed at the end of life or unsafe we did have a playground assessment done by our Engineers earlier this fall to kind of take a look at that and we came out in pretty good shape actually with a lot of our playground equipment actually but as we remove and replace older equipment or the replace the rubber tiling and uncover some things there may be some things that
100come up I want to get the board a heads up with rust underneath the ground that we don't see quite yet as until we start demoing some of these areas so we want to construct the play curbs where they aren't constructed very well a new concrete base were needed some of it's cracked and not going to be a good service to pour on and the discovery allowance is built into the estimate you can kind of see that at each of the schools we have 7 500 built in for any thing that would come up during the project that we would need to do flexibility on needing to replace solar equipment I kind of talked about that there's some things that we've got some photos on where you know some of the plastic slide might be
101cracked here and there we need to we need to be able to deal with that while we're on site with this particular company so there may be some change orders involved with this process and I'll definitely be running that through the buildings and grounds committee and whether they think we need to bring it to the whole board or not depending on the price a lot of these things should be cheaper they shouldn't be on a heavy expense side so I just want to give you a heads up on that process other information that uh you know we did talk about these being an alternate for the 2018 bond funds to fund these five projects if the 2023 bond is approved all the other elementary schools that will be um getting our hands on so to
102speak which is nine of them I believe will be resurfaced we won't we won't do Ashbury of course they're within the time right and probably not pretty clean we may do some maintenance there on theirs because there's only about eight years old Prairie queen as well so the other ones we will get into building fund will be used for any of the elementary schools not included in the bond project so we're not confusing people on what they're voting for within that Bond project if that makes sense let me see here lampardierson we do a lot of work with their their they do a lot of school districts in the in the metro area Millard um as one Elkhorn those types of districts so Schools they're very familiar with playgrounds we did receive one bid only
103on this project which was concerning but you know one of the major playground companies in the Omaha area is out of this business of resurfacing and so there's only one really other major company and they're booked out we wouldn't be able to get them until next spring this company can get going this summer which is exciting churches Recreation geospec drilling is their subcontractor that will do most of the work on site with a demoing and pouring of concrete and they've done a lot of projects in the Metro worked with a lot of different school districts Omaha Public Schools Millard schools West Side Waverly even us is on their list as doing some work for us as well they do have the references and the Engineers qualify them to be deemed appropriate to move forward with
104them this group and with that I would take any questions that you might have on these particular projects we're anxious to get started as you can see you know the looks of some of our playgrounds out there it'll really uh spruce up the place along with good news we had irrigation bids come in last week we'll be bringing those to the buildings grounds the finance committee next week those did come under too of what was um estimated so we're excited about that as well to bring that to you later this month I just had a general comment that I remember being a kid it was a long time ago and playground is important so thank you for making it safe for our kids I think over the many many years we've really seen things change
105with our playgrounds and the district taking that responsibility of ensuring that we have safe places for our children to do their recreating when they're out on uh you know their little opportunities we talk all the time about how important it is for children to be able to get out get fresh air and play so making sure that they're areas are safe is really critical a thing and I'm pleased to see how the district is taking this on that we're going to have some additional projects down the road if the current bond issue passes that we want to do as well as some that might come through buildings uh and you know through our building fund are we concerned at all about being able to get projects done in the future like this when you only
106see one can you talk a little bit about that yeah I think uh you know if the bond does pass we we can get out ahead of it a little bit you know to where we can get on a company's schedule you know I think if you got to get on a company schedule about 18 to 24 months in advance now because there are only three major companies only two of the major companies are doing this type of work so um I I wouldn't expect more than two bids probably once we get into that though but our estimate our the good thing about that I think I would comment on that battle if it came in over our Engineers estimates I would have some concerns because the engineers do this all the time and they
107estimate out the project this one actually came in under 200 under 200 000 what they had previously estimated so that was that eased our concerns a little bit only having one bid if it would have came in over maybe maybe it's time to look at delaying this out trying to get the other company involved and at least trying to keep it you know something that we have interest in and and can afford I'm sorry did I just want to be sure that when my I may have missed it is the intent for this to occur mostly over the summer time and to get it all get all the projects that these schools done prior to the start of school is that the intention correct we'll we'll try to get some of these as schools shutting
108down here in May as a matter of fact and then our goal is to be done by the start of the school year yeah I know my only comment in Brett and I and Doug previously is I this has been a high priority uh on my book uh for a for a few years uh just visiting numerous elementary schools taking my kids to different ones to play and you see a tear in the seam or a hole forming as a guy that has to deal with insurance all day every day at work for slips trips and falls and those things I mean it's it's uh you know some kid catches her foot or a teacher catches her foot we got a sprained ankle a broken leg and that does impact you know our insurance and
109it just we want it to be a safe environment and some of these are really at into life and definitely needed some attention so it was definitely a priority project as we saw some additional funds potentially available at the schools that have had Renovations so greatly appreciate your group and the engine engineers getting these hopefully ready to go so with that I'll make the motion to approve the lump sum bit of one million one hundred and seventy eight thousand eight hundred dollars and seven cents from church Recreation and delegate authority to an authorize approves and directs the president of the Board of Education superintendent of schools assistant superintendent of Business Services or a designee for the school district to sign execute and deliver such Construction contract sign and approve any change orders retain necessary Professionals
110for assistance pay the contract price change order increases and expenses related to the construction project and site preparation work and take all other action necessary to complete any requirements or obligations under the construction project and contract second all right thank you very much uh motion by Mr Lotus second by Mr madler any uh other discussion all right roll call please yes yes yes yes Miss Fisher yes all right thank you very much all right next up is uh our section four discussion information items the first is the bond informational campaign and I had uh Miss Lorraine renante did you uh I had up there you would like to make some comments and good evening again Lorraine renante 1108 Park Drive so there's a lot of people speaking up for the bond I just want to
111let people know there are some of us against the bond I've personally will have some signs available um anyone interested in a sign they can send me an email papillionchoice yahoo.com if anyone would like a sign on the vote no I'm since I'm personally paying for these signs I thought people ought to know how the vote Yes is getting their money there's a political ballot committee that's been formed and the funding came from the Papillion La Vista Community Schools foundation in the amount of twenty five thousand dollars thank you all right thank you Ms diamond foreign okay can you believe we have 15 days left and then you don't have to hear me talk about a bond issue um every meeting key messages are are really the same um I will say the biggest thing
112with this campaign and where we're at right now with the informational part is really a shift from providing information about the specifics of the projects to really encouraging people to vote that voter turnout is really important for a lot of reasons but primarily because we want the voice of our community to be heard in this bond issue um some of the activities that are completed all of the community and staff presentations we have 21 schools and lots of extra programs I think we did close to 25 Community presentations along with that including some of our retirement homes and different Civic groups Etc we have sent two Direct Mail pieces that's about 26 000 when we do a direct mail piece we have a final piece that's dropping this week which is just a small postcard
113that really is focused on making sure that people know how to turn their ballots in we had a lot of questions um about do I need to register specifically for this bond issue and so the intent of the postcard is really to help clarify that and make it clear that if you're a registered voter you vote in this election we completed on Friday the discovery tour we had a great group of people a good combination of parents and some people that were community members that got it off of the direct mail piece that we sent and really just wanted to see the insides of our schools uh Dr rickley completed two superintendent coffees and then the Facebook live I will say we had 76 people at our Peak on Facebook live live on Facebook live
114since then in fact I just checked this afternoon we've reached um just over 1800 people with the Facebook live so that clearly I think just people being in the comfort of their home and being able to watch it and not have to find a sitter for their kids and what they were doing with dinner is really the the way it is going with sharing information about the school district some of the things that are still in progress on the social media piece we're doing Daily Posts on social media we're really trying to boost some of those posts to get broader spread based on a Geo track for our community so anyone that lives in our school district hopefully we'll see the post particularly the post about the importance of voting and returning your ballot and
115how to go about returning your ballot our web page we're continuing to keep updated as questions come in we're trying to get those answered as quickly as possible and turned around and updated on our website and then also the videos storytelling which is also going on social media but it's also going in our school newsletters we're really going to start pushing School newsletters we've been doing the and we're we'll continue to do the weekly Communications update that has goes out to all district parents um that will continue to go out on Wednesdays our Tuesday Tibbetts goes out to staff on Tuesdays we'll continue to do that but we're also putting weekly information in the individual School newsletters that's more tailored for the specific school if I'm a parent at Portal Elementary what's happening at Portal
116Elementary so parents really have that information to make informed decisions and then the other piece we're going to start doing is just some text messaging just to remind people to turn in the ballots that voter turnout is is really important this is just an example this was our summary newsletter that we did last week we pushed this out on Monday the day the ballots went into the mail and each of those are separate videos about each of the specific projects so we just tried to put all of that we sent everything out separately but we tried to put it all in one newsletter so it was easy for our staff and our parents to find I want to talk a little bit about the voting process as we know the ballots were mailed a week
117ago on April 17th there's two ways to return those you can mail them with a regular stamp or you can drop them off at the designated drop boxes the drop boxes are sometimes a challenge to find so we've been putting these Graphics out to try to help people and encourage people to know the location of those drop boxes the election office down off of First Street has two one's a walk-up one's a drive through one in fact when I went and looked for those the first time I missed the drive through one so you got to drive all the way around the building and you don't really even know when you pull in that the road goes all the way around the building the Lavista Police Department is a really easy one to find right
118there off of 96th Street and then the Sarpy County Courthouse campus is kind of how they frame that one it's not actually located on the same side of the street as the Sarpy County Courthouse it's actually on the north side of this street so that's one that we've really tried to push out and communicate to people where they can find those drop boxes this is just and I think I've shared this with the board in the past but this is voter turnout because voter turnout's really important in this election um the blue line is what's happened in general elections in Sarpy County the red line is what's happened in general elections in the Papillion Lavista School District so it's primarily School Board elections that are being tracked there and the yellow line is what's happened
119in primary elections that little single Green Dot is the one special election that this school district has done there are not a lot of special elections in Sarpy County to really judge what the voter turnout expectations are so um all together as a school district we have forty five thousand two hundred and forty this number could increase it's a fluid number as we know um so this is when we receive the voter list from the election office this is how many names were on it we are anticipating a 30 to 40 percent voter turnout I think if we can get above 30 if we can get to 40 we're going to be really happy if we can get up above 30 we're going to be pretty happy um in a primary election um over the
120last 10 years the average voter turnout spend 23.85 so actually a special election tends to generate almost a better turnout than the primary election um the voter turnout for the last eight special elections in the last five years in the metropolitan area the average voter turnout has been 37 percent and that's ranged from I think Bennington had one in 2020 that was in the 40 three percent Ralston had one in 2021 that was at 27 Millard which is not figured into this average they just did their special election they were right at 29 voter turnout so if we can hit that 30 number I think we'd be really good and that's really the focus of our communication efforts right now is to really try to push um people to turn in those ballots we want
121everyone to have a voice in this election um so if you think about our number of Voters with the 40 turnout you're looking at about 18 000 just over 18 000 total votes that would be cast with the 30 you're looking at thirteen five um ballots that would be cast fifty percent of that would be right at nine thousand sixty percent of that would be at ten thousand or um if you have a thirty percent you're looking at about 6 700 or 8 000 votes depending upon the percentages and turned out so that's really kind of the range um that we're shooting for is to get above 30 hopefully we'd hit that 40 mark But at least to get above the 30 mark so what's happened so far in our election um on April 19th
122which was the first day that anyone reported having ballots in their mailbox we had nine ballots turned in um and then you can see the numbers and how they've increased since then the weekend was a great turnout in ballots we had 24 um 55 ballots turned in over the weekend so Saturday Sunday Monday would be included in that number right now we have a total of about 3 500 ballots turned in so we have ten thousand to go and we'll keep working on that every single day trying to push our voters and remind them how to turn in those ballots and the importance of sharing their voice because every voice matters questions that number that's they don't count those until the last day right they're not yeah yeses and no's they're just how many have
123actually turned just how many have actually turned in and you can track your ballot actually and that's one of the things we're pushing out so like one of the big things is um ballots get declined or rejected in their terminology if you don't sign the envelope um so you can actually track your ballot and make sure that it was accepted and recorded at this so one of the things we're going to be doing is pushing out that link so people can actually track their individual ballots and I think if your ballots rejected you can actually go to the election office and find out why it was rejected and fix that but yes it's just numbers I wish we knew it make us feel a lot better if we can know exactly how many were for
124and how many were against but no it's just numbers of ballots turned in but I figured I just want to make sure um for the for the mailers the phone survey the sponsored ads on Facebook and then renting the buses for the discovery tours can do you have a running total for everything that you've spent so far no but I can certainly get that to you um yeah running a campaign is expensive um so yes there's absolutely dollars that have been added up with the communication of this of this campaign but we can get you that thank you you the one thing I would say is one of the things that like every time we do a communication we try to evaluate it and see what's working and what's not there's not a direct science
125there certainly is a lot of best practices and we use those best practices in our overall communication plan the direct mail piece has been very interesting this time and I haven't seen that in the past but I will tell you we hit a direct mail piece and our phones at the central office start ringing instantly we start getting lots of questions I saw this I wanted to ask a few more questions about this so one of the evaluation tools that I'm seeing is that direct mail piece which is actually why we added that third direct mail piece the direct mail piece is working when you think that 60 percent of the people and it's probably a little higher than 60 percent that live in our school district do not have children in our school district
126um so how can they get information the local paper that we used to rely on to communicate has minimal circulation it has a much smaller circulation than a school newsletter there just are not a lot of ways for us to mass communicate to the voters that are going to be deciding on this election and one of the things that we know about research with Bond issues is that Bond issues that are successful are successful when the school district takes on the informational piece of the campaign and there's lots of research that supports that and so the one way that we have to actually reach are non-parent group because we don't have their emails we don't have their social media accounts is through that direct mail piece so that is a really important part of our
127overall communication plan and strategy in this effort and we talked about it previously but you know if you have any entity you're putting uh this election uh in front of the voters you have to you have to put in the resources to get them the information that they need to be able to make the uh you know an educated decision for themselves so I mean I appreciate all the work that you guys have done and I think we saw on the phone survey one of the questions was how do people either want to consume the information or how do they consume the information best and we heard uh surprising to me but it was the direct mailers was by far and away I think the number one requested type of information that we saw from
128the people surveyed yeah and and that's really why we increased that the number of direct mail pieces and then increased it again was because again it goes back to best practice and communication starts with research and if we want to be effective in our communication efforts we have to we have to make decisions for our communication plan based on research and that's what the research shows us absolutely I think one of the things that really strikes me is that it's easy to communicate with our parents it's easy to communicate with our staff but that isn't all this District represents it represents every taxpayer of a Community member so I think you've done an outstanding job of finding ways to reach out to those individuals to ensure they're getting the information so that they can make
129those informed decisions this isn't about how you decide to vote it's about having the information so you can decide how to vote and so I appreciate the effort that's been done I'm just going to speak from my mom's position because she has mentioned it several times to me she is a person with no children in the district anymore no grandchildren in the district anymore and those Direct Mail pieces have been incredibly important to her I may be on the board and I may talk about these things but she every time a piece has come she's asked me a different question than maybe before neighbors have done the same thing so I know that that's important so I appreciate the effort we're doing to reach every taxpayer in the community so that all of them have
130that opportunity to have the information necessary so thank you for that thank you great thank you very much all right uh Item B is uh policy 4000 personnel Dr sebels yep thank you very much so you have in your packet a variety of things um from the four thousands which are under review this month uh we have some recommendations for you on grammatical types of amendments or modified sentences but then I'm really going to discuss the ones that have more significant changes so first of all we are recommending the removal of policies 4004 and 4005 in Consulting with our legal counsel these are two policies that are redundant with policy 2102 which is our standard complaint procedure for the district policy 5208 also covers these items and that's our Title IX and sexual harassment policies
131um policy 2102 and 5208 now effectively address those complaints and regarding harassment and sexual harassment so that is the reason for that you will also notice 41 41 that moves the resignation date change to April 15th that would bring us to be consistent with other metro schools as we look at the climate that we're looking at in teacher shortages it just is wise to be moving that up and so we want to make sure that we're staying right in line with what other school districts are doing 4130 and 4131 so those both involve bringing up to date our district practices that also include our recent additions in the last few years with personalized learning credits and professional development as it now looks so I'm really proud of the collaborative work we did with the CIA
132team in making sure that we can make that more more modern to what we are currently doing now to really reflect the practices that are happening in those areas I think those are the biggest changes but happy to look at that if you had any other thank you just want to say I appreciate the work that's going into really looking into these and making sure that as we look at other policies that we have in other areas that we are eliminating the duplication that we're finding and making sure that we're Shoring up that so that we have one place for people to go so there's not confusion about where you need to look so this is there's been a lot of effort put into this so thank you for that any other comments all right
133thank you very much all right that concludes section four moving on to section five future board calendar April 27th is the Papillion Lavista South honors night that starts at 7 30. April 28th no school for students maybe that's why they're holding it at 7 30 now they don't have to go on yeah no school for students it is a staff development day on the 28th and then our next board meeting will be May 8th here in the central office at 6 pm and if there isn't any other [Music] orders of business here I will adjourn the meeting at 7 46 pm