001[Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] Please. [Music] Hey man. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey, Heat. [Music] There we go. She ride. [Music] Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey, hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey, hey, [Music] Heat. Heat. N. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Hey, heat. Hey. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [Music] Greetings and welcome to this week's highlights from across the district. March is National Why I Love My H.B.CU month. Our staff across the district are sharing why they love their H.B.CU. CUS and the impact these historic institutions have had on their education, careers, and commitment to uplifting future generations. Don't miss the opportunity to represent your alma mater. Show your H.B.CU pride by
002wearing themed attire every Friday. Let's honor the impact of H.B.CU and celebrate the employees who make CCS shine. On Tuesday, March 5th, CCS teachers completed their final guided letters training session as part of their professional development day. Letters training is the gold standard in professional development for the science of reading, and our dedicated elementary teachers have gone above and beyond to complete all eight modules. Reaching this milestone means that over 1,500 educators in our district are now fully trained in the science of reading, equipping them with the essential skills to support student success. And we're not stopping there. With over 30 trained letters facilitators, we're ensuring long-term sustainability to continue this important work for years to come. We can't wait to see how their instruction transforms their classrooms, empowering students to dream big and achieve
003more. Wednesday, March 6th was filled with imagination and creativity as 36 students from Oakland Park Elementary, Ridge View Middle School, Eco Kimwood French Immersion, and Wland Park Elementary School participated in Columbus City Schools 2025 invention convention event. This statewide program is designed to inspire, encourage, reward, and recognize students in grades K through eight for using their innovative ideas to develop new solutions to everyday problems. This year's inventions range from personal cosmetic solutions to pollution fighting devices. Top performers will have the opportunity to move on to the regional Ohio invention competition with the potential to qualify for the RTX Invention Convention US Nationals in Michigan. We are so proud of our young inventors for their creativity, problem solving, and determination. Their ideas have the power to shape the future, and we can't wait to see where
004their innovative ideas take them next. Recently, 68 CCS schools earned gold, silver, and bronze distinctions for their commitment to positive behavioral interventions and supports. This recognition highlights the dedication of our educators and staff and creating positive school environments that support student success. PBIS focus on proactive strategies to promote positive behavior, reinforce expectations, and cultivate safe, supportive, and learning spaces for all students. Through team-based planning and problem solving, our schools are implementing impactful interventions that encourage student growth. Congratulations to our PBIS award-winning schools. We are proud of your commitment to building a strong, supportive school culture that makes a difference every day. Save the dates. Join Columbus City Schools as Pathway Express feeds full steam ahead to arrive at its last destination of the year. Champions Golf Course on Saturday, April 12th, 2025 from 10:00 a.m.
005to 1:00 p.m. Whether you're hitting the green or learning new ways to stay healthy, this event is packed with interactive learning and tips to help you live your best, healthiest life. Throughout the day, family learning experiences include meeting New York Times best-selling author Jason Reynolds, learning new ways to strengthen your mind and body, free books and giveaways while supplies last, and free learning tools to take home and extend your learning. Free parking for families on the final destination will focus on the theme of adaptability, a vital skill in our portrait of a graduate. This hands-on experience will show students how to think on their feet, adapt to feedback, and navigate diverse perspectives to develop creative, effective solutions. Don't forget to enroll your student in summer experience. We have a health and fitness pathway students will
006love. Learning is a journey, so hop on board the Pathway Express. These have been your highlights from around the district for March 18th. Thank you so much for joining us. [Music] Good evening. Uh, welcome to today's March 18th, 2025 regular business meeting of the Columbus City School Board of Education. Mr. Treasurer, can you call the role? Miss Engles, here. Dr. Pierce, Miss Reyes, Mr. Simmons, present, Miss Vera here, Vice President Adair, present. President Cole, I am here. We have a quorum. Uh, join me for the pledge of allegiance. 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 and justice for all. Good thing I didn't throw anybody off today. Sometimes I go the military way of saying
007it. Um this evening I'm really excited to acknowledge uh a couple of student ambassadors who have been shadowing our executive level leaders today. I'll allow our executive leaders to announce who our students are. Please feel free. Good evening um President Cole, board members and community members. Um tonight, um we are pleased to introduce Abigail Bimpa who is a senior at Northland High School and she is one of our superintendent student ambassadors. Had the privilege and the pleasure of um spending the day and learning from Abigail today. Um and Abigail is um the co-president for the Northland STEM Club. Um she is involved. She was the president and project manager for the Boys and Girls Club. Um and certainly involved in several professional organizations. She's taking classes at Columbus State and um certainly has high hopes
008and aspirations for her future and her plans has concrete plans for next year, but we're not ready to give those away yet. So it was a privilege and a pleasure uh to spend some time and learn with Abigail today. Thank you, Dr. Chapman. Good evening. I'm pleased to have Rebecca Idu with me. Um, today we had a lot of learning, a lot of engagement. Um, she had the opportunity to attend OSBA's legislative day and I think it was very educational. She had a tremendous amount of excellent questions. I think I have my hands full tonight. I think I could defer to her for my report. More than happy to do so. Um, she's a student at cause, a junior, and she has plans to go on to college. She's debating between law school or medical
009school. So, very pleased to have her with us here tonight. Awesome. Welcome both of you. I was ready to grow. I was ready so much to brag about you, Miss Bimpmpa. And I'm ready to brag about you also, Miss Ida, because you guys, first of all, I thought she was going to be a treasurer today. I'm with you. I didn't be a lawyer. She took so so many notes during the legislative day. So, she did a wonderful job. I'm very proud of you. I won't spill the beans. We're waiting. They're waiting for the senior signing day and that's when they'll they'll share their choices for their future um secondary plan. So, stay tuned. Yes, ma'am. And turn to Auditor O' Conor. Absolutely. I had a great pleasure of having Annayia Reedus from East High School,
010which is my alma mater. So, that was fantastic. I think we had a lot of great comments about that. Um, she's a into culinary arts. Um, and she just came out. We had she's a superintendent, student ambassador, student council president, basketball team manager, small business owner. She was very inquisitive of the entire staff. Uh, we did take a team picture up there with with her. So, uh, it was just a fantastic day. Something I'm looking forward to in the future also. Oh, wow. Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you. Thank you guys for being with us today. We really honor you. Um moving forward, before we adopt the agenda, uh I'll walk right through it. We do not have public speakers today. Uh but we do have a pretty robust list of board matters uh that
011goes from 4.1 to 4.25. In addition to that, we will cover executive level reports. Um one of which we'll get from Dr. Chapman. uh we'll move on to uh consent agenda after that and once we do that we will go through consent agenda which is 9.1 to 23.10 10 zero after which we will then go to an executive session. Post executive session we will not return uh to public but we will adjourn from from uh executive session. Is there a motion to approve the agenda? So moved. There's second. Second. Moved and seconded. Vice President Adair. Yes. Miss Vera? Yes. Miss Engles? Yes. Mr. Simmons? Yes. President Cole? Yes. Motion passes. All right. So, uh, we will begin with, uh, our section four, which is board matters. And what I'd like to do is start off
012reading for motion to approve by the board the, uh, resolution that was passed on our behalf in support of us by Columbus City Council and unanimously passed. Allow me to call on the Ohio General Assembly and Governor DeWine to fulfill the constitutional duty to properly fund the schools of Ohio. Whereas the 134th General Assembly and the 135th General Assembly of Ohio adopted the fair school funding plan in 2021 and 2022, providing a rational, transparent, comprehensive, and fair system for funding schools based on the actual costs of providing a basic education for all students in Ohio. And whereas where the Ohio fair school funding plan was adopted in uh by Governor DeWine for fiscal year 26 and fiscical year 27 executive budget. The plan fails to increase the base cost of inputs to match the increased
013costs to educate Ohio students. And whereas this failure would functionally cut over 100 million in funding to Ohio schools, including tens of millions of dollars to Columbus City Schools over the next two years, compromising the integrity of Ohio's public educ system and the future of Columbus children. And whereas the damage caused by the loss of funding for Ohio students would abandon the state's constitutional duty to properly provide its citizens with an adequate education. And whereas the president of the Columbus school district have fulfilled their responsibility by passing a levy in November 2023 to increase revenues for schools. This state cut in school funding would abdicate Ohio's model of shared responsibility to fund education through state and local government. And whereas the city of Columbus believes in the invaluable role of education in fostering the next
014generation of of Americans and understands the Ohio General Assembly has the opportunity to pass the Ohio Fair School Funding Plan with the appropriate increase and base costs for education students now and therefore be it resolved by the Columbus City Council by the Columbus Council of the City of Columbus, this that this council hereby calls on the Ohio General Assembly and Governor DeWine to fulfill their constitutional duty to properly fund the schools of Ohio. Is there a motion to accept the resolution from Columbus City Council? Is there a second? Second. Motion is seconded. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles, abstain as an employee of the legislature. Mr. Simmons, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole emphatically. Yes. Thank you. Motion passes. All right. Moving on to resolution two, which is uh celebrating the National Reading Month. Mr.
015Simmons. Thank you. Um good evening. Before we begin tonight, I'd like to welcome Miss Zana Saab, a fourth grader from Liberty Elementary School to the podium. I will now [Applause] I will now read the motion. Whereas the Columbus City School District proudly joins communities across the nation in celebrating National Reading Month, a time dedicated to promoting the joy and importance of reading for all students, educators, and families alike. Whereas National Reading Month was established to honor Theodore Seuss Gazelle, known as Dr. Seuss, who was born March 2nd, 1904, and became one of the most beloved children's authors of all time, inspiring generations with classics such as The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Bluefish. I think I did that wrong. One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish,
016Bluefish. Yes. Um, whereas despite his famous title, Dr. Seuss was not a doctor but he was a master of storytelling, creativity and imagination using rhythm and rhyme to help young lead readers develop literacy skills. Whereas in recognition for his contributions to children's literacy and education, Dr. Seuss was awarded the Pillars Prize in 1984, solidifying his legacy as a champion of early reading and lifelong learning. Whereas while reading is a fundamental skill today, history shows us that literacy was once a privilege reserved for a select few. As written communication first emerged around 3,500 BC, books became available in Rome around 23 BC. And with the widespread availability of printed books did not begin until the the 15th century with the invention of the printing press. Whereas despite the technological advancements that have made books more accessible
017than ever than ever, a modern society faces a decline in reading habits, making National Reading Month an essential time to to reignite a passion for books and storytelling. Whereas the Columbus City School District is committed to strengthening reading reading proficiency with a focused goal of increasing the percentage of third graders stu third grade students reading proficient on the Ohio State test from 34.5% in school year 2022 to 2023 to 44.5% by June 2028 ensuring that all students have the skills they need to succeed in school and beyond. Whereas reading not only enhances academic performance but also boosts cognitive function, expands imagination, strengthens empathy, reduces stress, making it an essential part of well-being, well-rounded education. We have further resolved by the Columbus Board of Education that this board does hereby designate March 2025 as National Reading
018Month and calls upon students, teachers, parents, and the broader educ in the broader community to celebrate the power of reading as a gateway to knowledge, creativity, and lifelong success. That is a motion. Is there a second? Second. Motion and second. Miss Engles. Yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. Miss Vera, yes. President Cole. Yes. Our motion passes. All right. Moving to the next resolution. I'm sorry. I'm Forgive me. Welcome, young lady. Hello, board president Cole, Vice President, Adair, the additional board members, superintendent, chapmen, and guest. My name is Zana Sam. I am a proud fourth grader at Liberty Elementary School. I am so excited to be here tonight to talk about something very important, reading. My love for reading began when I was just a baby. My sister would read all kinds of stories
019to me and even taught me the lesson that she learned from them. Reading is more than just words on a page. It helps us learn, imagine, and explore the world, even from our classrooms. Last year, when I read I survived the attacks of September 11th, 2001, I was surprised that that event happened for real in my own backyard. and just a few years before I was born. Learning about 911 and the events that led up to it caused me to be a problem solver. When we be when we become strong readers, we can understand new ideas, solve problems, and become better writers, too. That's why I believe every student deserves the best chance to become a great reader. In our district, we are using the science of reading to make sure all students learn the
020best way. This means we focus on how our brains learn to read and use strategies that help us grow. We practice things like phonics, learning how letters and sounds work together. Fluency, reading smoothly and understanding what we read, comprehension, thinking about what the words really mean. To help us succeed, our teachers make sure that every student gets the strong reading lessons in their classrooms. Our teachers use fun, engaging activities that help us learn to read, write, and understand stories better. One of my favorite stories that we read this year was Perseus and the follow Medusa. After we read it, the class engaged in collaborative learning about Greek mythology. And we built life-sized posters on our chosen Greek god or goddess. The class learned a lot about another culture. We also have we also have special
021programs and resources like small groupoup instruction to give students extra practice when needed and exciting classroom books that help us love reading. I've seen these strategies help me and my classmates. When we work on reading together, we feel more confident, more excited, and more ready for the future. Thank you for supporting our teachers and schools and giving us the best reading education possible. Because of your help, students like me will grow into strong readers and lifelong learners. Thank you. Thank you. Come on. We want to take a picture. Thank you. I think we just saw a future public speaker. [Applause] This is so telling a moment too. So, our next resolution is about honoring Women's Month and honoring the legacy of Miss Angela Pace. But to be started off, to kick it off, Miss Pace,
022I I don't know. You got to go behind somebody that's real sharp. If you would come to the podium, Miss Pace, go right ahead. Board member Vera. Yes. I'll wait for Miss Pace to join us at the podium. Good evening. uh celebrating Women's History Month, honoring the Angela Pace um enduring legacy of service as an alumnest of Columbus City Schools. Whereas Women's History Month is a time to recognize and celebrate the countless contributions of women who have shaped history, broken barriers, and paved the way for future generations through their leadership, advocacy, and service. Whereas Angela Pace is a living testament to the power of women's leadership, having dedicated her life to serving central Ohio, beginning with her education at South High School and Capitol University before embarking on a distinguished career in broadcast journalism. And
023whereas Angela's career in media began with a variety of roles including at including as a news director and reporter for radio in Newark, a floor director and anchor at WCMTV and ultimately as an integral figure at WBNS 10TV News where her deep connections and expertise enrich the field of journalism and strengthen our community. Whereas Angela served as a trusted and respected anchor for 10TV Eyewitness News for 13 years. She established a reputation for delivering news with professionalism, integrity, and authenticity before accepting the role of director of community affairs in 2006, a position she held for 19 years. And whereas the director of community affairs, Angela played a pivotal role in connecting media with nonprofit organizations and advocacy groups, using her platform to amplify important stories, highlight community milestones, and support meaningful initiatives that uplift central
024Ohio residents. And whereas Angela's commitment to service extend beyond her professional career as it demonstrated as demonstrated by her active leadership on numerous boards including the Lincoln Theater Association, the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts, Capitol UN University Board of Trustees, the Mid Ohio Food Bank, the Greater Columbus Arts Council, Nationwide Children's Hospital Foundation, and I know I can among others. And whereas Angela's remarkable contributions earned her numerous accolades including induction into the NATAS Ohio Valley silver circle, the 2025 Salvation Army Angel Tree Award, a Columbus Association of Black Journalist Lifetime Achievement Award, three Emmy Awards, a Regional Telly Award, and the establishment of a foundation in her honor by the Columbus Bar Association to support the Center for children and family advocacy at Nationwide Children's Hospital. And whereas Angela is an icon in the
025Columbus community, a leader in general journalism and advocacy, and a role model whose legacy will forever be woven into the history of Columbus in central Ohio. Now, therefore, be it resolved by the Columbus Board of Education that in recognition of Women's History Month, this board proudly honors Angela Pace as a living icon whose extraordinary contributions to journalism, community service, civic leadership have left an incredible mark on the Columbus and central Ohio. We celebrate her enduring legacy within Columbus City Schools and the broader community and look ahead with great anticipation to the next chapter of her service, confident that her unwaving dedication and inspiring leadership will continue to uplift and empower generations to come. That is a motion. Is there a second? Second. Motion seconded. Miss Vera. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Vice President
026Adair. Yes. President Cole. Absolutely. Yes. Miss Pace. Motion passes. Miss Pace, you have the floor. Really hesitate to speak after my girl there who did just a wonderful, wonderful job. We're all going to be working for her one day. All right. I'm convinced of that. Um I stand before you humbled. Thank you, Carl, for reaching out. Um, I am a very, very proud product of Columbus City Schools. I went to a variety of elementary schools because we moved around a lot. Finally landing on Kent Elementary School, Roosevelt Junior High School because they were junior highs back in the day and the Columbus South High School. I am wearing Columbus South Blue tonight for that. I have been able to accomplish all those wonderful things largely because of my foundation in Columbus City Schools, because of
027the programs that the school system offered, because of my classmates who challenged me and pushed me along the way, but mostly because of my teachers. I have to give all glory to some incredible teachers who really helped me to make pivotal decisions. Beginning with my sixth grade teacher at Kent, Albert Leon Tapo. I was scared to death of him. He was my first male teacher. Kept me after school one day. Drove me home. I couldn't imagine what I had done wrong. My mom looked at me when I came through the door like, "Girl, you're going to get it. You are going to get it." But he sat us both down and he told my mother, "I know you don't have a lot, but this girl has to go to college." I wasn't even sure what
028college was. Is it a good thing? Is it a bad thing? Nobody in my family had ever gone to college. But he let my mother know. He saw something in me that meant that I had to strive for something more than a high school education. And that became our mission. till the day she died, two months before I graduated from high school, my mother helped me to make preparations to go to college. Then fast forward, two teachers at South High School, I had to drop out of college after a year because my mom had passed and we ran out of money and I had to get a job working to help support my younger brothers and sisters. I ran into one of my high school teachers, coach Mike Rotunda, who is a football coach at
029South at the time and one of my dear dear friends. He said, 'You ought to be about ready to graduate from college now. And I told him no, had to drop out. I'm working at Nationwide coding Medicare claims. Lots of fun for a young kid. And he said, "Okay." He called me about a week later, said, "Can you play hookie tomorrow? I'm going to come and pick you up." That next day, Mike Rotunda and John Gman, who was also one of my teachers at South and later became president of CEA, they picked me up. They took me to their their alma mater, Capitol University. I didn't know what was happening. They dragged me from office to office to building to building. And uh at the end of the day, I was enrolled at Capitol University.
030This is what teachers can do, y'all. This is what teachers can do. This is the difference that teachers make. So, I want to thank every teacher out there who um had an impact on my life and those who are having impacts on our young lives. Keep doing what you're doing. If you see something, say something. Get that kid involved and engaged and looking forward to whatever their next is. Okay, I've gone on too long. Um I talk for a living or I used to talk for a living. Can you tell? But I want to thank this board. This this resolution means a lot coming from my school district that I still pay property taxes to Oh, heat. Thank you all very much. [Applause] You know, sometimes uh we hear too often about the challenges of
031this school district and what what we're not doing, what's failing to happen. And then we have moments like this where we see and engage not just the past but also the promise of prosperity for the future. Give one more round of applause please for this school district and it all right we will move forward to the next resolution honoring our H.B.CU. Thank you. I believe we have um Gwendelyn Bess, Roma Johnson, and Judge Lashil Straoud here. If you guys want to come up as I read it. Um I am honored to present the resolution to support National Why I Love My H.B.CU month. Whereas the month of March is recognized as National Why I Love My HBU Month, a time to honor the enduring legacy, academic excellence, and transformative impact of historically black colleges and
032universities, HBCU, in shaping visionary leaders across diverse fields. And whereas H.B.CU CUS have long served as a foundation for many in higher education, fostering intellectual growth, leadership development, and cultural empowerment, particularly for students from historically underrepresented communities. And whereas Columbus City Schools as Ohio's largest school district remains steadfast in its commitment to expanding educational opportunities and cultivating pathways for students to access and excel in higher education, including at H.B.CU. And whereas CCS is honored to collaborate with the City of Grace Church, CBS Faithbased Collaborative, Columbus Metropolitan Library, Columbus Education Association. I know I can. Columbus City Council, the Twin Rivers, Ohio chapter of the links incorporated, and the Columbus chapter of the National Panh Hellenic Council to present the sixth annual SEAB bus H.B.CU College Fair for invaluable initiative, sorry, an invaluable initiative that provides
033students and families with direct engagement with H.B.CU representatives, scholarship resources, and alumni mentorship. And now therefore it be resolved. The Columbus City Board School Board of Education proudly proclaims March as National Why I Love My H.B.CU Month and calls upon students, educators, and the broader community to celebrate and uplift the remarkable legacy and contributions of HCBUS. And be it further resolved that the Columbus City School Board of Education applauds and celebrates the esteemed 2025 Central Ohio H.B.CU CU Alumni of Distinction recognizing their unwavering commitment to education, exemplary leadership, and transformative impact on the community. Wendellyn Best, assistant administrator, Walnut Ridge High School, who attended Kentucky State University. Roma Johnson, teacher, Columbus Afroentric Early College, who attended Oakwood University. And Judge Lelle uh Lelle Strad from our Franklin County common police court who attended Kentucky State
034University. You have well be it further resolved that the CCS board of education invites students, families, and community members to the 6th annual SEAB bus H.B.CU college fair on Saturday, March 22nd, 2025 at Columbus Aphroentric Early College from 1 to 6:00 p.m. This is a free communitywide event will feature interactive workshops, a rec a recognition ceremony for the H.B.CU BCU alumni of distinction and opportunities to engage with H.B.CU students, alumni, and admissions representatives. That's a motion. Is there a second? Second. Motion and seconded. Call the RO. Dr. Pierce. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Mira. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Motion passes. You have the floor to have a couple of words. Okay. Um, I wasn't expecting this and I I'm just a teacher that loves what I do. I'm also a
035CCS graduate cause. I'm a Pegasus. So, um, and girls, if you haven't decided yet, HBCU, we got you. Um, a special thank you to Dr. Stewart who's right behind us um, for her work in doing this every year. If it weren't for her, we probably wouldn't be recognized. So, we want to say thank you, Judge Stro. Thank you all. Um first thank you to the board for this award. I am extremely appreciative and to stand with the others who are honored. Um my experience at a H.B.CU directly contributed to the person who I am today. Uh so I am glad that you all saw the importance uh on exposing our students to H.B.CU so that they can know about the opportunities that they too have for their future. So thank you so much. Thank you
036to Dr. Steuart uh and to all of the partners and we look forward to celebrating on Saturday and hoping to see you all there. Awesome. Let's take a photo if we can. [Applause] This should be okay. All right. We'll move on to uh 4.5 with the which is the academic traditional and yearround school calendar. Dr. Chapman. Yes. Good evening, President Cole, board members and community. Uh tonight I would like to invite Dr. Michelle Klein to the podium and she will um certainly walk us through the recommendations for the school calendar for 2526. Thank you so much Dr. Chapman. Board President Cole, Vice President Adair, members of the board of education, Superintendent Chapman, Treasurer Cook, Internal Auditor Okconor, and most importantly, our scholars who are shadowing Abigail from Northland, and Rebecca from Cause. Good evening. Good
037evening. As you know from our first reading from February 4th board meeting, we used our board of education policy 8210, the collective bargaining agreement section 1501.03 and a collaborative group of staff in order to propose a calendar to you. Our labor unions were engaged consistent with their respective collective bargaining agreements. We also paid particular attention to the required number of hours for each grade level band according to the state of Ohio, which is a minimum of 910 hours for grades K through six and 1,01 hours for grades 7 through 12. Here's another look at the proposed traditional calendar. The first week back for staff would be devoted to professional development and common planning time to develop plans and instructional strategies prior to the return of our scholars. Research supports the use of collective planning to
038foster collaborative expertise and providing this opportunity for our teachers at the beginning of the year is a breast practice. One day of the first week will be given to teachers for room preparation per contracted agreement. Here's the proposed year- round calendar. The number of instructional days 167 remain the same for both calendars as in previous years as the professional development days from September and March were moved to August. The parent guardian survey went out on February 6, 2025 with reminder follow-ups on February 11th and February 20th to each parent or guardian who did not respond to the previous survey in our top five languages. So what was this survey? What's it all about? So we had five questions that were asked to each respondent. Some respondents selected to answer all the questions. Others selected the
039questions they wish to answer, but here are your results. Question one, do you prefer the majority of staff professional development to take place prior to the actual first day of school so that we have additional full weeks of school? Clearly on question number one, our proposed calendar aligns with a parent and guardians wishes to have the majority of staff professional development prior to the first day of school. Question two. Throughout the school year, it is necessary to provide our teachers time for professional development and records management. Which day of the week best meets your family's needs for your child to be scheduled off of school? In this instance, Fridays and Mondays were clearly parents and guardians preference. This is something that we will need to take to negotiation since our record days are currently on
040Wednesdays according to our contract. Question three, when would you prefer spring break to occur? March, April, tied to the religious holiday of Easter. April was by far the selected choice with 1,136 votes. This is a variance from our past practice of spring break consistently being tied to the religious holiday of Easter. Question four. For three days in November, our district has focused on individual social and emotional care and wellness or wellness week. To what extent do you feel your child, children, family have benefited from this opportunity? Wellness week clearly is a positive success with 442 respondents showing a benefit of greatly benefiting or benefiting their scholar and their family. Last question five. Do you prefer the school year start date to begin in mid August, late August, or after Labor Day? Late August and after
041Labor Day were very closely aligned with 131 and 151 votes, respectively. Historically, we have started school in late August. Overall, our proposed calendar closely aligns with the calendar survey results that our parents and guardians completed. 32,597 surveys were sent out, 2,89 surveys were returned, which is a turn return rate of 8.62%. Relative to professional development and records days, our board of education may wish to consider collaborating with our association to examine the day of the week in which students are not in session or records days to align with our parents needs and preference. Based on the information gathered from our staff, our labor partners, as well as our parent and guardian survey, it is our recommendation that the board of education adopt our calendar for the 2025 2026 school year. I will be glad to
042entertain any questions that I might answer. Thank you. Okay, with that, thank you so much, Dr. Chapman. That concludes our report. I think the board needs to call for a vote. I'll make a motion to approve uh the 202526 traditional and year- round school calendars as presented. Motion. Is there a second? Motion and second and call the RO. Mr. Simmons? Yes. Miss Vera? Yes. Miss Engles, yes. Dr. Pierce, Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. Motion passes. All right. Thank you, President Cole and board members. This uh certainly finalizes our calendar for next school year for 2526. And I'd just like to name that this calendar will be shared internally, externally, broadly. It'll be on our website. We create magnets with the calendar so you can stick it on your refrigerator. And for all of
043our families that are here with us tonight or watching um on our social media channels, the first day of school for next school year will be on August 25th for grades 1 through 12. The first day for kindergarten students will be August 28th. And the first day for preK will be September 4th. Again, we'll be pushing this information out now that we have finalized our school calendar for 2526 school year. Thank you, Dr. Chapman. Thank you. All right. And I also appreciate how you guys actually did data research to really glean perspective from teachers in that community about what you want to do. So, I appreciate that. All right. Moving on to section 4.6. We'll walk right back to you, Dr. Chapman, on the fourth through six interim for seventh grade. Yes. For monitoring. Good
044evening, President Cole and members of the board. Tonight, we'll provide an update on the district's progress in mathematics. This evening, we'll focus our monitoring report on grades four, five, and six, math, and the advancements we are making to improve the math outcomes of our students. I want to start by again expressing gratitude to our teachers, building principles, and support staff. Your dedication and hard work have been instrumental as we embark on this journey to meet our newly adopted math goal. Your commitment to providing highquality evidence-based math instruction is laying the foundation for future success. We are enthusiastic to begin this important work in math and share our steps toward improving outcomes for all learners. Today, we'll present our current performance data, our theory of action for achieving math success, and the strategic next steps we
045are taking to ensure that all students experience meaningful growth in math. Before we talk about math, I want to provide an overview of the monitoring calendar for the remainder of the school year. As you see here, tonight we focus on monitoring math. In April, we'll provide our annual update on the whole child guard rail. In May, the focus will be on the culturally responsive staff guard rail and we will end the school year with the monitoring session of the support intervention services guardrail. Next fall, we'll pick up the monitoring calendar again and provide monitoring reports on our progress towards each board goal and guardrail. We provide monitoring reports in the board meetings to model a pattern of behavior that starts with data. We analyze this data and present our strategy to the board and our
046community to address the gaps. This is what we see in building and teacherbased teams on a regular basis. This process is supported by research on how effective school boards improve student outcomes. Just as our board has adopted annual goals as the superintendent, I have set interim goals for each year. All interim goals relate directly to student outcomes in reading, math, and metriculation. Our goals and interim goals challenge us as an organization and require change in adult behaviors. During this presentation, we're going to provide you with an update on our progress over time and highlight our next steps to further increase math achievement. Because as a board, you set our math goal at seventh grade, I thought it was important to set interim goals at fourth, fifth, and sixth. These will ensure that we are on
047track to meet the goal when we measure it in seventh grade. In tonight's presentation, you will see that this process is working as it is intended. We are checking in on our progress to see where we are on track and where we need to make adjustments. If we waited to review our data at the end of the year, it would be too late to intervene where needed. Just like our most effective teachers who monitor the progress of their students every day, we are not waiting until the end of the year to monitor our progress or to check in on who's getting it and who needs differentiated instruction. While one of our student outcomes at midyear does not match perfectly with the end goal, this is only problematic when there is no evidence of sufficiently aggressive
048strategies in place to increase growth and help students make progress. Once again this month, I want to remind everyone that we are leading by example. What happens here in our board meetings at the board table is more likely to be echoed in our schools and in our classrooms. We are setting the culture for CCS. We want a culture where teachers and leaders are open and reflective in their craft. Therefore, we must set the stage for that by demonstrating that as leaders. We are data driven and reflective in our monitoring. At this time, I want to invite Dr. Russ Brown to walk us through our data for our the three interims that we're monitoring this evening. Good evening. Good evening. Pleased to be uh with you again to present our progress on our interim goals. I'd
049like to point out um for for members of the board this format will be familiar but for those who haven't seen it before the blue line and the and the dots on the blue line reflect our performance past performance and performance to date. Uh the orange line on the other hand reflects uh our goals and our targets by year as we move forward. As you can see here uh we exceeded the goal in in fourth grade. our our students outperformed that goal and actually are ahead of uh what would be necessary to pass the goal for next year interim goal. Despite that there is a slight decline this year and and we are doing some different things and one I think can expect to see a bit of a implementation decline when we do something
050new and we'll see this in the other goals areas as well but again we're above target here and where we expected to be and moving forward. I'm pleased to be able to say that uh those gains u or pardon me the the ontarget status for our students is shared by many student groups. The vast majority of our student groups met or exceeded the target uh at this grade level and the three uh student groups that didn't meet the target are very near the target uh at this grade level. When we go on to fifth grade, fifth grade um continues to remain near target. uh it's eight only eight ten of a point below the target at this point. Again uh it had the largest implementation decline and it also reflects a a shift in the
051content. The content of fifth grade frankly is much more difficult. Uh there there's a step up there and I think we'll get to see part of that a little bit later. Looking forward again uh the decline was shared across many uh student groups. Again probably not surprising when we saw a little bit of a dip overall. uh that passes to most student groups at this grade level. Again, implementation decline seen across all but uh most prominently on fifth. Moving on to sixth grade. Again, we're above target. Uh this year students, 35.9% of the students were either at or above uh expectation in terms of grade level or meeting stretch growth. Um and while we see a slight decline here again we are above target uh for this student uh for this grade at at this
052point in time and when we break this out by student group again most student groups at this grade level met or exceeded the target as well. Uh so again despite the fact that we were doing something new and had a little bit of imp implementation decline two out of the three grade levels exceed the target and the third grade level is still quite close. With that, I'll pass things back to Dr. Chman. Thank you, Dr. Brown. Uh, as we move forward, it's important to consider the level of rigorous thinking required in our math classrooms, as Dr. Brown just mentioned. Uh, so here is an example of a released item from the fifth grade Ohio State test. You can see that students must not only perform addition and subtraction of fractions, but also interpret and model
053their reasoning to demonstrate a deep understanding of the concept. To earn full credit, students must correctly select the model that represents the fraction operation and use it to determine an accurate solution. This highlights the complexity of the expectations. Not only do students need to compute accurately, but they must read and comprehend problems, use models to represent mathematical situations, apply number sense, and assess the reasonable reasonleness of their strategies and answers. And that's for one question. And for this particular problem, the correct answer for part A is option D, where the student correctly recognizes the model representing two- fifths can be subtracted from the model representing 1/2. And the correct answer to part B is one/10enth since 1/2 minus twoths equals 110. This example emphasizes the importance of aligning curriculum and instruction with these high expectations
054which we will explore further in our theory of action. This is our second meeting to discuss progress in math. As we learn through our progress in early literacy, impactful results require strategic planning and sustained effort. To support these efforts, I'd like to reintroduce our theory of action, which is central to our approach for driving student success in math. Our theory of action states, if we implement evidence-based instruction with fidelity focused on facilitating meaningful mathematical discourse aligned with grade level standards, there will be increases in student learning reflected in both improved growth and achievement by seventh grade. This theory is rooted in the belief that every student is a math person who can achieve success. Research shows that when students engage in structural structured mathematical discourse where they explain their thinking, debate strategies and critical reasoning
055inside the classroom and outside of the classroom. They build deeper conceptual understanding and critical thinking skills, setting the foundation for meaningful growth in math. Additionally, this theory aligns with our district's portrait of a graduate traits, ensuring that our students develop the necessary skills for future endeavors. Unlike literacy and the science of reading, mathematics does not yet have decades of research that point to a singular explicit process for how students learn math. Instead, we lean into what we know from reputable organizations and best practices, anticipating that more studies will deepen our understanding in this area over time. The National Council of Teachers of Math supports practices like mathematical discourse, which bridges procedural skills with conceptual insights, both critical for long-term achievement and retention. Additionally, when students engage in collaborative problem solving and reasoning based interactions, they
056develop a growth mindset, viewing challenges as opportunities and building resilience. We call that productive struggle in the classroom. To fully support these practices, it's essential to establish clear standards, align goals that focus learning. By aligning each lesson with grade level expectations, we give students a clear purpose and direction, enabling them to connect with the material meaningfully and work towards success. This approach provides the structure and support needed for students to thrive in math. Let's review our timeline to understand the key milestones and investments. Where we started, where we are now, and where we're heading next. Between 2018 and 2020, we engaged a curriculum audit led by PDK or Fidel Kappa. This was a critical step in evaluating our curriculum management, resource allocation, and district policies. The recommendations from this audit set the foundation for our
057future actions. From 2020 to 2022, we focused on adopting and implementing highquality curricular resources aligned with grade level standards. This work was essential to ensure all students across the district had access to consistent highquality instructional materials. Remember that in the 2020 2021 school year, we were mostly remote. due to the pandemic. So, true implementation of new resources did not occur or begin to occur until the 21-22 school year. By the 2324 school year, we took a major step forward by adopting the 7th grade math achievement goal. This wasn't just a goal on paper. It was followed by careful district planning throughout the spring and summer to align resources and guide improvement efforts. This marked a pivotal moment in establishing a clear direction for our math instruction across the district. Now in the 2425 school year,
058we are actively engaging in the work by initiating target professional development and family engagement initiatives. Recognizing that achieving our goals requires both investing in educators and partnering with families, we've leveraged the funds from the Levy Promise to launch these critical efforts. This year is about laying a strong foundation for our educators and building meaningful connections with our community. Looking ahead to the 25 2028 period, our focus will shift to deepening these practices and we will enhance our expertise through advanced professional development on standards deconstruction. That's taking the standards apart so that we can re better understand what the standard is asking for the students to know and be able to do including tier one instructional strategies and effective math interventions. This ongoing training ensures our educators are equipped with effective strategies to support student success.
059These milestones highlight our commitment to providing every student with a strong foundation in math. By following this timeline, we ensure our efforts are strategic, sustained, and aligned with our overall goals. While this journey will take time and perseverance, we are confident that this deliberate approach will lead to lasting improvement in math achievement. Due to the generosity of our community, we are investing in highquality math resources, focusing on core curriculum, intervention materials, and tools to support consistent research aligned instruction in every classroom. These resources are designed to monitor student mastery, provide targeted intervention and enrichment opportunities, and set students on a clear path to math success in school and beyond. Our teachers remain our most valuable resource for elevating student achievement. Recognizing this, a significant portion of this investment is dedicated to their professional growth. This
060year, we are offering target professional development to empower teachers to facilitate meaningful mathematical discourse in the classroom and drive positive outcomes for all learners. Additionally, we are extending our investment to engage families and communities recognizing the essential role in supporting math learning. To ensure that we meet the diverse needs of our students, we are prioritizing recruitment in high needs lensure areas, particularly math. Recognizing the critical shortage of qualified math teachers, we are implementing strategic initiatives to attract and retain top talent in this field. One of our key strategies is the early recruitment of high needs math teachers. By identifying these educators well in advance, we can ensure that our students have access to highquality instruction from the beginning of the school year. This proactive approach allows us to secure candidates and provide them with the
061necessary to support to thrive in our schools. Additionally, we are addressing math vacancies by creating pathways for teachers and building substitutes to achieve alternative lenture. These pathways are supported by target professional development and intentional growth opportunities. In addition to early recruitment, we are committed to supporting and retaining our high needs math teachers through comprehensive professional development and support. These initiatives are designed to foster collaborative and supportive teaching environment ultimately leading to improved student outcomes. By investing in high needs lensure areas, we are taking a significant step towards closing the achievement gap and providing all students with the opportunity to succeed in math. Our professional development plan this year is supporting teachers, substitutes, and school leaders in implementing high impact instructional strategies to meet our math improvement goals. We began with the August math symposium which
062focused on establishing math identity, implementing our standards, aligned curriculum, and facilitating discourse among students. These foundational themes have been revisited and deepened throughout the year. In September and October, on our professional development days, we emphasize aligning math goals with grade level standards and enhancing mathematical discourse. Additionally, teachers participated in professional learning around tier 2 interventions using I Ready while sessions over tier 3 intensive instruction were provided to teachers piloting a new resource math 180. Intervention specialists also received training on specialized resources such as visual vis and unique learning solutions to address the needs of students with IEPs, ensuring all students receive targeted support. On March 5th, secondary math teachers built on this work with sessions focused on best practices for English language learners and further advancing discourse strategies. These sessions will equip teachers with practical
063techniques to make math content more accessible for all students, including scaffolding strategies, language supports, and methods to encourage meaningful me participation in mathematical discussions. Our principal PD series has focused on calibrating effective math instruction, strengthening observation skills, and providing targeted feedback to support classroom practices. Additionally, we've introduced a dedicated PD series for building substitutes who are filling math vacancies that provides intensive workshops and job embedded coaching and support to ensure continuity in instruction. Looking ahead, we plan to conclude this year's professional development with the summer learning opportunity. These sessions will give educators a deeper dive into our rigorous rigorous curriculum, strengthening content knowledge and planning to meet the needs of all learners. Together, these efforts represent a deliberate cohesive strategy to elevate math instruction across the district. Our first responsibility to is to ensure high
064quality math instruction in every school and every classroom every day. However, we also recognize that stu students thrive when supported by a strong partnership between school, family, and the community. Improving math outcomes requires a connected system of support and we are just beginning this important journey. As part of this effort, we have invested in several family and community initiatives. designed to increase math engagement across the district. Many of these projects have recently come to fruition after months of planning, development, and implementation. One of these initiatives is the launch of math guides for families, which provide pro provides parents and guardians with clear strategies and tools to help their children understand key math concepts and apply them in real world settings. In addition, all students in grades four through eight have received brain play magazines designed
065to make math learning engaging and accessible. To encourage interactive math practice at home, we distributed engaging math board games during the summer opportunities fair in February. We've also expanded our efforts with math family nights where elementary schools host events geared towards strengthening family involvement in math learning. Leveraging digital and media platforms, we launched the Math Math Everywhere video segments in partnership with Faces, providing accessible math content for families. These segments have already gained recognition from the Columbus Dispatch and MSN, further amplifying our message about the importance of math and everyday life. And this spring, we're excited to host a community screening of Counted Out, a documentary that explores how math shapes our society and how math education is essential to creating opportunities and maintaining democracy. These initiatives represent a collective effort to make math more
066engaging, accessible, and meaningful beyond the classroom. By strengthening these partnerships, we are not only supporting student success, but also fostering a culture of math excellence throughout our district. We look forward to building on this momentum as we continue this critical work together. Our next steps in order for our students to further progress in math. We will continue with investments in professional development around effective math teaching practices and target interventions across tier one, two, and three. Building on this foundation, our focus this year and beyond includes targeted professional learning to key areas of math education. These sessions focus on facilitating mathematical discourse to deepen understanding, fostering a positive student math identity and implementing effective math interventions. We'll prioritize resources for families and communities to address inequities in math access. Before we conclude, many of our schools
067across the district demonstrated exceptional achievement by exceeding the interim math goals for grades four, five, and six. These schools not only met but surpassed the benchmarks we set, showcasing the impact of highquality instruction, focused, support, and student dedication. Let's take a moment to recognize and celebrate their hard work and performance. Their achievements inspire us as we continue our district-wide efforts to improve math outcomes for our for all students in grades four through six. These are the schools in for grades four that have exceeded our board goal. These are the schools across our district that have exceeded our interim goal for grade five. Some of these schools are represented on both slides. And um these are the list of schools that have exceeded our board interim goal for grade six. Again, thank you to our amazing
068uh teachers, support staff, and school leaders in our buildings that are working really, really hard to make sure that they're aligning their uh school improvement goals, their practices, their daily instruction. um not only to meet this board goal but to exceed this board goal and ensure that all of our students have the instruction that they need to um improve student outcomes. Certainly um I want to take an um just a minute to extend an invitation to our board president if you'd like to share any reflections or thoughts on your school visit. um you had an opportunity to visit some math classrooms with us a few weeks ago um at Wedgewood Middle School and so we certainly would like to invite you to share any reflections if you wish and then we'll conclude our report and
069open it up for questions. Oh well, thank you madam Dr. Chapman. Um I had a wonderful experience at Wedgewood. uh the west side period in any any myriad of ways has demonstrated uh some spectacular growth and development. Um we've seen some amazing outcomes on behalf of our students. I' I've greatly appreciate and you alluded to it very clearly in your presentation um about some of the pedagogy that you guys are implementing over there, the classroom instruction type things that you're implementing for kids over there that give them a very stepbystep process that allow them the opportunity to to assess in any given regular time where they are. Students in that building um were very engaged. The teachers also were very engaged. I appreciated how they not only organized their classrooms in a way that gave
070te students greater access to them but also allowed them the opportunity to cross-pollinate in the classroom to actually help each other along. Um so it was a wonderful experience. This is this is education that works the Columbus City Schools way. Thank you. Thank you, President Cole. Thank you for joining us. And I also have one more closing comment. I just want to name that this monitoring report was a little bit longer than our usual monitoring report. We thought it was really important because this is a new math goal. These new these interim goals are new for us, but it was also really important for us to highlight all the significant new investments that we have made to support and stand up this math goal. But I would be remissed if I did not name that
071um according to our upcoming state budget. Um we stand to lose in the proposed budget, we stand to lose over $45 million in state funding, which would be a significant decrease in state funding and it would offset um the $ 38 million in revenue from our recent levy. And so one of the new strategies that we stood up and our levy promise was to invest new resources, new professional development, new intervention resources, new resources for families to support this math goal. This certainly um we need to continue to advocate for the resources that we need to support our students, to support improved student outcomes, and to support meeting this very important math goal. and all of those resources and strategies and investments will be at risk if we lose over $45 million in state funding.
072So, just would be remissed if I didn't name that and just wanted every going to continue to remind our community um and um our taxpayers in Columbus about what's at stake. Thank you. At this time, we'll certainly entertain any questions that the board may have. Thank you, Dr. Chap. And if I can just for a second um in accordance with our our governance kind of model there are certain ground rules I just want to kind of remind us again uh this is a conversation that's solely supposed to be focused on the data that we've been presented number one. Number two in this conversation we don't we want to avoid and don't want to give advice or directive. This is not the opportunity for that. This is the opportunity to do deep dive questioning around the
073what, how, why, when. Um, we want to make sure that in approving this report, we understand that we approved it not so much because we met a goal or did not meet a goal, right? We want to approve or not approve this this report based on its substance based on the variables that are included in it like uh uh theories of action like reasonable next steps that give predictive understanding of whether students are walking towards meeting their goals or not. So any myriad of things that we want to we want to use to ask the right questions. The floor is open. If you need support, we have this document in our folder that can give us some guidance. You don't have to always use these questions. But if you can keep them within the framework
074of that what, why, when, how, the the the door is wide open for uh questions and responses. Anyone have a question? Madam Vice President? Okay, Ross, here we go with the chart. Okay. All right. Can you put the fifth grade chart back up, please? All right. So you mentioned that um while all of the grades are very are meeting or very close to meeting which is excellent news um we did see a decrease um because there was some new changes that were implemented and you explained those and this is all new and it's very exciting. Um it is noted that as we move one more year out the target is actually increasing by two points instead of one. Um, and so when we kind of, and I know you don't like when I do this,
075when I take the kids across years, so first of all, if you, um, can you go to the sixth grade chart? The sixth graders from their their fourth grade to sixth grade year, they actually as a cohort um, they were at 28%, 30%, and now at 35.9%. So the cohort is actually we're seeing more P proficient kids, which is great. Um and then go back to the fifth grade. Our fifth grade from their fourth grade year to their fifth grade year they did decrease from 30 to 28%. Or you know even though the sixth graders did have a decrease they still actually increased the total. Um my question is when we are predicting out and we see that for fifth grade in particular we're we're below and we have a two point now to to
076kind of gain. Um first are are are we done with the implementing of the change where we feel like we're going to see the decrease? And then second, do we believe that for our next year's fifth graders that they can they we're on the trajectory to get above the line or is it going to be a couple years out where we actually get up to back up to the line to to address um in regard to implementation. impact. Um I I once did quite a lot of work with John's Hopkins around implementing changes and they would frequently say um don't expect um academic outcome for three years with the implementation change. Um so I I don't think we're outside that window yet. And you know, if you think back to what we saw with ELA,
077we saw some volatility with that before we sort of got our our wheels under us on it. this is a new direction for the system. Um, and frankly, when we were setting up these these goals and these targets, I mean, there was an urgency to do it, but we didn't have as much runway in terms of data either because we hadn't been doing the I Ready assessments in the middle school grades quite as long. And so, that adds some volatility to it as well. In regard to comparing, I I know you like to to look at cohorts over time, but I I would really like to remind you that the standards by grade are not equal steps. So, what it takes to go from third grade to fourth grade and be proficient isn't the same
078as going fourth grade to fifth grade. It's a bigger step. Um, and so those proficiency rates won't naturally carry forward quite the same way. uh they therefore have always been anchored to what has been historical performance at that grade level acknowledging that grades are again have different difficulty to them as you move from one to another. Isn't it fair though like you know because the goal is to really have all all of our children proficient so the number should be a hundred and we have a long way to go and there's and and you know we get it right but you know when I mention that between the sixth graders I mean that every year year-over-year they are improving um just as a whole cohort. Why is that not fair to consider? Again, I'm just
079suggesting that when you compare fourth grade to fifth grade to sixth grade, the steps between are are different. And so the percentage of kids who are either at grade level or meeting stretch growth will vary across those grades. And it doesn't just translate to 30% should be 30% should be 30%. Uh it just hasn't been that way historically. And this pattern around fifth grade standards in particular um has existed for a long time. It's not unique to this particular test uh in regard to the OST or the standards. Standards have always had a step up around fifth grade ELA as well. So you're anticipating based on your response then that next year we'll see another decline or or maybe flatline in fifth grade but still not yet hitting the benchmark. I think there are two
080things in the works here. one, as that cohort moves forward, it'll be interesting to see how they show up at the start of next year and the progress they make during the course of the year. One would expect apples to apples, yes, there might be a little bit of a dip for the next year on that. The second piece in this though is we're implementing something new and you know, when we start to see traction, we'll start to see an inflection on this as we move forward. So there's pieces of this have been in place for a while. It's the it's really leaning into into the PD and practice and the uh community and family components that are very different. Uh so I think there's a lot of potential there. And Vice President Dar, did
081you have another question about implementation? Well, I guess it kind of goes moving to where he's going. Maybe he's trying to be careful about stepping on what you're supposed to be telling me. I mean to if if he is saying that the data trend is that either we're going to remain flat or possibly see another decline. I'm concerned that we have we're going 2.0 over 2.0 2 point you know for the next four years. I'm wondering if we're actually going to hit the target for this interim which means that the seventh grade goal will be harder to hit. That's why you set these up. Yes. Yes. And so I'm I'm just wondering in particular in this grade because it's a more difficult challenging math year for them. Um if we're already anticipating a flatline or
082decrease, what are we what are we doing then I guess to get back on track? So um as Dr. Brown explained, whenever we implement new strategies, certainly it takes time for the for the um implementation, right? We this year we received new funding to make new investments in our math strategies and so we're beginning that process and so now we'll be working on the quality of that implementation. Right? This was the first goround of our professional development. We're tweaking that. But again the again when I say the magic happens in the classroom. We know that our students are responsive to high quality instruction and so we have to continue to um really build our teachers toolbox with all the resources that they need so that they can deliver highquality math instruction. Again, this is a
083new space for us, not just CCS, but districts across the state. Um, just last week we had visitors from the Aspen Institute, uh, chief academic officers and chief of schools that were here in Columbus City Schools doing a critical friends visit where they're looking at all of the great work that we're doing around our new strategy, our math goals and giving us feedback and that really the feedback that they were sharing with us was around the quality of implementation and we know that also our state is having conversations about how they standardize ize the expectations for math just kind of like we standardize the expectations for the science of reading. So there is a push and a need from districts across the country to think very deeply about the instructional practices that we prioritize. Then
084we provide the professional development to support that shift. And then we certainly are um working to align the our time, our allocation, our resources to ensure that the professional development investments that we're making are moving the needle on student instruction. There is room, there's lots of room for improvement here. As you noted, uh Vice President Adair, we think about uh where our students are currently achieving and where we need them to be in particularly in the area of math. And this is really a long road ahead as we're thinking about how we work um really across the state, across the country to improve math instruction. So, we're charting a new course. Um we certainly have to allow time for uh those new investments to be um um implemented with fidelity in the classroom, but there's
085certainly there's evidence that our students are making progress. One, just one more. Thank you for all of that. So you can keep it on sixth grade, but so and on any of these charts then with everything that you just said, you are you're you're telling us that at some point by the end of 28, we're going to hit the target based on all the strategies that you are implementing and giving it time that we should be hitting target is I guess my ultimate question. We are making all of these investments not only to meet the target but to exceed the target. It all of these investments that we are making are designed to improve student outcomes. We and we are monitoring this goal midyear to again to check in to see are we making progress?
086What feedback do we have based on what we're hearing from our teachers? What we're seeing from our students in their student work in their progress monitoring. This is in advance of the high stakes test high stakes assessment that they will that they will take in the spring. So this is giving us another pulse check, another temperature check. Again, at the end of the day, how we're held accountable is the when we think about there's our accountability for these board goals, but our sixth grade performance, that true accountability measure is going to be on the state um assessment that they'll be taking in another month. And so we're doing we're having this conversation right now again that informs our practice informs the uh cycle of school improvement so that we can our students will be more
087successful on their high stakes exam that they take in the spring. So this is a pulse check and we think about our interim measures. I think yes I know that I just part of our job here is to make sure that the strategies that you're putting forth these are yours these are your metrics your goals are going to get to that ultimate goal that we set this is our governance model yes so the board sets that math goal of seventh grade and you set the inram goals and so I'm you know I'm just trying to listen for to make sure that what you're saying is that um I I understand the poll check. I understand what we're doing, but based on what Russ said about where the trend is going, I want to just make
088sure that we are um you know, still on trend to hit the seventh grade goal based on the strategy. So, I think you've answered it. I just wanted to try to be more articulate in what I was saying. Um maybe it wasn't as clear of a question. I was it was more about the trending to make sure that I'm listening for the strategy because that's what we're that's what we're monitoring here. Yes. So, I would just go back to we've articulated our strategy, our theory of action, and the new investments that we've just made this school year beginning in August. These are all new investments. Those resources we receive, we're able to start some of those investments over the summer. new investments. Again, this is we have the expectations. These goals send a signal. The
089math goal, the seventh grade math goal sends a signal to the entire organization that this is what we expect. So, this is what we inspect. We inspect these interim goals. We absolutely expect that our student outcomes will improve. We absolutely want our students to have greater success in math. And so we are making these investments, our time, our effort, our professional development, the resources, the family resources in service of improving student outcomes. And we are checking in on this work midyear to see where do we need to adjust, where do we need to push harder, where do we need to pull back, where do we need to call a friend and ask for help. This is our opportunity to do that. If I had a crystal ball, which I wish I did, which I kind
090of think you were going there and saying, "Can you predict to me where we're going to be? Where will the blue line be in 2728?" I want the blue line to be above um our goal in 2728. And we will continue to be relentless in our practices, our work every day at the district level and at the school level and the classrooms to achieve those outcomes. That's what we're working on. All right. Thank you. I want to move these questions forward to give other board members opportunity. Dr. Pierce, you had a question. Thank you so much, President Co. So, um, Dr. Brown, we continually see that um certain student uh communities continue to not be um in the percent that we would like them to see in terms of achieving that proficiency. um in particular
091our homeless student population, our students receiving special education services as well as our emergent bilingual students. Um in some instances, if you look at slides 9 and 11, their proficiency percentages have decreased from 0.8 to 4.6 percentage points. My question is basically are we seeing a normal variance distribution in those particular student populations? So is this a comparative data question? No, it he doesn't have to necessarily compare it. I just want to know is it a normal distribution that we're seeing given these variance ranges. So I if by that you mean is it unusual for the populations you've named to have additional challenges, additional needs and show up usually performing substantially lower than other groups across the entire state. Yes. So I but I think that's what our data is showing right. Our data is
092showing that those students need more intervention, more resources. we continually every monitoring report we are seeing the same challenges with these student populations. So my question is is that a normal distribution that we're seeing across c can we just expect that that is a very sort of normal um I don't care what system I've been in around the country uh that pattern shows up. So given that this pattern is showing up, we have the interventions that are taking um place that we need to give some time um to to to kind of just set it to set in so our students are being successful and achieving. I wonder if there's a way in the monitoring report that you could help to give us an understanding of what we can expect as a normal variance for
093student populations, certain student populations. And and that's something to just give thought like in a future monitoring report. Could we get an understanding of what the normal distribution we should expect for a particular student population or grade cohort should be? I'm I'm happy to put some thought into that. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. Okay. Uh board member Simmons, you had a question. Yes. Thank you, President Cole. I had a couple questions about the data and the monitoring calendar. Um Dr. Chapman, in December, we had calendared um re monitoring equitable resources, our guardrail. Um forgive me, I colleagues, I did miss one of our December meetings and I did review our agenda and minutes and it doesn't look like that took place. And so I wondered, Dr. Mr. Chman, if you had identified an
094alternate date where we'd be able to have that conversation. The board monitoring calendar is approved by the board. Um, I can certainly have conversations with board leadership. There must have been a reason why we pivoted in December to make an adjustment to the board. Of course, I recognize in a school district December is a very calendar full month and and very busy. Um, but I'm certainly interested. I think it's important for us to have that conversation um before the the probably before the end of the school year. Thank you. We'll certainly take that into consideration as we review and set the agenda for our board meetings. And if I can remember, we want to focus questions for the sake of this conversation while we have it because this is a unique opportunity. It's important. We
095want to focus our conver our questions on the data at hand. Remember, we want to avoid making directive comments at this point. Now, when this concludes, if there was a statement that you wanted to make to that effect, the floor is open for you to be able to do that should you request. I do have some questions about Okay, let's go to it. Thank you. Um, Dr. Brown, forgive me. I think you touched upon it, but I missed it. Um, the changes that you referenced, you you spoke about, you know, that in the report. Is that what Dr. Chapman spoke to in the later slides, or are there additional changes that weren't included in the report you could speak about? I think Dr. Chapman outlined. Okay, those that's Oh, thank you. And then um I
096was a bit confused if we shouldn't anticipate to see the the fruits of these investments, the increases for several years down the road, how could changes that we made within the last year be contributing to decreases um so soon. So, anytime you implement something new, you're asking folks to try and do different things in the classroom. Um, you know, think about your your own experience. If if you pick up something and try to do it a different way than you have been, it takes a while to to build some proficiency with that, build that muscle to do that. And oftentimes, you'll actually see a little bit of a dip in your performance initially until you've acquire um sort of build up those new skills and new ways of doing things. It's a fairly common pattern
097when we implement things in in education. Um, again, sometimes that can take a minute to get through. Um, I think conservatively that could be three years uh to see that full implementation of cycle. Parts of these materials have been available for a while. I think we're really leaning into the professional development piece now to help people use those materials more effectively as we move forward. So, I'm, you know, as the superintendent said, we want to see our students exceed that. And you know there I think is a fairly robust plan here with a lot of components to try to accelerate that achievement for students. Thank you. Um and then why might those changes be impacting some it seems there are some grades that were impacted more than than others if that is the the reasoning
098behind the decreases we're seeing. So as I mentioned before um the performance by grade level there's some differences there. Fifth grade tends to be a more challenging year and so we see that across the board. Um, so we see a little bit more of a change there. Some of these fluctuations, if you look over time, you know, it's sort of gone up and down a little bit over time. I don't think we've seen a clear inflection upward quite yet, but one could expect that to come as we move forward. Thank you. Um, President Cole, I do not have any more questions at this. Thank you, board member Simmons. Are there any additional questions from the board? Okay, I don't have a question, but I do have uh and it's germaine to the data and it's
099not directive or instructive. Right. I have a comment. Thank you, President Cole. I just want to give um our team a kudos for sharing the example of the math problem. I think it's very important for our community members to be able to see the rigor that our students are showing in the classroom and in their work. And so I appreciate you all um adding that to our monitor and report and I think uh colleagues President Cole if we could have future examples like that in our other monitoring reports moving forward I think it would also help. So thank you all for that. Yes sir. Thank you. Um I I did have just one last question. Dr. Chapman, you spoke at the end about um how um the these the recent changes in professional development is
100funded by our levy investment, and I'm just concerned that if we do take a nearly $50 million budget hit in this upcoming year, are these goals still going to be attainable for us? Well, certainly um when we think about a significant loss in state funding, um our goals and our expectations will not change despite the lack of investment in resources from our state. We will still continue to have high expectations for our students and we'll continue, we have a dedicated team of staff members in our buildings and throughout the district. will continue to work um to remove barriers and prepare our students not only for grade level success but future success. But it will be a challenge and it will not be easy because we will have to make very tough decisions about which resources
101we will be able to allocate to support these goals, our interim goals with fewer resources. and um we'll continue to have conversations and dialogue about what that will mean for our district and what that will mean for um us as a community. Thank you. Thank you. So before I ask my question um and then we'll move on to get out of this this section and move on to the next. Um, I love some of the questions that colleagues asked specifically around trying to get their arms around the predictive idea of where our children are headed. Our goals are all based on community values. So, I want to speak to it from that standpoint and I want to look at this from the standpoint of what does the community need what does the community need to
102know more of to understand what their children are able to demonstrate in fourth grade leading up to fifth grade and then what they're not demonstrating. So, you mentioned that there's a a a rigor situation that happens, right? a situation of academic rigor that happens in the space of fifth grade and that transition from fourth to fifth. What is it that students are demonstrating in fourth grade that they are not demonstrating the ability in fifth grade to actually achieve? I think when we're figuring when we're trying to really figure this out, we want to know what it is that a student can do based on what they know. What is it that they're struggling with in that space academically? So, if I'm mom, dad, nana, pawpaw watching this video or just an interested parent working with
103children and I've got a youngster at this age or any age group that's kind of got a snag in the sweater in a particular space. What is it? And and the school did a wonderful job of explaining this to us when we visited. What is it that in that space that they're struggling with in terms of, you know, math concepts? What is it that they're not grasping that otherwise we need to give a little more in-class focus on? So, um, President Cole, thank you for that, um, question. I think some of these this question stems from your visit, um, to Wedgewood Middle School. Um but certainly um when we think about um the standards um what our students are expected to know and be able to do and when you transition from third grade math
104to fourth grade math when you get to fifth grade math um K4 most of the the math skills are more procedural for the students and then when they transition to fifth grade it moves to very it's conceptual you certainly have to have the procedural understanding you have to know your basic facts and you have to have fluency um in all of those basic foundational skills, but you also beginning starting in fifth grade, it moves to more conceptual understanding and it's a higher level of rigor that our students have to demonstrate in order to be able to explain their mathematical thinking um make comparative analysis on looking at um different mathematical diagrams. And so it be the rigor increases and it becomes more challenging for them um to just we're not talking about the right answer.
105We're talking about comparing two answers. We're talking about explaining why this answer wasn't right and why this answer was wrong. It's it's much more conceptual and you have to have a very solid foundation to be able to do that. Awesome. So now when we're looking at uh I think it's slide 14, the NCTM effective teaching practices. Now that highlights, I think even more effectively why it is that you're looking at leveraging these sets of strategies, these sets of adult inputs to help improve student outputs when we're looking at this from an interim basis. Outputs are all interim. So I'm using some common language that we're all going to learn very shortly, but outputs are what we're looking at right now. What we're hoping that transitions, Madame VP, is how this then come becomes predictive towards
106outcomes. But at the end of the day, this is where the rubber hits the road and slide 14. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yes. So when we um math instruction looks differently today than it did yesterday. Uh when I was in elementary school, we spent a lot of time on fact fluency and it was just getting the right answer. Did you get the right answer? Yes or no? And so you would literally have um how many answers you got right and how many answers you got wrong. Math instruction looks a lot differently today because in order to get um credit for your answers or your responses, students have to explain why. It's it goes beyond did you get the correct answer but why and how did you get the correct and you
107have to be able to write that out um and explain your thinking. So this strategy around mathematical discourse really provides a safe space for students in our classroom to practice and build that muscle every day of explaining their thinking and reasoning in math class. We usually um hear lots of opportunities for dialogue in our reading classes, English classes, science and social studies ex classes. Explain your hypothesis, explain your reasoning, defend your position. But now in math class, students are have to be able to explain their thinking. They have to be able to um communicate with their peers and and defend their answer, right? because a lot of times in math depending on how the problem is set up um there's more than one right answer. So it's not just one way of thinking about how
108to solve the equation. And so these are strategies certainly that are supported by the National Council of Teachers of Math that really provide teachers with a playbook for how to set up a safe space in math classrooms that supports um students leading the conversation, talking with their peers and conversing and sharing their thinking about math. Thank you for that. Um so we'll move on forward uh to a motion to approve this report this evening. Is that a motion to approve the report as given by um Dr. Angela Chapman for our interim math uh go monitoring report? Motion motioned and seconded. Call a roll. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Yes. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Miss Vira. Yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Thank you, Dr. Chapman. Thank you, President Cole. I think I have uh
1094.7. It's my next item this evening, but we'll move on right to you to board goals and guard rails discussion. Thank you. Um so this um presentation is and certainly an invitation from board leadership to take a few minutes to talk about our board goals and guard rails. At the beginning of our math presentation, we saw the monitoring calendar for the remainder of this school year. I want to take a few minutes to remind everyone what we mean when we talk about goals, guardrails, and monitoring. The student outcomes focus governance model calls for us to monitor each goal twice a year and each guard rail at least once a year in a board meeting. So, in April, we'll provide our annual update on the whole child guard rail. In May, the focus will be on
110the culturally responsive staff guard rail and we'll end the school year with a monitoring session of the support intervention services guard rail. Again, we'll pick up the monitoring calendar in the fall and provide monitoring reports on our progress towards each goal and guard rail. The goals and guard rails, as President Cole mentioned earlier, reflect our community's vision and values for Columbus City Schools, and they serve to focus the work of the district on improving student outcomes. When we are all working together on common goals, we are able to accelerate accelerate and celebrate our system progress. This short video coming up next provides an overview of the difference between the goals and the guard rails. So recently I was leaving my office and heading to the airport. Um, and so what I did is I called
111an Uber. And the first thing you do, you know, when you open up the Uber app is, you know, you tell it exactly where you want to go. In this case, I said, "Yeah, I want to go to the airport." Um, and so the Uber arrives and I hop in back. I happen to know that on this particular day, the most obvious path to the airport uh is blocked by construction. And so I leaned forward to the Uber driver. I said, "Hey, don't take I35. I happen to know that it's completely blocked off of construction." At that point, I've actually given two critical forms of direction of instruction to the Uber driver. I've said, "What is the goal? Take me to the airport." But I've also said, "What is the guard rail? Don't go along
112this particular path." Now that I've provided the goal and I provided the guard rail, all the other operational decisions are made by the Uber driver. You know, if we're going to slow speed up or slow down, I don't make that call, the driver does. If we're going to turn left or turn right, I don't make that call. The driver does. There's probably seven other routes that we could take to get to the airport. I don't pick which of those seven routes we take. The driver does. Inside of a student outcomes focused approach to governing, the board is actively saying, I am more focused on what are the vision and values of the community, the goals and the guard rails. We trust that to our professional educators and the professional staff to figure out. This is
113a radically different approach to government, but it's one that we believe honors our professionals and really preserves for them the ability to do things that they know make the most sense on behalf of our students. Thank you. Um and just again reminding us and anchoring us in our board goals. Our goals reflect the vision of the community, what the community expects from us. And tonight we focus on our progress towards our math goal. Our guard rails however reflect the values of the community and how we get to the goals. In addition to our three goals, you as a our board of education have set guard rails. These reflect the values of the community. As we saw in the video, the goal is setting is getting to the airport. The path we take to get to
114the airport is the work of our guardrails. Guard rail number one, support intervention systems. The superintendent will not allow multi-tered systems of support, what we refer to as MTSS, to be underresourced. As my team creates the budget plan for the upcoming school year, we are intentional about aligning resources to support tier 1, tier 2, and tier three student needs. Guardrail number two, prioritize a whole child focus. This the superintendent will not allow the district to ignore a whole child approach. In addition to addressing the academic needs of our students, we also prioritize social emotional supports. Our school counselors, school social workers, and school nurses are assigned to provide student support services beyond what our teachers and support staff in the classroom provide. Guardrail number three, align resources equitably. The superintendent will not allow any region
115to be without strong learning communities. This has been a new focus for the district during the last couple of years. Earlier this year, you learned about the new budget planning team was taking a cross office approach to aligning limited resources to student need. Guard rule number four, ensure a culturally responsive staff. The superintendent will not allow cultural cultural non-responsivity to impact student experience or staff effectiveness. We talk about student and staff sense of belonging. That work is aligned to this guard rail. We measure it through our district panorama survey. These are the four guard rails that we are previous that were previously adopted by the board and currently drive our work. I'm now going to talk about a potential fifth guard rail that the board um will consider. Previously, the board had a goal related
116to our portrait of a graduate work. We believe that this work fits better as a guard rail and it provides direction that the superintendent will not allow the portrait of a graduate to not for us not to invest and implement in this strategy. PLG is most viable as a guard rail as it emerged as a community value and can be measured as an adult input resource or activity consistent with the board's model of student outcomes focused governance. This discussion was last held during a board retreat meeting in 2023. So, as a reminder, a number of themes emerged during the board of education dialogue in January of 2023. PLG should be a demonstration of attributes embedded throughout K through2 learning. PLG should be aligned with learning paths for students with teacher and student voice included in
117crafting what it looks like adapting to current reality while staying committed to the community vision of POG. Finally, the board will need to adopt the PG work as a part of a new or fifth guard rail. So certainly to in closing, our next step um is to take up the portrait of a graduate guard rail in the academics and facilities board committee um once the board has created the language for the PLG guard rail, we'll take up the work of how we will update the board on how we'll fulfilling the requirements of the guardrail. In the future, certainly our board members will need to vote on whether to add the portrait ready graduates as a fifth guard rail, which would be a change. All right. Um, thank you for this, uh, discussion opportunity with you
118here. What I want to do is just kind of set the stage very quickly. The first piece is is that guard rails, as you saw, are foundationed on community vision and expectation of what it is that they want to see kids know and be able to demonstrate or do. Here's the thing about guard rails though. First and foremost, and thank you young ladies for attending get home safely. Guard rails are prohibitive. They are prohibitive. One of the qualities of a guardrail is that it is prohibitive. And you read in the language the s this one of the examples is the superintendent will not fail to da da da da da. In addition, they're measurable. In addition to that, they're predictive and also they're progressive. They're progressive. They set the stage for progress. They give the
119superintendent or any direct report the opportunity to figure out how to color in lines in the most qualitybased kind of way possible, if I'm making any sense. So, with that, I want you guys to frame your questions around that kind of thinking. So I'll give an example and anybody can take my question and run with it. How does portrait of a graduate assist help us measure what students know and can do? If we were to think about this from that standpoint, how does portrait of graduate work to the effect of improving student outcomes in a way that helps us be able to measure what they know and can do? The other piece is this. In closing, 80% of the work of the interim is the superintendent. 80% of the work is the administration's job and
120her team. So, go ahead. If if there are any questions on the floor right now, let's open it up. President Cole, I guess I don't understand what you are actually asking us to discuss right now. Well, I just I just gave a good question. What I thought was one. How does this portrait of a grad We can just kick the conversation off with that question. How does portrait of a graduate there's six component? There's six six qualities, you know, attributes. Thank you. There's six attributes of portrait of a graduate. Let's talk about what they are and then let's answer the question based on how you guys are looking at having us frame this in a way that we can measure what students know and thus be able to do. What are the six qualities? Let's
121remind ourselves of that and then how are you aligning this to a me measurable ways in which that you can report to us on an interim basis and an outcomes basis about what kids know and what they can do based on these six qualities. How's this going to prove student outcomes? So, President Cole, this is um work that we have yet to articulate across the district. Um, right now we have four guard rails and the question is actually for the board. Does the board is the board have the pleasure or discretion to or interest or desire to establish a fifth guard rail? Does the board want to create a fifth guard rail? And if so, my thought would be that we could certainly work with during our one of our board committees um to work
122on that work. The board will set the guard rail which will be the directive to the superintendent. The superintendent will not allow related to PLG and then our team will then work to create um the um supporting metrics that um align to that guard rail. So that's the question for the board this evening. Um do you all have um desire and interest to add a fifth guard rail which would be portrait of a graduate and um move that work forward and then that will send a signal to the administration of our next steps. President Cole, hold on just a moment. This is point of clarification for me. For me, it's helpful to know how it is that you're thinking about how this improves student outcomes. Ultimately, that's what for me, if you see, if you're
123telling me that you've got some sort of idea about how this adds value, how this is directly contributative, and it's not a skeptical question. And it's just one that helps me get clarity about what it is in terms of your vision or idea around scope of work with this that'll improve student outcomes for us to add this as a guard rail. What does it make s what to you makes sense about doing this? I guess can I sorry um Yes, please. I don't think that's a fair question for her because it's our guard rail and it's our it's us listening to our community, right? So that's our job to tell her we think it should be a guardrail and I think that's what she's asking and then she would have to decide how to measure
124it which is what she's saying that's where the work would go and so I think that for me it was always important to have this as a piece of our governance model because our our community developed this this was something that um took a lot of time and effort and these attributes were something that um you know a cross-section of our community came together and said, "We want every uh student who graduates to have these attributes." And we know that these these attributes aren't just measuring a math score or the state graduation. It's more of human qualities that the community felt would be in the best interest to create a functioning human in our society, right? and more advanced skills that would really propel them for the future of that we can't even imagine. And
125so I do think it's important because the community was very clear in what they were telling us here that we do um you know have this as a guard rail. Um first we said it was a goal because it was that important, right? And I think we figured out quickly it was we didn't quite because it wasn't built. So it wasn't like the math and we didn't have metrics. We had to build it first. Um and I mean I maybe that's your question. No, it was my question years ago when we actually built something. We set it as a goal. I asked the same question there. But okay, hold on. I got you. I thank you for your insight. I want to make sure we get everybody else too. So it looks like this is
126something that we're walking towards. Uh, anyone else have some insight or feedback that they'd like to give? President. Okay, Brandon, thank you. I'm sorry. Um, to my colleagues who have been here longer than I have. So, it was originally envisioned that this would become one of our guard rails because I was a bit confused with the presentation and how we got to a space where we were discussing this as um an option to add to one of our guardrails. So, I guess that's my first question is it sounds like it was originally envisioned that this would become a guardrail at some point. Yes. Yes. It was it originally started as a goal board member Simmons. Um one that we had questions about okay how do we quantitatively get an idea about what progress what how
127this directs towards student outcomes. There was not much clarity around it. Then it was later asserted as the opportunity for a guard rail. we took on other work at the time and moved in another direction and really took on the math go the the math interim guard rail and goal. So with that in mind that's how we got to this point. We want to make sure we're working with the administration to again based on community value add quality to the student experience with these attributes that you know help us get to where it is we we believe we're trying to go. Thank you. And then that having that background knowledge allows me to um kind of dig into the substance. Dr. Chapman, currently at least on our website, the portrait of a graduate is included
128under the strategic plan, which I believe is owned by the superintendent. Um how would the how how would your work change if we were to make this a guardrail? What would you be doing differently then versus what you're doing now? um is could so so when we think about um the portrait of a graduate attributes we are thinking about the skills and the mindsets that we want our students to embody not only so they can be successful in their K12 experience so they can be successful in college and career and beyond. So the question when we think about um if we stand up a guard rail, the board would send the signal to the superintendent, the the organization of what we are not going to allow in order for us to continue to hold up
129this guardrail. The guard rail, as we talked about earlier, um really demonstrates um aligned pathways for students opportunities for them to um have personalized pathways and explore their interest. Um we can certainly tie that to our career pathway work. Um we think about the attributes of portrait of a graduate, adaptability, creativity, global empathy, communication, technology, and critical thinking. Um certainly there's aspects of that already embedded in our curriculum, already embedded in our program offerings, already embedded in our professional development. Tonight, um in our monitoring report, we talked about critical thinking and how that shows up in our math classrooms and what our students need to be able to to know and be able to do in the classroom as well as to be able to demonstrate that type of thinking on their high stakes assessment.
130But these attributes and this goal around Pog goes well beyond fifth grade math. Thinking about what are the skills and the the mindsets that our students need to be able to demonstrate not only in school but also in college and career. Um I'm I'm sorry. I I what would be different, you know, is that does that look like, you know, your team allocating additional resources to support this or I I guess I'm just the the disconnect for me is is is not only what would be what about the work of the administration would be different if this became a guardrail. But I'd also say that given our other guardrails, we we don't talk about them a lot. I guess I'd be a little bit concerned we might be having too many competing priorities at once
131and not able to to focus and give them all the the light and the time that they need. Um, but I I guess there I'm still a bit disconnected about what about the work of the administration would be substantively different if we made this a guardrail versus right now how it it kind of lives in the strategic plan. Thank you um board member Simmons for an asking that question but also leaning into um an area of making sure that we stay focused on our goals and our guard rails. Um the question um the answer to your question would certainly be um 100% dependent on how the guardrail is established. So if the board created a guardrail around the board could decide not to create a guardrail around PLG. the board could decide we have four
132guard rails and we are not interested in adding a fifth one. We talked about adding a fifth guard rail because PLG was a goal. The board um certainly at that time thought that PLG should be one of our goals. We have since pivoted and decided that we needed to transition PLG from a goal to a guar rail. We talked about that. We talked about that in a board meeting. We've talked about that in um um 2 by two meetings, but that work never happened. And so I'm bringing it back to the forefront at the request of board leadership to have this conversation tonight. What is your pleasure? Um do you want to move? Do you want to continue the conversation, have further dialogue and consideration around a fifth guard rail? So the first decision point
133is do we want to establish a guardrail? Do we want even entertain this conversation? We're going to continue to keep this guardrail under construction for further consideration at a later date. And then once the board, if the board moves in the direction to establish a guardrail, how you write the language will then send send the signal to the administration of how we would behave and act differently to support and deliver upon this guardrail. Perhaps it's around resources. Perhaps it's around curricular resources. Perhaps it's around um all of our guard rails are supposed to be adult behaviors. What will the adults in the organization do differently to uh achieve the guard rail? And so that would be the question for the board. Again, nothing has been predetermined yet. um this work has not I don't have
134a plan to present to you regarding this this guardrail because the board hasn't given me um an indication that they want to move forward um now officially with adopting a new guardrail. Does that help for clarity? No, it it does. Thank you, Dr. Chapman. That that helps a lot. And then I just had one final question if I may please. Um, is there any recommendations that you could or in, you know, potential paths forward that you could give us if we were to adopt this as a guardrail as the, you know, thinking back to the video about the, you know, the setting the guardrails and it's not saying turn left, turn right here, but just as our superintendent and CEO, is there something maybe you have envisioned if the board were to adopt this as
135a guardrail? Because it it'd be helpful to have again more insight into what would be different if this was a guardrail versus what's taking place now. Certainly, I would love the opportunity for us to um again engage in dialogue. Before we talked about when we had PLG as a guard rail, we were um it was all focused on what the students would do. And so, as a guard rail, remember our goals are focused on student outcomes, but our guard rails are focused on what the adults need to do to ensure those goals are met. So we want to make sure that whatever we land wherever we land what we articulate in a guardrail it is not a distraction from the work that we've already established and it is in service of improving student outcomes particularly
136on our board goals the three board goals that we've set and those interim goals. So, we want to have dialogue about making sure that there's alignment and this work is really going to um further help us accelerate and improve student outcomes on those three goals that we already have established. Is the capacity there to to do that successfully along with our other competing priorities? as a board, as a board and an administration, when I think about our other goals, our other guard rails, the realignment work, the ever ongoing efforts to comply with different things going on at the federal and state level, is the capacity there to stand up a fifth goal or a fifth guard rail, excuse me. Certainly, we would have to be very mindful that we are not um decreasing our capacity
137to prioritize and accelerate student outcomes by um creating a guardrail that sends us in a different direction. Um so that's something that we always have to be mindful of um particularly at this point in time. Thank you, Dr. Chapman. Yes, ma'am. Uh thank you Dr. Chapman. Just as a point of clarification, is it your recommendation or are you seeking the board's consideration to add a fifth guard rail? I I want to be very clear on what is it that you are saying to us. Do you want a fifth guard rail or is this something that you just are simply bringing back for conversation and consideration? What what is your pleasure is what I would like to be clear on. So um just for context, the way that I understand again our governance model is the
138board sets the number of goals that we have and the number of guard rails. I do not set the goals and the guard rails. I work to achieve and accelerate and those outcomes. But that is truly a decision for the board. If the board created um five goals, the administration would have to work to achieve five goals. If the go the board created seven guard rails, we would work to achieve seven guard rails. We are making great traction and progress with the goals that the clear goals that we've articulated that we're working on. And now we are certainly at that point where we need to firm up our the language around our current guard rails and certainly the the board said to the administration we're moving this goal PLG we're replacing it with a different
139goal math and this PLG work is important. We've heard from our community this PLG work is important. the our recommendation is that this should be a guardrail. That's what I heard from the board and that's board work. And so um the um board leadership asked me to bring this back to the table and so I am honoring the request to um certainly um have a dialogue about where we go next. Thank you for that um background and um President Cole and colleagues since we're having the discussion I definitely welcome an opportunity to have a deeper dive around what this is. I don't know that right now in this moment this is the opportunity to have that uh really looking at you know how how do we go about really evaluating um the necessity for this
140in this moment. So looking at an opportunity to have maybe a special meeting to bring AJ back. Um I don't know if it starts within the committee space, but I think right now there there are more questions for me than there are than there necessarily is a path forward. So thank you for that feedback. Thank you for that feedback. Dr. Pierce, thank you so much. President Cole, I wonder in probably just extending the comments that board member Simmons and board member um Ver have given that at this point because there is more conversation and discussion that needs to happen. I'm not really seeing how this guard rail will be very different from the superintendent implementing portrait of a graduate as a part of the strategic plan. So at this point, is it possible that we
141could table this conversation to a later date time um with the caveat as well before we move into a special meeting that there's probably some homework on our part to figure out, hey, do we want this? How would we want it to be measured? So we're prepared to come back and have a fruitful dialogue and discussion. I thank you for that feedback. Is there anyone else? Okay. So, um with response to, you know, two of the suggestions that have been brought forth, uh I think that there's a a very unique opportunity, I've had the opportunity to speak with our board chairs. Um, we are going to do in the second week of April on April 8th and April 9th, we're going to host a joint committee. We're going to do a two-day joint committee where
142we're actually going to get student outcomes focused governance training and we'll have the opportunity to ask that question at that time should we be able to get to it. The other opportunity is this. Each individual board member has a has a chance to call AJ to contact him. Those who did not have his information, I made sure I forwarded it. Uh you can contact AJ and ask directly for additional guidance and understanding around the establishment of a guard rail. Um, again, I'm in the space of, as Michael, I'm in the space of understanding that 80% of the guard rail work is incumbent of the administration. As you said, these are doubt inputs and outputs that go into this whole piece that we end up eventually looking at and monitoring subsequently. So at the end of
143the day, I think that this is something that we can continue to deliberate upon at a future time. Uh again, any of those, we have a first bite at the apple the second week of April on the 8th and 9th. We have another bite at the apple that we're working towards planning in June where we'll even open that opportunity up to the community. Okay. And um so with that in mind, I think that this is I thank you for this insight. I thank you for this presentation. Um we're really working diligently with you to ensure that we're making progressive steps towards where we're trying to be not only in terms of interims but also outcomes. Um so we'll we'll move on with this conversation. Is that all Dr. Chapman? That's concludes the report. All right.
144I thank you very kindly. Okay. we will move forward in the agenda and we will head to uh committee updates. Now um in this committee update space we're only giving ourselves three minutes up to three minutes. So with that in mind uh we can start with community engagement and advocacy. Uh thank you President Cole. Um so the community engagement and advocacy committee met for the first time um this past um Tuesday. Um really was excited to be able to welcome three a new um appointment committee members. Um we spent the the top of the year really evaluating the work plan of this particular committee. Um we achieved that through um being able to put out a survey to collect feedback from other board chairs um members of the committee looking at work that we had
145um worked on last year in addition to our amazing uh direct reports. And so I'm happy that we were able to make that a focus key focus area of our meeting uh last Tuesday. So we have um really leaned in on the areas of school funding, education and advocacy, uh master school realignment and innovation plan, enhancing community feedback mechanisms, advocacy and policy alignment, building and expanding multi-tered partnerships and student experience, specifically leaning in on ESL and special education. Um in the um on board docs this evening I do have a hyperlink there that will give you the full presentation as well as the executive summary. Um in addition um that evening we also heard from our government affairs director Beth Hess who really provided a robust update and call to action regarding the state operating
146budget. Um she covered the CCS legislative priorities in addition to the Ohio bianual state operating budget. um also went over the executive budget proposal and also talked more with the committee about ways that they can advocate what we are doing here at CCS with families and and community partners um in terms of advocacy and what does that mean and how others can get involved. Um um Director Hess's full presentation is also linked here in my uh committee report. Um and then we wrapped up our evening with a really powerful um interactive experience uh led by our ESL department and office of engagement where they shared efforts to remove barriers and enhance knowledge um sharing information within the ESL community. So it was a really interactive experience uh where we were able to give some input
147um but her their full presentation is also um linked here. One of the things that I want to highlight for my colleagues, um, as part of our ongoing activities, um, the ESL department has also sent a a a survey link out to committee members to provide feedback on that presentation. Um, I would also encourage my colleagues to watch the video playback so you can see the presentation that was given to us. Um, because they are also interested in your feedback as it relates to the presentation. Um, so I'll be sure to include that link um, out to each of you, but certainly I've included the survey link in my report as well. And um, kind of f follow f wrapping up. Um, additionally, we wanted to talk more about intentional ways to partner uh, to
148be able to do more advocacy efforts. And today we did a little bit of that down um, at the Ohio uh, schoolboard association legislative conference. Um, so that's a big part of our work for the committee this year. Um at the bottom I have some things that are coming up um in in the next couple of meetings. As board president Cole has mentioned um our April meeting will be in partnership with our committee colleagues. So which means the items that I have listed here will be pushed out to May. Uh which those items will consist of an u an update from our policy and governance committee on board policy 7105 as it relates to the closing of school buildings. In addition, um, Treasurer Cook will be joining us to talk about, um, pre present his
149initial draft on community engagement strategy for the treasurer's office uh, specifically related to school finance. And that is my report. President Cole, thank you so much. Uh, we'll go to ETRM. Thank you. Um, so we met on March 12th and we, um, as always had a very full agenda. Um we continued our work about learning about the cost of programming. Um and we focused on our ESL program. So director Seain was with us. Um I also have a report attached in board docs that can be uh seen with lots of links data from the presentation. Um, long story short, in ESL, we are um serving more students um than we ever have in this program. And we're seeing big influxes in our kindergarten and first grade levels, which is explained because there's a pipeline from
150our um preschool, which is great, but also in 9th grade, which is causing um some challenges um in how the sites are set up. Um we also over the past few years have increased staffing in this area to really meet the needs. Um Dr. or Mr. Sain um explained to the committee that inhouse um our team serves and does a lot of the translation and services for our uh Spanish and Somali and then we contract out for our other languages. Um, in funding, the ESL program costs about currently about $20 million and 93% of that is from general fund with the rest of that being from um, title three. Um, and in order to see uh, and meet the needs of our future um, EEL students, Mr. Sain is asking for an additional $2.2 2
151million dollars in personnel which would um help create a system where we have full they're called sheltered sites at schools with high eel enrollment in the high school level which is what is going to help solve the increase of the ninth grade students. Um he did outline a few long-term strategies um to make it optimal and that would be really to realign the program to allow all students to be served in their home schools um and providing each of those schools uh in ESL um instructional assistant and one at central enrollment. Um we then heard from our superintendent who went over the annual operating budget process um with the committee. Um she first started with a great reminder about our enrollment and demographics really highlighting that we are growing. We are serving over 47,000 students
152currently and we are again seeing increases in our disability and EL students which the committee had learned. Um the staff is really taking or the administration is taking um kind of a different approach to our budgetary process which Dr. Chapman outlined and um some of the considerations were the potential impact of reduction of the federal funds. We don't know. Um we have current uh challenges in our prek funding which the committee explored last time. Um, and you know, we have a goal of expanding prek and having universal prek in our city. Um, and what we've all been hearing about recently, the state budget. And so, Dr. Chapman spent a lot of time talking about the state budget, talking about just exactly what she said this evening, so I won't repeat that, you know, basically the
153uh the levy promises that our committee gave would basically be wiped out. And she walked through those um those things. And it's and a good reminder that the levy was really about maintaining a lot of the uh promising practices and services that we knew our students need coming off of ESSER and that there were a few key additions, but it really was about maintaining things that were working. Um closing, we then had uh Treasurer Cook also give a highlight about um House Bill 96. Um, and again, we've heard a all about that and really it's about making sure that uh we are funding the formula correctly and that our adjustments are made in the cost sets. And so he explained that to the committee. And then lastly, we finished up with our internal auditor who
154um gave a report from our state auditor about the uh about WCBE, our radio station. and we had our general manager come and chat with us about all the wonderful things our radio station is doing to support our students and new CTE things and we got a good report from the state auditor. Um so all those things are linked um in the report. Again a very full meeting. Um just a reminder uh as we have one formal recommendation back from November on the cash balance policy and uh we will not meet in April due to the announcement but in May we will meet um and talk about um five-year forecast West broad and uh have our internal auditor back to talk about um the OIa dashboard. Thank you, Madam VP. All right, I'll move on
155to AFAC academics and facility alignment committee. Um, we had a good committee meeting that was started with a presentation by a company called Varagy. This is a company that focuses a great deal of its efforts in the space of energy management and automate automate automation of these types of services for school buildings to be able to monitor and measure uh effectively the type of energy use that they have in consumption. Um they gave a very robust kind of explanation of the work that they do. They're a nationally recognized institution um by accredited uh organizations that you know uh are probably one of the few I think they're about 14 one of 14 in the country that are acknowledged with this type of uh accreditation. Um in addition to that most importantly we got a presentation
156from uh Dr. Cath well Katherine Moer deputy superintendent Katherryn Moer and team um relative to career tech um and giving us a level set my committee a level set understanding of what's happening well in career tech that my group were able to learn and understand that you know we're looking at a 94% graduation rate. So again, nine plus out of nearly every 10 students who are involved in CTE in Columbus City Schools are actually graduating on time and with credentials. In addition to that, they rolled into what I believe is a growing developing drafted program uh for careermies and leveraging that career academy approach by working with advisory boards that have contributed to, you know, helping the the district figure out what industries are actually in need of human capital and how do we design
157curriculum around that. I was very inspired by that. So was the committee. In addition to that, um, the National Career Academy Coalition, this kind of leading group that is also a part of the idea capital space for where we're trying to transition this and again to the 80% I spoke about early on to answering somewhat of the question that was asked by a board colleague. What does POG have to do with you know what we're trying to accomplish? Well, part of this strategy was around the idea of creating portrait of a graduate school students as a part of this academy process, incorporating that into that to some degree. So, as we continue our discussions, I look forward to learning more about that. But at the end of the day uh the the the committee got
158a great opportunity to learn about what's happening well in this space and uh what the vision is for careermies moving forward. In this program there were uh the idea is that between uh the year school year 2025 and school year 2028 that there are possibly as many as 10 schools identified as careermies. that these uh require smaller classroom sizes uh that require pathway development and direction. Um so there were a lot of things that we were encouraged by hearing and look forward to more. Um as I understand it this current 2526 school year there were four schools that were identified for such an opportunity. Beach High School, East High School, Walnut Ridge High School and West High School. I've had the opportunity in closing to see, you know, the FAB lab at West High School
159and the great work that they're doing there. Um, they're actually working on creating some sort of uh some sort of robotic machine based on fabricated equipment that they that they use. And I'm not saying this right. So, they made something on the computer and it cut it out for them. and now they're putting these pieces together with the support of the Ohio State University's engineering program. So, that concludes my report. Thank you. And we'll go right on into policy and governance. And what I'd like to do if it's okay um I'd like the opportunity to uh see if it makes sense to walk right into to in fact you can even incorporate your report into these these 15 policies. So we can go ahead and do that and start with uh uh revised 4.1 or
1604.10. So, um, if I can, before I do that, I do want to call out that the closing of school buildings policy is a policy that our committee has been working on for a few meetings now. We meet every three months, so it has been um, a while. We do have a draft based on the Denver model um, that we are out we are going to be out talking in the community about. Um that draft was presented at the last policy governance meeting and we will be presenting um to board member Vieira's committee community engagement committee and asking them for assistance and getting out and talking to folks about the draft of that policy. So um we are still very much working on the policy for closing of school buildings and we'll continue that work
161um into our next June meeting. Other than that, we did discuss a couple policies um that are up for consideration for the board tonight. I'm going to go a little out of order um but based on the board docs. Um so 4.10 is policy 0155. It is the committee's policy. The specified change or the recommended change um is really simple here. The recommended change is that instead of language that says the committee shall be comprised of up to three elected board members um or elected members of the board of education that we change the language to say the committee shall be comprised of at least one and up to three elected board members of the board of education. That gives this board a little bit of flexibility about how many board members have to be
162on a committee because right now um it's Thank you. So, madame VP, is there an amendment you'd like to make? A motion? She did it within um Okay. Okay. Excellent. I have a point of clarification, please. Um the res the legislation in board docs doesn't include that at least one up to to three and this is not the legislation I reviewed. Yeah, the legislation as written says shall be comprised of up to three. Um, in talking to the board president and board vice president, they are recommending that we change that um to to shall be comprised of at least one and up to three elected members of the board of education. So what I would like to do is just kind of on the spot make the amendment um so that the language that we
163consider as a board says the committee shall be comprised of at least one and up to three elected members of the board of education. So that is a motion. That is my motion. Second. Motion and seconded. Call the role. Miss Farah. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. I'll come back. Um h the at least one is the committee chair. What was the rationale behind I I guess weird. Yeah, I I'm having a question, a thought process as I'm thinking through the at least one. I I I don't even know if you want to come back. Mr. Treasurer will move on. I'll say no. No. Mr. Simmons. Abstain. I would have liked to have more time to consider this change. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Motion carried. All right. Continue, please. So our second
164uh policy for consideration is item 4.11. It is a first reading of a new policy 2265. Um 2265 beliefs, affiliations, ideals, and principles. comes from House Bill 214, which requires districts to adopt and post a policy prohibiting the use of statements and commitments to or soliciting or requiring specified individuals um to affirmatively ascribe to specific beliefs, affiliations, ideals or principles concerning political movement or ideology. Um that bill became effective in late January and so our compliance with it is required imminently. Um the language of this policy um as drafted came from Niola with lots of uh feedback and input um from the districts. Um and so it's as good as we can legally make it. If I could clarify that last motion actually we needed five to pass that. Thank you. Um, I'll make a
165motion to wave first reading and adopt adopt the second. President Cole, just a moment. We're in the middle of a vote. Go ahead again. Discussion. Yeah, there'll be discussion. There'll be discussion. There was a motion in a second. Okay, Miss Engles. Oh, is that discussion? We have discussion. What is the What are we voting on to approve the policy? Uh, well, I think the first vote though is to not have a to have a second reading. So, we're just going to have this one reading. Are we gonna We have to do two votes to I put it all in one motion. Well, I'd like to discuss the first the president Cole. I'd like to discuss the the waving the first reading is more gerine to my comments than the Okay, that's the initial motion, I
166believe. Yes, that's what I thought it was. I said it in just to be clear. I would my intent was to do it in one motion. Is that not appropriate? We would need to wave it in one and then we can have a second. Okay. Then I will amend my first motion to just wave and I gave the second. There was a second. Now the reason for in large part for the waving and then I'll let uh board chair explain further. One of the biggest reasons is is because several of these policies are time constraint. And when I say time constraint, I mean has we have to make some sort of decision before the end of the month. That's one of the reasons why we're we're waving the first reading. The second and most important
167reason also is that a lot of this is nothing more than compliance with what state law is at this point in time. So Niola has made some recommended changes to these uh respective policies because this is nothing but omnibus action that we're taking place uh that we're acting on based on what law is already in place right now. So we're just aligning ourselves with the law. Am I explaining that correctly board member? That's that's correct. That's the intent of it. Um the law says what the law what is required in the policy. So, um this is this would be compliant with um the requirements of the law. You have another question? Um the the reason why I I hesitate is when I reviewed the agenda towards the tail end of last week, these policies were
168not on the agenda and so I haven't and there's a numerous amount and I haven't I will be honest, I haven't had time to go through and and read each one because they were added a bit maybe closer to the meeting. Um, and my my question actually is of which of these policies are just statutory changes that we're making to align with the law and then which are maybe more substantive changes that we're we're making because that's not clear to me at this time. And then thinking about the tradition in which our board has typically um looked at policy changes and made policy changes and had open discussion. I you know think about our last piece 4.10 Dr. Pierce raised a really good point that I had not considered. And if we had more time
169to make to digest the information, review the information in advance of the vote, then perhaps we would even if they are just statutory changes, perhaps some new things might come to light or insight. Um, and so I'm just I'm personally not comfortable making even just a what might seem like a blanket statutory change. I'm personally not comfortable making that without having maybe more time to review the policies. And if we have traditionally done a first reading, if if it is urgent, I I understand that. However, we do have another meeting scheduled this month. Um, and so I again, it's just I I'd prefer if we do it more in the tradition in which legislation has typically came to the board. April, President Co. Uh, yes, another comment too. In my board briefing, I asked specifically
170what um legislations leadership or chair would have had in mind to um to not have a second read on and I did not get a list of those um particular um policies and so I too feel that while I am still in support of um foregoing the second reading on this one there is quite a lot of policies and it would have been very helpful for that information to be given to us at least in the board briefings that we have. Okay. So, with that in mind, there's opportunity because there's a a a sec a motion in a second on the floor right now. Yes. What we could do is take that vote. We could take that vote. If it doesn't pass, what we then can do is walk through each policy one at a
171time to get an idea of where things are. I'm assuming that's what we'll do with each policy, though. This was just for the This was just for um this policy. Yeah, we're not taking them as a group. And for clarification on the second reading, I do think on um Kyle, Miss Lathwell, please correct me. Uh I see that you're on if I'm wrong, but on this one, I think that we would be okay on time to to allow for a second reading at the next board meeting. Um this is not one of the super urgent timely as long as we would accomplish it by the next board meeting. Is that your understanding? Which one we're on? Um 2265. No. 2265. 2265's effective date has passed. So I would consider you have to do it today.
172I would consider it um a compliance issue to not do it. It's a mandatory uh policy for all boards across the state. Okay. I want to be clear on the motion to wave the second reading. It's to wave the second reading. No, just on this one. Okay. That's what I wanted. I second that at all. That's what I wanted to clear up. I think that's policy. We have a motion in a second. Call the call the question. Call the Call the RO. Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. Motion to approve the policy. Second. Call the RO. Dr. Pierce. Yes. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Miss Vera. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Okay. The next item is 4.12. Interscolastic
173athletics. This is not a policy that we discussed in our policy committee. However, we gave notice of it to the committee um about what the changes were um and why it was important. Um it is included it includes provisions of House Bill 47 that regard mandatoryformational meetings for students and parents and adding sudden cardiac arrest training and restrictions. It also includes updates from House Bill 147 that included the athletic eligibility provisions. Um this is a recommended Neola update um which is our policy service provider and um it's fairly straightforward motion to um wave the second reading. Second. Call the role. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles. Yes, Dr. Pierce. Yes, Mr. Simmons. Yes, Vice President Adair. Yes, President Cole. Yes. Motion to approve the policy. Second. President Cole, we didn't have any discuss right now. Are
174we discussing? Is there a discussion? This just to clarify this policies again, it's just a change to comply with recent changes to state law in House Bill 47 and House Bill 147. Yes. Any policies on here that are are not like that? No. Okay. That is what we're what we're handling. There are a couple where we had an option and so I'll call that out when I when we get to it. But for the remainder, it's just compliance. And the deadline for us to adopt this is uh this policy. I'm not sure. And then I I would probably have the same questions for the subsequent policies too. Well, we'll do one at a time. I have that answer. Kyle, did you have it? Yes. Um the effective date on this one was 10:24 2024. beyond.
175So, we're very past it. Colleagues, the qu um the question that Oh, I have a question. Thank you, U. President Cole. Um the question that I have relates to uh the restoration of an incomplete grade. Um I think that is on page two. it the policy outlines that um the student is able to I guess participate in practice in sports once the incomplete incomplete grade has been restored and a grade has been given. Um a while back we had a student come and share their experience with their athletic team where their grades have been in question they weren't able to participate. I think this particular language right here, it it puts us in that tough situation again where the student um might be in a position that they know they're going to be able to
176to get that A, to get that B, and be able to participate, but as policy is written, if the student has the incomplete, then the student cannot participate. Am I understanding this correct? Are board member um Pierce, are you talking about the white section or are you talking about the green section? White section. So the white section is current policy and I would say I'm uncomfortable without a full legal review of changing anything in that section. The only things that have been legally vetted are the potential changes that would be in in one of the colors on the policy. So um that would be my feedback on that. And so if we were to as a board because we need to be compliant move forward with this would we I would be in a position
177to recommend that this policy go back to policy and governance specifically to address the restoration of the incomplete grade issue especially given that we have had students come give testimony and share their experience. I think that is a gap in the current policy. Yep. So, I would be open to get us to compliance, approve as is, but President Cole, I think we need to recommend this back to policy and governance to to deal with that that gap. Julie noted. Awesome. Motion and with I mean, we can absolutely do that. Um, with uh the voting of the policies tonight, no policy is ever really stagnant. So, we can't always revisit every single policy at any time. Unless it's just in clear violation of law. Correct. Yeah. All right. So, it's been motioned and seconded. Let's call
178the RO. Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. Great. We will move on to 2460 special education. Again, this is a legal compliance update. Um, we have until the end of this month. So, if we wait until the next board meeting, we will be out of compliance. Um, districts are required um under law to adopt written policies and procedures regarding the education of students with disabilities. The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce released an updated special education model policy and procedure in the December of 2024. So, this is actually coming from the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce. Um, districts can choose to adopt the 2024 model policies or develop their own to comply with this policy requirement. However, Nola, our policy provider,
179uh recommends um that there are at least four areas that contain statements in conflict with existing state and federal laws. Um to properly adopt the 2024 model policies, Neola districts are advised to use the board resolution um and to officially adopt the 2024 model policies. Um so with that, this policy is the recommended um adoption that would put us in compliance, which again is a deadline of by the end of this month. Motion to wave first reading. Second. Second. Motion and seconded. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Yes. Mr. Simmons, I have a miss. Yes. President Cole, yes. Vice President Aderair, yes. Item 4.25, which sets forth the four areas that Niola and and my office believes are not consistent with state and federal law. Can you clarify that comment that again this is just us
180taking action on things that put us in alignment with state and or federal law? Yes. Yes. There are there are four exceptions to states model policy. I'm sorry. Should we have done the should we have done the resolution first? They probably should have been done together. So what is it that we need to do? Is it that we need to just go ahead and approve the resolution? Yes. Okay. So I'm going to jump ahead to for that. Yeah. I don't know. We'll come back to the policy. We'll take the resolution first and then come back to the policy. So then you're okay. So point of clarification. So through the resolution in essence we're approving the policies and we still might have questions or discussion around the policy. What we're approving in the resolution and please
181feel free to clarify are the se the several different exceptions by which we take under consideration in how we move forward with policy. Can you can you explain what it is that I that I'm miserably explaining? That's correct. Board member Ingles did reference immediately prior to the motion Niola's recommendation um to um for the board to vote on the resolution because there are four areas where there uh Niola and my office agree that there are four areas that are not compliant or consistent with federal and state law. And this is to get us compliant. Yes. Yes. And when's the deadline? No. Date, please. We are 30th. We We are required under the stat. I just wanted to know the date. We are required under the statute to notify um Odo by March 30th. I have
182an additional question. As if one additional please to policy. Oh gosh. Um maybe I'll just make this larger. all of our special education um model policies. How does Special Olympics fit into these policies and the resolution? Is that a form of extracurricular activity or is that seen as education? That is not I do not know the answer to that question. We can certainly get that feedback to you get that answer to you at another time. Well, I think as we're deliberating this, because I I have attended their games, I've attended practices, some of those students are over 21. So, I just want to make sure we're being thoughtful and mindful as we're looking at policies that are age specific. So, the one we just looked at before that gave an age range of which special
183education students are receiving services. And so I think it might be helpful for us to understand if Special Olympics is seen as a service that is an education service and some of those students are older than 21. We just want to be mindful about that. I don't think that that falls into that category respectfully. And then with compliance in compliance to federal and state law, we we look at compulsory aid specifically. That's why I'm posing the question, does it count as education or extracurricular? Um, Kyle indicated that she could help with answering this question. Thank you, Kyle. Please. Thank you, President Cole. And I apologize. I may have miscommunicated that. Um, what I can help clarify is put into one bigger picture why we're looking at this 2460 policy along with the resolution and then
184the date that we're looking at as a timeline that we need to meet. The policy itself is just acknowledging that our district is going to adopt the use of the 2024 model policies uh because those were newly developed and released at the end of 2024. So the policy is just saying we're going to follow those in lie of creating our own policy which is what most districts across the state do. Both our legal office, OSBA, and Neiola issued releases of resolution because there are four areas within the 2024 model policies that we believe are inconsistent with law. Overall, the 2024 model policies are fine. They're not these four uh carveouts are not going to change the way we do our work. Dr. Mickey Nelson was able to attend our committee meeting on the 10th and
185and clarify that with the committee as well. So, this is just an acknowledgement of what we're going to be following going forward and getting all of the tees crossed and the dies dotted eyes dotted. Sorry. All right. Thank you so much for that, Kyle. So, again, let's go back to 4.25 25 and make, you know, offer a motion to adopt that that that section and then move forward with the rest of the policies that are President Cole. Yes. Um, we have a motion. I don't quite I was hoping to hear more from Mr. Barnes about how 4.25 is connected to the policy we just voted on. And is that piece of 4.25 also making changes to our policy? it would seem to suggest in the legislation it is. And then I'm also not clear. It
186just says P14, but normally the policy numbers are a bit longer. And so I'm confused about what policies that's making the change to. And I'm just going to stress that I think this is why it's important that we do make the time and the space to have the first reading and so that these questions can be asked with space in between distance from the vote. That way we have time to consider these. But I just my question is how is 4.25 25 connected to the piece of legislation we just voted on and what what's the how is it just how how is it connected? I I don't quite understand that. I think you're going to hear again and please feel free Mr. Barnes what or what happens if we approve the one and don't approve
187the other and why are they packaged differently? I can I try to explain it? Hold on. Let's let Mr. Barnes come back up, please. Thank you, sir. because I think that there's going to be an opportunity for you guys to hear again specifically that it's tied to several set of conditions that give us clarity about how we become more in alignment with federal and state law. Can you just answer his question, please? Yes. Uh the the answer to the first question is you really can't do one without the other. the the resolution um spec specifically goes to the special the special education uh board policy and specifically sets forth what the district is not aligning itself with the four areas for the special education policy and those those four areas are in our policy No,
188currently no they're in the res. Yeah, there is no current policy. It says delete this sentence entirely. Where is it getting deleted from? It's like for example P4 independent education evaluation at public expense. It has original language. An education an educational agency may not impose conditions or timelines related to obtaining an IE except for one criteria described above. action delete this sentence in its entirety. It's it's deleting that portion of the state's model policy of our policy or the state state's model policy. Why do action on that? Because it violates because we don't agree with it. The reason we don't agree with it is because it's not consistent with state or federal law. So we're not adopting pieces of the model policy and we have to make it very clear to the state why we
189are doing that and then that's what the second resolution is. So the the policy 2460 says we to we're not going to have our own policy on this. We're going to use the required state model. However, we've adopted a resolution that goes with this that says there are pieces of that model state that we believe violate other law because you didn't write it correctly. and we are not adopting that because we think that that's a legal liability and that's what the resolution says. So we're pulling out pieces of the model where is it's not is that policy the state's model policy attached somewhere and then in addition to that I I I understand it the state's model policy is not in compliance with federal law or with state law both. Okay. those four. Could Could
190you explain a bit why why that is or who's why the department is it just they haven't gotten around to updating it or it's an old policy or I'm just confused why the states the administration's policy would not our administration why the executive department's admin policy would be conflicting with state law and how that impacts us. I'd have to go back and look at the specifics, but that was done in um junction with uh with with Niola. If you look at our if you look at the proposed policy, that's exactly what this the model policy says except for those four areas, okay, that are listed in the resolution. So the what we just voted on is the model policy. We Yes, we have only voted on waving the second reading on this policy. We have
191not voted on the special education policy for two policy 2460. We have not voted on. And then um what we're talking about right now is 4.25, which is the resolution that corresponds with the policy. The policy refers to the state um Ohio operating standards. Um and so what we do is we adopt the Ohio um policy, but we are going to in this resolution say we are not adopting certain pieces of that because we believe that they are not compliant with state and federal law. It sounded like there was desire to move that up in the agenda so that we could vote on the two related policies at once. And if that was the the will of the board, I would encourage us um because our rules do say that we have to follow our
192agenda to make a a motion to amend the order and that way we can keep it more consistent. Motion. Is there a motion to So motion to move amend the order of the agenda? Second. Moved and seconded. Miss Vera. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Yes. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Vice President Adair? Yes. President Cole? Yes. All right. Now, we're focusing on 4.25. Is there now? Is there a motion to vote for approve 4.25? 4. That That's the resolution. Resolution. Uh motion to approve the resolution. Second. Motion and seconded. Miss Ver. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Yes. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Motion to approve policy 2460. Second. Second. There's a motion in second. Call the RO. Miss FA. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Is that the one I
193asked the question about Special uh Olympics? I got to find it again. Yes. Um where where are we at the vote? Are we at discuss? We are at the vote. We have called the role. We are at the vote. Did we have discussion on it? We've had discussion on it earlier with with several of your queries. Add that to the to the query. I'm sorry. Did we Sarah um Chair Les did we add that piece about the special educ um special Olympics question? We did not amend them the policy. It doesn't need to be amended, but when policy and governance reviews this because it is a living document, can we make sure that we have clarity on if Special Olympics is seen as and I want to say I think it's extracurricular solely as opposed
194to education, but I feel like there's some education components that happen. So, just to satisfy my question. Okay. So, now that it's noted, I'm ready to vote. Dr. Pierce. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Simmons. Yes, Vice President Adair. Yes, President Cole. Yes. All right. Now, where are we going? Back to We are back into um the regular sequence 4.14, which is policy 4121. We have a lot of legal compliance. 4121 is the criminal history records check. [Music] Um, point of order, a clarifying question. Seeing as how we move we moved 4.25 up in the agenda, wouldn't that change the numbering of each item? No. What we're doing is we're going back to where we just left off. So, we approved 4.25. We approved a sub a subsequent policy. Now, we're back on track with where we
195left off, where we would have been at the at the agenda. We just took them out of order. I get that we took them out of order, but we just took one we took we took the two out of order and now we're back on track. We're back in order. Is there something that I need to No, I think what Dr. Pierce is asking because 4.13 became 25 or 4.25 when we moved it up. So the numbering shift fine. We'll call this 4.15. Well, okay. So I guess my question I would like to motion to the board understanding that Chair Engles will keep order in in this moment based upon the numbers that are there in the current agenda that we as a board approve the numbering that needs to happen in our meeting minutes
196and the posted agenda to correspond with the action we just took to move 4.25 up. We will make sure we adjust that accordingly. Does everybody understand my motion? Thank you, Mr. Motion. We've already approved the motion, so we can just note it. Is it Are we good with that? Okay. Thank you. So, four four point um policy 4121 is the criminal history record check. The law is requiring enrollment in a state wrapback system. This is language to require the enrollment in a state wrapback system. Um therefore, it is legally compliant. That is the recommended change. Yes. Is there is there a motion? Kyle, when is this policy due? Is this time sensitive? This is not I don't know that off the top of my head. I would have to check on the effective date. President
197Cole. Yes, sir. I I would say if if if it's not time-sensitive, then we should allow the first reading to occur and then come back to it um at a later date in the tradition of how we have typically done policy changes. I'm fine with that. Okay, Madame Chair. Okay. Are you comfortable with a revisit and just as a first read? I have motion to table. You don't have to table a first read. This is a first read. You don't have to do that. Thank you. All right. Moving on to policy 4.15 or I'm sorry item what is currently labeled 4.15 will be 4.16 policy 5136.01 01 electronic equipment. Is this time sensitive? This is Yes, time sensitive. Yes, it is. It's just statuto changes. Yes, these changes tie back to Senate Bill 29 and
198the monitoring of school devices and the bill that followed that up, House Bill 432, which uh brought forth some fixes that districts um brought to the legislature regarding Senate Bill 29 and its requirements. Um, Senate Bill 29 caused quite a stir for our uh, district and made it very difficult to identify what um, platforms and programs were legal and okay to use and what were not. So, there was a fix to that um that came through in the lame duck session and that um we did not adjust our policy based on Senate Bill 29 out of choice um until we really understood what was going to come out of this lame duck session. We do understand that now and that's why um the language is written the way that it is is to comply with
199uh those rules and regulations. Motion to wave the first week reading. Second. Call the RO. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. Motion to adopt the policy. Second, Simmons, yes. Miss Farah, yes. Miss Engles, yes. Dr. Pierce, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. Motion passes. Okay, we're going to move on to the attendance policy which is policy 5200. This is a policy that we discussed um in committee. It is also timesensitive. Um this policy update required us uh is required to align with House Bill 214 which requires schools to allow three religious expression days. current policy allows for an excused absence to observe or celebrate religious holidays. So, the language in this um policy relates to what is required under House
200Bill 214 and allowing those three religious um expression days and the rules that come along with that. Is there a deadline with this one? Yes, by the end of the month. Um was there discussion or is there a motion to wave? discussion, right? Who has a question? Go ahead. H how does this um to President Cole um Chair Engles, how does this policy relate to 14.7? We just have it in two different places currently is I'm sorry, what was your question? It looks like there's two. There's one about release time and then one about attendance. And I'm my question was how are they related or yes maybe are they not? Yeah, they they are different. So the attendance policy is for three religious release or religious expression days which is when a student um is
201practicing a religion and seeking a certain type of um release for that and then sets forth what that um specific house bill said the policy needed to contain in order to protect the students ability to um engage in that religious expression. The next policy that we're going to discuss, release time for religious instruction, is release time from the school day to go out to, they call it a sponsoring entity. Um, so one of the sponsoring entities that will then um take a student and engage in uh religious education and then bring them back uh to to the school. So they are different things. Okay. Thank you. I have a question. Um, as it relates to page three where uh, paragraph two starts. So, it's three of six. It says, "To receive accommodation for religious expression
202days, parents or guardians must submit the written request to the principal within 14 days after the start of the school year or 14 days after a student is enrolled in the district. My question then relates to students, and we've had this happen. I think maybe it was last school year. We had a student kind of adjust mid year and um it it involved a hijab. So we had a student adjust their religion um and that was like mid year. So, are we legally required to keep this written notification and time frame or can we adjust it to give our students and families the flexibility to notify the principal when a religious um change has has occurred? Do we have to keep the 14 days? Uh, Madam Chair, is that a is that a a a
203Kyle question? That is a Kyle question. I don't know how we treat that currently. Or a James question. I think what we do is stick to the spirit language of the policy, but please answer. Feel free to answer. Thank you, Kyle. Yes, President Cole. Um, this is the language of the law. Uh, I think that would be an interpretation of the law based on a case-by case basis. So, I wouldn't speculate, but certainly that could be looked at if the situation arises. So, could we potentially amend the policy to include or give our keep this original language in there, but maybe add that understanding that uh changes may be made to an individual's religion that we give I I don't know what type of language that that we we we understand that the 14 days
204may not be it. I would say we can definitely look into it and if there's room for flexibility um there's room for changing the policy. I also would recommend um not changing that in the policy but maybe creating an administrative guideline that interprets the language of the law which is the policy and allows for that flexibility under the administrative guideline. So if that is um a concern and it sounds it it is a concern um I think it would be our intent to allow students to express their religion as um is earnestly uh uh taken. And so um through the administrative guideline process we could address um any changes in religion that occur midyear that would allow or would not allow a student to comply with the policy. So then my request would be that
205can we get an update on that administrative guideline um or just an update when you give your next policy governance report committee report administrative guidelines are set forth by this more time than that. I'm just asking for an update on it because again we want to make sure and we just passed a policy saying that people can have religious freedom. So, I want to make sure that that we're being mindful of that. Duly noted, we'll work to see how we can provide that information. We'll work at it, but in the spirit of continuing this work, are we prepared to uh wave a second reading? Are we prepared to move forward with this policy as approved? There's also a written grievance. If you read the policy, there is already a written grievance procedure, in which case
206a parent could challenge if there is concern about whether or not their student is being honored. So, I would argue that that's already within the policy and the interpretation of it then falls to um really the superintendent's court. Okay. So, let's Are we prepared to take action or no? Yes. So, I will move to adopt uh policy 5200. Is there a second? We already waved. That grievance puts the Well, whether we waved it or not, if there was a motion made to adopt it alto together, then that's the motion on the floor. We know that this is about legal compliance. We know that there is a grievance process that can hand that can be handled on a we know that we're we know that we know that the administration is going to take the next
207steps in terms of administrative guidelines. We need to wave the second reading. Okay. I will withdraw my motion and make the motion to wave the second reading. Second. Motion and second. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Yes. Are we still at discussion? Mr. Simmons? No. Yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Motion to approve the policy. Second. Motion and approved. We'll call the roll. Miss Ver second. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Dr. Pierce. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Vice President Hadair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Yes. Please note that the grievance relates to the attendance and not to the question that I initially asked. Motion carried. Thank you. All right. Moving on. We are moving on to policy 5223 which relates to rel release release time for religious instruction. Um this was a policy that
208our committee did discuss. Um it becomes effective, the new law becomes effective April 9th. Um new language is required due to House Bill 8. This policy was optional for districts, but it is now mandatory. The bill includes new requirements to collaborate with sponsoring entities and permits districts to require criminal background checks of the instructors instructors and volunteers working with the sponsoring entity. So, I do want to walk through it um just a little bit. It is compliant with what uh we have to do by law. It's changing um we we already had a policy that allowed for religious instruction release time and so it is changing um what we had as may students may be provided release time to shall uh because that is what the new law requires. In addition, the committee did recommend
209uh to this board to include the requirement that criminal background checks of the instructors and volunteers working for the sponsoring entity be included. That was also something that was recommended um both by our legal council and our internal auditor Okconor. Um and it also um included we also uh voted as a committee to include the language um that would um agree for force or require the sponsoring entities to agree that they will not provide participating students with any material, snack, clothing, candies, trinkets or other items for return to school um out of concern uh for you know coming back with a pile of gifts from the the sponsor. sponsoring entity and how that could be disruptive to the classrooms and the educational experience. Um and so we did opt to include that language as well
210which you'll see in the last paragraph. So that is that policy very quickly. Um so what is this the third paragraph where it says criminal records um checks will be at no cost to the board. Yes. Why didn't we say district? Um that was the recommended language. Um but it the board of education is the district and um so it would be upon the sponsoring entity to accomplish those. The rest of the policy is very specific around the district. That is the only sentence that for my quick reading of this that refers to the board. So that's why I was asking the question is why did we specifically say the board? I think there was an reason. I think the reason I think that they're just one and the same. They're one and the same.
211They are one and the same legally and otherwise. They're one and the same. Even as per our bylaws, they're one and the same. Um, so is there a motion to wave second? Can we can I motion to change that that motion to change the word from board to district in that sentence? It's for consistenc. Is there a second to this? Second, Miss V. Wait, discussion. I'm sorry. Is that language where you're looking at? Is that something that was part of the law or is that something that we edited? They're saying that the Neola recommended language language. And if it's one and the same, it's just for consistency to show district, district, district, district instead of board. Mr. Treasurer, is there any fiscal difference in saying district versus board? Not that I'm aware at all. Thank
212you. Okay, so there's a motion. It was seconded. Christina voting. Mira, yes. Miss Engles, no. Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Vice President Hader, yes. President Cole, yes. Motion to wave the first reading. Second. Um, discussion. President Is this time sensitive? Yes. Yes, it is. Yes, it is. I second it. Okay. Thank you. So, we can call the roll. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles, yes. Dr. Pierce, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. Motion passes. Motion to adopt the policy. Yes. A second. All right. Motion and seconded. Can we call the role? Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. All right. Thank you. Moving forward to 43 uh 4.18, policy 4353. 5353, excuse me. 5350. Where we at? Okay.
213So we are on policy 5350 which is student health well-being and suicide prevention. It is a complete replacement of the existing policy. That's why none of it is marked up. Updates are due to requirement for training requirements which came out of House Bill 33. Um as well as language that came out of House Bill 70 and House Bill 206. Um this is effective March 20th, 2020, two days and April 9th, 2025. This is um the Niola recommended language and um it comes straight out of those laws. There a motion to wave the second reading. Is this time sensitive? Yes. Oh my gosh. So again, we have the inconsistency of the language here where we're saying that the board is responsible for providing developmentally appropriate training. It it should really say the district, the board shall
214I I could see where the board shall adopt or or adapt evidence-based awareness and prevention curriculum. So again, without word smithing, this is Neiola template. The beauty of this is is that should we decide to take this back to your committee for such a language change, there's always the opportunity to do that. But for the sake of tonight's work, what we're going to do is is there a motion to wave the second reading? We'll make the motion. Second. All right. Motioned and seconded. Can we call the role? Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera, yes. Miss, yes. Vice President. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Motion to approve the policy. Second. There's a motion to approve the policy and it was seconded. Call the role, please. Miss Farah, yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Dr.
215Pierce. Yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Thank you. We are now moving to uh uh nine which is policy 5751 parental status of students. Okay, this is one that we did not discuss in our committee. Um Niola updates are driven by the latest legislation and regulatory provision put forth by federal law to provide appropriate accommodations and protect pregnancy and parental rights of students. Um CCS does not currently have this policy, but it does have an active administrative guideline, which is administrative guideline 5751 from 2020. If a new policy is adopted, a review of the existing administrative guideline would follow to ensure consistency. Kyle, unless you correct me, I do not believe that there is a time requirement on this one. I don't see a time requirement in my notes, but this was put
216out in Neo's most recent January 2025 update. So, it it do, but it it's going to have an effective date coming up. I can follow up on that. Thank you. So, then this is just merely your first reading, Madam Chair. Yes. Thank you. All right. We can move on to the next Next policy we have 6460 4.20 is the vendor relations policy 6460. Um again the the committee did not discuss this. Um it is a recommended policy um from Neola and this relates to certain technological provider contracts. Um it relates to the schoolisssued device piece um that came out of Senate Bill 29. And this applies to the contractors the way the other policy applied to um the devices that we were using in the schools. Um so that Senate Bill 29 again a very
217messy bill was corrected and um amended in the lame duck process. And so now that we have clarity on what that language looks like, this is the recommended language um from our uh policy provider as far as um coming into compliance with that. So Madam Chair, is this time sensitive at all? I don't. It is. Kyle is shaking her head. Yes. Yes. These these next three in a row are all tied to Senate Bill 29 and House Bill 432 and the monitoring of devices, what vendors can do with regard to their monitoring of student devices. So, it's all along the same vein. All of uh House Bill 432's uh items that were related to 29 became effective on December 9th of 2024. Motion to wave the first reading. Second. Motion and seconded. May we call
218the role. Miss Vera? Yes. Miss Engles? Yes. Dr. Pierce? Yes. Mr. Simmons? Yes. Vice President Adair? Yes. President Cole? Yes. Is there a motion to adopt the policy? Second. Motion and seconded. Call the role. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Miss Vera? Yes. Dr. Pierce? Um, yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. All right. Thank you. Moving on to 4.21. Okay. So, we are on to 7540.03. Student education technology acceptable use and safety. Um, again, this came out of Senate Bill 29 was corrected in the lame duck process. Um, part of the reason that we have a stack of policies is because this is what the legislature likes to do at the end of the general assembly is they pass a ton of bills at the end of the general assembly. They
219come through lame duck and then we have a short timeline to comply. We wait for our policy provider Niola to give us the information and give us the model policies so that we can see what they're recommending to us as our policy provider and policy defender. Um, that takes a a long period of time. Um, and so that's why this is all very compressed on a timeline. I just want to set that forward. Um, so with that, I would ask that the board consider waving um, and make a motion that the board wave a second reading. Second. Motion and seconded. Is there Can we call the role, please? Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera. Vice President Adair? Yes. President Cole? Yes. Motion to adopt the policy. Second. All right. Motion
220and seconded for adoption of the policy. Call the role, please. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Yes. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Nicole. All right. Thank Yes. Motion adopted. So on to policy 7540.04. This is similar. The last policy we approved was student education technology acceptable use. this is staff technology acceptable use similar um types of comments and so for that reason I would make a motion that we wave a second reading so it's motion and was that a second second motion and second we call the role Dr. Pierce yes Mr. Simmons. Yes. Mira. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. All right. Second. All right. Motion and second for adoption. We can call the role. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Miss Vera. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr.
221Pierce. Yes. Vice President Hadair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Motion passes. All right. Moving on to 4.23. Policy 8142. 8142 is a criminal history record check for contracted school services. It requires the enrollment in the state wrapback system. So much like we've adopted that in our other policy um the law says that we have to adopt that um for contracted school services. Delay the first reading. Second. Um President Cole, quick discussion. Hold on. Motion was made. Motion was made and and seconded. All right. So before we call adoption, excuse me, before we call a role, go ahead. What's your question? Does this apply um in an instance where the board's contracting services for a non- Columbus City school such as um a a charter school or does this only apply to contracted services for our own
222schools? And if so, is question. It's my understanding that this only applies to contracted services that we would provide. We don't set forth the contracts for other entities. Yeah. Thank President Cole Chair Engles. Thank you. Does that is that um we don't have that flexibility under the way the current law is written is what you're saying. Are you asking if we can set other people's contracts if I guess I'm confused if the board is is you know we we get a lot of of contracts to the board for services where we're Yeah. Those are I think what you're referring to are the pass through that it is required by law that we serve as a pass through entity for certain things for charter entities and so they will come across our um board uh docs
223but we don't really have the ability to decide what the charter contracts or doesn't. Okay. And does that pass through typically just really deal with fiduciary matters more than it does contractual? Yes. Mr. Barnes is going to come up and explain that because I don't want to give a legal Yeah. Right. Thank you, sir. The law and the policy applies to more than contracted services for charter schools. It's any vendor that we use. any vendor that we use who has routine interaction with our students um would be required to enroll in the wrapback program. I think Mr. Simmons question was um was whether or not we as as a pass when we serve as a pass through for certain charter schools if we are approving those contracts and if they would then have to comply
224with this uh policy. That was my question. The answer is yes. Thank you, sir. All right. So, now we have a motion on the floor to wave the second reading. Can we call the role? Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles, yes. President Cole, yes. Vice President, yes. All right. Motion passes. Is there a motion to adopt this policy? Motion. Moved and seconded. Call the RO. Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. All right, motion passes. All right, moving forward. We are at 4.24. First reading for uh policy 8452 automated external defibrillators and cardoppulmonary resuscitation. This policy is overdue. Um it is related to House Bill 47 which was effective October 24th, 2024. Um and so it is required
225that we have uh these policy updates um per the terms of House Bill 47. Um some of that was us waiting for uh Nola to get this finalized. So um for that reason I will um ask that we wave a second reading motion and seconded. Oh and I'm sorry it looks like the version that I have um requires the choice of language. It is not the final drafted. So, um, where it says at the bottom, the board shall adopt, um, model emergency plan, I would actually opt for the second and say the board authorizes the superintendent to develop an emergency action plan for the use of automated external defibrillators. Um, so I my motion is for the um integration of the second option there. Uh I don't understand. So what what chair is doing is
226asking to amend the current language to incorporate the superintendent being directed by the board to provide the help the emergency plan and whatever else. Can we state it? Yeah. So if you if you look at the policy, this is how we read them in policy governance. So um for those on the committee, it can be a little confusing or not on the committee, I'm sorry. But if you look at the policy, um, in the green is all the changes. These are the changes that are recommended by law. If you flip to the second page, you'll see how it's it has that little bracket and it says shall adopt model emergency action plan or authorizes this. We should have had this finalized by this time, but it's not what we're looking at right now. So, I'm
227looking at the option that I'm suggesting that this board elect, which is the second option there in language. And so, it would read, "The board authorizes the superintendent to develop an emergency action plan for the use of AEDs." I would second your um motion to amend the policy. All right. Motion and seconded for amendment to the policy and language. You can call the RO. Miss Vera? Yes. Miss Engles? Yes. Dr. Pierce? I'm uh point of order as it is [Music] current. So are we not taking the sentence below that sentence? Um it where it says end of option is where it ends. So that's where the option ends. So everything in green below that would be included. Okay. Yes. Thank you, Mr. Simmons. Yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. Motion passes. All right.
228Thank you. And we have already approved. We have to adopt policy now. Okay. We have to wave. We have to wave the second reading. Thank you. We have a motion and a second on the wave. All right. Is there a motion to wave? Motion to wave the first. We already did that. Okay. Vote on this motion and second. Call the role. Yep. Miss Vera. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. All right. Motion to adopt. Can Can I ask a question? Do we have discussion on this one? There's a motion, I believe. Is there a second? Second. Motion and seconded. Call the role, please. Is there discussion? Discussion. So, question. Um the policy reads that students in grades 9 through 12 need to receive instruction.
229Um and so my question I guess is related to does the instruction have to the amendment that we made to the policy where it says that the superintendent is authorized to develop those guidelines. The superintendent will then have the discretion in determining when the students in grades 9 through 12 have that training. Is it just the students that are on the teams that need to have that training? That's a Kyle question. Like help me understand how why that specific language is there related to the students in training. This specific lang language came straight out of the statute. Um, I don't think it distinguishes students versus students that are playing sports, but I would have to look closer. I haven't looked at it that closely. And this is a time-sensitive one as well. Yes. So colleagues,
230I would just want us to be really mindful of I understand we have to do these policies quickly, but I just think we would need more clarity on who are the students that are giving are are getting this instruction. When are they required to get it? Because this also says that the emergency action plan has to be practiced at least quarterly. That is what the law requires. the same way fire drills. I I get it. I've again children that play sports and and have played sports. I never remember us doing action plans quarterly or I I think it's great that we're doing that, but I would just want us to be mindful of actually what these policies are entelling. So that was my discussion point. Okay. So we have made a motion. You can call
231the role. Miss Vera. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. All right. And this was the adoption, correct? Or Yes. Thank you. All right. We have already moved towards 4.25. We will walk right into uh the superintendent executive report. President Yes, sir. Um 4.9 committee appointment updates. We jumped around a bit. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Uh the 4.9 committee appointment is for SEAK, which is community engagement advocacy. This is for the appointment of Noel Britt. She is now duly appointed as a member of SEAK. Congratulations. All right. Now, moving on to the superintendent report. Thank you, President Cole. board members. Um this evening I'll be providing a brief update on our realignment work. Certainly the school realignment work committee has met twice since
232our last board update on February 18th. Uh the work of the committee continues to be guided by the five key principles when making and considering decisions. Students are at the center of our decisions. We prioritize transparent two-way communication with families. Adaptability is necessary as we move forward. We act with integrity in our decision makingaking and our choices must support long-term planning for the district. The committee is working to ensure that our families understand the process and can provide input. Teachers and staff will be notified of timelines and next steps while determining the best approach. Right now, the committee is working on discussing potential receiving schools for Mhler and Broadley Elementary Schools. It's important to consider the least disruptive relocation plan for impacted students and their families. Classroom placement will be based on proximity, proximity to
233um their neighborhood, uh space availability, and equitable access. The commu the committee will hold listening sessions before spring break. Uh these will be small private in-person sessions to ensure open productive conversations. Uh the topics will include parent concerns regarding school closures, district priorities in the process, preferred communications or methods to keep families informed, and what will help students and families feel comfortable during the transition. Again, this is an opportunity for additional feedback that will guide the formulation of the plan, then timeline that will be submitted to the board in June. Uh principles will select um certainly will provide input um in the composition and the parents including representation from the impacted school communities and additional focus groups will be scheduled with the remaining schools as we move forward. Walkthroughs of the affected buildings are being
234scheduled to assess capacity and facility needs. selected groups um including principles and committee members will assess building space and classroom needs again to determine um our capacity at each site. Certainly our capacity certainly depends on not only the enrollment but also additional programming that um may be housed at a particular site. Um certainly the goal is to optimize available space and ensure that each receiving school can adequately support incoming students. Um broadly in Molhar schools will begin activities to foster trust and transparency within the school community. Um and we'll launch community building circles this spring targeting May to ensure the beginning of smooth transitions. Um throughout this process, it's important that all student populations are considered when making or proposing decisions, including um certainly our general ed students, special ed, English language learners, and gifted
235students who receive all who all receive specialized programming. Communication with families will begin once school level engagement starts, ensuring clarity and preventing misinformation. Again, the district is committed to keeping families, staff, and the board informed as we move forward. Transparency and community involvement are top priorities in this process, and we'll continue prioritizing student needs while ensuring a smooth and equitable transition for all of the impacted school communities. Thank you, President Cole. Thank you. Are there any questions given this update? Yeah, quick question. Um the timeline that will be given to us in June, will that include the dates that you are taking action on behalf of the district and administration as well as the dates for various committees that will align and complement the work that's going to be taking place? Um that's a great
236question. Um certainly I know the bo the board committee work has um are working on that work um as we speak and creating a timeline for engagement and additional opportunities. So it would I'm thinking that you'd probably hear about that before uh we present this timeline in Definitely. Okay, I would appreciate that. I think that was the same question I asked our February meeting. So if we could just get that calendar, that'd be great. We were about to accelerate that process until we decided to do the joint committee piece for our governance training to make sure that we're also in compliance firmly with our board work in that space. Awesome. But the answer is yes. Thank you so much. We'll take that up in May. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Um I just had some questions about
237the listening sessions that you mentioned that were happening before spring break. um where and when are those happening and then how will people be invited to them? So these will be school specific listening sessions for broadly and the impacted school communities particularly the schools that will be closing or consolidating. um we're gathering feedback from the students, from the families, um and community members to better understand what needs to be considered as we develop and finalize this timeline that we are providing to the board in June. So, we'll make sure that we share that um those dates once those dates are finalized with the respective school communities. Um and followup, would you share that via email? Like where do parents know to look for this? where should they? So, um we communicate with our families through
238a variety of channels and through all of the languages. We translate our messages in the top five languages. We communicate those messages um through parent portal which um the way it's set up um parents may also receive an email and a text message. Um we send sometimes particularly at our elementary and middle schools, we might send a flyer home and a backpack. Um, and then we work directly with the schoolbased staff to make sure they're sharing those messages um through sometimes teachers have their own separate newsletter that they sent or a tool that that um they use to communicate um with families and we'll leverage all of those resources. Um Madam Vice President, when you say when you say school specific um I assume that just means like for example any student enrolled at Broadley.
239That's what you mean? Well, so when I said impacted school communities, so that may mean the school the potential sites that the students would be transitioning to. So we're also not only um looking at the school sites, the schools that the board voted to close, but we're also looking at the impacted school communities, which would be the receiving schools. Thank you for that consideration. I've said it before. I think part of this process is going to be boundary drawing. Oh, absolutely. That's the biggest part of the process. Exactly. So, some students who are at schools that aren't broadly may actually be impacted. So, it's great that we're opening like kind of around the the region so that other families can participate too. Yes, that's the biggest variable that we're working with. Um certainly recognizing these
240decisions don't happen in isolation and um there is a domino effect when we make a decision um to close one building um the programming may be shifted the programming will be shifted to another school classes um enrollment boundary shifts may be required and so um those are all the variables that we're considering as we work on developing the timeline as the clear deliverable and next step for the board. Are there any additional questions? President. Yes, sir. Um, thank you. Um, President Cole, Dr. Chapman, I was just hoping um you could remind the board or well me um what was the original deliverable the board wanted by June? Was it a plan for what would happen to all the buildings or just I I Go ahead. Um the the the deliverable that the board asked the
241administration for June was a timeline and a plan for the implementation of the school closures and consolidations as a part of our realignment work that the board voted on and approved in December, not mistaken. And um the board asked for that um deliverable to be provided by June June 2025. So coming up here soon in just another few months. Thank you. If there aren't any other questions. Uh thank you. We'll move on to approval of the consent agenda and that is No, you excuse me. Excuse me. Go ahead. Yes, sir. I have a brief report on the five-year forecast. Forgive me. Forgive me. I know it's late. I'm sorry. All right. We should apologize. Okay. Thank you. Um, are we skipping six? No, we're not. Okay. Okay. All right. The moment I know you've all
242been waiting for. Got an update on the five-year forecast. In May, we're going to be preparing an update from November. and we've had a lot of discussion as of late about the state budget, the impacts to the district and uncertainty at the federal level. So, what I would like to do is have a conversation with the board, revisit the assumptions that were made in November, have a discussion around the comfort level with the board given what we're entering fiscally as we head into May, seeking your guidance, making sure this forecast you are all comfortable with. Once you approve it, it's your forecast. So, having said that, um it's important, again, I know some of these slides are from November, um but it's important the community hear this. Um the five-year forecast encourages district management teams
243to examine future year projections and identify when challenges are going to arise. This helps district management to be proactive in meeting those challenges. And that's the conversation tonight as we look at where we're heading. In November of 2024, we approved a forecast that was projecting cash deficits in fiscal year 28 and 29 of 59.1 and 212.4 million. So again, as we look out there, that previous slide, there's there's danger zones out there. We're not going to have cash on hand. So again, we need to talk further about that tonight. Make sure we reinforce the board's comfort level. Assumptions that we made, transportation penalty, very comfortable in that one at this point. That's not likely to be fully assessed until the end of June. Last year, we were hit right at the end of June. And
244as I arrived in August, we received another penalty. So it's still too soon to say if that is going to need to be updated. If we see data, this is only the second year that indicates we can lower that, we will certainly take a look at it. On the expenditure side, in November, we had a 4% base increase for this fiscal year. And then every year moving forward, we made an assumption of 2 and a.5%. Obviously, that has a huge impact on our numbers as we project forward. Again, I think this this does a nice job of graphically showing as we look to those out years, when are we beginning to experience some severe challenges. Fiscal year 28 and 29 in November are giant red flags from a treasur standpoint. We are projecting actual negative
245cash. It's no secret we've had a ton of discussion around the budget at the state. It's heavily dependent on two new bienium budgets. We still don't have any clarity. We have the governor's introduced proposal. It's going to work its way through the chambers. Hopefully by the beginning of July, we will have a new budget. So my plan is we're going to have a May forecast update. Once that budget is enacted, we will then immediately recast the forecast likely in August. So we will have a certain picture at that point where we stand. As we talked earlier in the slide about the 4% this year, the 2 and a.5% projection as we move forward, obviously the largest driver of our expenditure side and that cash balance is our personnel. Right now it's at 82% of our
246budget. So I want to make sure we have a comfort level as we head into this season of uncertainty and discuss whether or not we feel that's where we should be as we project forward. In November, we were projecting uh 85% of total expenditures in FY29. Again, no secret. We're heavily dependent on personnel, people. However, that ratio is going to continue to grow. That shift from 82 to 85% is again driven by that salary projection we're casting forward, that two and a half% As I look at the forecast we had in November and and I try to paint a picture of where we're heading in May, we've got a couple of headwinds that that face us. We've got an introduced budget that we've spoken of. We're advocating for $45 million in reductions from the state.
247Inputs are frozen at an FY22 level and we're not getting any benefit on the inflationary cost increases we've seen. There's formula movement which is going to potentially decrease state funding from that 8020 to 9010 on the local side. Again, shifting more of that burden to our local tax base. And then the latest development, everything has just changed since November. Um there are discussions at the federal level with respect to title one, title two, and title three. I've heard discussions around a 25% reduction to title one based on our CCIP application. If that were to happen, that could lead to another $10.2 million either needing to be cut or supplemented by the general fund. Again, a potential risk that's out there depending on what happens at the federal level. Our title two programming would have the
248same effect with 3.6 6 million followed by title three with 1.4 million. So as you can see just a tremendous amount of uncertainty as we look forward here into May. Again once the budget passes on the state side we'll have clarity we'll update the federal landscape is just ever evolving. There's tremendous risk there. So, as I begin to update the forecast, this is a screenshot um taking our salary inputs to a 0%. And what I want to highlight for the board that's freeze things today at zero. We still have a problem with that cash balance. Now, having said that, we haven't received our property tax settlement yet. That should be in at the end of the month. We're going to begin to true up our payroll expenses as we navigate through this month in April.
249So, we're awaiting data there. However, I think that risk and that input is right now, as I saw it last Friday when I updated this, at 0% with no increase, we still have deficits in fiscal year 29. If I look at impact scenario one for 1%, you can see that in fiscal year 28, we still have a positive cash balance of 10.9 million. It's razor thin on the size budget that we have. The deficit in actual cash in fiscal year 29 jumps up to 128.4 million. And again, that's projected at 1% based on what we know today. impact scenario 1.5 for one and a half percent. You can see fiscal year 28 flips from a 10.9 positive to 10.4 negative in actual cash at 1 and a.5%. FY29 jumps to 164.4 million. So again, the
250cautionary tale as I have moving forward and and I'd love to have some info input from the board of education. The November forecast was built around an assumption for 82% of our budget at 2 and a half%. As I look at the uncertainty and the headwinds we're facing moving forward with a potential state budget and reductions at the federal level potentially, I want to gauge what the board's comfort level is as I begin to update that forecast here in May. Again, once I present this to the board and it's approved, it's your forecast. So, I want to make sure the assumptions we're using reflect where the board wants me to go. Again, I think here I like this hurricane map and and what we're really trying to do here is identify when challenges are going
251to arise. We know that we have trouble in FY28 and FY29. And really the purpose of the discussion tonight is what action can we take that can help keep that storm that's out there brewing in the Caribbean from coming right in and taking us out from a fiscal standpoint. I said it in November. This slides from that forecast. The district's going to need to look at budget cuts. I recommend attrition, new revenues, or a combination of both for long-term sustainability. Again, this isn't necessarily something that's going to impact us tomorrow. But if that storm materializes that we're seeing today based on those numbers, we have some severe difficulties as we enter FY28 and FY29 on a almost billion dollar budget in the general fund. 10.9 million is just razor thin. And again, I recognize there's
252some things as we head towards May that could shift that. Hopefully, we catch some positive news, but it's razor thin and tight. So, I'm I'll open the floor to comments, questions. Thank you, Treasurer Cook. Are there any questions? Madam Vice President, um on the chart, and I I can't really tell on here if it's if there's differences in them, but each chart has uh it talks about approximate millage and operating levy. Could you just explain what that section is? Yes. Let me go to the 1% just for that that purpose. So on the left hand side, it's a little blurry to me on this screen. Um there's an approximate millage for the 4-year levy cycle. And you'll see out on the left hand side there's a negative figure there. My spreadsheets autoc calculating for me
253based on our valuation. If we were to go out in November of 27, we would need 7.9 mills to stay on our four-year levy cycle. If we would wait an additional year and go in November of 28, it jumps up to 11.4 mills. So again, much like expenditure reductions, if we start now, it's much smaller than if we wait. We're seeing the same when we go out to the ballot for a levy issue. And again, this is one of the tools I can use with board members to show you impacts. Again, we have significant challenges in 2829 at even 0%. And again, we're looking at millillage 7.91 at 1% as we go forward. So, that's what that tool's showing us now based on our updated valuations from county auditor. Does that help? Yeah. So, just
254to kind of restate it, um the amounts there because in order to gain new general revenue, we have to come out and ask the community for operating levies and we did that in 2023. Correct. And so, typically we're on you say a regular cycle, four years. It's about every four years we come out and that's typical. And so these are the projections and if we were to waiting increases and then you have it for each scenario um where what the millillage would be and can you remind us what the 2023 millillage was uh 15.7 million dollars per mill. Is that what you're asking me? Well, the the what they voted on on the Oh, I believe it was 7.7 and then it rolled right back. We didn't even collect the full millage because of House
255Bill 920. I think it dropped about five and a half mills before it was collected upon. Um my last question is regarding the um the title dollars. Um you know, we've been doing a lot of work in ETRM to talk about programming that may be impacted by these title dollars. And I just want to verify that what our title one, two, and three cover, our programming for our uh special education, our preschool, um things like our ELLL program. These are these are things that we need and would need to find money for. Correct. Um or cut, which some of these things we can't cut, non-negotiables, I understand. Um, so I just want to verify that that's and that's still very unknown right now. It's very much uncertain. There's a lot of talk. Um, I know
256the House has passed continuing resolutions. I believe that's going to go through the Senate. Again, there's just that level of uncertainty. We've seen all kinds of executive orders. We've seen, I believe, a 50% reduction in staff at the Department of Ed. I know there's discussions with how funding is going to be allocated to different agencies, perhaps block grant models at the state level. We just don't know. It seems like every day there's another news headline that comes into my email box with respect to federal policy potential challenges on the horizon. The most significant that I've heard, and again, this is just a whatif scenario, is that 25% reduction and then those eliminations. Do I think it'll happen? I genuinely don't know. I just don't. And so you're asking us um because uh you know we
257make assumptions in the budget I'm sorry in the in the forecast. Um and so you're asking us in particular to look at the uh the increase of salaries which currently in the November forecast we have at 2.5 every year. Uh you feel like that one may be something you need more guidance on from the board? That would be an I want the board's comfort level if we're going to leave that assumption at two and a half% moving forward or based on that projection again in November. We were 212 million negative in FY29. If we begin to back that down, it extends the longevity of our cash balance. Although it's razor thin, it does have an impact and again buys additional time for us to begin to plan and look at things as we navigate forward.
258So, I would certainly entertain a discussion. All right. Thank you. Quick question, Dr. Pierce. I don't even think it's a question on on my part. I will just say thank you um Mr. Cook for giving us this report, for laying out the scenarios. Um and I think a way that is very digestible, not just for us as board members, but also for our community members. um and providing us with the opportunity to be able to from the board table um make the very tough decision that we have to make for the fiscal well-being of our district. Yeah, I actually I don't have a question. I'd like to share my opinion because that's what he's asking. So it, you know, as a board member, part of my our responsibility is to ensure that our district is
259fiscally sound. And um with all of these unknowns, I do feel like personally it is not responsible to continue with a 2.5 assumption baseline. um showing where the deficits are going to be, understanding the amount of millage we would need to go out to the community for. Um and so I personally think that we should reduce that number um to something not 2.5. And um you know I I think for me one this impact scenario one is a little bit more digestible. uh at least in terms of what we know at the moment. But again, more information will be coming in. Um so that's my that's like my personal stance. I just don't feel comfortable leaving the 2.5 assumption in. Okay. Understanding where we are and all that still needs to be decided. And again,
260I appreciate that feedback. We're going to take a look at this in May with what we know and then as we gain clarity from that state budget and it's implemented, we're going to turn around then late this summer and recast it because again, we're making some assumptions. We've got the introduced budget that we're going to have here in May. Who knows what it's going to shake out as. So then once we know, I want to make sure the board is on firm footing with solid fiscal info. So we'll have a May forecast and then I'll call it a budget recast once we have some clarity there. Thank you. Uh, board member Simmons. Um, thank you, President Cole. Um, Treasure Cook, I appreciated the discussion between you and um, board me between you and Vice President
261Adair about, um, the levy, but I was hoping just to put it in plain words for our community that the longer we wait to return to the ballot, the bigger the ask will be. Um, and did I get that right? That that is correct. The longer we wait, the more we will have to ask for it. Yes. And I'm happy to put these. The longer we wait, the more reductions to services, um, academic offerings, our academic programming, and staff we will have to make. That would be correct as our cash balanced way. And then in terms of raising revenue, what options do we have? Well, for the size budget that we have, it would be returning to the voters. Um, it would be a general operating levy. The question would be, is it a traditional
262levy? Is it an emergency levy? Um, we have those discussions. We're really not there yet. It would be as we get closer to those out years and we've we've got a state budget in place, what what does that deficit firm up as? What size dollar need is there based on the program? But realistically, the only way to increase revenue is to return to our voters. And that is correct. Thank you. And then my last question is how could a a bond issue um help or or not help us offset some of the the general fund costs as it relates to our facilities? Well, I think from an efficiency standpoint, newer newer buildings in theory um cost less to operate on utilities, but utilities are a very small scale. Um I think we're going to need
263operating before we look at bond. But as we get to 2031, our existing millillage on our FMP projects will come off. So there could be an opportunity there for a no new millillage bond issue. What year was that? Um 2031. Okay. So we're we're again on the out years of that forecast. We again have time to plan. I know those facility projects have a long tail, but in that more midterm as we get to 28 and 30, if the budgets come in as expected, we continue to not see increases from the state and they drive that state share down and local share up, we're going to be back on the ballot. Thank you. And then I would just um close into saying that I agree with Vice President Adair when I think about my um
264financial responsibility to the district, to our students. Um, you know, I I I think keeping at current levels are unsustainable and the impact to academic programming and the student experience um is is just too great. All right. Are there any other comments, Dr. Pierce? Um I so I I definitely um again uh think that the 2.5 is too much that um we should explore the impact scenario one. Um but also given exploration of that scenario, President Cole, are we as a board um open to or thinking uh around our timeline as it relates to potentially going back to our community? Well, that's part of what this conversation actually entails is given a forecast of where we're looking at fairly immediate deficit spending coming up uh in in the next less than three years. So I
265I think again to answer that question, I believe as we get certainty with that state budget, we head into August and then that November forecast, we're going to have much more clarity around what 28, 29, and 30 begin to look like because we'll see our first look in November at 2030. And I don't have it here, but the number's huge. So let me uh pose the question differently. um to ensure that we are really getting good community engagement that we have rallied our key stakeholders. Are there things that we could be doing in our board committees just to prepare for what we know will come in the future. So thank you for that question. Establishing relationships those type Thank you for that question. The answer is yes. The answer is is that that's actually already
266underway. Part of what I will be doing today is directing our SEAK committee to actually start the work on developing our community engagement plan as a board with respects to that. So those conversations have already taken place. They're already in motion. Work to get doc uh to work to get Treasure Cook I want to call you Dr. Cook. That's all right. No, he's late. um work to get Treasurer Cook out into the community. Yes. In front of folks is already again already rolling. The ball is rolling. Um so with that uh are there any other additional comments? So the board's comfortable with one. Do you want a mo do you want to I would prefer a motion if that if motion you can go scenario zero zero or one or one. I I motion for
267impact scenario one. Well, before we before we before we motion anything, just let me offer my commentary. Um, we are looking at some things down the road, very soon that are coming in the form of cuts, 45 million plus in cuts projected that we know of to date. That number plus is the probability of it increasing. We know that the federal government, as alluded by Vice President Adair, we're facing uh uh uh we're facing cuts on the federal level through title funding. These things are contribute significantly to very specific types of program from special education to any myriad of things even professional development for staff. So all of these things that we are actually as a part of theories of action looking to leverage in adding supports adult supports to kids. This is all in
268tremendous jeopardy moving forward. The one word I want to use is conservative. I think the responsible aspect on our part is to approach this process as conservatively as possible. That is how we are responsible to not only our students but also to our staff and most importantly to this community. Um my question is this and then we move on has do any of these scenarios and it's just the fact it's a small print so I can't really see it like that but do any of these scenarios take into account 30-day 60-day cash on hand we have not used that as a metric we look at it but it is not a guiding principle at this time so this is not as a part of any assumption any of these no decision in this is driven
269by that we don't even have a polic on Okay. So, just so the community also understands and my colleagues also understand, if we were to incorporate 30-day or 60-day or 90day cash on hand, uh whether it was a policy or whether it was just the assumption that we considered in this, it would it would increase the number of deficit spending. Correct. Even more drastically, correct? Just so folks understand that. So the word that I'm I'm saying from the table is conservative approach to this process in a way that we're demonstrating the best ways possible. In the other space I think it's an opportunity for us to look at how we leverage PI, how we leverage some other spaces um with that debt to income ratio kind of thing. I'm speaking as a homeowner, but how
270we leverage that opportunity to monetize things for our district and again as a part of the realignment process. What are we thinking about? And we have a very short window of time to look at what we turn over in terms of stones with facilities itself. What do we what do we look at leasing? there's there opportunities here that we need to think about considering to monetize assets that we do have. So with that in mind, I thank you all for the feedback that you've given. This is important. There's a motion on the floor and and colleagues, I'm motioning for impact scenario one because that does give us some leeway and flexibility to not be at the 2.5. It gives us a ramp and a runway to be able to continue to rally support through as
271pre President Cole just indicated, Chair Vera will be starting to work on that timeline and that plan um that when we need to go out to the community that um we will be well prepared to do that. So again, I motion for um impact scenario one. I second that. I just had a question of clarification for the treasur. Is impact scenario is what that one like 1% or Okay. 1%. Sorry. Yes. I just tried to keep it simple. I didn't know we'd guess Yes. 1%. Yes. And it still gives us the ramp, guys. If you look, we I mean, we're going to get to the red, but we still got some green there. We got some It buys us some time to play some time. It is conservative. Um, and and again, it's going to
272give us time to really look down the road as we begin to face those headwinds. And I think that's that's where we're at right now. We need some time to look at those situations and adjust. I appreciate the feedback. All right. So, there's a motion in a second. Yes. Uh, call the role, please. Miss Vera, back to Miss Engles. No. Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons. Yes. Mira. Yes. Vice President Adair. Yes. President Cole. Yes. And again, we will continue to update that. It is very much a living document. All right. Is it safe to say too that the behavior of the Treasury in the past um with exception to how we had done things previously with the 30-day 60-day cash on hand balance um is it safe to say that we have always operated within
273a trying to design some sort of thin space of up to or around 1% um in terms of how close we were to and maybe I'm asking this question. No, we've I've looked back. We've we've had 1%s in the forecast before. It's it's not like a historical precedent. Those have been there before. Okay. Thank you. All right. Um before we get to consent agenda, there are a couple No, I'm sorry. Point of order. Can we motion to um reorder the agenda because we did not get to internal auditor? Um well, I'm going to before I was I was just going to do that. I was just gonna I'm okay. All right, Mr. Internal Auditor, are there any uh is there any report that you have for us? No report to see, Mr. Thank you, good
274sir. Thank you. That's why I was going to start to say All right. Do we still need to adjust? Is there a question? Do we need to Is it okay? We just allow disagrees. Yeah. No one disagrees and you got a vote to amendment, right? We approved your piece by accepting what you asked in terms of us via request to conservatively approach this ballot, this budget. Thank you. So, we're in the same space. All right. Um before we get uh on to the consent agenda, there are just a couple things I want to remind folks of. First and foremost, um community engagement is going to be frontline work. and we're going to start with how we're learning this govern how our governance model and its approach to community engagement that we will follow. In addition
275to that, uh that training will happen again between April through June. But what's going to take place is we're going to be looking at some opportunities that are already underway and that the board will also co-design an effort to get out in the community and really one update them on the fair school funding model. to give them an update on where we are with our goals and guard rails. They need to know that we are at the 36 month mark to have to do that. And then finally this, you know, go into listening mode with them about what their values are, what it is that they want and what do they anticipate and want to see out of students that in a way that give us further guidance moving forward. Now, Madame Chair of SEAK,
276what I'm looking at the opportunity of trying to do is between the months of April and November, be able to distill that, not only plan the process, but actually execute the process. So, by no by November, we've already got a one to five pager put together. we've distilled the information and then December, ideally December, we're ready to actually report out to the community what it is that they shared to us and what it is that they're asking us to do. And then further consideration could be taken by this current board or a future iteration of a board to take action on what those community quer what those community needs actually are. So, if I'm making sense, we start our training. We're engaging in community activity. We're spending a lot of time engaging folks between September
277and October. Come o end of October, we're we're now we're we're disseminating the data in a way that we're disagregating it. We're we're looking at it. We're doing a deep dive. By November, end of November, our second meeting of November, you've your committee has looked at and been prepared to present to the board a final report. That final report can be given on a day that you guys feel most, you know, gerine to have that that that committee report shared. Does that make sense? Yeah. Um, so my committee did approve a work plan at our last committee meeting. So some of this is included in that. So we can definitely take a look to where there's some potential um gaps, but we do have a timeline already put together for some of the items discussed
278tonight. Um so if there are additional items, that's something we definitely need to have a conversation. We'll do but we're looking at before close of year to make that that work actually happen. All right. Um is there any question? Yes, madam dr. President Cole, I just want a clarification. When you say that this work is happening over the next couple of months and by the end of the year, we're distilling the community feedback. Um, are you alluding to um we're leveraging this feedback and we're going to use that to shift our goals and guard rails or is there another strategy? No, the other the Okay. So, every 36 months, every 36 months, three years, we're required to get out into the community and have those conversations to engage them about where your values, this is
279where we are, how do you feel about that? What is it that you need to see more of us from? In a way that gives the board some additional guidance on how to move forward. And if it is because goals and guard rails ideally are a living document. We made example of that. We made example of that when we changed a goal to proposed guardrail. We made that when we adopted an additional goal with mathematics. We've done that in certain ways. The idea here is so that the next board has this opportunity and ideally we're going to open the door to you know other candidates to be participative in that process not from our standpoint but just as community folks who have something to say and leverage in it and more importantly to give them
280the opportunity to learn so that when they start next year they can actually start running. Yeah. I I when I heard you saying goals, our hopes and values from the community, that certainly is our currently articulated in our goals and guard rails for the district. And so that's why I asked that question. And I would just want to continue to reiterate that any conversations about new strategies certainly should be had in context with a decrease in state funding, a decrease in federal funding. And as we just discussed again, um, conversations around decrease in revenue and certainly if that trend continues, we'll be having conversations about going back to the voters. Wonderful. We're on the same page. I just have a a really quick question. President Cole, um, yes. because this is our first time going
281back into the community having implemented SOFG. Could we see it more as just like a check-in, a touch base as opposed to I I think you are describing something that might have a multiple parts and and components and elements to it. If we could just distill it and just narrow the focus a little bit, it it might be easier to digest. Yes, ma'am. Julie noted and President Cole, if I may add, um what you just described was not a part of the work plan for CAT. So, I want to be very clear that what we presented and what my committee voted on um last week, the goals in the guard rails were not a part of that that advocacy piece. We talked about um fair school funding. We talked about the realignment and consolidation. we
282talked about partnership and specific things related to um student experience. So I just want to be very clear that this needs to be a conversation we have as a board because to be honest I don't know that that could just be handed to CAK on top of the work that we already have already outlined for the year. To me it also feels like an academic and facility alignment piece as well. So I just want to have Yeah, it's the governance. So I just want to be very clear that that was not a part of the work plan and so we just need to figure out where does that work really live because policy and governance um so there are pieces to this that I want to be very upfront that that is not a part
283of my committee's present work plan. Okay. So when we talk hold on when we talk about the student experience aspects of things. Right. Right. the student aspect, the student experience aspect of that is very much tied to and my every committee is going to be engaged in this in some respect. We are this is board work. This is board work and a minimum of two per experience are required for this is a minimum. So we're going to do the work but if you're thinking about student experience goals and guard rails are tremendously gerine to that especially the goals in terms of where they are and what what they're doing. we leaned in specifically, if we go back to the work plan, student experience was from the lens of ESL and special education. So that was
284singularly focused on these two specific areas. So I just want to I want to make sure that that's noted because it's not just overall student experience. That could be a thousand different things. No, I'm trying to be specific. Yeah, but I'm trying to explain that a work plan was approved. We took feedback. We gathered insight. you gave feedback and ESL and special education is where we landed. Goals and guard rails. This is this this week was the first that we've had that conversation specific to this being an item for at least my particular committee. I just want to be upfront that that was not a part of my work plan. We'll talk further. Yeah. Last thing. Um yes. when we have our training for the special meeting, is there like a template that other districts
285have used when they've done their their AJ will provide all of those. AJ will provide that. So, we'll spend kind of talking about because also when you say data and and like who who's collecting this data, who's analyzing it so if we could just at the special meeting get more clarity on what data we're seeking, what the process entails, that would be extremely helpful. I thank you. Duly noted. All right. We'll move to voting on the consent agenda. Motion to adopt the consent agenda. Second. All right. Motion and seconded. Call the role. Miss Engles? Yes. Dr. Pierce? Yes. Mr. Simmons? Yes. Miss Vera? Yes. Vice President Adair? Yes. President Cole? Yes. All right. Motion passes. All right. We'll move to executive session. Madam Vice President, it is recommended the board of education I'm sorry. We
286have to go back. I apologize. Can you just amend mine for 13.3 abstain? Just yes to everything else. You say 13.3. 13.3 impractical um transportation. Does this require us to revote again? I was going to say let's do a motion to Thank you. motion to reconsider the closed voting on the consent agenda. Second. All right. Motion and seconded. Miss Engles. Yes, Dr. Pierce. Yes, Mr. Simmons. Yes, Vice President Adair. Yes, President Cole. Yes. All right. Now, that includes her exclusion on that particular legislation. Do we have to vote to consent again? So, motion to separate 13.3 which will be reumbered to whatever will be reumbered for separate consideration. Second. Motion and seconded. You can call the role. Yes. Miss Vera. Yes. Miss Engles. Yes. Dr. Pierce. Yes, Mr. Simmons. Yes, Vice President Adair. President Cole?
287Yes. Motion carried. Motion to adopt the consent agenda. There's a motion to adopt the consent agenda. Is there a second? Yes. Motion and seconded. Please call the role. Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles, yes. Vice President Adair? Yes. President Cole? Yes. Motion to adopt 14.3? Yes. 13.3. Second. Do you No, you Oh, I got a You abain. Okay, my bad. I'm sorry. So, we've taken care of that. Second motion and second. Dr. Pierce, abstain. Thank you. Mr. Simmons, yes. Miss Vera, yes. Miss Engles, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. Motion carried. Motion to. Okay. Now, it is recommended the board of education move into executive session pursuant to a higher revised code section 121.22 G4 to prepare for conduct or review negotiations or bargaining sessions with public employees
288concerning their compensation or other terms and conditions of their employment. As a motion second all right, call the role. Miss Farah, yes. Miss Engles, yes. Dr. Pierce, yes. Mr. Simmons, yes. Vice President Adair, yes. President Cole, yes. Carried. Thank you. Uh we are going into executive session. Once we come out of executive session, we will be adjourned.