BOE 2025-10-16

001them at first they're really excited about it but then there are others that say I really want to know a little bit more about this so it's more than just looking and glancing at it like how can I be a part of this because I've seen it go from being just a seed and now it's growing and I want to be a part of that process. So they they really take care of everything and do it all and know how to do it all and they have a lot of pride in that in showing whoever comes into our classroom what they do and how they do it and what they've grown. I think it's really cool that they're learning how food is actually grown now because so many places are using all hydroponics and so

002it's really opening their mind to see different ways that food can grow. Learning how to grow is really important. And when you see it in person, it's a lot different than just reading about it or seeing pictures of it. And taking the fresh produce that you grow and then being able to cook it and taste it in your classroom than potentially going home and requesting it at home, I think is pretty powerful of an impact. It tastes different because it's more fresh at the moment. And also when you pick when you freshly pick it and just go wash it real quick and then eat it, it's like it's crunchy and delicious. But when you buy it from the store, it doesn't taste normal. >> This is the best salad I ever tasted. This This salad

003This salad is so much yummier than my mom's own salad. Having like a fresh lettuce that you just picked is really it has its unique taste. It was my first time ever trying buck choy and kale. They looked pretty weird at first when my friends told me to try it. I just I just took a bite and it was super good. Oh, it's so cute because they really have a new taste when they try like tomatoes from the grocery store. I mean, they don't taste the same as fresh from the vine and just their their brains are explo like normally they want to ask for ranch and they just pop it without it. So that's amazing. [Music] Hey, [Music] crazy. Yeah, [Music] I [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] in the spring of 2024, Fort Hayes was

004unexpectedly without a choir teacher. The principal, Dr. Milton Ruffin, took it upon himself to teach the class. Their final project was to be a recording of a song written by Dr. Ruffin. We now present to you the result of their hard work. >> All right, let's uh let's do um celebrate. [Music] >> Ready? Go. We get the drop the jaw and sit up. [Music] >> One, two, ready. We can find a better tomorrow. We can find a place we find each other. So we clap our hands and we lift our voice. [Music] I was pretty nervous. I'm not even going to lie. Uh I was nervous, but then again, I was I was very excited. Um I was like, it's my first time going record. Uh I hope I hope I don't mess this up

005for everybody. You know, all these thoughts in my head. Uh but at the end at the end of the day, uh I'm glad I did it. I have no regrets of doing it. I wish I could do it again. Sadly, this is my last year. Uh but yeah >> every day there is a brighter day coming where we all participate. [Music] >> He treated us like he treats his college students. >> Yeah. Which was cool but at the same time it's a little little rough to meet those expectations. It was very challenging for us to get there. [Music] I listened to just the stems of the song every day for about two weeks before the recording session and then when I came in you know I we did about two takes of it. I think

006it's combin it was a combination of like the first and second take and looked at the digital audio workstation on his computer and you know uh try to make you know the drums sound as you know keen to the song as possible. There's a brighter day coming where we all participate over. And so it's a it's tricky especially for people who are not used to recording, young students, uh people who it's their first time recording. They get nervous. There's really no audience to give you that energy, feedback, and that um appreciation for what you're doing. It's just an empty room with me. stand closer every day. There is a bright day coming and we'll celebrate. and we celebrate. these out. >> Okay. You want before, during or after or after? Okay. >> Okay. We'll do.

007>> Good afternoon everybody. Good evening. >> Good evening. >> I can do that. I can't run a power. >> Welcome to today's special board meeting. Uh today is Thursday, October 16th, 2025. Mr. Treasure, can you call the role? >> Yes. Vice President Adair, >> present. >> Miss Mr. Simmons, >> present. >> M >> here. >> President Cole, >> I am here. We have a quorum. Thank you. I will rise for the pledge. [Music] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, justice for all. >> Thank you all. Um in review of the agenda tonight again we are holding a special joint session uh for Columbus City Schools Board of Education. This session brings together three important

008committees community engagement and advocacy, equitable and transparent resource management and academic and facilities alignment. The goal of this joint session is to discuss and make decisions on critical matters that directly impact our students and their learning environments. I would like to express my gratitude to our committee members, those who are present and those who are in transit and we know how horrible traffic is out here today. So, I'm let's make sure that we have they have prayerful safe travels. I'd like to express that gratitude to them as well as staff and all all members for u the work that they put forward to make sure that we're equipped to make the best decisions we possibly can moving forward. We'll begin with a realignment presentation led by Dr. Angela Chapman uh superintendent and Dr. Russ Brown,

009chief strategy and performance officer. Additionally, we will have a presentation on open enrollment and the lottery led by Dr. Michelle Klene and Miss Tanya Freeman, executive director of enrollment. As we move forward, I want to share the timeline we're following for these important discussions. Um, in September, we discussed transportation and the updated 5-year forecast. So, if you recall, we got that presentation. In addition to that, we made a decision as a joint committee to bring forward recommendation for a policy change that the board subsequently took action on and vote of affirmation to amend our policy 6800 which is trans 8600 which is transportation to from a may from a shall from a shall to May with respect to high school students. Just wanted to make sure I covered that. Um, tonight we are focusing on

010the realignment and open enrollment lottery system. Uh, in November we'll discuss district staffing and in December the board will be voting on these matters. Our next joint committee session uh will have happen as a special board meeting November 13th. That'll be Thursday, November 13, 2025 at 6 pm. In addition to that, uh before we move forward with an approval of tonight's agenda, um I also want to make an announcement about uh an upcoming listening tour that we're engaging in called our future, our CCS, our Columbus City Schools. This is a workshop series and it is to bring your voice, your vision, help us reimagine public education here for our students and for our staff. that will happen in a series that go from October 27th through October 29th. Uh so on Monday, October 27th at

0116 PM will be at South High School. So the first place you'll have the opportunity to provide any insight, join us is October 27th, Monday, October 27th at 6 PM. The second one is October 28th at 6 PM at West High School because the West Side is the best side. Um, and on Wednesday, October 29th at 6 PM will be at Mifflin High School. So, all 27 26 20 27 28 29th, all at 6 p.m., the first to be held at South High School, the second to be held at West High School, the third to be held at Mifflin. You are more than welcome to attend. We look forward to seeing you there and most assuredly look forward to all feedback and insights you have to share. All right. Uh now moving on. Is there

012a motion to approve tonight's agenda? >> So move. >> It's been moved and seconded. Mr. Treasure. >> Mer. >> Yes. >> Mr. Simmons. >> Yes. >> Vice President Hadair. >> Yes. >> Nicole. >> Yes. All right. Motion passes. Agendas have been adopted. Um before I move on to because tonight I wanted us to be really focused on the discussion at hand. There's quite a bit of information for the community to have to receive and particularly our our our committee members. We wanted to make sure you had every bit of the time available to ask the questions and try and get the feedback that you want to provide the feedback that you want. But I wanted to start off by including some public comment. but public comment from the standpoint of sharing with you what we've

013heard from the community uh as of recent. The first is an email from uh a parent who sent it with the deepest respect. She shared, "I want to begin by saying that I fully understand the difficulty of your position regarding upcoming budget cuts dictated by our state legislature. I know you're going to have to make some unpopular decisions in the near future. and that there are no easy answers here. That said, I wanted to raise some questions about the the swirling rumors regarding a possible plan to return all lottery schools to being neighborhood schools and why I feel strongly that this would be the wrong approach. The most obvious uh reasons is that some of your lottery programs are among your absolutely most successful schools by every metric. These are some of the uh communities

014that keep the district afloat or afloat in terms of test scores and enrollment and those programs should be studied and emulated and not disbanded. Ending these successful programs would be massive betrayal to the families who waited on weight lists to easily enroll their students. Welcome. Um, your lottery schools keep families in the district that might otherwise opt for charters or private options. From an equity perspective, the Pure Lottery schools are the most equitable in the district because they are the only schools where the area code does not dictate your access. From a purely practical point of view, this plan would be would also create more problems than it would solve. Geographically, all of these schools exist within the cach within the catchment areas of existing neighborhood schools. And these schools are not necessarily or do

015not necessarily have the populations to support an additional neighborhood school, which means full buildings would likely end up sitting empty or partially used. It is my strong opinion that buildings do need to be closed. usage, buildings condition, and successful program outcomes and report card grades should be the determining factors as to which buildings are consolidated. In my mind, this means that less successful lottery schools could be considered for closure, but just across the board, ending all lottery programs is a terrible idea and would have serious negative outcomes for the district. having participated in now three facility master plan processes in the last 12 years as a spectator but one uh who paid full attention. I happen to know that uh CCS is really wasting money in our high schools. We have two to three times

016more high schools than we should based on how many uh students we have and many of the buildings are only half to twothirds used. Uh before we can consider building more schools, we need to consolidate our existing programs into existing buildings until they are all at or near capacity. Catchment areas need to be redrawn and the newest buildings with the greatest offerings should be favored for use. Additionally, our argument could be made to for eliminating busing for inner district lotterying between the uh neighborhood schools. I do hope that these are all issues you have already considered with deepest respect. Now, um I've also received calls as we have too from parents who are concerned about transportation and all of the things that we're looking at with respect to that as well. A decision at this

017point has not been made. Action has not been taken on the part of the board to vote on the elimination of things. These are recommendations that a joint committee is receiving that will move forward to us as a board for further discussion and by December certainly action taking place to move forward. So I just wanted to put that in perspective. We're listening to you. We hear you. We respect you. And we continue to encourage you to reach out to us. I wanted to make sure I tried to uplift at least one if not several voices of folks who have called. Um, one gentleman left me a long message. Didn't leave his didn't tell me his number or anything like that, but he left a long message uh with concerns about his children being high school

018students throughout the district getting transportation. Um, this is something we take very seriously. We're not just blowing things off. We're having and demanding our administration to give us the information that we need to be equipped, as I stated earlier, to make the best decisions we can possibly make so that each student is highly educated, prepared for leadership and service, and empowered for success as citizens of a global community. All right, thank you for that. Uh moving on, we will walk right into uh our first since we've adopted the agenda. Our first uh event, excuse me, our first presentation will be uh by Dr. Chapman and also Dr. Brown. Yes, ma'am. >> Is there another person for public comment? >> Is there another person for public comment? >> Okay. >> Yeah. All right. Okay. So, before

019we start the uh presentation, uh Dr. around. I want to take the opportunity. I just found this out because I structured this to be very specific. Um, but uh, since we have someone who has signed up by the name of Sarah Watson, Miss Watson, welcome. Forgive me on on the oversight. Thank you for joining us. You have three minutes. >> Thank you. Good evening, everyone. >> Good evening. Tonight, you plan to discuss scenarios for facilities realignment and scaling back school choice. I'm here not to oppose these discussions or any particular plan, but to make a plea for transparency about the benefits benefits and costs associated with these measures. So, on benefits, the board has talked previously about the potential dollar savings um from school closures or limiting school choice, but we haven't heard much in

020the way of specifics. So, I ask that you please show us the math. How much do you think we'll save on transportation and fewer empty buildings? On what basis are you making these these estimates and so on? I think it's important for the community that this information is made transparent. But I would also ask that you talk about the potential dollar costs um especially in tonight's discussion about limiting school choice. After all, about half of CCS students currently do not attend their assigned neighborhood school. And if we limit meaningful school choice by reducing transportation options, for example, we know that some of our students will leave. So, how are we accounting for these departures in our scenario planning? So, just as a hypothetical, um I didn't know exactly what that the slide said when I

021wrote this. So, but let's just imagine that about tw% of students currently opting for school choice decide to leave CCS rather than return to their neighborhood schools. So by my calculations, that's about 5,700 students. And we know that CCS gets $3,850 approximately for each student from the state of Ohio. So a back of the envelope calculation suggests that losing those students would yield a loss of about $22 million per year in state funding. So what is my my point here? We've had many recent discussions about cutting back services in order to make up for these devastating losses in school in state funding. And I totally get why we're having these discussions. We have to, right? It's just being realistic given the situation that we're in. But what I haven't seen is an open and honest

022accounting of how students and families might respond to limiting or, you know, eliminating school choice, cutting transportation for school choice. The assumption seems to be that families are stuck, that they're just going to accept policy mandates and that no one is going to leave CCS. But we know this is not the case because we live in a world of school choice. Charter schools, private schools, other districts are all options that CCS families have taken in the past and continue to choose. So just as we have to face the hard realities of state cuts to funding, we should also acknowledge that cost cutting measures that we take in this space will likely have repercussions for our total enrollment. And this too can have budgetary impacts that we need to consider in our scenario planning. So again,

023I am not against change. You guys have seen me before actually saying that we need change, but um I am advocating for a really sort of transparent and two-sided accounting of these proposals that we're considering. So, I look forward to hearing this type of discussion um and balanced analysis tonight and in our upcoming meetings. Thank you all for your time and for all the hard work you do for CCS. >> Thank you, Miss Watson. All right. Okay, Dr. Brown. Thank you, Dr. Chapman. Thank you. >> Good evening, President Cole. Um board members, committee members, and community members who are here with us this evening. We have two presentations to share with the joint committee this evening. The first um com presentation that we'll be sharing as President Cole mentioned is about realignment. And so we're

024going to talk through several scenarios and suggestions that we've been thinking um very deeply about and share those with you. And certainly we'll have a discussion after that presentation and then we'll transition to the next presentation. But you'll see that both of these presentations um are aligned to each other and thinking about how do we best position and prepare CCS CCS for all of the conditions that we face tonight. Um we know that um our federal funding is at risk. There have been attempts by the federal government to roll back our federal funding, the funding that we receive for um title one, the funding that we receive for professional development for students who have special needs, for students who have ESL needs. And so we have to be thinking differently about how we allocate resources

025so that we can continue to serve our students in CCS. We know that when we think about um even on the local level, our state funding, the state funding, our legislature has decided not to fully fund the fair school funding plan, which is a choice. And so, as a result, we have to account for how we allocate our resources given that we're not receiving the full funding that we deserve and our students deserve and our students need to educate them. In addition, we know that we've had conversations about our five-year forecast and our treasurer has eloquently described for us uh our current state of financials and that we're currently in deficit spending. Um in addition, we know locally um there are lots of conversations about property tax reform, which is again another primary source of

026revenue for public schools across the state. And so these are some of the conditions that we're um considering. These are some of the conditions that we're operating on. And so we have to be thinking differently about how we allocate our resources in CCS. We want to make sure that in all of these conversations, we are putting the needs of our students first. We are thinking about how we are going to uh center the needs of our students and ensure that they have all of the resources that they need to succeed not only in K12, but in college and career and beyond. So tonight, our first conversation, we're going to start with realignment and Dr. Russ Brown will lead us in that conversation. We'll pause and have discussion um very robust discussion. There's a lot of

027information um that we'll be presenting, so we'll have time to discuss that and then we'll transition to the next presentation. Dr. Brown, I'll turn it over to you. >> Good evening. >> Hello. See if that better. I gotta get really close to this one for a torque. Between that and feeling very vertically challenged by this podium. Uh it's a pleasure to be here with you this evening. Uh President Cole, Vice President Adair, um members of the board, committee, uh superintendent, and others. uh pleased to be able to join you this evening to have a conversation about consolidation and how this can better position us to move uh forward toward the future for our students. A vision of of how we would actually like to serve students in this system. I'm going to start with that

028vision. I'm going to talk a little bit about a vision for the future of Columbus City Schools. I'm going to talk about a little bit about the context uh the importance of setting the stage for new construction. We need new construction. um appreciated the the comments from the email uh about rebalancing. There are some places where that won't work um in in our system and there's an urgency to consolidate uh some of our buildings and I will spend some time talking about that. Last year the legislature uh was entertaining a consideration for uh an opportunity to um force the sale of our buildings uh buildings that were under 60% utilization. Uh it's my understanding that's still on the table and and that creates some urgency to create change. Going to talk about some scenarios, uh

029scenarios for closure. I'll revisit uh some of the scenarios that the board has already voted on uh to put some numbers on that in terms of uh cost savings uh and cost avoidance uh moving forward. Um also going to talk about um buildings that we want to make sure that we preserve. They're they're buildings that the community has invested in. Substantial amounts of money that have been invested in these buildings and we want to make sure that we preserve those. Um, as the the email said, it wouldn't it be nice if we were serving our students in our most modern facilities, the ones that that are the largest and and have the greatest opportunity uh to serve students the way we want. And then uh we'll talk about uh next steps, some questions, etc. And

030then uh the opportunities for other folks to engage because as board president Cole outlined, we have an opportunity to engage with the community. And so what folks hear today and there's some handouts in the back for folks. Um we certainly want people to to be part of this conversation to help inform it as we move forward. So diving right in, uh we want to ensure that every student learns in a strong modern school environment with the programs and the support that they need to succeed. We envision Columbus City Schools re realigning our feeder patterns to support 10 to 12 vibrant high school programs with each region offering robust programming in one to two high schools. We'll do this by expanding enriching programming that resonates with our students hearts and minds and meets the evolving needs

031of our community. We've got a growing community. We have lots of opportunities for our students, particularly in the CTE space, uh to be able to have an education that aligns to workforce opportunities as they weave. We'll strengthen our communities and our neighborhood schools by providing needed services and resources for our learners within their high school community and where possible at their home school. localizing whole child supports and academic MTSS supports in each of our high school communities so students don't have to travel so far in order to receive the services they need. It's frustrating sometimes to look at how far students have to travel in order to receive the services that they should be able to get within their community. So to make this vision our reality, our community needs new and larger schools with

032greater offerings for our students. Bottom line, we have too many small schools. We have too many old schools, small schools, and we've talked about this before, limit academic and extracurricular programming for our students. It's really hard to have AP classes uh a diversity of AP classes at a school that has 400 kids in it at a high school. It's really hard to do that. And um the other day we were really hungry when we were talking about it wasn't the best example at the time. Um we've spread our resources sort of like peanut butter and it gets real thin after a while. You know, when you have too many schools and they're too small, all of a sudden everybody's got a half a teacher for this, half a teacher for that, a social worker one

033day of the week instead of all full-time. It's much better when you have a larger community because then you can aggregate those resources, those whole child supports, those MTSS resources to support kids. Bottom line is our kids deserve newer schools. You know, they need flexible environments. Again, they'll support and structure for all learners. And again, those are those wraparound supports, the MTSS that we want every student to have, but yet over half our schools are over 50 years old and a number of them are over a hundred years old. >> And bottom line is older schools, sort of like older cars and older other things are hard to maintain and cost more to maintain. So we also have this opportunity thanks to the community. We have PI dollars, permanent improvement dollars that the the community

034has been so kind to to route our way. Well, if we're spreading them thin like peanut butter against lot across lots and lots of buildings, that's probably not as strategic as we'd like to be. On the other hand, if we can consolidate some buildings, then we can be much more strategic about those investments and we can actually pivot some of that money to support the construction of new schools. So, moving forward, again, I mentioned there's some urgency to this. That impending legislation's not going away. Um downtown high school is one of the schools that's the picture here um that would potentially be forfeited. It it had less than 60% enrollment. It's one of the buildings that would meet the criteria for the state. And you know I as a taxpayer in this community get really

035frustrated with the idea that this building wouldn't be available for our students. And when you start looking at the list it makes me really nervous. So, here are some older buildings, legacy buildings that are all under 60%. They would all be expected again to be uh potentially having having to be forfeited. And some of these are buildings, again, hearkening back to the email that house some of our premier programs, programs that the community values significantly, but yet they're at risk to be lost if we don't do something about them. And I'll point out the other the two columns on the right. One points out the age of the facilities. And you'll see a lot of these buildings are well like every one of them's 50 years old older and some of them you know were

036built before electricity was in building quite literally. So and the I know it's edges speak here but that FCI number on the right that's a facility condition index. That number reflects the proportion of the cost it would take to uh re um pardon me to modernize that building versus replace it. So as that number approaches one when it's 100% your renovation cost equals your replacement cost. You'll see some buildings there where renovating them would actually cost more than just outright replacing them. So we're we're sort of upside down in some of our buildings in terms of our cost. And again, these buildings, these older buildings end up and particularly when they're larger buildings, end up taking a lot of permanent improvement dollars, dollars that could be redirected for another purpose. >> Dr. Brown. >> Yes,

037sir. >> If we can, um, just as you go through this presentation, uh, if you get the opportunity again to reiterate FCI, facility condition index. >> Yep. uh for some of us who are slower like me that just need to be able to wrap our minds around it, want to be able to that understand if we're able to do that. >> Yeah. Again, and I I'll come back to it a couple times here. Uh the facility condition index is that cost replacement versus renovation. When it hits 100%. You're equal. Your renovation is the same cost as your replacement. as you're getting up there 80 90% this you know there's a threshold here and I I don't recall the exact number for it but there's a threshold after which the state won't support a renovation because

038it's throwing good money after bad at that point uh and it would be more efficient and more cost worthy to replace the building rather than to renovate it. So that first list of schools is concerning to me based on programs. This list these are all brand new buildings. These are the ones that were renovated. This is where the community has made substantial investment. Every one of these is at risk. If we don't do something to fill these buildings and again serve our kids in some of our most modern environments, we run run the risk of losing $97 million worth of investment that this community has made. I think that'd be tragic. And so we're looking here at at ways to try to bring things together to fill these buildings and move students out of older

039buildings that are less efficient um and don't fit our our students needs. So again, we're going to need addition additional consolidation to move forward. If we're trying to move towards that vision that we want for our students, we need additional consolidation. The board already approved the consolidation of five facilities. Broadley, Mhler, Buckeye, McGuffy, that that's where cause is and West Broad. Um I'm going to talk about four of those today. I'm not going to talk about West Broad because West Broad is contingent on funding, but I will talk about the other four and what we're doing with them and where we're at with that and the potential savings with each of those. Again, uh more consolidation's necessary. U you know, I've pointed out the buildings that are at risk with this. It's a use them

040or lose them scenario and and we're trying to figure out the best way to to make best use of the uh community's investments that have already been put there. Again, most of these will not be new. The the board has seen and the community has seen some of these recommendations before or some variant of them before. So, I don't think it'll be entirely new to people as we go through it. Uh there are a couple wrinkles that are and I'll emphasize those when we go through them throughout this. I want want you to understand that there were some goals uh or guiding principles that that were used to sort of inform this process. Number one, akin to what we heard in the email, we want to serve kids in the best educational environment that we

041can and and that is to utilize those modernized facilities wherever we can to fill them as best we can to capacity so that our students are served in in the largest and best schools that we have where we can provide the types of services that we want for them. Again, it'll increase access to program. It'll foster more equitable access to those services that students need. And we'll in some cases, we have the opportunity to standardize some grade bands as well, which again aligns to that educational vision of where we want to be. Gives us an opportunity to leverage permanent improvement dollars. And you're going to see me for each one of these talk about the potential uh permanent improvement dollars that could be redirected. And then uh again bottom line safeguarding those investments that have

042already been made in those new buildings so that our students again have the opportunity to use those facilities and be able to use them instead of having a a force sale and someone else using them for a different purpose. I start with Broadway again. This is one of the uh buildings that was already uh decided upon. And I'm just revisiting this in part to to let you know, hey, we've been down this process before. This is the savings that comes with it. and we've been engaged with the community around a boundary process and we sort of know where that's going at this point. So it gives a little bit of background. So Bardley Elementary School built in 1952 that FCI number is up there. It would cost 90 95% of the replacement value to renovate

043that building. Again, the state's not going to support that sort of investment. the board, thank you very much, uh decided that we would repurpose um or or close that building for instruction and repurpose it. We listened to feedback from the community on that and focused on what this would mean for English and language learners, students uh who receive special education services, and we spent quite a bit of time uh relocating those services as close to students uh homes as we could. It's a process that we're engaging with uh with the Muller community as well. By moving kids to Eastgate, we're going to make uh more full use of the Eastgate comm uh building. Uh Eastgate will uh or as is feeds into Champion in East High School. So by moving broadly into Eastgate, we will

044eventually add a hundred more students to East High School as well. So it starts to help us with making better use of East High School. The two of those things together preserve about $43,400,000 in previous investment that this community has already made because Eastgate is a new building and East is a new building. So, it's an opportunity again to honor those investments and again have students in modern facilities broadly. Again, being an older building costs nearly $500,000 a year uh in terms of permanent improvement dollars. So we can again redirect those to another purpose and depending again on what the board chooses to do with the building there's some other potential savings tied to general fund and those are tied and I've solely looked at utilities and maintenance there are additional potential savings here as

045well but uh specifically facilities um maintenance and utilities because we have a lot of data on that and it's sort of predictable on that and so if we were to shutter that building and the building uh were taken out of use and we didn't spend maintenance installers on it and reduced utility costs. We could save another $162,000 in terms of general fund costs a year. Mhler is similar again FCI of 91. So, uh, replacement is 91% or pardon me, renovation would be 90% of replacement. Mr. Cole, you're not the only person to get hung up on that math. Uh, again, uh, we looked at options here. Um this will split uh uh the old the old Mhler community. The boundary for this has the majority of the kids north of Friebus going to Lincoln High

046School or pardon me Livingston and the students that are south of Friebus will be routed for the most part routed to uh Lincoln Park. Again, this uh saves about $988,000 a year in permanent improvement funds that we can redirect and could save approximately $210,000 a year in general general fund savings uh tied to utilities and maintenance. We had plans for Buckeye and Marian Franklin that we had talked about. The original proposal was to move Buckeye into Marian Franklin. The problem with that that plan uh and this plan was put together before the legislature came out with this 60% number we could move Buckeye into Marian Franklin and it would still be under 60% utilization which would make it at risk for being forfeited as well. >> Marian Franklin's a very important site for us because

047it is the site connected to the facility master plan that would be used for a new south area high school. it is the the site for that. It's a site that's large enough that we can actually build a new southside high school on it while the building's still functioning. The other thing was, oh, we started talking with folks in the community and that idea of a 612 school wasn't real popular. Folks were not real happy with the idea of sixth graders being in a school with high schoolers. Uh, and I'm not sure the 712 concept was all that uh popular at South High School either. So moving forward, the proposal again that's responsive to that legislative threat is to combine South and Marian Franklin at the Marian Franklin site to have a large Southside High

048School and to standardize the grade pans across the entire region. So every building across the entire region would be prek to 5, 6 to8 and 912 and combine all the middle school students at South which again aligns to the FMP um and is part of the long-term plan for that that community. So again the whole community uh southside community south and Mary and Franklin would have standardized grade bands a large middle school and a large high school. It would take Mary and Franklin to about 90% utilization and it would take South High School as a traditional middle school to about 85% utilization and by balancing enrollments across the elementaryaries were around 87% utilization. This is pretty close to ideal across that region and it would allow us to the opportunity to begin to relieve overcrowding

049at uh schools like Seabird and other schools in the community that may have some overcrowding. Again, this avoids a lot of money uh that would be permanent improvement dollars that would be spent per year uh at Buckeye. It's over a million dollars a year. And again, this is the number for permanent improvement dollars is based on the square footage of the building. And it and it's averaged out over 10 years. So, if you think about that as a 10-year investment, that's over $10 million that we can save by making this shift. And again, almost $300,000 a year in utility and maintenance costs. That legislative wrinkle also had uh implications for for cause and the movement of cause to east. Uh cause has about 800 students in its enrollment. We certainly want to support cause. We

050it's a flagship program for our students. We want it in a modern facility. The task force looked at East looked at downtown high school and frankly the community was sort of divided over that. Maybe a little bit of a favor to East, but there was a bit of a division there. East cannot accommodate cause and the academy programming that that we've talked about putting there. Um it would require a substantial reduction in the size of causes programming. Uh the addition of the academy programming has already increased uh east enrollment and again the movement of broadley into the east feeder pattern is going to increase east enrollment as well. And we're not done with that. One of the other recommendations will also increase East's uh feeder pattern and will increase the number of students who will

051be going to to East. Downtown High School, on the other hand, is a is a school that's at risk of being lost, forfeited. And so this gives us an opportunity to fill that school with Downtown High School, give those students a more uh more adv um modern setting. Wouldn't be hard to have a more modern setting than where they are right now. Uh and you know when you think about it they're in an old elementary school to boot. So this moves them into a modern environment and again it locates the programming center city. So now uh students can be closer to the arts, the business community and in the collegiate community downtown. Again preserves about $22 million in investment at uh downtown high school. It saves almost $1.4 4 million a year in permanent improvement

052dollars that have to go to the McGuffy site and it would generate some general fund savings as well. When you piece all that together, we're looking at about $3.9 million in permanent improvement per year that could be redirected. A little over $910,000 in general fund potential general fund savings again connected to utilities and maintenance. and we preserve at least $31 million in prior investments at East and Down High School. Come back to East after we talk about the other school that will feed into it. So, that's where we are now based on the board and and what the board has done so far. So, there is already savings and there is already an opportunity to redirect uh permanent improvement dollars. Now, we're going to talk about what can we do in addition to that that

053would extend those savings and preserve more of our buildings and again, more importantly, allow our students to be served in our most modern uh facilities that we can. First of them, and pretty much any of them that you see this uh light yellow building, these are ones we've talked about before. Fairwood was was part of the consideration before. So, we're going to come back to Fairwood and talk about it. Fairwood uh would fit neatly within Ohio. They're they're adjacent to one another. Um Ohio Avenue is a renovated building. It's uh Fairwood is aging and underutilized. Again, it was built in 1924 and renovating it would cost 111% of what it would cost to replace it. Um so as an underutilized building, one that could be taken anyways. and Ohio, which is also an underutilized building,

054but an FMP building that we don't want to use. We're talking about taking kids from an old building that's underutilized and moving them to a new facility, modernized facility that is also underutilized so that we can preserve that investment. It'll save about $10 million worth of investment that was done at Ohio Avenue. Uh it will help us with East because again if you think about four cohorts of kids going through it'll it'll add about another hundred kids to East High School a a year by by having Ohio Avenue feed through that that pattern as well. And again, it avoids about $642,000 in in um permanent improvement investments at the Fairwood site and would allow us to save up to 162 save roughly $162,000 worth of costs around utilities and maintenance gifted academy. Again, when we

055think about what what we heard in that email, we've got some programs u magnet programs across the city that are full 100% lottery. Folks feel very passionately about them. Uh the gifted program is one of those and yet the gifted program is at risk as well because uh the building that it's in is only utilized about 55%. So this is a building that if we don't do something, if we don't move this programming, we'd be at risk of losing this programming for our community. Aendale is a school that is a little bit landlocked for us. It's an elementary building. It's a new FMP site that's landlocked between the river, Starling, and Sullivan. And there's simply not enough elementary kids in that neighborhood to fill it. So, the proposal would be to move Gifted into Aendale.

056The Aenddale students could be served at Sullivan and the and Starling. they would easily fit into those two buildings. Um, it would allow us to avoid the loss of the gifted programming and would allow us to retain an FMP site that we have invested in that's going to be difficult to fill based on the location. It would save an investment of about $12.3 million at Aenddale. Uh it it would avoid again the investment of permanent improvement dollars in the old Everett site uh which again is one of the oldest sites that we have. Again built in 1898 and it would cost 124% to renovate that versus what it would cost just to simply replace it. And again potential general fund savings each year over a4 million dollars. Ducks. This one's a hot hot one too.

057For years, we've we've promised the Ducksberry community that we want to move them to for Hayes. Uh that would require additional funding that would require additional dollars and we're not quite positioned to do that yet. But again, Ducksberry is under ro under enroll and South Mifflin is too. South Mifflin is an FMP building. South Mifflin is basically in the backyard of Duxberry. They are very close to one another. So the recommendation would be to move Dubberry and Dubberry's programming into South Mifflin. Um we could pick up and move that programming in whole to South Mifflin and be able to again maintain a neighborhood zone for that school with lottery seats available 100% lottery seats available to the community uh for folks who are interested in in the arts and the arts programming and the continuation

058of the arts programming through Ames and then on to Fort Hayes. It's really a joy sometimes to to um spend some time at Duxberry and see kids that come back from Fort Hayes and again talk about their experience as they went through u from Dubberry to Ames to Fort Hayes. Again, uh Dubberry's old built in 1959. Its FCI is 86%. So it cost 86% uh of of the total value of a replacement in order to be able to renovate it. Again, this preserves about $ 8.5 million in in community investment in South Mifflin, which is the FMP site, and avoids an initial over half million dollars a year in permanent improvement dollars that would be uh put into Ducks. And again, if you take that out over 10 years, that's over $5 million in savings.

059Again, potential general fund savings again uh here are over $175,000. finally because I feel like I've been talking a long time already. Como. Now, when we were on the north side before, we had talked about north winded, but KOMO is actually in worse condition. Again, KOMO's facility uh condition index is 106. It would cost more to replace uh to renovate it than to replace it. Um again, the FCI for North Windon is 89. It's not great, but it's better than than KOMO. We also have a school in this area uh Oakland Park which is 100% uh magnet program but while it's 100% magnet program it doesn't have a substantially different academic program than other elementary schools. If you look at Ducks, again, it's an arts program. You look at gifted program, it's a gifted program.

060This one's an elementary program. We have an opportunity here to convert Oakland Park instead to a neighborhood school, close com. Most of uh uh KOMO students would end up at Oakland Park. And then we do some boundary adjustments, some enrollment balancing across the region and it would land at about 85% utilization across the region and would make better use of Oakland Park. While Oakland Park isn't at threat um you know based on enrollment currently, it is um you know a building that the community's invested 8.1 million in and one that we could again make accessible to the kids who actually live in the community and allow those students who've gone to KOMO or other schools in that area uh to participate in that school which is a modern learning environment. again, uh, avoids about $435,000

061per year in permanent improvement dollars and has the potential to save over $100,000 in general fund per year. So, if we summarize that, when we look at this, Aendale becomes the new home for the gifted program. East has an expanded catchment area receiving students eventually from both Broadley and Ohio. Um, and with the addition of the career academy, we've already seen an uptick in the enrollment at East and we would expect that again this would add 200 additional students to East overtime. Ohio would receive students from Fairwood and would provide additional neighborhood relief if necessary. And finally, South Whiffland, South Mifflin will become a swing site for Duxberry. These actions focusing on these four four shifts would save uh or preserve an an additional 65 plus million dollars that the community has invested in these

062new FMP buildings. Again looking at this uh KOMO under this model would be closed for instruction. Ducksberry again uh the program would be moved. Everett the gifted program would be moved and fair would be be closed for instruction. those four facilities, those four buildings would be closed and the permanent improvements uh savings would be near three $3 million a year with potential maintenance and utility savings that uh are in excess of $700,000 a year. So, when we put that all together, what the board has already acted on and what we are considering now, we're looking at $6.8 8 million in permanent improvement funds that that get to be redirected to another purpose. Um about $1.6 million in general fund costs tied to utilities and maintenance alone. Uh that are potential savings in this. And probably

063the biggest number in this is nearly $97 million in prior investments in FMP buildings that we get to to safeguard and make better use of. And you know again if we go back to the beginning we want to ensure that every student learns in a strong modern school environment with the programs and supports they need to to succeed. In order to do that again we need to take steps to consolidate schools to be better able to provide off uh offerings in these modern facilities. We want to wisely invest our permanent improvement dollars to enable new construction. And finally, we want to protect the community's investments, the investments they have already made. These are the first steps for making this vision a reality. They help us move towards where we want to be. It's a long

064path, but these are steps that will move us in that direction. Today, we're looking to this committee and asking two things. one that you would vote uh to move this uh recommendation forward to the full board for consideration and two that you would vote to recommend that the board temporarily resend policy 7105 in order that the board may take action on that recommendation. The the policy 7105 is the policy that requires a committee to come together to look at this. Now, the uh task force and the committee looked at a lot of this previously, but there are some small differences here between what the task force said and uh again what we're recommending at this point in time. And this is being driven entirely by the urgency of the legislature. We want to preserve those

065investments. We do not want to lose those investments for our community. Uh and that will take urgent action to move forward and it's important to do that. Yeah, there's a call to action for folks. Uh before I close out and take we take some questions. Uh we're going to have some town hall meetings. We really want folks to participate them. We want to hear from folks. These are difficult decisions. We have to to weigh some very difficult uh choices as we move through this process and really want to hear from folks about what they think and how we can best move forward as a group. And there are several opportunities here uh to do so. And again, there's some handouts in the back and I think the superintendent's got some for everybody at the table

066as well. Um, we want folks to be engaged and have the opportunity to to to hear have their voices heard and help inform as we move forward. So, with that being said, uh, we'll be happy to answer any questions that you all might have. >> I know that was that was a lot. >> Yep. Thank you so much, uh, Dr. Brown, Dr. Chapman, uh, for tonight's presentation. Um before we get into opening the floor for discussion, um Mr. Treasure, is there anything that you would like to add uh to this discussion? >> I think as we look at the numbers, I know Dr. Chapman's team worked closely with mine this week to score the the figures that were presented tonight. Um we were able to quantify $371,000 in actual general fund savings as of today.

067I think it's important to note these are dynamic decisions >> and as these decisions are made at further meetings and further discussions are held. Those those savings numbers will need to be updated obviously but we've got 1.6 million in potential savings. We can quantify 371,000 of that and again as the decisions roll forward and the times are then more solidified we can further extrapolate those into more solid figures. >> All right. But at this point this is a projected estimate. Yes, >> projected estimates. Correct. >> Thank you. All right. Um, so what I will do is open the floor for discussion. Are there any questions at this point in time uh from the joint committee members? >> Yes, good sir. Um, I'd like to get a little more clarification on Downtown High School and what

068should be or could be done with that because it to me it would be a shame to let that building go. >> Totally agree. Uh, it's a it's a tremendous investment that the community's made. It's a lovely facility and again by bringing cause down to downtown high school and putting cause in downtown high school we'll fully utilize that building. That that is one of the recommendations here is to move cause into downtown high school and fully utilize that building. At the same time we know that we're developing CTE programming and we're localizing in the community. So many of the programs that exist at downtown high school can be localized in other settings around the community which will allow um the cause program to move in a whole to downtown high school. >> What's going to

069happen with the cause building? >> It will move to downtown high school and it will uh continue there. It it will be a >> building >> depending on what happens. One would expect it would be 100% water >> and but the building that KA is currently located in at the McGuffy site is one of those buildings that we would consider our legacy buildings. It was never intended to be a space for high school students to learn in and for teachers to teach in. It was an older elementary school. And so that would be the buildings that we would be phasing out instruction and programming in by choice and moving our flagship program that we offer cause to a more modernized learning environment downtown centrally located. >> Thank you for that context Dr. Chapman. And as

070we're asking questions um and from time to time you may find that I'll remind you lovingly but if we can use your microphone uh this is a recorded meeting. I want to make sure I'm able to hear folks and uh I want to make sure that you're able to be heard as well. So, please use your microphones. All right. Is there an additional question? >> All right. Yes, sir. Okay. First of all, I want to say thank you because I know that's a lot of work. Um I've tried to follow that in the past and I get it. A very quick request. Uh, I really appreciate the transparency in how much savings there is from electricity, maintenance, and everything like that on the buildings we're talking about, but it would really helpful to see the

071entirety of all the buildings laid out the same exact way. Um, just so that we can get a sense of scale because I have a feeling you've picked some of the really big outliers, but seeing that across all of them would be really great. Um, two quick questions I wanted to do um, in terms of framing. So, I know the legislation you're talking about where they tried to pass the exact same thing last year with the 60%. Um my first question is um do we have a sense of when they're trying to pass this legislation again or is this just in the early chambers again? >> I don't have a date for that. Do do you I do know though that it is still under consideration at >> Okay. Right. So they're still trying to

072actively move it through the subcommittee and whatnot. And then I think this might help with framing for the community. Um, is the concern here and the urgency really driven around the fact that uh we would need to be compliant with this legislation ahead of it passing? So, like let me just lay out like a timeline maybe for everyone. So, if they were to pass legislation that said any buildings with less than 60% utilization have to be, you know, closed and then sold to charter schools, right? Um, the versions of legislation that I think I've seen, we would need to be compliant with that before the legislation passed, right? And so that's why we're trying to take action so quickly here is that if we if the legislation passes and then we react to it, it

073may be too late to um save the buildings. Is that the concern and what we're trying to educate? >> Absolutely. Uh the again the concern would be that um if the legislation passed, we literally wouldn't have time to respond to it. and devoid of having a plan, an articulated plan in place on how to utilize these buildings. I don't know how the system would have a defense to to argue that there's an intention to to make better use. >> All right. Uh yes, ma'am. >> Yes. Um was it ever >> use your mic. You got to move. >> Was it ever in the plans that uh cause would move into East? >> What happened to that? >> The recommendation, the initial recommendation from the task force was move cause into East. Um again, it was

074a bit of a split decision on that that because both CO um pardon me, downtown High School and East have been considered. There are two problems to solve here. one, we want to fill east. That's that's really important. But we also want to fill downtown high school because again, between the two of them, it's over $50 million in investment. East is being filled by the academy. We've already seen an uptick in the enrollment. If we were to try to move cause into East, and again, broadly, it's going to come into East. That'll add 100 kids. Ohio Avenue feeds into East. If we increase the the footprint for Ohio Avenue, we'll add another hundred students to East High School as well. So that would require the cause program if it were to fit in East to

075be substantially reduced in size. This was a big concern for the folks in the cause community. They wanted to be able to maintain the size of their program uh as they move forward and this would require a substantial reduction in the size of the program. So again, the legislation that came through sort of nudged us to to go back and revisit that. Um, and again, I think it provides a better fit because Downtown High School can accommodate that entire enrollment and can maintain that enrollment uh over time. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. Two quick questions. We own all the property at Fort Hayes, right? >> Yes. >> Okay. So, >> I believe so. So, Ducksberry would move there and that would be where our artist impact program would be. >> I think again what has

076been spoken about over time is moving Ducksberry to the Fort Hayes complex, but until there's a facility to accommodate that, okay, >> moving them to South Mifflin, preserves that programming that's very important to our community, allows us to grow it a little bit while we come up with a permanent solution for it. Um, and again the permanent solution that I think that community would love to see and and many of us who who enjoy the arts would love to see a K12 integrated arts program on that site. >> And then my second question is when we vacate buildings, what is keeping someone else from buying the buildings and becoming additional charter or private schools, which again depletes uh our funding >> for public schools. So again, I think it's incredibly important that we have a

077plan to move through to try to figure out which buildings are best to serve our students. And then, you know, if we make it, if the board makes a decision to move in this direction, then the subsequent decision that the board needs to make is well, what's the disposition of those buildings afterwards? And the board has moved through a number of buildings this past year and raised those buildings um because they're old and and we're not going to put them to use. And so I think the board would have many options to consider in terms of what to do with those buildings and there's a window of time to make that determination once we've done that. >> Okay. >> If I can provide some additional context to and colleagues particularly my my state house colleague

078feel free to chime in. Um, to answer part of your question, there's really nothing if if we if a building goes from being utilized to non-utilized. If it goes to non-use, the clock begins on when charters have the opportunity to go through the Ohio Revised Code process of purchasing a building. Am I stating that accurately? >> One year >> from the from this when we stop using it for an academic purpose. >> That clock begins. >> Are there any other questions? >> Yes, Ringles. >> Um, I want to uplift something. When we went through the last facilities process, um, I did sit down with a number of uh, folks throughout all of the communities. Um, but specifically the downtown folks were very concerned about the loss of programming that is specific to downtown, the reason

079for which it was built. It has a cosmetology program. It does not have an auditorium. It does not have those key things that cause currently has and uses. Um and in addition, it has specific programming um that it was built specifically for like the culinary arts program. Um what would happen to those? Have you considered what would happen to those um so that those families can feel like they were heard in the process? >> So, a couple things. one cause is in a less than ideal building now it's an elementary setting um there is a framework here and I I think the superintendent wishes to speak uh where we're expanding CTE programming and I will quit >> um thank you for that question so in all of our efforts we certainly want to honor our

080again previous investments that we've made in the facilities our learning spaces but more importantly centering the our decision decisions on the needs of our students. We know that we have viable programming that is currently housed at Columbus Downtown High School. The culinary program is not a program that we would be able to move tomorrow. So, it would stay. The cosmetology program is not a program that we would be able to pick up and move tomorrow. It would absolutely stay. So, there are programs at downtown high school that would be would lend themselves to being more mobile and that we would be able to uh relocate at another campus. And again, most of the programming we're thinking that we we have space to accommodate the programming at another site, but certainly when we think about um

081the programming at cause, downtown high school is a perfect site for cause. When we think about we the board has already made a decision to relocate cause to another CCS site. Downtown High School presents as the best site of all of our sites for cause given its proximity and central location. This is a cause is 100% lottery school. Having it located in the center of the city downtown on all of the mo metro Aakota lines makes it very accessible accessible to students across the city. When we think about cause and the programming at cause um because of the program and the IB programming they don't need space for athletics and so a downtown high school it does not have athletic fields and so that's a perfect match. We do recognize, honor, and will support and

082uplift the arts programs that have been central to the programming at Cause Downtown High School is is near I don't know how many theaters that are downtown, more than five. I think there's about eight or nine. But it's so we're this will be a prime opportunity for us to think about and partner with our arts community on how we can provide even more stellar opportunities for the arts program to thrive at cause in proximity to the building and their space. Um, in addition, COS would also not be far from Fort Hayes, which is another one of our campuses located relatively close to downtown or close to um the um current location of the downtown high school where we have a huge theater. And so th this this this this scenario is presents as the most

083ideal scenario as we continue to execute on the board's um previous action to relocate cause to another CCS site. Of all the sites of all the high school sites that we've looked at, this is the one that presents the most viable opportunities for our students for access and opportunity as well as for the academic programming. and we'll continue to explore that and move forward with concrete um um ideas and strategies for how to lift up all of the programming and supports. >> Uh thank you for that uh direct response, Dr. Chapman, and you're actually in the next presentation going to go over uh a little more in depth some of what you've just spoken about. Um are there any additional question? Yes, for >> um thank you, President Cole. Um, I had just a couple

084questions, three questions. One that could be answered later. Um, I'd like to learn more, Dr. Chapman, about exactly where that programming from the Columbus Downtown High School would be relocated to. Um, but that doesn't need to be answered tonight. That can just be follow up before um, we have this on the calendar at the appropriate board meeting. Um, and then my questions are um, Dr. Brown, if you could just provide a little bit more insight into what programming is at Oakland Park um, elementary school. I'm not super familiar with that building. Um you mentioned that they do have some specialized programming, but maybe it's not. If you could just expand on that. >> So Oakland Park um doesn't really have specialized programming. It's essentially a general education program at an elementary building. Uh historically, I

085think it did, and I think historically, uh it had sister school across the system, but you know, over time, I think it has become more of a a general ed program. Uh and it affords us an opportunity again to have students in that community served at a more modern building. >> Okay. Thank you. But it is a 100% lottery school. >> It is 100% lottery right now. >> Um thank you. And then um I will actually just move on to my um point of discussion. I was um you know you said >> if I may one go ahead one more thing >> uh to board member Cole's uh comment earlier. It it's also while it's 100% watery, it the academic uh performance of the building is one that we would be happy to maybe make

086some improvements for. >> Okay. Thank you. Um I was I was happy to hear um and you did set the stage a little bit, Dr. Chapman, in the presentation about um opportunities for new construction, but I think we could have talked a little bit more about that. Um you know, freeing up these permanent improvement dollars, I think we need to make a mindset shift in our organization. We currently spend 100% of our permanent improvement dollars on the upkeep of our facilities. Um, and that means in 10 years we will still be spending 100% of our permanent improvement dollars on the upkeep of our facilities. Um, if we instead begin to change that ratio and start to spend maybe 15 or 25% of those PI dollars on the construction of new facilities, in 10 years our

087kids will be in new buildings. Um, and so I do think there's a huge opportunity for the board, for our district, and our community to um, start to realize some construction. I would have liked us to talk a little bit more about that. So, in that regard, I'm disappointed, but I'm not deterred about new construction. Um, and perhaps later towards the end of the night, the committee could consider a motion to recommend to the board that the board does calendar that on its meeting and begin to talk about construction. But there's a real opportunity to um you know not just um do triage I guess you could say and make reductions to our facilities but actually begin to construct new buildings. It's been 10 years since the board has um broke ground on a new

088building. That's a significant amount of time. Um and so it's certainly my intention to continue to have those conversations um colleagues with you all about how we can move forward on new school construction. But I think it's imperative that in the future when we have these conversations um they're not disconnected from the possibilities or the realities of new school construction. And my second point of discussion is there was some mention about you know if we do make additional consolidations that does mean that these properties may become accessible to charter schools. And this is an area where my mindset has shifted as a board member. When I started on the board, I really felt that um we should work to preserve all of our properties and maintain all of our properties. But my mindset has begun

089to shift and I've begun to question the value of um retaining properties um rather than focusing on other core areas where we are competitive. I think there is um I think it potentially that it could be better for us to let go of some of these facilities um and for us to focus on what does make us competitive against charter nonpubliclix which is we have better programming, we have better student outcomes, we have highly trained staff, better trained staff. And so that's an area where my mindset has really shifted where I'm more comfortable allowing these facilities to go if it means that we're able to make better investments in our AC in our core academic and programmatic offerings, which is then what we have to go talk about to our community so that they know

090we are the better option. And that's not something we really do. Um and so and and my my last point I will just close is I think it's good we're being proactive um rather than reactive to potential changes at the legislature because the legislature has established a mandate for public schools and charter nonpublic schools whether folks like it or not to compete with each other and that's something that public school leaders across the state have never truly realized and so I'm excited that I think this is the beginning of a big mindset shift and changing our approach to um how we address that mandate. All right. Thank you for that insight. Uh, gentleman down at the end. >> Uh, well, sorry, I'm going to piggyback for like five seconds. Two things I do agree there

091with you on. Um, you know, so coming back to like, oh, maybe the high school we're moving cast to doesn't have an auditorium, but to your point, having those dollars freed up allows us to actually build an auditorium. So, I think that is an excellent point. I think the other thing I would challenge the community on is what can we use that land for that would also be recurring revenue for the school district so we get out of this position of constantly having to find money and scrap for it. Right. So some great thoughts there. My actual question though but that was really great Brandon. Thank you. So um we've talked a lot about the money and the dollars. We have to I definitely get it. But some things I'm really curious about are how

092are the busing times going to change for kids? because my understanding is that busing time is a direct correlation to um how often they're going to attend school which then can be a direct correlation to their academic performance. Right. I'm also curious if there's any academic program changes that we can make. So, I think you mentioned maybe one of the elementary schools might be struggling there. And so, I'm also curious with these changes, um, you know, what are the some of those are there academic program change opportunities? And then finally, uh, D1 sports, I know, is something we really struggle with in this district at the high school level. And so, I'm curious if that's something we'll be able to offer at some of these high schools when we talk about combining them. >> So,

093I happy to take a swing at part of this and I'm sure the superintendent will will want to lean into part of it as well. A lot of questions in there. Um, I keep writing them down. >> So, for the transportation piece, I I'm not going to be able to answer it completely. Um, I think we'd have to go through a routing exercise, etc. But if we move cause downtown, we definitely are going to shorten transportation for anybody that is on the west side of the town or the south side of the town who attends cause. It becomes a central location. It becomes more accessible to students. Um, if Oakland Park shifts from being a magnet program to a neighborhood school, we stop ship shipping kids all over the city to Oakland Park and instead

094it becomes part of a neighborhood and school and some folks might exercise choice to go there as well. But it it reduces a transportation burden for that one as well. Um, Ducksberry moving to to South Mifflin would not be as substantial. the South Mifflands in their backyard. So, I don't think that's going to be a sub substantial change in transportation cost. Uh, and Fairwood and Ohio are are adjacent. So, again, I don't anticipate a sub substantive change in that. And again, by aggregating more kids at a building, we also reduce cost because we reduce stops on that. Uh and certainly there's an opportunity uh in some of these settings to be much more creative about our programming and by having our our students aggregated in larger groups. Uh it means that we're not spreading those

095those resources whole child resources as thin. Uh so it's more likely that folks are going to uh be able to have additional resources in the building because they have more students there. >> All right. >> I think Dr. Um I want to just expound upon that just a little bit more. Um we talked about uh programming. Um when we think about some of the elementary schools that we discussed tonight in this presentation and the recommendations, some of those elementary schools have maybe 150 students. That's a very very small elementary school. And so it is um it's a challenge for us to provide all of the supports that the students need to accommodate them given the size of their building. And so they usually typically end up with 0.5 for an art teacher, 0.5 for a

096social worker, point five for a counselor, 0.5 for music and PE. That means that those that programming is only offered one day a week, which makes it impossible to integrate um for those teachers to collaborate with each other, for those teachers to plan amazing experiences for the students because they're only there one day a week. And so and they're they're teaching their their classes not there to integrate and talk about crosscurricular programming and planning with their peers and their colleagues and plan for um extra programming. But if we again one of the schools, one of the scenarios that we discussed, one of the schools could fit totally in another school. And so now those same students, same staff, now they have a full-time art teacher, full-time music teacher, full-time PE, they have a full-time counselor,

097they have a full-time social worker, so that all of the supports that the students need are there on every day of the week when the students are there. You know, none of our students come to school and say, "Oh, I'm going to be sick on a Tuesday when the nurse is there. Oh, I need to talk to the counselor on a Friday when the counselor is there." And then the counselor then has to figure out how they're going to serve all the students in one day of the week. And so, we talk about robust programming at the elementary level given the size of some of our schools. Those are some of the constraints that we're working under. I also want to name that increasing the enrollment and getting the utilization up at our elementary schools,

098middle schools, or high schools does not mean that we're increasing class size. We will still honor our class size limits at all of our schools. Larger schools does not mean that we have larger class sizes. It means that we have an average number of students in a school to provide the robust programming that they need. You had a question about sports. When we think about high school athletic programs, the the category, the ranking that the students perform in is based on the number of kids in the school. If we have small schools and small enrollments, they're already not able to compete at a higher level because of the size of the school. So, if you look at our peer districts, they're building high schools. They're like mammoth high schools compared to the size of some

099of our high schools. where over a thousand students are in those schools, but they also have all of the programming that the students need. They're able to offer a diverse array of AP courses, CCP courses, college career courses for the students because the they have the enrollment there to support it. And so we think about increasing our enrollment, increasing our util utilization. That's how we're able to offer more programming. Another piece of this we think about, we talked about downtown high school. I want to be clear, we have been providing exceptional career and technical education programming to our students across the city. Some of those programs are located at downtown high school. Some of those programs are located at Fort Hayes House High School. Some of those programs are located in our comprehensive high schools.

100I have a a handout that I'm going to pass around so you can see how many of those programs we've already moved to our comprehensive high schools and we will continue to do that. We're bringing the programs closer to the students so that our students have access to them and they don't have to leave their home school. This is an opportunity for us to strengthen programming in our neighborhood schools so that students have more greater access to it and closer to their community. So, we're thinking about this through multiple lenses and always thinking about how we're going to provide our students with the experiences, the programming that they need to be successful in K12, college, and career. >> Thank you, Dr. Chapman. We'll take one more question. Dr. Miranda, >> thank you. I'm curious as

101you're projecting the enrollment, are you also able to project increase in students in those neighborhoods or decrease in students in those neighborhoods? >> So, I will tell you projecting enrollment in the city is challenging >> because 48% of kids don't attend a neighborhood school. They they they move around. So we have been uh working with external partner to do projections over time and to to localize those um actually by building by grade level. >> All right. Thank you. >> And and one last um piece to the question about I I neglected to to mention that moving the gifted program to Aenddale essentially makes it center city as well which would reduce transportation and increase accessibility. Thank you so much Dr. Brown. Uh this is an actual great entree new as per your comments Dr. Chapman

102into our next presentation uh with Dr. Klein regarding open enrollment and lottery. Um now just because we have not had a chance to answer any number of questions that may be available, you have every opportunity to submit those questions to uh your respective committee chairs. You may feel free to send those questions to me directly if you'd like and then we will make sure that those questions are then submitted to the superintendent and treasure and or treasurer uh for further review and response. So this is not the end all beall opportunity right here. This is just a moment in time to encapsulate the opportunity to answer ask questions and if we can't get them in now, we're going to get them in in the future. All right. All right. Dr. Klein, welcome and thank you.

103>> Thank you. Thank you, President Cole, Vice President Adair, members of the board, and members of the community and committee. Thank you so much. Good evening. My name is Michelle Klene. I'm privileged to serve as the chief of student services here in Columbus City Schools. Tonight, Tanya Freeman, who is our director of enrollment, and I would like would like to provide an overview of the school choice lottery program. To begin, it's very important to establish a shared understanding of the terminology surrounding school choice. In Columbus City Schools, the term school choice and school lottery are used interchangeably. They both refer to the process of applying to attend a school other than the one assigned by your home address. You may also hear the term open enrollment which is defined by the Ohio Department of Education

104and Workforce through two categories intra district and interd district open enrollment. Intradist refers to students enrolling in different schools within the same district. What we call here in Columbus City Schools school choice lottery. Interd district open enrollment allows students from outside of Columbus City School boundaries to enroll in our school buildings tuitionfree. Both pathways require strict adherence to district policies and procedures. It's important to remember that the school choice lottery was born out of the desegregation movement in the 1960s grounded in a commitment to equity and access. While we remain steadfast in our dedication in providing equitable and accessible education, we must also take a thoughtful look at our current practices. A critical question arises. Can we continue to sustain a broad transportation model for the school choice lottery if doing so compromises the classroom

105resources our ste students need most? In 1967, Columbus City Schools introduced the Columbus Plan as an effort to integrate the district. This initiative allowed black and non-black students to apply for transfer to schools offering specialized programs or those with a student population predominantly of the opposite race. While the plan aimed to promote voluntary integration and broaden educational opportunities, it was met with limited participation from Columbus City School families and ultimately did not achieve widespread adoption. In 1977, following a court-ordered desegregation mandate that required busing students to different schools and closing several buildings, an innovative principle and a group of forward-thinking teachers stepped up with a bold idea to preserve Columbus North. They proposed a magnet school model centered on independent study and a rigorous academic curriculum. By 1978, their vision materialized as a half-day pilot

106program at Mohawk School, enrolling 100 students. The following year, it evolved into the district's first 100% lotterybased school with classes beginning in 1980 on the top floor of McGuffy Elementary. This marked the birth of the school choice lottery in Columbus City Schools. To ensure racial balance, a dual lottery system was implemented for black and non-black students. The overwhelming interest in specialized programming soon led to the creation of several more 100% lottery schools in the years that followed. During the 1993 1994 school year, Columbus City Schools expanded the school choice lottery to include all schools, both alternative and conventional schools. While this marked a significant shift toward broader access, student placements were still governed by racial diversity guidelines. As a result, even schools with assigned neighborhood populations became lottery schools by virtue of accepting lottery applications.

107In the summer of 1995, the Columbus City School Board of Education approved a policy allowing placement continuations once applicants affecting racial balance had been exhausted. This pivotal decision laid the foundation for the modern lottery system that we recognize today, one that blends choice with structured equity considerations. It's important to understand that in Columbus City Schools, families have the opportunity to apply to our 100% lottery schools, which are designed to offer specialized programs and are often referred to as alternative schools. These schools offer unique academic themes and instructional models, and general seats are filled exclusively through the lottery process, drawing students from across the entire district regardless of residential boundaries. Our 100% elementary and middle lottery schools include Arts Impact Middle School better known as Ames, Columbus Afroentric, Columbus City Prep for Boys, grades 6 through

1088, Columbus City Prep for Girls, grades 6 through 8, Columbus online academy grades 78, Columbus Spanish immersion, EC Kinwood Indianola informal K to8 and World Language Middle School. Dubberry Park and Oakland Park are also currently 100% lotteryies, but you have just heard a proposal for future changes for these schools. Our 100% lottery high schools include Columbus Afroentric, Columbus Alternative, better known as Cause, Columbus International, Columbus Online Academy, Eastmore Academy, and Ford Hayes Arts and Academic High School. Currently, we have 6,540 students attending all of our 100% lottery schools. While many families pursue these specialized options, others choose to apply to neighborhood schools outside their assigned attendance zones, highlighting the diverse ways families engage with school choice across our district. Columbus City School Choice Lottery provides families with a unique opportunity to explore a wide range

109of highquality educational options. Through this process, parents can apply for available seats at up to three schools outside of their assigned attendance zone. Each selection carries equal weight as every school and grade level operates its own independent lottery. The application process is simple and accessible. Families can log into their parent portal from the comfort of their own home, submit applications, track their lottery status, and and accept and decline placement offers with ease. So, how does the lottery process currently work, you may ask? All on-time applications for each grade and school are randomly assigned a number ranging from one to the total number of applications that were received. Offers are then extended based on the number of available seats using lottery capacity limits. For schools with an assigned attendance area, we use lottery capacity limits rather

110than total capacity because a portion of the seats must be reserved for students who may enroll from within the school's boundary. Once the lottery process is finalized, parents are notified of their students offer via email, text message, and an automated phone call. They have two days to accept the offer. If no action is taken within the time frame, the offer is automatically declined and extended to the next student on the wait list. As seats become available due to declined offers or other changes, additional offers are made. Late applications are placed at the bottom of the wait list in the datetime order of receipt. Before accepting a lottery offer, we always encourage families to carefully consider a few important factors. Once the first the first decision is final. Once a lottery offer is accepted, all other

111applications are automatically cancelled and the child's seat at the current or home school is released. That means families cannot simply change their mind and return to the previously assigned school. Second, sibling placement is never guaranteed. While we do our best to keep siblings together, it's not always possible. For elementary schools, any unaccepted seats after the initial lottery draw are offered to siblings on the wait list in the order that they were drawn. Once all siblings have been exhausted, we move back to the general weight list. For our 100% lottery middle and high schools, unaccepted seats are offered in an alternating pattern between siblings and non- siblings based on the order that they were drawn. Third, it's important to consider transportation needs. Currently, if a family accepts placement at an elementary or middle school within their

112designated community and lives more than 2 miles from that school, transportation is provided. However, if they choose a school outside of their assigned community, transportation becomes the responsibility of the parent. The school choice application clearly alerts families during the submission process if transportation will not be provided due to their selection. For high school families, it's also important to consider transportation needs beyond the school day, especially for afterchool activities like sports, clubs, and other programs. We want every family to feel confident and informed before making this important decision. The school choice lottery opportunities are widely popular with our families. We think it's important to note that the general school choice lottery receives a little over 20,000 applications each and every year representing roughly 7,500 students. For the 2425 school year, we received 20,976 school choice applications

113representing 7,633 students as three applications can be submitted for each student. 7,382 offers were extended to 5,78 students. 3,652 students accepted their offer. Remember, by accepting an offer, other offers and applications are automatically declined. Therefore, often multiple offers are made for the same seat until it is filled. Once a student is admitted through the lottery, they will continue to be enrolled in that school until they age out, lottery back out, submit a request to return to homeschool application, or move and opt to change schools. It is important to note that if a student moves within CCS boundaries, they are permitted to remain in their previous school, but transportation is not guaranteed and may be the responsibility of the parent or guardian. While the general school choice lottery opportunity impacts the greatest number of students, CCS

114offers several other school choice opportunities that are also available under specific conditions. We accept applications for interd district open enrollment, IOE. This is an opportunity for students living outside of the Columbus City School boundaries who wish to attend a school in the CCS district. These applications are added to the bottom of the CCS lottery weight list in the datetime order of receipt. IOE applications in grades K through 8 and new high school students can only be offered placement once all CCS students are cleared from the weight list and they must reapply every year. At the high school level students who metriculate and submit their application on time are automatically approved to continue. It's important to note that transportation is not provided for students attending CCS under interdist open enrollment. For the 2425 school year, we

115had 980 students apply from other districts to attend Columbus City Schools. 332 offers were extended and 210 offers were accepted. The request to return to homeschool application process is for students attending a school in Columbus City Schools that is not their school of address. All students attending a school other than their school of address can apply. Whether it be that they lotteryied into a different school and now want to return to the school of address for the following year. They moved and chose to stay for the remainder of the year. They were placed by ESL or special ed. And the list goes on. While we do our best to honor the request of families wishing to return to their school of address, this is not always possible due to services needed by the student or

116capacity limits of the school of address. Last year, we received 325 requests and 307 offers were extended and accepted. Reservation admissions is available for students who currently attend a school that is eligible to reserve a seat in the next school with the same programming. Currently, students at Duxberry can reserve a seat at Ames and students at Ames can reserve a seat at Fort Hayes. Columbus Spanish immersion and Echo Kinwood students can reserve a seat at World Language. World language eighth graders and secondyear global students can reserve a seat at Columbus International. And last but not least, Burwick's eighth grade students can reserve a seat into Eastmore Academy. 298 students reserve their seat when transitioning to the next level of schooling for the 2425 school year. Selective admissions is by invitation for students who have met

117specific criteria. 20% of available seats at schools that participate in selective admissions are reserved for these applicants. While selective admissions is a lottery for cause and eastore, Dubberry, Ames, Fort Hayes, and Columbus Aphroentric all have an interview or audition process for selection. Last year, 170 applications were received. 95 offers were made and 73 students accepted those offers. The Air Force Junior ROC is for students entering 9th through 12th grades who are interested in participating in the Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corp at Fort Hayes. A small portion of seats at Fort Hayes are reserved in order to fill the available seats in the ROC program. Last year, 50 applications were received, 21 offers were made, and 18 seats were filled via this lottery. Beginning this school year, we have implemented a lottery application process

118for the career technical education program through the division of school choice. As interest in the CTE continues to grow, many programs now receive more application than there are available seats. To manage this demand fairly and transparently, the district uses a centralized CTE lottery system that allows families to track through offers and weight list status with ease. Students may apply and rank up to three CTE programs. Please note, this lottery is for placement in a CTE program, not for enrollment into a different school. students remain enrolled in their primary school and will graduate from that school. And last but not least is the preferential lottery. For students who are attending schools that the district is closing, they are able to submit a preferential lottery application and a lottery is ran prior to the general lottery for

119priority placement and available seats. By now, you should have a solid understanding of how the school choice lottery works and how we've arrived in our current process. Due to ongoing financial challenges, it's time to re-evaluate the future of school choice, particularly how it affects transportation costs and how well it aligns with our district's strategic priorities. These considerations are essential as we work to ensure that our resources are used effectively while continuing to provide equitable access to quality education. So the big question, can we sustain transportation options to continue school choice lottery in the current model? In an effort to keep families informed and empowered if it is determined that there needs to be transition from the current transportation model for school choice, we are proposing a thoughtful and transparent timeline. Our goal is to ensure

120that every family understands the changes ahead and has time to consider their options. We recommend that the joint board committee present its recommendation to the board of education in November. This will allow the board to make a final decision on the future of school choice in December. Once that decision is made, we will begin communicating with families. In early January, following winter break, parents will be notified of updates to the school lottery process and the transportation policies. Then in mid January, we will open the request to return to homeschool application window. General lottery applications will be accepted beginning in February and will remain open through March to be part of the lottery draw. The lottery itself will be conducted in early April and offers will continue throughout the summer until all available seats are filled.

121Late applications will be accepted and added to the bottom of the wait list in the datetime order of receipt. This timeline is designed to give families clarity, choice, and time to make sure no one is left out, and that every voice is heard. Currently, Columbus City Schools elementary and middle school students are provided transportation to their school of address. 100% citywide lottery schools and other neighborhood schools within their community or the center city provided they are more than two miles from their home. The transportation communities are colored on the map. So, for example, if a student lives in the east community, which is displayed here in dark orange, and they are enrolled to another school within the dark orange community, or the dark green center city community, transportation is provided. But if they apply to

122the light blue or to the peach color, transportation would be the responsibility of the parent. At the high school level, transportation is currently provided citywide. So, a student can live in the furthest south peach area and receive transportation to Beachcraftoft, the furthest high school on the north side of Columbus. Imagine, if you will, that every morning a student boards her first bus at 5:39 a.m. Before the sun rises, before most families have even started their day, she transfers buses at an elementary school, then rides to her high school, arriving just in time for the 7:30 a.m. start of school. After school ends at 2:30 p.m., her journey begins again. Another bus transfer at an elementary school, another long ride home, and finally she steps through her front door at 5:14 p.m. That's if there's no

123traffic. That's 4 hours and 35 minutes on a daily basis on a bus every single day for a 7hour school day. This is not sustainable. It's not equitable. And it's not what we should be asking of our students. When transportation demands this kind of sacrifice, we must ask ourselves, are we truly putting our children first? This is not a hypothetical example. This is actually a lived reality for several of our students in Columbus City Schools. Although school choice is one of the factors that plays into students being assigned to a school that is not their school of address, there are other reasons a student may be enrolled outside of their home school by address. You might be wondering what some of these reasons are. Here are some examples. Displaced students due to a school of

124address capacity restraint. Homelessness. Student remains at school of origin after an address change by their own choice. special education services, EL services, gifted services, medical transfers, and discipline transfers. So, let's take a look at where our students really are attending this school year. Right now, 53% of our students are enrolled in their school of address. Another 22% are attending a different school through the school choice lottery program. 7% have been placed outside of their school of address to receive special education services and 8% are attending schools that provide English as a second language support. We also have 2% of the students who were reassigned due to capacity limits either because of teacher contact provisions or building constraints. And finally, 8% of our students are placed in schools for other reasons such as homelessness, change of

125address, the family selected to remain in the original school. There is a significant cost difference when transporting students who attend their assigned school versus those who attend a school that is not assigned by their address. On average, it costs $1,487 per routed student to transport a student to their home school. In contrast, transporting a student who does not attend their home school costs approximately $2,316 per routed student. That's a 56% increase. These estimates assume a full bus of 65 students, but in reality, our buses typically carry 35 to 40 students per route. The average cost to operate a school bus for one year is approximately $96,000, and that figure does not include the initial purchase price of the bus itself. While school choice itself does not create substantial financial costs for the district, the transportation

126model that supports it does have significant impact on not only our budget, but on the level of service we are able to provide to our students. Let's take a look at the legal mandates for the state minimums in school transportation under Ohio Revised Code 3327.01. The two-mile rule. If a student in grades K through eight lives more than two miles from their assigned school, we must provide transportation. Career tech access. High school students enrolled in career technical programs are entitled to transportation to those programs from their high school. Non-public school coverage. When Columbus City Schools are closed, we still must transport students attending private or charter schools. 30 minute windows. Students may arrive up to 30 minutes before school starts and must be picked up no later than 30 minutes after dismissal. Special needs. Students

127may students with disabilities who have transportation needs addressed in their IEP receive transportation services regardless of how far they live from the school. But here's what is missing, and it does matter. There are no minimum standards for service quality, no limits on how long a child can be on the bus, no requirements for comfort, ride times, or the experience. So, yes, we're legally compliant. Let's ask the harder question. Are we currently being strategically and physically effective under our current model? In looking at the future of school choice, we must also consider how it aligns with our district priorities. The CCS strategic plan underscores the critical importance of cultivating neighborhood schools. Presently, 47% of students are enrolled in schools located throughout the city of Columbus outside of their school by address for various reason resulting in

128extended travel times. Being enrolled outside of their neighborhood often diminishes their ability to participate in after-school programs, extracurricular activities, and community events while also limiting opportunities to build meaningful connections with their own neighborhood. It's difficult to build strong neighborhood schools when the majority of students are leaving the neighborhood for their education. We deeply value the voices of our students, parents, and community members. Your insights, your experiences, your hopes of what you want for your children matter, and we want to hear them. Later this month, you'll have several opportunities to share your thoughts and help shape the future of our district. The district will be hosting three town hall meetings on October 27th, 28th, and 29th along with a virtual option and a district-wide survey to ensure everyone has a chance to participate and be heard

129as we face important decisions around balancing our budget. Your input will help guide us towards a responsible and communitydriven path. We look forward to hearing from you and working together to build a strong future for our schools. Over the over the past several months, our committee has worked diligently to review a wide range of options surrounding school choice and transportation. Each one brought its own strengths to the table and deserve serious considerations. Through thoughtful discussion and collaboration, we've arrived at a recommendation that we believe strikes the right balance, delivering meaningful savings for the district while continuing to support the school choice lottery process. Our recommendation is to continue providing transportation for students in grades K through eight who attend designated 100% lottery elementary and middle schools. However, for families who choose to lottery into an

130elementary or middle school that is not classified as 100% lottery, transportation would become the responsibility of the parent or guardian. This proposal is intentionally aligned with the September 11th recommendation to return to state minimum standards for high school transportation, ensuring consistency and fiscal responsibility across grade levels. By approving this recommendation, the district would realize a projected savings of approximately 8.7 million. This would be achieved by discontinuing transportation for students who lottery into non 100% lottery schools resulting in the educa in the reduction of 91 buses. This change would affect approximately 2019 elementary and middle school students currently attending schools that do not meet the 100% lottery designation. Combined with the previous recommendation from the September 11th meeting to discontinue transportation for grades 9 through 12, the total projected savings would be approximately $15.9 million. Just

131to reiterate, our current 100% elementary and middle school lottery schools that would be eligible for transportation would be Arts Impact Middle School known as Ames, Columbus Afroentric, Columbus City Prep for School for Boys 6 through 8, Columbus City Prep for Girls 6 through 8, Columbus Online Academy grades seven and eight, Columbus Spanish immersion, Duxberry Park at Colkinwood, Indianola informal K to8, Oakland Park and World Language Middle School. If the recommendation is approved by the board of education, please know that board of education policy 8600 will again need to be updated as the current policy provides transportation for all K to8 students outside of a twomile radius distance from their home. We ask that you thoughtfully consider our recommendation presented this evening. When we consider the cost of transportation, we must also reflect on what it

132could mean for all of our students, the opportunities this might miss, and the support they could gain through the MTSS framework in making our neighborhood schools stronger. It's not just about dollars. It's about the difference those dollars can make in a child's education. Remember, one of our district priorities is to build strong neighborhood schools in every community. You can't put a price on the magic of strong neighborhood schools and the bonds they create. When families, friends, and neighbors come together, learning side by side, working hand in hand, lifting each other up. It's more than education. It's love. It's legacy. It's the heartbeat of a thriving community. and that is truly priceless. While we're not proposing major changes to the school choice lottery itself, our focus remains clear to continue delivering the educational services and programs

133our students need and building strong neighborhood schools while being fiscally responsible and thoughtful thoughtful stewards of our resources. There will be opportunities for parents, community members, and staff to share their input before the board of education reaches their final decision. Your voices matter, and we strongly encourage your engagement in this process. At this point, we'd like to open the floor to any questions or comments. >> Thank you, Dr. Chapman again and Dr. Klein uh for tonight's presentation. All right. So, um, the floor is open. This is our opportunity to ask questions. This is our opportunity to seek some further understanding about what's been presented before us this evening. Please resp I want to be mindful of the energy and everybody's been wonderful at the energy that they have brought into the room. This is a

134tough discussion to have, but I'm asking that folks be as honest as possible. Let's not give a dissertation, but if there's something that you feel like is some significant feedback, please impart it. But most importantly, ask the question that you feel like you need a response to. The floor is open. Madame Vice President, >> um, thank you. Can we just clarify um when we are talking about high schools what your recommendation is um specific to our high school uh lottery programs? >> Yes, ma'am. The proposal is to continue with our current school choice lottery for our high schools, but in conjunction with the previous recommendation to not have transportation for grades 9 through 12 across the board. Madame Vice President, if we did offer that for our 100% lottery high schools, we would have to

135also give that transportation to every charter school. >> Thank you. >> Any additional questions? >> Yeah. Oh, please. Ladies first. Uh thank you Dr. Klein and team. Um just so that I'm making sure that I'm following. So are we saying on slide 24 that essentially these are the only schools the the recommendation is that the district to consider that these would be the only schools that we would approve transportation to K through eight. Is that correct? No ma'am, only for lottery purposes. All other K to8s would have transportation as required by law. >> Dr. Khan, you had me over here stress. When did we come to this decision? >> This is only with regard to lottery, ma'am. I'm sorry. >> Yeah, that's a requirement by law. >> Clarification. Dr. Chapman, please. >> Thank you very

136much. >> So, just want to provide clarification. We've been having lots of conversations at the board table about transportation. This is a new conversation that we're having tonight particularly in respect to our lottery program. And so we have open enrollment, we have intra district, we have lottery schools, we have some schools that are lottery and neighborhood. We provide transportation to students to attend schools all over the city. If you go back to that map, that previous slide that showed how students are moving all over the city, what we are recommending in tonight's recommendation is that we only provide transportation to some of our lottery schools, not all of them. Right now, we're we're providing transportation students to move and learn all over the city without respect to time, distance, programming. And so, we're saying for

137the schools that are 100% lottery, our commitment to the viable programming that we offer at our 100% lottery schools for K8, we will continue to provide transportation. Yes, we will continue to provide transportation to our 100% K8 lottery schools and those are listed on the slide. We can go back to that slide so you can see which schools we are referencing. >> That is slide 23. >> I also have those in handouts for everyone in the audience as well. >> Are there any additional questions? Uh board member. Um, thank you, President Cole. Um, I think that this is a good opportunity for our district. Um, I, you know, think about my time in the district. I did go to Columbus, Columbus alternative high school, a lottery school. Um, and the reason my family chose that

138school is because the services that I wanted and needed as a student were not available at my home school. And as we heard from Dr. Brown earlier, the reason why, um, you know, if all of our schools were as great as we wanted, students wouldn't need to choose lottery schools. But we aren't able to realize that dream for our district because we have too, you know, we have too few students in too few buildings and too many buildings with um not enough staff, the staff that they need as we heard from Dr. Chapman. And so I think this recommendation in conjunction with the previous recommendation we received tonight is a really good opportunity to allow the our district to make additional um free up dollars to make additional investments in our buildings in our programmatic

139offerings. Um, and I think, you know, it's really important that we remember that a core part of of the vision for this district is to have more students in fewer in fewer buildings with more staffed and more services. Um, and this is, I think, just looking at the cost, you know, about $1,000 in in differences. Um, that's money we're spending on transportation, not instruction. And so, I think this is a real opportunity for our district. >> Thank you for that insight, Mr. Simmons. >> Thank you. Is there anyone else who has a question? Yes ma'am. >> Thank you m Dr. Michelle. I have a question. Yes ma'am. Uh you stated that the school lottery program uh when is the student is are when is the student win the program you inform them through email and

140you wait two days and if they are not if the parent do not respond back to that email then the student will not be qualified to continue the to be enrolled the program. So I feel like two day two days is not enough and I feel like some parents may not be even able to open their emails because they may not even know uh how to speak English. So do you think it would be better to have at least second option maybe phone call >> or maybe mail? >> Yes. So I'm sorry you misunderstood but we actually do three options. We actually do an automotive automated phone dialer and email as well as a text message. They get everything. That's amazing. Yeah. Thank you. >> Yes. Thank you. Can I add that the email um

141is also in all of our top languages. >> Great. >> Thank you. >> We try to please everyone. >> Yeah. That's amazing. >> And the phone and the auto dialers. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Are there any additional questions? Yes, sir. And yes, >> just to clarify, I'm sorry. One more time. Just to clarify, the 100% lottery high schools with your recommendation will not provide busing. Correct. >> Yes, ma'am. That is correct. If we provided buses for the 100% high school lotteryies, we would have to provide buses for all of our charter nine pubs. >> Yes. Great. >> Now, that doesn't mean we can't do something else, an alternative transportation like passes. That's just a separate subject. >> Will the code of passes be for Columbus City School students only?

142>> So from what I understand from my transportation friends, if I provided a a code of pass at $13.50 per semester per student for our high school students, we would also have to provide that for our charter nonpubs. Is that correct, sir? >> That's correct. >> Thank you, Mr. Woods, for joining us this evening. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Michelle was doing such a good job answering the transportation questions. Thought I would have a night off. So, um the there's kind of two components here. So, we made presentations on September 11th about two options that we were proposing. One was to provide code of passes to our high schoolers. Um and in that pres presentation we identified that if we provide any type of transportation option to our CCS students then we

143have to provide yellow bus service to some of the CMP schools. So that was scenario one. We had a price tag associated with that of about $4.5 million in projected savings. Option two was if we did not provide any transportation to our CCS high schoolers then that puts us in a position where we would not have to provide transportation to the CNP schools. So in this recommendation, there are some lottery schools and since we have the option of not providing any high school transportation, we would not be able to provide that transportation to those 100% lottery schools. If we chose to do that, then that opens up the conversation around providing transportation to the CMP high schoolers. Trying to keep it pretty simple. Did that? >> Yes. and I'm trying to make sure that we

144understand the two conversations in the context. >> Thank you so much. Just a quick question. Is it fair to state um and even ask the question is this more about again savings and the idea of redistributing equitably resources in the district that go back to a classroom that go back to a building. This is more about that conversation than it is the latter that you just mentioned about charter nonpub. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. >> 100%. >> I thank you for that. I just want to make sure that we uplift that point. Um parents have every right and entitlement uh and support to be able to send their children where they feel it is best for them to receive education. That is the right and entitlement of a parent to do the work of doing that

145to ensure their child has the type of education opportunity that they feel is best. But in the instance of Columbus City Schools specifically, I think it's important for us to understand what is best in terms of provision academically and otherwise for the experience of our students. And it is not intended in any way, shape, form or fashion to be punitive against the community as a whole. I want to I want to be clear in saying that. I really want to make sure I put that forward. Um so thank you for that. Are there any additional questions? Yes, sir. Um this one I think is pretty simple. Uh so again another simple request is you brought up some extreme examples of students being on buses for I don't four hours, five hours a day, but it

146would be nice to just see what the average distribution is again, right? Or that just so we can see across um what that looks like. And then I think just like one other general comment that I would have is I definitely appreciate these workshops. I know it's a lot of work to put them together. Um but this feels reminiscent of the last time that we tried to have conversations around this where it's all happening in one week. And so I'm looking at this going, hey, this is two weeks out. I think I already have stuff planned. I don't even know if I can make these right. And I think something would be really helpful given I know that we have to move fast because we're trying to come against legislation again the second time. Uh

147it takes a lot of work to plan these things out and we need time and runway to be able to plan them out. But I think for the sake of the community, you know, spreading these out a little bit more into um November and maybe even December so that people have more time and opportunities to plan around being able to attend these these town halls would be really really great because otherwise it just feels kind of rushed to be honest. >> I thank you so much sir for that feedback. Um, I like to look at this as an opportunity to take a first bite at the apple. A first bite at the apple with the opportunity to do a couple of things. One, not only glean the feedback that we're looking for, right? But at

148the same time be able to refine a process as we think further as we as this as the board thinks further out about how to engage these opportunities again and what are the more optimal ways in which to engage the community. How do we meet them as you're asking where where where our community needs to be met. So this is a first spot at the apple opportunity that helps us contribute substantively to the conversations that we're having right now. Right. But as the board moving forward has every opportunity to engage the community again. Now, not only we have a good model, we've got some idea about how we can refine it moving forward. That's all. But I thank you for that feedback. It is absolutely uh on point and I hope that the administration heard

149it. I believe they did. Yeah. Thank you though. Any additional comments? Yes, ma'am. Good evening and um thank you for the presentations tonight. I don't know if my mic on me. >> Okay. >> Um thank you for the presentations tonight, Dr. Brown, Dr. Michelle, um and Dr. Chapman for your clarification on a lot of the ideas presented to us tonight. Um I also want to say thank you to the community for showing up tonight um as we're talking about pressing issues. A lot of the projections we were shown tonight, I mean, were warm and fuzzy. Um, but thank you, Martin, for bringing up legislation we have coming down the pipeline and Dr. uh Miranda for even bringing up enrollment. Um, these are harsh realities that we also need to take in consideration as we make

150these really hard decisions. Um but something I think I the community and myself would like to see is these projections also um depicting I would say significant changes in enrollment. A lot of families are upset. A lot of families are angry. Um staff in these buildings who are losing their buildings are upset. So I almost want to see projections, you know, less warm and fuzzy, you know, more a snapshot of reality. What is our plan B? Do we have a plan C? You know, I mean, we can go down the alphabet, but I think we need to also see real depicted, real numbers that may not be what we were shown in the first presentation. Um, I want to see potentially what what could happen if those shifts do occur. And I think those are

151would be, I would say, good data points to present at these town halls. This is why we're having these town halls because so many people have concerns. This is probably the biggest audience we've had at one of our joint committee meetings. Thank you guys for coming. Thank you for our public comment. Thank you. Um but moving forward as a committee member um in the board, I I think we need to see some different data different data points if you if they'll have, you know, I think that would give us more of a understanding of what we're really working with, you know. Um and that's all I want to say. I wasn't going to speak if I felt so moved to say something, but I think everything has been warm and fuzzy. It looks good. It

152looks good. But what happens, you know, if legislation passes? What if can we get our land back? Are we going to lose our land to these charter schools? Like, what happens if we can save schools? If that's an option. So, I would just say seeing a depiction of different data in a different light. >> I thank you so so very much for uplifting those points. I promise you. Thank you. >> Yeah. Um what I'm able to distill from what you've shared is that in th this conversation is actually beginning we're our next set of conversation will actually be that in joint committees specifically around staffing and impacts in terms of resources. So, we're going to be discussing quite heavily and and quite honestly the human capital aspect of this that we haven't to the to

153with with any great depth to this point at this point in time. In all fairness to the administration, what we really sought to do is one give this joint committee and even the board a deeper dive into some aspects of the operational things that impact academics. And the biggest one you've seen uplifted to date is transportation. It's been transportation. So now we're in a space where we have a good look at what that entails, where there's opportunity for savings. We'll have further vetting on the numbers of that and scoring as they work collaboratively together that give us again an even better snapshot. Um but at the end of the day what's coming up in November it 13th is definitely going to be that conversation around staffing and its impact on curriculum and what's available for

154students in the schools that we've outlined impacted right now. So thank you for that. Is there anyone else who has a thought, concern, question? Is there any further context or uh for staff to be able to provide? Dr. Chapman, do you have any closing thoughts? >> Certainly. Um I would just like to name and say that um we are tackling some very very heavy and hard decisions as a board, as a community. Some of these systems like talking about our school lottery have been in place for decades. And so we have to ask ourself, are the systems that we've created that were created several decades before, are they still serving us to the in the best ways to support our students and to support our programming? We talked about facilities tonight. Many of these facilities

155are over a hundred years old. Are those same facilities spaces still supporting our students, our staff today? Those are the questions that we have before us. Our last meeting we talked about transportation, the fact that we have continued to provide transportation to students above the state minimum. Um we have to ask ourselves if are we continuing to redirect resources? Is there an opportunity for us to redirect resources to the classroom to support instruction to support our students needs? We have to ask ourselves these these decisions, these questions, but these are choices that we have to make as a board and as a community. And so again, we want to remind everyone that no final decisions have been made. These are conversations. We encourage continued dialogue. And if not lottery, then what? If not um transportation,

156then what? If not facilities, then what? We still have significant budget pressures that we face. We still have a significant um budget gap that we need to close. And so we have to have conversations. It can't just be no to everything. We have to say yes to something. We have to really engage, ask the questions. What else? What other clarity do you need? What additional information that you need? Because we still have a task before us. and our board will be voting in December on how we're going to make up a $50 million budget gap. And so those are the questions that we have for us. Again, these are all choices. There were intentional choices when they were made 30 years ago. And so we have choices before us today to think about how we

157reallocate our resources to support our students, our families, our educators today. >> All right. Thank you, Dr. Chapman. Now, I want to go and do the next step and the closing step. There have been a few recommendations that were uplifted to the joint committee this evening. The first recommendation, and colleagues, if I'm off on something, please feel free to give your your poor blind brother uh some direction. Um, the first recommendation was that we bring before the board a consideration to revise or or uh uh hold off I'm I'm not sure if I'm using the term correctly. Policy 7105 uh which is the I don't think it's an amendment. >> President Kohl's. >> Yes, sir. Um the recommendation um in that first set of slides we received was to recommend to the board that we

158temporar temporarily resin policy 7105. >> Okay. So there is a request to the board to temporarily resend policy 7105. That's the first one. The second one was uh in this presentation to look at policy 8600. look at policy 8600 and amend it to uh allow the district greater flexibility to not transport or transport uh middle school students, K through eight school students who are outside who are not attending a 100% lottery school. If you we have K through eight students who are in in open enrollment, they are actually engaged in open enrollment but they are not attending a 100% lottery school that we consider in policy 8600 not transporting them. So we have two there's a third please share the third. Uh the third was back to the facility uh conversation and it was to

159have the board consider um some additional moves that um uh and consolidations that were outlined by Dr. Brown. So, the move of um all of the ones that he said gifted to Aendale um to South Miffland >> Oakland Park one >> uh yes to close or uh KO and make Oakland Park a neighborhood school. Um >> I think those were the big ones that were the additional things. So the realignment >> just to consider the the rest of the realignment have that go back to the board uh to have deeper conversations about those >> that was the third recommendation. >> So what I Yes sir. >> Um yes President Cole if we may before we begin to make the motions and vote on these if we could just consider um additionally um the joint committee

160recommending to the board to um calendar discussion for regarding new facility construction. I think our next agenda is kind of getting a little bit heavy, but maybe at our first meeting in November, the board could discuss the best way to continue to leverage our PI dollars. Um, going back to that 100, you know, like I said, we're using 100% of our PI dollars on facilities upkeep. Um, and so I would just ask that we could consider um as we're making the motions that the joint committee recommend to the board to discuss um the best way to leverage our PI dollars in specific regards to new construction at our first November meeting. So that you so you're basically asking that the board that that the joint committee ask the board to create a calendar date and

161time by which we'll discuss these matters of new bills what have you. >> Yes, please. >> Okay. >> Where are we going to get? >> Yeah. Because we're not there. But I appreciate the fact that what he's asking is is that the board will then at least calendar that that conversation. >> And I think that's reasonable. That's a reasonable request. Okay. So is there a motion? because I don't want to I don't think it's necessary to do this all separately. Yes, Mr. Treasur. >> I just I'll have the board roll if you will on the motion in second since it's a special meeting. >> Yes, but these are committee recommendations. >> President Cole Lydia >> committee needs to vote >> otherwise. Okay. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. Lydia, >> you have something. >>

162I have the commission. She has the role. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Okay. Wonderful. Thank you. All right. So, is there a motion to adopt to adopt all of the recommendations by the joint committee to be forwarded to the board for further discussion? Is there is there a motion? >> Motion. >> It's been motioned. Is there a second? >> Second. >> It's been motioned and seconded. >> All right. It's been motioned and seconded. Can we call the role? question. Hold on. Is there any >> Is there any further discussion? >> Can we just Can we just go one more time because we we keep going back and I just want to make sure I understand. >> President Cole, I'll motion to separate these motions out so that we understand exactly what we're voting on at

163every given time to get to get a little convoluted. >> All right. Okay. So, we'll make So, we'll we'll roll the roll this back here. What we will do since it's now been motioned and seconded um what we'll do is can we vote to resend this initial motion? Is there a motion to resend this initial motion? >> President will just withdraw. >> You can withdraw it. Just withdraw. >> Okay. Motion to withdraw has been made. >> Seconded. >> Let's call a roll. >> It's just withdrawing, isn't it? >> Yeah, just withdrawing. We don't. >> All right. Okay. So now what we will do is on a motion for motion basis adopt each uh recommendation. The first recommendation. Can we pull it up please? Want to make sure we have accurate language. >> Yeah. They just

164said um vote to forward the recommendation as presented um to the board which included the schools uh around Gifted um Fairwood, Ducksberry, Como. >> I think that was it. So this is so in essence this is a motion to adopt the realignment plan as presented by Dr. Brown by the administration to adopt that realignment plan. >> Excuse me. >> President Cole it's it's to forward the recommendation to the full board for consideration. There's no actual adoption. Thank you to forward. So we will forward this recommendation to the board. Forward the realignment plan recommendation to the board. >> Is there a motion? >> Motion. >> All right. Motion. Is there a second? >> A second. >> All right. Motion and seconded. Can we call the role, please? >> Yes. >> Barnes. >> Yes. >> Turner. >>

165Yes. >> Cole. >> Yes. >> Davis. >> Yes. >> Les. >> Yes. Miller. >> Yes. >> Dr. Morena, >> yes. >> Musa, >> yes. >> Price, >> yes. >> Reyes, >> Simmons, >> yes. >> Of church, >> yes. >> Vera, >> yes. >> All right. Motion pass. Thank you. All right. The second recommendation. Is there a motion to forward the second res recommendation which is to look at policy 7105 for possibility of temporarily resending? Is there a motion to forward the recommendation for the board of education to have further conversation about resending temporarily policy 7105? Is there a motion? Motion >> second. >> Motion and second. >> Could you remind us what that is though? >> Policy 7105. >> Just give me a moment. >> The requirement. >> It's the requirement to have the community

166task force before closing >> consolidation. Yes. >> Consolidation. So in reality what it would be just so all so as I think was presented by administration all of the uh recommendations except for KOMO were were talked about already by the task force. So if the board were to consider KOMO so closing KO that has not officially gone through the 7105 process that that school was not brought up at all in the task force. They didn't look at any data. they didn't they didn't consider it. Um so if we would like to move forward with that recommendation, we would need to do something with this policy. Now just as a reminder, the policy itself was put into policy committee. Uh that committee reviewed it um then sent it over to the academic facility alignment committee to

167be reviewed under an academic lens. Unfortunately or we can't we decided to do this instead. So, we're doing joint committee work because of uh you know, things that we need to get done. And so, really, this is the opportunity to kind of advance it from committee to the board so the board can look at it as intended. Um, but I'll I'll have uh Chair Engles or the policy committee maybe chat about this too. >> Yeah. I also just want to be very clear that it's my opinion, and I'm not speaking for anybody, but it's my opinion that it's kind of unnecessary for this committee to do this action because the board, even if it failed, the board can still just rescend its own policy at any time or temporarily suspend its own policy at any

168time. So for whatever that's worth >> and at the end of the day whether you guys forward it or not even if you do forward it we can still as she just stated make that decision at the table. What at this point all you are doing is forwarding the recommendation for us to have further dialogue about the possibility of rescending that policy. And then that mean that and with the idea of temporarily doing that that means that we're putting a timeline that means we're having conversation about what that timeline looks like maybe what aspects of this policy we want to put a temporary timeline on it that there's further conversation in that space but all you're doing is saying that we believe that this is something that is going to support board work. Thus we're

169recommending you guys consider this in further deliberation. That makes sense. >> It does make sense. Can I just point out I think the the one concern here from the community might be and it's why I wanted to break these out as separate votes is it's then unclear where the community input is going to be in these things. And I just want to make sure that's super clear when we're talking about that. >> I'm I'm sorry where the community >> input will be on that, right? Because for better or worse, even if they weren't perfect and we may have not have agreed with it, at least there was a specific process we're following. And so if we're suspending that pro process, it's unclear to me as a community member. No, we have three we have three

170workshop town halls that we'll be having discussion on where the committee the community has every bit of opportunity between today and through that time or beyond up until such time that we actually discuss this. They have every bit of opportunity to email, come to the meeting, call any one of our contact phone numbers, show up to board meetings and express what their concerns are around this. That opportunity is wide and broad. Yes. >> I mean, it's there, but I just pointed out that this is now condensed into a week, right? That's two weeks out. That might be hard for people who've already made plans to to come to, right? Um, I think it's also something to be said that a lot of us have been sitting here have sat through a lot of meetings this

171year trying to learn and really comprehend. And I think we have a deep comprehension where we can start to ask some really insightful questions. And I'm not trying to say that people in the community aren't or don't have that. They also have very well-informed and smart opinions. But when you have people tasked with looking at it continuously to try to figure it out, I think sometimes you come to an in a different interesting solution, right? And so I'm just trying to point out by not having that kind of task force in place. I definitely have a concern as a community member that there isn't as much transparency in the process of of what we're deciding. Just to make that clear. >> No, I understand. I thank you for that. Um for us moving forward, please

172go ahead. Um, board president Cole, I just want to make it really clear that my opinion of committee work is that it should make policy recommendations when it has had robust discussion and when it has done the work to really examine whether or not that committee recommendation makes sense. And when we have situations where the board can just take the action anyway, I still don't really understand why a committee is being asked to do something that it hasn't fully vetted and evaluated. and I don't like creating or recommending even to the board policy in that manner. So I just I want to make that statement clear. >> Uh thank you. Um at the end of the day the board as per its bylaws and as per its behavior and culture and practice. We value every

173bit of transparency. We value every bit of ensuring that there is community inclusion in our conversations particularly around building closure andor consolidation. This is one of the reasons specifically why we are here tonight to have that rich that rich conversation around solutions and recommendations that have been provided to us. So moving forward, I'm pretty confident that should there be further conversation around closure and consolidation, this is something that the community will certainly have every bit of a veil to question, to provide insight, to provide concern about. Absolutely. Yes, sir. >> Um, thank you, President Cole. I think it's also important to remember because I do hear our committee colleagues concerned that um making this recommendation doesn't mean the board would make action at its next meeting. I don't think that's the intention that we would

174vote on these schools um immediately. Um and I certainly intend um as a board member to work collaboratively with the superintendent to um be able to go see all these programs just like we did last December. And I imagine that there'd be a similar engagement process to what we did um last year um in the fall and late win early winter um again this this year. And so I think there will definitely be additional opportunities for the board to um really weigh in and get a feel for each of these individual recommendations. >> And in closing before we move forward with that um the recommendations that the previous most recent task force made, I don't believe that they are necessarily off the table. I don't believe that at all. Um, in fact, the action that

175we took as a board this past December was to further vet, was to go to those schools ourselves and have the conversations with the staff, with families, see how education was dispensed with children and get their feedback, our student feedback about what their thoughts were. that then helped us drive the decisions that we made moving forward to either close a particular building or close another one under a certain set of conditions. This is how we made that decision. A task force provided us some insights based on information that they were given by the administration. We at and and we weren't even a part of that process, might I add. Hopefully moving forward that won't ever happen again, but we'll work together. We're collaborative, right? But at the end of the day, we then said, we

176want to go move further and meet these schools and see what's happening there ourselves and glean community insight. And we did that. Yes, sir. But I hear your concerns as well and your heart on it. I thank you. Okay. So, we have created a motion. We have created a motion to move forward the furthering of conversation with the board of education to deliberate on policy 7105 for possible recension. Is that uh is there a motion for that? >> Did we do that already? >> Okay, we motioned and seconded. Thank you. All right. Uh there's been a motion second. Can we call the role, please? >> Yes. Ofurch? >> Yes. Yes. >> Yes. >> Miranda, >> yes. >> Miller, >> yes. >> No. >> Davis, >> no. >> Cole, >> yes. >> Turner, >> yes. >>

177Barnes, >> yes. >> No. >> All right. Thank you. Motion passes. Okay. Our third recommendation to move forward is what? can swing pull it up. Thank you, Mr. Sim. >> Yes, President Cole. Um I would like to motion that the um joint committee recommend to the board of education that we um review policy 8600 again and recommend that the board continues lottery transportation for K through8 students attending 100% lotteryonly schools and discontinue K through8 transportation for students who um attend non 100% lottery schools. >> All right, that is a motion. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Motion and seconded. Uh and and folks feel free if you if you are not in a space of comfort, if you're not in a space of confidence. This is this is your opportunity to to express that.

178This is your opportunity to do that in a vote. All right. It's been motioned and seconded. >> This is just for the cons for the consideration. >> For consideration. Absolutely. Um, all right. So, it's been motioned and seconded. Are is there any discussion before we call the role? Is there any discussion? >> All right. Let's call the role. >> Yes. >> Barnes, >> yes. >> As Turner, >> yes. >> Davis, >> yes. >> Miller, >> yes. >> Miranda, >> yes. >> Simmons, >> yes. >> Church, >> yes. Yes. >> All right. Motion passes. All right. And the last >> Yes. Um thank you, President Cole. I would like to motion that the joint committee recommend to the board of education to calendar for discussion at its um November Wednesday the 5th meeting that's been rescheduled

179um from the 4th to the 5th of our normal committee day or normal board meeting day. Um, but I'd like to motion that the joint committee recommend to the board to calendar for discussion um the usage of our PI dollars in a discussion regarding new school construction on November the 5th. >> So, let's do I need to make it more clear or >> Yes, please. Okay. Because you're asking us to have a discussion. You're asking for the board to actually have a discussion or the board to calendar the discussion. Well, in this moment, I'm asking for the joint committee to recommend to the board to um have a so it would still be the board's decision to take that recommendation up or not. Um but I'm making I'm asking that the joint committee recommend to

180the board um it to engage in a discussion regarding the usage of our PI dollars, that 100% on upkeep versus 0% on construction right now. Um and discuss new school construction at our November the 5th meeting. >> Okay. So there's there's a I think I think the substance of what you're asking for and let's get to the substance of what you're asking. The substance of your request is that the board calendar a conversation period. But what you're trying to do, it sounds like what you're trying to do is make it that we actually have this discussion on November the 5th. >> Well, the date I suppose the date is not particularly important. So we could remove that from the motion. It can just be a recommendation at the board at some I just you typically

181when we make these recommendations in committee they're typically towards the next for the next board meeting but the date is not particularly important I don't think >> um madam vice president >> so um I I hear you I agree I think we got to talk about it I think it's something the ETRM is going to be talking about in the new year I think for this moment in time it's really unfair to ask these community members to uh to do that because we've they have been presented no information at this moment in time about any of that information. Um and while I agree that it is a discussion that we definitely need to have and I think that it's on the agenda for ETRM coming in the new year um you know at this moment

182in time it is not right and it is not right to ask the committee these community members to vote on something that again they've been presented no information about >> is my opinion. >> Okay. >> Their present goal. So >> just briefly um to both of my colleagues points I think we can work with board leadership to add this to a future agenda. We don't really need to bring it before the committee as president uh vice president is mentioning but as board member Sims has asked for this several times. I think it's important that we work with you and the superintendent to put this on a future agenda and we don't need to do that right here right now. You all can make that decision offline. >> All right. So, a motion is being made.

183I want to honor the motion that has been made and if there is a second, then we can move forward with whatever the vote would be. If there is no second, then we'll take the actual steps to prioritize the conversation, right? Prioritize the conversation and look to how we take forward steps to address what it is that we need to know in that new building, you know, that new building investment re, you know, space, if I'm making sense. Um, President President Cole, I'd be happy to withdraw my motion if there's just a commitment from board leadership that we will calendar that for discussion. But I will say, and I will just be very clear, this was supposed to be the meeting where we talked about new construction, and that did not happen. That was what

184we talked about a month ago. That was, you know, we had lots of conversations at the board leadership, you know, board member Simmons level with the superintendent. Um, so that was supposed to happen and take place today. Um, and so I'd be happy. I will withdraw my motion, but I just want to be very clear that um that was supposed to happen already. And so I've just I it's time for us to talk about new school construction. It's been 10 years and again we are spending 100% of our $65 million permanent improvement fund on upkeep and construction on old legacy buildings. That means that in 10 years we will still be spending 100% of those PI dollars on upkeep and construction. If we begin to shift that mindset and instead dedicate 15% 25% to the

185construction of a new high school, um, for example, that means in 10 years our students will be in new facilities that are modern, state-of-the-art, serve their needs, are less square footage, less legacy square footage means there's less space to heat, to cool, to secure, to maintain. Um, and so it's been 10 years and I think waiting till next year to have that discussion is frankly it's unacceptable to me as a board member, as someone who um, you know, ran for the board to >> I thank you and your comments are duly noted. >> Thank you. >> I thank you. Your comments are duly noted. All right. So that motion has been rescended. Yes, ma'am. >> Do you need a motion to adjourn? >> Uh, it is time. Uh thank you all for being here this

186evening. It's been a absolute pleasure uh getting through very tough conversations with you all. Is there a motion to adjurnn? >> Motion to adjurnn. Second. >> Motion and seconded. All in favor? I. >> All right. Thank you all. Have a safe trip home. Please. This start.