PLCS Board of Education Meeting January 9, 2023

001good evening I'd like to call to order the Papillion Lavista Community Schools Board of Education meeting for January 9 2023. section one call to order please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance thank you all all right moving on to Item B under section one called order the oath of office for new board members I will turn that over to Dr rickley thank you very much Mr Lotus members of the board this is a little bit unique in that the superintendent takes over in two junctures during the meeting this meeting does not belong to me it belongs to your board of education because this is our annual business meeting there's two specific tasks that have to be accomplished first is the swearing-in uh which I'll get to in just a little bit and then the second

002part occurs later on in the agenda when we elect our officers and there is a brief moment in time where we are without officers and there's some transitional period it'll make sense when we get there for those of you that have watched our Board of Education meetings in the past you've seen this happen before but it's a kind of a neat symbolic moment of transition of power and emblematic of what's near and dear to us as elected officials so the very first thing is the official oath of office and let me just kind of explain to you in case we have people in the audience that would like to take pictures so we have three newly elected board board members one that's brand new to the board two that are returning so what we'll do

003is we'll do the oath I will administer the oath we'll ask for recognition from the community and our board members here if you want if we do have family members that would like to come up and and take pictures during that that is perfectly appropriate it's a it's a pretty important deal if not we'll just move on and then I'll turn the proceedings back to the board president Lotus for the remainder of the agenda so with that I would ask our three board members Mr Brian Lotus Miss Brittany holtmeyer and Ms Sue Ann Witt to Stan and say the Pledge with me and at the Sora so our audiences is where aware as well so we'll verbally say it and then at their places they have a written document that they'll sign and then we'll

004keep that for posterity's sake as well so again just want to make sure everybody has time to come up here to take their picture if you'd raise your right hand please in this whole fireman is with Mr Lewis I state your name do you solemnly swear if solemnly swear that I will support the Constitutions that will support the Constitutions of the United States and the state of Nebraska and the United States and the state of Nebraska and will Faithfully discharge the duties and will Faithfully discourage the duties of the office of member of the office of member of the school board of the school board up the Plano Vista Community School District that's the Community School District according to the best of my ability according to the best of my abilities Ms holtmeyer Ms Witt

005Mr Lotus congratulations we're very proud of you foreign [Applause] ition of power it is a Hallmark of this great country that we live in and I'm thrilled to work with all six of these members including the three that we just administered the oath of office and with that President Lotus I will turn the agenda back to you great thank you Dr rickley moving on to item C under section one call to order a roll call please present here thank you as noted uh at this section of the agenda each meeting the open meetings law is posted at the entrance to the boardroom all right that concludes section one called order moving on to section two Communications item a is our student council report from Papillion Lavista high school I'll welcome up Marcy and Evie to

006give us an update welcome ladies well we're just going to talk about a few things going on at our school to start off we're going to talk about the Fine Arts uh the playpro had the its festival and they performed the play Little Shop of Horrors last Friday at the Holland performance theater at this performance James rasser was awarded a superior rating for his solo and Caleb Hampton received a superior in the tech category chill choir begins their season this weekend and they have a preview night this Thursday and then their first competition is in Gretna moving on to Service Learning our student council donated over 400 worth of items to the Sarpy County holiday assistance in December our Leadership Academy showed our staff their gratitude prior to finals week by hosting a staff appreciation

007breakfast our Stafford treated to music from the jazz band and songs from our vocal choir students as they ate breakfast pizza um also our National Honor Society provided over 900 in gift cards that are provided to our plhs students and families with the greatest need moving on to our debate team for our debate Brenda tangway uh placed first place as a speaker and Vincent Timberlake placed third as a speaker and overall we've placed second and for Papio proud our organization that is for diversity inclusivity and for sexualities and ethnicities they are preparing for a cultural fair this will be held this spring the leadership committee also will meet with the nspa this is the school psychologists Association in the state of Nebraska some more important dates are the winter prep rally which takes place Friday

008January 20th the Monarch Titan basketball game which is Saturday January 21st at plhs and our color of Hope game which takes place Friday January 27th and that is all we have any questions is refreshing yes both of us are seniors thank you for having us thank you all right moving on to Item B under section two Communications our presentation for this evening on the teacher ladder program I'll turn that off to Dr Settles thank you so much uh so you'll hear quite a bit tonight about our strategic plan goal three which just a reminder focuses in on recruiting and retaining a high quality staff and I'm going to ask Mr Bell to kind of make his way up as he's going to introduce our first guest tonight so last spring just to give you a

009little bit of background West Side approached us and Millard and asked or let us know that a private donor have stepped forward and wished to pay tuition for some Paras that would like to become teachers we listened in on that and it's called the teacher ladder program through Midland University at the Omaha campus here we asked our Perez and solicited applications from them and we had 22 of them turn around and apply in very very short amount of time we determined then to focus in on an area of need which is Elementary special education and our guest tonight began right away in May of 2022 then we do also partner with Uno for some similar types of programs that are not funded that are paid for by the various Paras that do those for some

010teacher programs teacher preparation programs and then we're also working with Peru State Hearing some new options that they're going to have basically each of these kind of accomplishes some of the different things with the end goal of Paras being able to become teachers if that's something they're interested in so Andrew's going to introduce our first guest congratulations to returning board members and our newest board member uh so I'm going to introduce uh two individuals that have worked exceptionally hard this year not only as paraprofessionals in our district but also departing at night to do some classwork so I'm going to introduce Gala Ezra and Corrine Hansen both paraprofessionals in special education that work 175 days a year they are six hour paraprofessionals Corinne has been with us for seven years and she serves at Prairie

011Queen and Gala with us for 15 years over at Portal Elementary I know I saw Mrs lowns proud principal here too so I'd like to introduce those guys and have them tell you their Journey on the teacher ladder program foreign thanks for having us um our journey began in the teacher ladder program on May 23rd of 2022 so this was our first day of classes at Midland University um we meet every Tuesday and Thursday from 4 45 to 9 15. we take 15 to 18 credit hours per semester and 11 in the summer time and we will student teach in the spring of 2024. so that requires a lot of time management skills organizational skills and flexibility from us because our iPads calculate our average study time and we average four and a half hours

012a day each week so we both work full-time we both have families so it requires a lot from us and we are just very excited to have this opportunity upon completion of the program we will be dual um endorsed with an elementary education degree and an endorsement in special education so we are excited to begin our journey in the fall of 2024 as special education teachers um we have an amazing and supportive cohort we have nine members from West Side Community School members from Millard Public Schools a member from Nelson Mandela a member from Platte view a member from Metro Community College in a daycare and the two of us from Papillion La Vista Community Schools we feel our experience working with the district as a paraprofessional has been very beneficial for us we're able

013to apply the work related material to our classroom material it has allowed us to grow in as individuals in our current positions and it has made us easier to apply the material that we are learning and connected to our experiences in the classroom we are the first cohort to be apple teacher certified so it it took a lot for us to get there um it required a lot from us because some of us don't get to work with um technology technology very much with some of the students we work with so um it was a little bit challenging for us but our next few slides are going to Showcase some of our assignments we all know that every student is different they all have a different learning style some are visual Learners some are auditory

014Learners some are kinesthetic Learners and some are reading and writing learners so this here is one that I created with the storyboard that it is a comic strip and it was a lesson that I presented on the day in the life of a teacher so students with this they learn most when they're actively engaged in learning process so as you guys know the move now is to steer more away from the traditional teacher oriented to more of a student-centered Hands-On approach so this comic strip I was supposed to present a lesson plan I was supposed to have two students ask me questions and then respond to those so just kind of a fun way to present a lesson to students this next one is mind mapping and it's a visual graphic organizer and it helps

015students see how material is connected this also allows multiple students to learn at their own pace so they can go back they can reread they can watch videos um so my particular one was on biomes so it allows students to read the articles watch videos and links and then they can go back at their own pace and connect with that material then we have some interactive posters I did mine on bunsie and the interactive posters just again allow for another learning style opportunity teaching different methods so in my buncee although you can't interact with this one but if a child was pulled this up there's little links and every time they hit that link it takes them somewhere it might open up a book to read to them it might take them on a virtual

016field trip to Texas to a color Museum or it might present them with a song where they learn how colors have feelings and what they can do when they are feeling that way and then I did mine using a application called blend space and this assignment we were trying to create kind of more of a like a snow day classroom or a um a sick day a flipped classroom kind of idea uh and here there's a video where again it's not interactive on our slideshow but if we clicked on the boxes there's a the first box would be me introducing the lesson the next box would be me giving a lesson and then I included some other videos and diagrams for the students to check on just to kind of help explain it in another

017way and then we gave it more interactive worksheets and a quiz at the end just to kind of gauge our students understanding we also um had a chance to do an application called s'more which you guys might be familiar with since we use this in our district with newsletters we personally chose to use some more there were other options but since we knew our district is using some more of those gave us a chance to go ahead and get started using it and kind of check it out it was really easy to use by the way I did enjoy it um and then we've also done lots of lesson plans already we've been take learning how to break apart standards and rightful lesson plans and the ones we're writing we're having to do like verbatim

018so from the beginning to the end the whole dialogue is included uh and then different variety of uh presentations just shared out throughout the time of our coursework and then we also do a lot of collaborating together yep um so these are just a few more pictures of us working together with our classmates our cohort is amazing I feel like we want to be able to do it without them they're we're all very supportive and it's so nice that we all have a pair of background um so you can just see on the left picture that's just one of our classrooms we spend every Tuesday Thursday in working together and in that last picture we that's actually the main area where we can choose to eat together and kind of take a break each night

019so without our cohort we would be lost I think but we do really want to say thank you this has been a great opportunity for us um we are really enjoying furthering our own educations and we look forward to sharing our new knowledge and working with the students in our very near future so thank you very much you guys have questions for us will you have a bachelor's degree when this is over yes we will have a bachelor's degree in K through six with an endorsement in special education excellent I do already hold bachelor's degrees as well that was one of our ways that we worked with Midland on determining how to narrow down from our amazing 22 people who were interested they said if you want to First focus in on some that already

020have bachelor's degrees we would be able to get them ready for the job in 2024 fall of 2024 so that helped with that as well I took a master's degree program at College of St Mary's at 36 Saturdays so we met every Saturday for nine hours and the one thing I remember when it was Oprah was there was a sense of oh what do I do now because that's driving that you're working so hard to get these things done is one of those important things that keep you going and so congratulations and I wish you much success thank you the fact that you'll be getting your bachelor's degree in elementary yet in special ed along with the teacher Apple certification which is no small thing that's that's going to bring tremendous value to your skill

021set and we're thrilled you're doing this we're proud of you for doing this and can't wait to see as classroom teachers well done ladies yeah sorry uh first for this one's probably more for Dr settles is this just a one-time thing well we hope that it can continue um that's kind of one of the things we're in the talks about at the donor has some real specific things that they've asked for from those that are coordinating it and so for instance one of the things they regularly do is fill out surveys of kind of their progress moving forward on so the hope would be you know as a whole this is something that can help the whole metro area in these areas of shortage one of the pictures I think maybe the second or third

022picture was the two of them signing their agreement that upon successful completion um they would give five years in the field of as a special education teacher here in the district and uh if hopefully I mean it sounds like a great program hopefully they are able to continue it going forward but what feedback would you have on it if they do continue it I mean 15 to 18 credit hours at the same time as uh a full-time job and families obviously you know not an easy thing but what feedback would you guys have on the program um the administration at Midlands is very supportive and I would just say that you know you have to have good time management skills and organizational skills because everything's you know hits right there and so you got to

023be ready to go and I think it helps too we work in the district already so we have support in our buildings that we're working on in so I can go to any of one of my teachers in my building or my principal or whoever I need to and ask a question and they'll be there to support me 100 of the way so gotcha well appreciate it thanks again for coming and presenting thank you I'm very impressed by the program and it'll be interesting to see how it goes moving forward but there's no doubt that that word supportive came in it's you have to have a supportive family you have to have supportive community and supportive Community includes all of your staff and and your cohorts and the programs so wish you the very best

024of luck as you move forward looking forward to having two additional special education teachers in the district moving forward so thank you thank you thank you so very much that concludes Item B under Section 2 Communications moving on to item C public comment for items not on tonight's agenda we do have one again an individual may not exceed three minutes and a total time for individuals like to speak shall not exceed 30 minutes unless the majority vote of the board approves extending allocated time when I call your name up to the desk with the microphone please state your name and address for the record Ms barenko has her timer again those of you that may not have been or spoke before it'll beep first at about two minutes and 15 seconds kind of giving you

025the wind down time and then again at three minutes first up for public comment for items not on tonight's agenda Miss Tiffany Carter welcome hello my name is Tiffany Carter I live at 18521 Summit Drive in Omaha um I actually moved out of Papillion last year I want to say congratulations to Brittany holtmeyer on her new position on the school board I believe that you worked very hard to get this seat and absolutely deserve it I can say that your tenacity to speak the truth stand for righteousness and refuse to compromise has not gone gone unnoticed we can just look at both the primary and general election results as proof great job and I look forward to seeing what God will do for you in this position as excited as I am for Britney's big

026debut on the other side of the table that is not why I wanted to speak today I have been speaking or studying I'm sorry the library catalogs of many of the public schools in Nebraska since January of 2021 most if not all of you are aware of a few of the egregious books that are sitting in the Papillion La Vista school library shelves thank you Brittany and others who have come forth in public comment to shed light on these before you I have a study written on the American College of Pediatricians in June of 2016. I urge you to read the whole thing but for your convenience I've highlighted a few things that I'll be reading from today the ability availability and use of pornography has become most ubiquitous among adults and adolescents consumption of

027pornography is associated with many negative emotional psychological and physical health outcomes these include increased rates of depression anxiety acting out and violent Behavior younger age of sexual debut sexual promiscuity increased risk of teen pregnancy and a distorted view of relationship between men and women pornography may be defined as a depiction of erotic Behavior sexual display in pictures or writing that is intended to cause sexual excitement in the viewer over the last decade there has been a large increase in the pornographic material that is available for both adults and children grade school children are sometimes exposed to pornography accidentally when they view material on the internet they may also come into contact with a person a parent or close adult pornographic material sexual predators have purposely exposed young children to pornography for the purpose of grooming

028the children for sexual exploitation pornography exposure at these young ages often results in anxiety for the child children also report feelings of disgust shock embarrassment anger fear and sadness after viewing pornography these children can suffer from all symptoms of anxiety and depression and then skipping forward to the last page pediatricians and Pediatric Health Providers should understand the negative impact and share that with their basically share it with their patients why does that pertain to you well you have a responsibility to protect our children when we have children who have access to these public library or the school libraries I'm sorry whether it's ebooks or regular books on the shelves which are there we have proof of that then it just doesn't belong in the hands of children period people who say that this point of

029view of getting these things out of the school that it's bigoted or closed-minded my concern is for all children it doesn't matter what kind of orientation race religion or Creed it shouldn't be there and that's your job to take care of that [Applause] thank you moving on to item D under Section 2 Communications our superintendent's report Dr Wrigley very thank you very much Mr Lotus members of the board for our members of the community that are here this evening thank you for your attendance and for those that are watching at home on YouTube thank you for tuning in and being engaged with your Board of Education First off happy New Year happy 2023 to our students our parents and our community members I sincerely hope everybody had an opportunity to recharge the batteries over a

030nice long winter breaks spend some much time with friends and family and away from away from the books but we've got a full semester ahead of us so I want to wish all of our students and families best of wishes for the second semester beginning a second semester also means the beginning of the legislative session so on January 4th the Nebraska legislature convened it's been an interesting session to start we're not very far into the session it is a long session which means it's a 90-day session the biennium spin split into two years the first year the biennium is always the long session with 90 days the second year the biennium is a short session with 60 days days the main task ahead of us in the next 90 days is passing the state budget

031the two-year biennium budget so there'll be a lot of conversation around the budget and how to spend some of the federal stimulus dollars no real surprises yet on any of the leadership positions our own Senator John Arch who hails from Papillion and encompasses all the papilla Vista Community Schools is the new speaker of the legislature the speaker has some considerable Authority in that position so we're very proud that our own Senator will be sitting in that chair a number of committee assignments some committee assignments are still being resolved including the education committee which is the committee frankly that we probably follow the most closely we do know however that the committee leadership of the education committee did change from Senator Lynn walls to Senator Dave mirman who's a rancher in outstate Nebraska so we have

032high hopes for Senator merman and the things that he'll do with our education committee I also wanted to remind our community in the board that the first 10 days of the session not not calendar days but business days days they're actually transacting business or when bills are dropped so typically in a long session we'll see between 600 and 800 bills introduced and by law every single bill that's introduced in the legislature must have a hearing that's very unique to Nebraska it's very unique to our unicameral model it's a very good thing in my opinion but January 18th represents the last day that bills may be introduced without some special exceptions by the speaker so we will have former state senator Tim Gay who represents the district's interests through Catalyst public affairs at our next board

033meeting Bill introduction period will be over and we'll have an opportunity to start looking at some of those bills that may either directly or indirectly impact the school district's interests also wanted to share that we provided some testimony last Friday at the Nebraska State Board of Education meeting a number of us including Shireen Siri and Angie Wright have been working with education leaders across the state to make some changes to Nebraska's assessment accountability system we've got some nice things in place but there's some some necessary improvements that needed to happen through Ms serious leadership among others we've been meeting with former commissioner bloomstead we've been meeting with state board members we've been meeting with other members of the Department of Education and on a 7-0 vote last Friday they accepted the group's recommendations so without

034going too far into the weeds basically what the state has agreed to do is to continue to fund nwea map which this District in the vast majority of Nebraska public school districts use it's a very powerful instrument our teachers like it our teachers use it our parents understand it it's used very frequently impaired teacher conferences for example and instead of a continuous through-year State assessment model where you're administering it at fall winter and spring at least in the short term they've agreed to do it just in the spring which cuts down on our testing burden and it certainly preserves much needed instructional time at a time when we frankly need it quite badly so very pleased with the outcome there we'll keep you posted as we know more on those developments also wanted to congratulate

035all of our students that received a letter or an email last week Academy appointments were made we have a number of academies that are both internal and external we have a couple of outside academies the zoo Academy and the middle and Health Systems Academy being two prominent examples some of our academies most of our academies are very hard to get into there is an application process there's an interview process the health systems for example I think typically about 50 percent of our students get in 50 do not so they're they're very coveted slots and for our students that were accepted into the Academy of their choice congratulations I can speak from first experience having seen at least one of my own children go through it they're very very powerful programs and they do great things

036for our kids also wanted to remind the community our staff that we've got another Community closet event coming up in fact we have an open house tentatively scheduled for the end of this month we'll get you the date the time but we are opening a new storefront on 72nd just North of Highway 370. it's right next to the FedEx stall if you know where that strip mall is located we have partnered with Cavalry Shadow Lake Church to open this storefront and you all know the good work that we've been doing with some of our most vulnerable and fragile families in providing toiletry items and clothing items and we'll continue to do that work we'll just have a bigger space to do it and finally had the great honor of doing a liberty day lesson as

037a former High School government teacher it's not often I get to dust off my teaching chops but I got to meet with a group of fifth graders gee Stanley Hall last week and they're just they ask really good insightful questions about our history our government that that wonderful document that we know is the United States Constitution it always surprises me how sophisticated that that even fifth graders 10 11 year old students and then their understanding of this great country of ours and the form of government that we have so I think I've got at least one or two more of those coming up in upcoming weeks and it's always kind of fun to meet with our students and with that Mr Lotus I would conclude my superintendent's comments thank you Dr rickley moving on to

038board reports or comments for this evening I'll start since you uh were mentioning the academies and I I do have a point to this but I'm sure um most of the country and probably all of us been watching uh the whole scenario with uh Damar Hamlin play out the Buffalo Bills player who was uh hit and had cardiac arrest and everything and athletic trainers are the ones they were the First Responders and did a lot of CPR and uh you know have been credited basically with saving his life which is fantastic and if you followed today he's waking up he's got pictures of him and everything so he's back in Buffalo which is great news but my point being um our school district does a great job with athletic training academies and and I have

039two of my three children that have gone through they got lucky enough to get into the athletic training academies and one is now a nurse at UNMC and the other one she is finishing up her senior year as an athletic training student at Emporia State University so I just huge shout out to all the folks that started the process for my kids and a huge shout out to the athletic trainers we've been saying it for a while watching my daughter be an athletic trainer they don't get near enough nearly enough credit and and now the world has kind of seeing what they can do and it's kind of fantastic so like I said my point is is that you know hey for those that got into athletic Training Academy good on you as well as

040the other academies but we do some great work with our Academy so very very proud of everybody out there who teaches and does all the work with our students so thank you very much last Friday I was fortunate enough to have the liaison lunch at uh Carriage with the teachers which is great Mr Richards joined us as uh Dr rickley was having a really good time it looked like in front of the State Board of Education down in Lincoln uh and and uh that just got held up a bit and it was a great conversation we talked about we had a bunch of questions around the bond timeline and some of the projects Mr Richards did a great job answering we also talked through they had some questions on our legislative priorities as we brought

041Mr Gaya previously and we talked about some of those uh and then the probably the biggest thing they talked through was mental health and Behavior Support in our buildings um you know it sounds like Carriage Hill they're doing some great things there um Seth the principal and the staff seem to be very supportive of some of the different programs that they're bringing in I had some positive feedback on it but they were thrown out some ideas which were great I know we took some notes down and we'll send them along but overall I thought it was a great lunch appreciated all the teachers that were there that showed up took their uh you know their short lunch break and and spent time with us in the library Mrs Bailey only had a couple negative things

042to say about you skip which was good last yeah less than I expected but overall it was a great conversation thank the thanks the teachers and staff for hosting me appreciate it I just have one quick comment I just want to thank the board and the administration for your well wishes and your support while I was recovering in December and missing meetings so thank you so much for your understanding okay um I just want to say I'm thankful to be here um it's been a long journey for me to do so and I just wanted to remind the people that we work for you so if you have questions anything email um we'll get back to you and I'm just very happy to be here and can't wait to see where this next four roads

043four years takes me I don't have anything to add so I'll just bring it back so thank you all for your comments and reports uh liaison launches are always uh one of the favorite parts of the favorite parts of the uh the job here so it's great to get time in the schools all right seeing no further board reports or comments we'll move on to committee reports building grounds and finance uh Dr Tafoya was the chair and we have not had a meeting since the last meeting moving on to human resources and student services been very busy we've completed negotiations with the teachers on the agenda tonight I think the entire section four is about HR issues so you'll be talking about those negotiations Staffing goals um and all of this fits with Goal number

044three of our strategic plan which I think is great because we do want to retain and increase our staff retention so um I'm waiting to hear reports from Katie later thank you thank you neswick and curriculum americanism we have not met thank you Miss Fisher all right well that concludes section two Communications moving on to section three action items as Dr rickley previously noted at the beginning of the meeting this is one of those areas where um I is outgoing President we will currently have a few minutes without board members without officers and I will turn over item a the election of officers over to Dr rickley thank you very much Mr Lotus members of the board so let me just outline the process kind of big picture and then so the community understands exactly

045what's going on we only get to do this um every other year when we have uh new board members and then every year if we have a election of new officers so we just want to make sure our community understands perfectly clear what's going on in front of you these next couple of minutes the board of education does have six elected board six elected board members four of those are officer positions that is your president your vice president your secretary and treasurer I will oversee the process for a very brief time until either the president is selected or a whole slate of officers depending on which option the board chooses to pursue once the president is elected I will turn the proceedings back to the new president whoever that individual may be typically we've done

046officers in one of two ways we've either done each of the four officers individually and you'll see how that looks here in just a little bit or the board does have the option of doing a slate of officers so instead of saying I would like this person to be president and then stopping and voting and doing this person to be vice president it's one person saying I want this person to be president vice president secretary and Treasurer and then we do the Slate of officers so the board may choose to do it either way um once that someone has been nominated either individually or the Slate it does not require a second typically with Robert's Rules of orders when a motion is made on the floor typically you need a second but when you are

047electing officers that is not required it can be done however uh if someone chooses to make a motion we may accept a second but again neither is required for the process to move forward when it becomes clear that no more names or no more slates of officers are being suggested the nominations will be closed again you don't need a motion to do that but if a board member wants to to provide some closure to that part of the agenda they certainly could but if we have a board member that says hey I move that we close nominations moving forward we would require a second for that but again a nomination in a second are not required questions from our board member board members before we proceed with asking for either an individual board president or

048a slate of officers seeing no questions before me at this point in time I would open it up to the floor for our six board members to either nominate a president or a Full Slate of officers I want to make a motion to do a slate of officers Mr Bailey as president Mr madler is vice president miss Witt is secretary and Mr Lotus as treasurer thank you Ms Fisher as a former teacher I will exercise wait time for a moment here and see if anyone wants to process and add anything else seeing no other nominations either individually for the president or slate of officers for all four of the positions I declare the nominations for the board positions closed at this point in time we will we can do it really one of two ways

049uh in in the case where we have multiple nominations we've done um paper ballots uh I don't think that's necessary I think given that we only have one slate of officers being recommended I think we can do a voice vote so Ms barranco I would call the question the current slate of officers as suggested by Ms Fisher was Mr Bailey for president Mr madler for vice president Ms Whit for secretary Mr Lotus for treasure that does not require second it did not receive a second call the question please order do the do the vote please yes motion carries 6-0 I am no longer in charge on behalf of the entire Board of Education Community can we have a round of applause for our new officers please we will not ask all of our officers to

050change positions the board will kind of figure out where they want to sit at a future board meeting but it has been our custom for the new board president to assume the position to my left so I would humbly ask my new boss Mr Bailey to assume the president's chair and again thank you Mr Lotus for your years of service years [Laughter] president Bailey uh the floor is yours all right in the big chair I've only done this in the absence of you so oh thank you very much so now I'm not going to figure out what I'm doing all right uh since we are finished with uh number three uh letter A there we will move on to action by consent for our uh annual business and I think for this one uh turn

051it back over to you for all the uh everything it just or did we just do a consent just roll call all right and we'll just do a roll call to yeah um yeah I'll make a motion to approve the items or the action by consent second all right I got a motion on Mr madler a second by Mr Lotus uh roll call please may I ask a quick question with that for the actions by consent if I had a question on that can I add when would I ask that will ask oh after we do this oh sorry sorry no it's okay go ahead please okay absolutely um for this for this stamp for the authorized use of the stamp um the people that have that is the president secretary and Treasurer correct is

052that the facsimile stamp yeah I think that is correct okay and then when that stamp is being used um each time is that person aware that they are having their name stamped like per checks they give that authorization in the beginning to just allow someone to stamp it thank you thanks all right sorry to make sure I do this the correct way thank you for correcting me all right any further questions okay I have a motion by Mr madler second by Mr Lotus roll call please yes motion carried all right thank you very much all right the next item is item C subcommittee assignments um if you read through this uh you can see that uh we essentially uh we have a number of subcommittees and the organizations um we have I do not have

053the list in front of me other than obviously the subcommittees I guess those are all of them right there the different representations they're all here as well um I know that we currently have them set up obviously Dr Tafoya was the only person who left his position he was on the building grounds in finance so looking of course miss holtmeyer that was where we were looking to place you if you're looking at another subcommittee or if anyone else I think we're going to train since you're going to be Treasurer we're looking putting you on the finance um committee and then moving uh Mr maddler over is that why I understand it for those subcommittees okay and he was going to go down he is going to stay on finance okay okay yeah I think Mr

054Bailey mostly is this is your request for us to let you know if we want to make any changes or if there's anything that we maybe would like to we have an interest in that we maybe hadn't been doing before okay thank you all right well in that case then that's if that's the case and uh I have those two changes if anybody else has any requests please let me know after the meeting and then we will um go through it a date by which you'd like us to let you know Mr Bailey yeah if you could let me know by um by the next uh board meeting we have by the 23rd please and real quick for front come in how do you determine who gets picked you can email me that and then

055I will we will talk amongst the the board and then see how we're going to do it um mainly if the other board members of those subcommittees are already full would be a matter if another board member would like to step down if they don't want to switch subcommittees then in that case then that I would tell you would be denied so since they are already area other board members already on those subcommittees they have the right of first refusal so our public is aware we have and if you don't have a copy of the agenda in front of you we have three standing subcommittees that meet periodically we'll have ad hoc committees that meet as needed but for the most part we operate with a three subcommittee structure buildings grounds Finance which deals with

056as you would guess facilities and monies uh curriculum and americanism which deals with the teaching and ask teaching and learning aspect and HR student services which deals with negotiations uh deals with disciplinary issues if they rise to the the central office things of that nature lots of policy and procedure also mixed in with that group so thank you Mr Bailey trying to figure out all the annual business not you should do in all this one uh item D the 2023 board meeting dates uh Dr ricula do you want to go over uh the user would you rather have me to go over those yeah either way is fine as it has been our tradition uh again for those who that watch our board meetings you know this nothing has remained uh nothing changes here but

057for those of you that may be new to this process we meet the second and fourth Monday of every month 6 p.m typically our board meetings last between 60 and 90 minutes sometimes slightly longer sometimes slightly shorter we do reserve the right of having a fifth on months where we have a fifth Monday of doing additional board meetings sometimes we do sometimes we don't though frequently we'll use that fifth Monday for a board retreat typically the board will do one to two Retreats per year so the list of board meeting dates just simply reflect that second and fourth meeting date scheduled for the upcoming year one month out of the Year sometimes two depending on where Memorial Day falls we'll only have one board meeting December because of Christmas holiday occasionally May because of the

058Memorial Day holiday otherwise we stick pretty closely to that second fourth Monday schedule does that answer your question Mr Bailey thank you very much I appreciate you going through that absolutely all right any questions I'll make the motion to approve the 2023 board meeting dates as presented second all right I have a motion by Mr madler in a second by Ms Fisher any questions on the board meeting dates make sure I get this right this time before I take it to vote no no not you I meant make sure I do my job correctly here all right uh then if we could get a roll call please yes all right thank you very much survived all those let's see what we can do here we'll go back to what we're used to here with our

059monthly business uh item a is a action by consent I'll make a motion to approve the monthly business action by consent as presented uh I'll second I was wondering if you remembered how to do motions as uh being president yeah am I saying this right all right uh motion by Mr Lotus the second by Mr madler uh any questions on this yes ma'am I just had a question I was looking through these and then with the checks uh there was one made out to you and oh gosh for 26 500 for the two of them two checks I didn't know if that was maybe like a typo or if that was supposed to be like that oh gosh it was the very last one Uno yeah that's something okay okay perfect okay thank you okay

060thanks all right any further questions okay roll call please yes all right thank you very much uh Item B under the monthly business the board meeting minutes of December 12th 2022. I'll make a motion to approve the board meeting minutes of December 12 2022. I'll second okay I have a motion by Mr madler in a second by Mr Lotus any questions uh before we go to roll call please yes yes yes I was saying yes all right motion carries yes thank you five five zero with one abstain thank you very much all right so let's continue on to uh item four discussion and information items uh a human resources and student demographics report Dr settle thank you very much so um what I'm going to share with you is just an annual look at data

061that really does help to inform recommendations and decisions on staffing recommendations for the following year so 23 24 is what we're looking at here so I'll be sharing with you first so a look at some of our student demographics and then a look at our personnel so first of all if you take a look at the Historical report of our preschool through 12th grade students this is as of October 1st we always need a stopping point each year and of course continue to grow throughout the year but we wanted to just share that that is October 1st for the data that you'll see here you'll notice that this is a an increase from last year you may remember a couple of years ago at this time we were down students that we do continue to

062see some growth slow growth as we rebound from the pandemic times but we do expect to continue seeing some with some of the land that's being developed as well as some of the option enrollment opportunities that are increasing just a little bit further look at this so I kept on there three years for you to be able to see um and just to kind of summarize these numbers so in yellow there you see the numbers from October 1st of 2022 uh the white is the fall of 2021 and the gray is October of 2020 and then again in white the difference between this year and last year um again just as we continue to come off of the pandemic just thought it was important to be able to share with you a three-year look there

063you can see total pre-k through 12th grade we were up 23 students from last year even though I'll remind you and you were there I'll remind you that we did graduate some of our largest classes of a total of 900 students in also note that fall October 1st timeline does tend to be some of our lowest numbers of the year because of preschool preschool is something that will continue to grow throughout the year as child find Services help to identify birth to age five children and as new babies are born so that's something our Specialists are continuously on also we always like to take a look at Option enrollment at this time of year and you know a celebration we always do hope to see more students opting in than opting out but we do

064expect to see this change just slightly again with some of those option enrollment possibilities that we're looking at at the high school level currently our four highest grade levels of opt out are seniors followed by sophomores than Juniors and then freshmen um so that's just kind of a look as far as where we're at this year on those just a reminder our current closed schools for this year are Bell Prairie Queen Ashbury and actually portal is not up there that one is closed this year La Vista Middle Papillion middle Papillion La Vista High School and Papillion Lavista South High School it is important just to remind you that just because there's a school that's not up there does not mean that they have not reached capacity at certain grade levels that's something that we monitor

065these all year long so not only do we just do this annual review and make recommendations for the following year as far as open and closed schools we also keep an eye on it all year long an example would be Ashbury grew 50 students over this past year and we'll definitely be taking that into account as we look at Staffing for next year and make recommendations to you at the next board meeting for 23 24 just a little bit of of further information it's been determined that our closed schools will be Ashbury Prairie Queen and then all three middle schools with the exception that Liberty will remain open for internal only uh at a real quick glance you can see that we do work hard to maintain excellent class sizes one of the points of

066doing so is that we just recognize the student learning needs can be increased and as we grow we want to maintain manageable class sizes that's very very important to be able to optimize learning this is an average so it's important to note that so where some of our classes of course are above this and then some are below this um I would like to thank you on the board for your support as we come to you with various needs one of the things you do for us each year is give us an amount of growth positions if we see a need throughout the year that we have a certain amount that we can dip into this year we did need to go use one of those five positions we're always very very cautious to do

067so and would inform you if that was something that we were moving forward and doing but we do that ask for those positions for you from you for both General and special education it's also important that we just regularly take a look at our ethnicity demographics and this is a self-reported area from our students and families and we did again this year see our total number of non-white students increase by about a half percent so we're at 26.82 percent of this area our Hispanic population is the highest followed by those that are identifying as two or more races are free and reduced area is also something we take a look at every year we did see a fairly significant increase in free and reduced so we now set up 27 percent as a district average

068with Elementary being 29 middle school 28 in high school 25 percent with free lunch going away we did expect to see that increase so I'm glad that people did come out and complete that application that application for free and reduced does remain open for families throughout the year that may still wish to apply for it we also like to take a look each year at our military percentage this is another area we saw go up over last year we currently have 1009 of our students are from military families active duty military families that makes up about nine percent of the district that's over 100 more military students than we had last year and I do I know that's super tiny so I'll just share with you at each of the different levels our elementary our

069largest is Anderson Grove with the military population of 22 percent and then at the middle level Papillion middle school with 11 percent and at the high school level South has nine percent transitioning over to look at some staff pieces this figure shows the percentage of staff that are working in our school district by the various categories we have a total of 1709 employees filling these roles that you see divided out on those slides and those are a full-time equivalent of 1550. um full-time positions so we have people working from two hours a day to all the way to full time one of the things we're very proud of always is that more than three-fourths of the staff and it's 77 percent of the staff members do work directly in classrooms with students I do really

070want to stress however that we definitely see all staff members make a difference being able to whether they're Paras or a food service or custodians and van drivers and Riders those all can really make an impact on the education of students maybe they're the van driver that is the first one to greet students in the morning or their food service personnel providing nourishment so the students can be ready to learn but these are some of our areas that we have seen shortages in so I think it's really important and something that we often share with staff that this board of education really does recognize the impact that all of our staff make on students and make them ready to learn for those teachers and Paras and that are working with them in the classrooms every

071day every year we also like to look at our teaching positions and just evaluate where we're at on a couple of different data points compared elsewhere in the state of Nebraska at last check some of the state data was not yet available for the last couple of years but just to share with you our teaching staff do have an average of 14 years of experience and an average of a little over 10 of those years being in our school district so you can see that's something that we definitely like to see as it continues to increase and it has hovered right around just above as we see a slight increase each of these years we're very proud that over 71 percent of our district teachers compared to the last report of the state at 57

07271 percent of our district teachers do hold master's degrees this is something very valued by our teachers in this district and something that we like to see them supported on doing we have that means 675 of our teachers hold master's degrees and many of them not reflected in here but many of them do hold multiple master's degrees as well we also and this is this is the certified teaching staff only this does not include administrators we have 17 that hold Specialists degrees nine that hold doctorates and that's probably 10 if we take after October 1st because we had someone just complete in December as well um at the time of this data collection again we did not have data for the state from the previous two years we do have a 42 of our certified

073staff that hold National certifications so that would include in a very various areas administrators classroom teachers counselors School psychologists speech language Pathologists and assistive technology specialist you're probably pretty well aware but our starting teacher salary this year is at 39 000 and we are in the second year of a two-year contract with the teachers of plcs you can see that our average teacher salary is sixty two thousand forty one dollars and that reflects also um the the high number of teachers that we have with master's degrees and Beyond uh when starting in the district so a first-year teacher with a bachelor's degree when we look at total compensation package so it not only including salary but also including if there was an average insurance package taken along with the other benefits that total compensation is

074around sixty eight thousand dollars when insurance and everything is calculated in with the national shortages in the areas of Education we definitely keep an eye on the certified staff that are nearing retirement so you're going to see everywhere from very new teachers on this chart to those nearing retirement you can see that close or right around 10 percent of our teaching staff is age 50 and up and of those the administrators are the highest percentage closest to retirement than followed by clerical and then custodians this year we do have over 60 teachers eligible that could retire and apply for the voluntary early separation eight did put in for early retirement and you approve those at the December meeting Bell that's one of the things that happened I know that you supported that you can see

075here though that we have a large group of teachers in their first five years as well so one of the things that this District works very hard to do is really support those new teachers in the profession too and make sure that they find a success during those first five years as there's some Trend data nationally that shows staff that leave in their first five years teachers that leave in their first five years in this area in particular I'd like to give credit to our Mentor teachers our instructional coaches our principals who on a day-to-day basis are working with those first-year teachers and make this a place that's really known to be a grower and a supporter of teachers entering the profession so that's uh some of the information that we've collected and I'm certainly

076you know willing to answer questions or um I guess I'll just share with you that we've already began to discuss some of those areas that we'll be asking um as we look for staff at Staffing for next year over the through the month of December we met with each principal individually and got an idea from them as far as what they believe the needs might be and then we'll propose a preliminary Staffing for you to discuss at your next meeting thank you Dr settles I uh always love uh going through that information I was wondering those two uh slides where you're showing the average 10-year and then the average education where you didn't have state benchmarks last two years does the state plan on getting those benchmarks again did they stop because of Covenant or

077why do why do we no longer have that part I believe they do plan to share it part of the reason there's a delay there is also because of the number of staff that some districts had to hire to assist with covid remote learning all of those things so my understanding is they're trying to get it clean I don't know that they will go back and pick up the last two years my understanding is they will last year for service gotcha yeah that'll be good just to you know keep comparing ourselves against a benchmark making sure we're not getting too far out of where those averages are appreciate it one of the nice reasons why we do see master's degrees will not only did you know there's a lot of availability online but also just

078being in the location that we are there's a lot of different cohorts and things that do happen at some of the area schools so that makes it accessible to for staff it's always good to see that we continue to manage our class sizes very appropriately for the success not only of our students but also for those teachers in the classroom making it easier for them to do the job they need to do every day so it's good to see that those numbers continue to be very reasonable and and holding steady all right doesn't look like anything else I do have one one quick question I don't know if you have the answer right now uh we average what 27 free and reduced lunch do you know is that fairly um standard or I shouldn't say

079standard is that pretty close to the average that you see across the Metro I know probably Ops might be a little bit different but by District I would say um we are not the absolute highest for sure but we're definitely not the lowest yeah I believe the oops is uh approaching 90 poverty and then there's districts in the Metro that would be below 10 poverty I think the Statewide average the last time I looked at it is between 55 and 60 so it's it's over half the last time I saw the numbers and some of that's pandemic and some of that's probably some broader factors at Play thank you very much all right appreciate all that information this year um let's see uh letter B uh teacher negotiated contract of 2023 24 and 24 and

08025 and I think that's right back to Dr settles we're going to be tired of me I promise no we are really proud to have worked at the HR student services subcommittee um Ms Fisher Miss Witt Mr Lotus worked with a great group of teachers as we did were able to complete the first week in December the proposed negotiated agreement and come to a tentative agreement and then more recently right as the break was starting our teachers did vote and approve this two-year contract so I'm going to just go through that with you it is a two-year agreement again and the base salary would increase 400 each of those years that's a 3.59 percent increase in year one and a 3.68 increase in year two this would allow for both vertical and horizontal movement the

081insurance would remain through eha with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska with the three Network choices for staff along with the choice between taking PPO and the high deductible plan this does include a reopener clause if the total cost of health and dental insurance premiums would increase by less than two percent or more than seven percent from that 2324 to 24.25 school year we tend to find that out in October of each year as far as where it will be at for the following year um some other items on here so we took a look at new hires with experience so previously we were able to allow up to 12 years of experience and this would now allow up to 15 years of experience that tends to impact uh maybe three to five of our

082new hires each year but helps to keep us a little bit more competitive with some of our other areas in the Metro one of the things we did I seek to do is to have those student teachers who were hired on with us they will now start their career when they start their career here in plcs and stay with us they would come in on step two which recognizes their experience in the school district and hopefully makes for just a more successful start along with their mentors are able to just kind of Jump Right In with them as far as a lot of the more meat and potatoes of things as opposed to some of the typical early questions that they probably have already gotten answered during student teaching we also in looking at and

083you're seeing a lot of goal three in here as we really look at shortages and wish to prepare for shortages it's really important that we remain competitive so we added a high need and hard to fill areas that will be designated by Human Resources by the fourth Monday every January so those areas that are designated in that would receive an additional fifteen hundred dollars in salary during their first year employed here in the district we also have currently had for the last couple of years an hourly rate of 32 dollars an hour for we call it blue sheet for everyone in the district they're familiar with blue sheets but that would be like extracurricular Work summer school plan time coverage um so that rate would now increase from 28 an hour to 32 dollars an

084hour we also discussed and reached an agreement to consider recognition and retention stipends which you see as a further agenda item tonight and then an agreement for one of the areas we hear the most on is special education and either helping to cover during their plan periods helping with students who might have needs during their plan periods or some of the additional things that are asked of them outside of the school day so this agreement would allow for an addition of two contract days for special education teachers we also did some work in the area of extra Duty collaboratively with our plea members that were a part of the group and some of the things that you'll see from that are an addition of cooperating teacher scholarship or stipends of 200 for partial semesters or

085400 for those that are cooperating teachers for the full semester we did decrease both debate and speech by one percent and we eliminated the assistant in that area those areas decreased my trial by one percent saw a greater need in the area of increasing Unified sports two per two percent higher at the high school and we added Unified sports to Middle School at four percent we decreased the high school intramural director to buy two percent and we added a Deca assistant at five percent we increased the elementary building supervisor position an additional one percent and our plv media who probably many have enjoyed watching sports from time to time Sports and activities on that now became one District spot at 15 percent it was previously kind of an innovation type of Club and then um

086I guess the high need area we is something that we already discussed so those are a variety of the areas we were really proud of this agreement and really really appreciated the group that we got to work with with plea we feel there's really something in here for everybody and really takes a wise look at some of the issues facing education basically the goal is we want to make this the place that people want to be and we hope that we've accomplished that I do want to give a special shout out and thank and some of them are here tonight and I appreciate seeing their faces here tonight Austin Bolton Bolton Lindsey Wilson Shelly Kramer Carrie George David tozen and Taylor Oglesby were the teachers from plea that represented and it takes a ton of

087extra time a lot of people don't realize that but as they look at a whole variety of different areas and as our team does the same and really come together and try to do what's best for everybody so really appreciate them being here is there any questions I want to Echo what you said about working with the plea this was my first experience being on the negotiating team and the professionalism the ability to negotiate with good faith I think was well demonstrated by both groups and I appreciate that very much I I've always felt that teaching as an altruistic calling and the teachers come here to do this because it's something they love to do and I want them to be recognized that that's what I feel they're here to do and so I love

088that about teaching I wish I could make it the same as professional baseball players make but when we work with public funds we're stuck with what we have so and this does fit goal three the retention and hiring which is I think we're doing an excellent job of meeting that strategic goal thank you I would Echo your comments um I'm disappointed that I wasn't there when the when we made the agreement but I will say that um since the state put into play the specific dates we have to do everything by this is a district who has worked with great teams with our plea and we have always met goal and never had to revert to the state for any assistance and timelines and getting things done so again thank you so much to all

089on plea on the negotiating team and the efforts they put in and the time they put in because it's it's a joint effort and we can't do it without great people from that side and board members willing to spend the time along with administrators so we met that deadline quite early and did a very good job with that so appreciate that I wanna I was not on the uh negotiating team but I know you guys put a lot of time and work into it and want to thank plea as well um and then taking it back to the members and getting their feedback on it I know that it was a time consuming process uh so I want to show my appreciation I also want to go through an example just because I we look

090at the um the new contract and we we talk about things in base salary right but those are just for what is the base so a teacher so the base is going up to 3.59 next year than 3.68 uh the year after that but those teachers are moving up and are moving down the scale from one to two or two to three or whatever in those years and because we do try to incentivize the continuing education we saw the 70 percent of the Master's Degree 71 we try to incentivize that so the hope is that our teachers will invest in themselves in that continuing in education in the district once they get those credits and start adding them up in the district can can reward them for them so that is a quick map but

091if your current third year teacher with no additional credits you'll be up actually just salary so not including anything like the total package but 4.8 percent next year with us and then the next year it'd be 9.6 in year two from now and if you just go up one if you move to the right and just do nine additional post bachelor credits you'll actually be up 13.9 percent two years from now right or I'm not I'm wasn't quite quite following I was trying to flip to that page that's the one thing I'll point out is that includes the insurance increases yeah so that for those 3.5 and 3.6 percentage includes that yeah my percentages does not so yeah I was just talking about the right salary so and I think that's where it is we

092we do try to to lay that out there to incentive so that the our teachers do invest themselves and themselves for the education and they can can uh get rewarded for it as well right and and we're very very strong uh when you have your master's degree very very strong there in the middle of the scale as well our student teachers are going to think I paid you to just point that out because I met with them last week we've got a 29 new student teachers this semester and I met with them last week and it was explaining to them how they read those whether it be with us or someone else that they're applying with we really want to make sure that they're considering all of those different pieces of compensation perfect appreciate it

093all right are you are you guys good in any further questions okay thank you very much appreciate all your work all right number four item C the recognition retention stipends and right back to Dr settles yeah yes all right so um you know definitely this has been something that I know has kind of been highly anticipated by our staff and really appreciate the patience that our staff has shown and the patients that the board has shown as I know this is something one of many options that you began discussing many months ago as several other districts kind of jumped on board with doing some recognition and retention things we really sought along with the agreement with our staff let's see what we can do in the negotiated agreements to make this a more competitive place

094to be and then follow up with is there anything further we want to do with Recruitment and Retention again you're going to see a lot with Goal three in this so I do want to explain and go into some detail on some recommendations for the recognition and retention stipends very much appreciate the board hanging in through some very long I know closed session over the last several months but I think as we considered a whole lot of different things I think where you've landed is going to be something that really accomplishes a lot of what we're trying to do here so the Big Goal here is we absolutely recognize that there's Great Value in retaining our staff not having to start over our staff has done a lot of difficult work over the last several

095years and stepped up in areas that we've asked them to as far as helping to close the learning gaps for students post pandemic and it really does take everybody so being able to take some time to reward and retain the existing staff that we have helps to be able to continue these great efforts that school districts really are facing in this post-pandemic time um this is taking a look at the year of 2023 and what are some things that we can do to recognize and retain our staff and we're going to look at some stipends for that um a big takeaway we want to make sure that everybody hears is and time and time again I hear you say this as board members and I think it's really worth repeating that every single person and

096every single job has made an impact here and when we have faced different areas of shortages everybody has stepped up in many many ways to do what is right for our students uh again that supports what we're looking to do here in strategic plan goal three with recruiting and retaining a very qualified staff our staff survey data that we looked at from the spring did show that we had some staff that were interested in us taking a look further at stipends to be considered for the extra work that was expected to do as well as the extra work that still lies ahead it's also really important that we do keep competitive with other districts in the metro area so what does that look like for us the proposal involves three thousand dollars divided on three

097different occasions in 2023 and I am going to go through and kind of explain each of these so it's a thousand dollars each time for full time um everyone and I'll go through everyone who this includes and who this does not include but we're looking at all certified and classified staff who are expected to report on a day-to-day basis the first thousand of that on a full-time basis would be disbursed on February 15th in the paycheck and that would be for all staff that has already been employed at on or before September 1st of 2022 our next one would be on May 15th and something that we ask our staff to do in March and April is to let us know if they're intending to return for the following year and helps us with planning

098as we look to hire for the following year so all staff in those intent to return letters that agree to stay on for 23.24 would have a thousand dollars on their May 15 paycheck again these are all pre-tax and then December 15th would close out our 2023 year of these recognition and retention stipends which would be all employees that will have been employed at least by September 1st of 2023 or sooner of course this does not include the superintendent or assistant superintendents I did want to kind of give a and I shared this a little bit in that staff report we have staff that work all from an hour a day to full time at eight hours a day so that one thousand dollars is the full-time equivalent for that and then you can see

099divided out you know if you're five hours a day it comes out to 630 dollars pre-tax a two hour day person which we do have several people two hours a day that comes out to 250 dollars so you can see that on the chart based on the full-time equivalency we do have people that also fall in the half hours like a five and a half hour position things like that so those are not on there but um just kind of wanted to give an overall chart as far as how that looks couple of other things I really do want to make sure that we share that that is subject to all taxes and withholdings people should plan for that being at least a third of the total but to keep in mind that's very individualized

100based on each person's withholdings based on retirement things um one of the other areas we wanted to point out that those who do not fulfill those obligations of their intent to return or do not fulfill a contract would be expected then to repay the stipend amount or would have the stipend amount deducted from their final paycheck and then again this does include all certified employees all classified employees all regular daily floater Subs who are contracted with the district so anything like I said that positions where daily attendance is required does not include the superintendent the assistant superintendent's substitutes or student teachers however I will mention substitutes on this substitutes are another group we could not do this without and we do have some other types of incentives planned with substitutes some things that you perhaps

101have seen us do in other years that we're looking to revisit as we really could not do this without our substitutes either so just to kind of answer some questions and of what the board looked at for this so really how the district's able to do this is we budgeted for things during the pandemic that was not spent because day-to-day operations just ended up looking differently than planned we did have and we do continue to have some unfilled positions we also saved in areas of transportation and utility expenses while we were closed several of our daily operations had to be stopped just to keep teachers in the classrooms and minimize contact with others some work that we typically would pay some extra to be able to get done did not get done as we just

102sought to be able to keep education going in the district we did ask everyone to step up and accomplish this and um in this publicly enlisted Community Schools has been successful in doing so during this time and in these months that have followed this savings did result in a one-time extra pool of money that Dr rickley and the board did determined to be able to use it to recognize and retain our what we believe is our most valuable asset and that is the staff of plcs so as I said our most valuable asset is our staff and being able as we Face In This Nation um shortages all over the place at all different levels in the field of education and as teaching positions become more and more challenging to fill it's very important to

103recognize and retain our current team this team knows what they're doing they've been very successful with students and through a lot of hard work they've gotten us through the pandemic it really is only appropriate that the savings found during this time does get returned to all of these people who have stepped up done the extra work and stayed with us here in papilliona Vista Community Schools we value them and we want to make sure that we keep them here for years to come as long as they are working in the field of Education we would love to keep this staff here um again this keeps in line with the recruitment portion of goal three as well as some of this money would also be used to help recruit some staff that would be starting for

104next year and to hopefully fill some of the para positions some food service positions that do still remain open to answer a question that may come up why not just put this into salary increases as I mentioned it has been very very important to this board to maintain competitive salaries that we do budget for annually however we sought to do what we could in those negotiated agreements but this was extra money saved through some reduced expenses throughout the pandemic and similar to what some of our neighboring districts have done we want to offer that retention and recognition stipend for the staff who have stayed with us and plan to continue to serve here I will entertain any questions if you have them I have a question so retaining staff um I know that I don't

105gosh in the fall time I had shared the the teachers resignations maybe it was even this summer um can you tell like from now and then then like why our teacher why is it hard to find a teacher and why is it hard to keep a teacher yeah so truly there are not as many people entering the field of Education uh as we work with a lot of different colleges I think we are we have eight different colleges represented in our current student teaching group um recruitment just into the field of education has also gone down so that's something that you know we aim with our education Academy with our para teacher ladder program all of those variety of areas just to increase in general the amount of people going into education and another thing

106just from hosting town halls in this past summer I did have quite a few teachers come and show up who were expressing to me how they are feeling burnt out um and a lot of it goes back to Paris that they don't have the para help because it's so low do you know why that is so low it's at was it seven percent is what you said it was at pairs are at um that would be the total percentage of our uh of our staff that is Perez not what what how many were short but we've had um I would say at a high we were probably over 50 para positions unfilled and um at different times para it can just turn over pair of positions can turn over we do see and that goes

107all the way down to like 30 unfilled pair of positions many of our schools are full on Perez but many others have you know one or two open positions and some perhaps more than that we have other creative ways that we seek to help with that including that's some of the ways that our substitutes have stepped up and helped to go cover para positions um but yeah that just continues to be a challenge any time you have an unemployment rate as low as it is in Nebraska right now we see shortages in areas like our classified staff and Katie didn't we raised the salary recently preparers to help incentivize recruitment yep we did that was a eight to nine percent overall package increase when we did that over the summer so I do believe that's

108helped but at the same time sometimes those who serve in Para positions some don't work full-time or choose some to move to like a sub position as well uh Dr Sutherland thank you again uh for another presentation uh number three on the night one more to go uh I know the Administration has fought hard to try to get something like this to show the teachers and the and all the staff their appreciation um and I and I hope they appreciate the appreciation that the administration is attempting to show I know we're getting questions about it the uh January 9th surprise from the emails we've got questions on it at the The Carriage Hill um uh lunch that I had last week and I don't think they appreciated that I told them the surprise was going

109to be a technology change which it is not and so hopefully they almost rioted when I said that um as a joke so hopefully they appreciate this news um and and that gets out there but uh what is the estimated cost of this going to be I know what you're not going to have specifics it's going to depend on how many people sign the intent to return how many people do return next year what's the estimated dollar amount if all all 15 50 people do it's 4.6 million dollars and where would that come from yeah so those areas that we had budgeted for but did not end up needing to utilize over the last several years because it's not coming out of your general operating budget correct which are limited a little bit as we

110talked about through State spending lids and property tax Lids which doesn't you know in a highly inflated Market which we're seeing right now in the Private Industry uh schools we can't really follow suit and give eight ten percent raises across the board because of those things so you know I think the savings recaptured from the um the spending the lack of spending probably especially that quarter that we closed that wasn't expected when the revenues were coming in um you know where the taxes were put forth for that year uh so if you look at that I mean we had over four million dollars in 2019 that went into our cash Reserve uh 1920 that school year so that's the bulk of where that money will come from yeah so this would be coming out of

111the cash reserve and I assume we still feel we still feel like the cash Reserve would be healthy enough even after this disbursement over the next you know I wouldn't even call it a cash Reserve I'd call it more of a unspent budget and that's a good way to look at it so most districts try to stay around 20 our size of a cash Reserve because taxes only come in in bulk twice a year and that's April and August so you're living off your cash reserve and your state aid coming in for example um you know we're sitting right now in your financial packets of about 20 million dollars in our general fund account so over the next three months as we barely get anything especially February and March we barely get any tax money

112in at all so we'll go as low as eight million dollars within that general fund when you think about how much we spend per month you know which is up close to 12. that's that's about right that 20 area of cash Reserve so this this will get us back down to that around that 20 level appreciate it all right I appreciate it I had a few teachers ask me and I told them an extra couple of Jean days and they they didn't appreciate that either um I did have one quick question though I didn't see school board on there we considered 1.0 or 0.8 or where's I'm sorry thank you very much Plus at a 0.0.0 salary perfect I like it all right thank you so much for all that hard work all right uh

113the last item on under four oh sorry no uh Mr President I just wanted to thank uh the board uh and Dr settles and her team for their commitment to doing this this is a big deal uh it's it's something that's a recognition of not only two and a half really difficult years of doing teaching and learning in the classroom but some fiscal uh restraint on the part of this board of education there's a lot of other ways this board could have chosen to use those dollars but I think they wisely Bank them for a rainy day I think this is the rainy day we have this or or maybe the sunny day if you look at it that way Miss Fisher but we are unquestionably faced with incredibly challenging times economically in the Staffing

114Market that Dr settles talked about I just hope our community knows how hard this board of education values our our staff and how hard they've worked to make this happen along with Dr settles and her team and I'm just very proud that we're able to offer this at this time so thank you Mr Bailey and just one one last thing Mr President I want to thank Annette eyman and her Communications team uh for for having extremely creative ideas and putting together I had a a blast uh making the the surprise video uh kind of out of nowhere so uh it was such a creative idea I hope they all enjoyed it I know Dr rickley and I had a blast making it uh it only took you know 100 takes but that's all right don't

115have acting skills so it was it was entertaining to take some constructive criticism but again thanks for coming up with exciting ways to to just do something different uh to make make this announcement even uh more exciting than it already was so appreciate it I will share something I forgot to mention and that is this is compensation so one of the things we do you saw that we had talked with the negotiating group about it and while only a couple of them had some specific details of they trusted us and they kept it under wraps as we worked through a lot of details over the last couple of weeks along with that teacher negotiation group we also have spoken with Dan Foote our representative from local 226 and he represents a variety of our other

116negotiating groups clerical Paras custodial and maintenance and over the next week we will be getting those groups together and we would propose an addendum to their contracts that would help to get their input and show that that we've discussed this as well so all right thank you again appreciate all that that work the last item item d a review of policy 1000 public relations and Communications and number four for Dr settles I will happily turn this item over to Annette I'm in so we're it's time to review the 1000 Series so if you all want to take some time and go through that and we'll come back at the next board meeting with our proposed recommended changes so just shoot myself or Dr Steele any suggestions that you have on any changes that you'd like

117to see in that policy series all right thank you very much all right moving on to uh number five here our future board calendar uh January 13th uh we're going to start Ms hold my hold my off right to Liaison lunch at Patriot at 11 30. on January 17th we've got uh Mr Lotus with the plecc at 11 10. and then another liaison lunch uh the 19th Miss Fisher at Trumbull park at 11 30. and then the nasb legislative issues conference in Lincoln is on January 22nd and 23rd and finally our next Board of Education meeting will be at six o'clock here in the central office on January 23rd as I said uh seeing no further business before this board I will adore adjourn the board at 7 43 pm thank you very much