Hamilton City School District Board of Education Work Session & Meeting

001you know please don't maid sir good evening we're returning from our executive session uh this time we're going into work session and i'd like to turn the meeting over to mr hallbrook thank you president sprague tonight we have two different presentations for the board um and the first is from our department of human resources so i am going to turn this over to our associate superintendent mike wright in executive director i'm jesse weisbrod from human resources thank you thank you mr holbrook thank you board members for giving me the opportunity to speak to you tonight what i'd like to do is uh just kind of do a little bit of a review of really kind of the last year of things that have occurred within our human resources department as mr holbrook mentioned um one

002of the the big things this year was obviously the addition of jesse weisbrod to to the staff in hr she's been a a godsend honestly uh in a district where we have as many staff members as we do um so i do want to recognize her and thank her for kind of joining in me with this effort um she doesn't want to come up and speak tonight um but she is obviously an integral part of our team so the first thing i'd like to do is uh obviously one of the biggest undertakings within the hr department is our hiring as you know this last spring and summer our hiring was fast and furious so we hired new hires between january 1st and august start date of school we've actually hired more people since then but

003we did hire 163 new hires during that time frame of those new hires 84 of those new hires were part of our co-teaching plan that ms blevins has spoken to you about previously during her presentations of those 163 new hires nine were intervention specialists uh serving our special ed population within our district uh we did have eight administrative hires uh most of those were in our system principal ranks uh and some of our other ranks within administration of the people that we hired 34 of the individuals that we hired came to us with master's degrees and 121 had bachelor's degrees and you'll say what that's you know there's 155 there that doesn't match the 163. uh one of the other things that we do is we do a bachelor's plus 150 so the other people

004fall within that area there but most of our individuals that we hire new hires are coming with bachelor's degrees we do hire some experienced individuals who do have master's degrees so let's talk specifically about those elementary hires this was where we actually did a great job and i will give kudos to our instruction department to rick to andrea to our entire team up there we got out early and we got out often and we really beat the doors down and got some really really good new hires at our elementary level we hired 20 teachers for bridgeport elementary we hired 16 teachers for brookwood elementary we hired 10 teachers at crawford 19 at fairwood 18 at highland 18 at london 15 at ridgeway and 11 at riverview now when you look at that you say why

005are there such a difference in numbers why was 20 at one building intended another building well part of this is obviously the severance package we offered last year created some additional openings at certain buildings as well as with the way that we restructured our title services some of those title services within those buildings were higher numbers and some were lower numbers so as we shifted into that co-teaching model there were more openings in certain buildings and less opening in other buildings so you'll see that you know kind of on average we hired 15 16 teachers at each one of our elementary buildings which makes sense uh because we do have 12 co-teaching sections at each one of our elementary buildings the other hires were probably you know retirements you know people leaving the district shifts

006from maybe elementary to middle school we do have that sometimes so that's basically a breakdown of our elementary hires secondary hires we had 15 hires at garfield we had three at wilson we had two at the freshman campus and we had four at the main campus i will tell you that in my time in this district i don't remember another time when our freshman campus high school and our elementary schools were that low now garfield's a little bit higher we did have a few retirees over there we had a couple that took the severance package and we had a couple that obviously left the district but when you look at that three two and four we were really really secure and had a lot of um continuous uh service with our with our secondary building

007so i think that speaks volumes to obviously the buildings as well as the satisfaction that our employees are having in those particular locations oh sorry we did have four hires at the miami school sorry i forgot to add that one and that was basically uh obviously our vli program is under our miami school now so that was basically to make sure that we're staffing those bli programs this is one of the things that i'm most proud of when i came into this job three years ago one of the things that we had talked about in this district forever and ever and ever and i had heard was promoting diversity we are partnering with all the other butler county schools with the butler county educational service center we have a group called educators united where we

008are linking diverse individuals up with others in the county and allowing them to work as colleagues and i see this as being one of the things that's going to really promote this district into the future is the fact that we are promoting diversity we were fortunate enough to hire six new african-american teachers this past spring and summer we also hired two uh individuals who were asian one new hire was hispanic latino and one new hire was american indian and and when i when i look at these numbers you look at obviously we hired 163 people uh you know we're looking at 10 individuals there you still look and say that's kind of a low number and i agree that's still a low number we're not anywhere near where we need to be but what i

009can tell you is if you look back in history of what we've been able to hire in the past years and promoting diversity has been a struggle for us it's been a struggle for us to first of all find candidates it's been a struggle for us to hire candidates and it's been a struggle for us to retain candidates that is one of our goals here at hamilton city schools is to make sure we are not only promoting diversity we are hiring individuals we're recruiting them we're retaining them and we're setting them up for success so that's going to continue to be one of our objectives and one of our goals within the hr department let's talk a little bit about one of the things that has come up as far as you know that the

010the pull of substitute teachers out there is is very minimal so we were a little creative in some of the things that we've done this past year year and a half and one of the things i want to report to you tonight is how that has impacted our substitute pay and what we're doing with our hcta union and our teachers union i'm going to go back a couple years because obviously everybody knows 2019-20 2021 was a little different with coven but when we go back and we compare what we were paying in certified subs the fiscal year 19 which is kind of the last we'll call normal year we've had in education during the first six weeks of that fiscal year 19 we were paid we we paid out 91 000 in substitute pay just

011to compare that year we ended up kind of over the year fiscal year 19 18 19 20 our substitute and modular pay for teachers and for certified subs was right around 1 million dollars so one of the things that we've been able to do is we've been able to be a little creative in the way that we're doing things this past quarter basically first six weeks of this first year of 2122 we incurred thirty thousand dollars in cost so if we speculate this out and obviously bob can can give you all the numbers we're estimating that this could be anywhere from you know a four hundred to six hundred thousand dollars in savings for the district as we continue to move forward it also does the other thing which is it gets our teachers in

012front of our kids all day long instead of having substitutes in front of our kids all day long which we know is probably a benefit to all of our students having our own hired certified teachers in front of our children so i did just want to give you an update on that and i can update you later on you know as we get into obviously the mid-year range and then once we get to the end of the year i'll have more exact numbers as to how this has impacted our substitute teacher costs across the district let me talk a little bit about upcoming events we do have four different bargaining units within the district and we're going to have four bargaining agreements that are going to be coming up in this springtime they're going to

013end in in june june 30th they will all go out of date so we're going to be bargaining with all of our four different unions so we'll have hcta opc 151 which is our clerical uh educational assistant union opc 711 which is our transportation unit and askme468 which is our maintenance custodial and food service contract so we will be negotiating all these in the spring i'm already in talks with each of these individuals the presidents in our district and we're already establishing dates and setting dates so that we can begin these contract negotiations probably right after the start of the calendar year so in january sometime we'll begin these negotiations the other thing that is new this year kind of from an hr perspective is there's a new teacher evaluation model where in the spring

014we took all of our administrators and we spent um time training each one of our administrators who are going to be evaluating teachers in this new otez 2.0 model so it's the ohio teacher evaluation system the new 2.0 model is a little different than what we've been doing in the past there's a much higher focus on data analysis for the teachers which is kind of the new piece and it really kind of focuses on their professional growth plan which is their plan to develop and kind of enhance them as teachers so we've been implementing that the beginning of this year we started that we're seeing a few little bumps in the road you know as we obviously do whenever you go into a new system but overall i think we've done a great job of

015kind of infusing this new system into the district teachers i think feel a little more comfortable that they have a little more control because they're developing their own professional growth plan and it really is a collaborative effort between the evaluator and the evaluatee so the teacher and the administrator evaluating them they really work a little more alongside each other through this process whereas the old system was more of the teacher does their thing the administrator comes in and evaluates them they write up a an evaluation report they discuss it and then they kind of move on this one really kind of puts them in tandem working alongside each other developing that professional growth plan working on the evaluation and identifying specific areas of either growth or refinement that that teacher may have and enhancing that

016teacher as an individual and really analyzing that data one of the things we're going to be converting to next year is we will be converting to the opez which is the ohio principal evaluation system 2.0 it'll be a new system that also goes along with what the otez does it'll be kind of a similar system it'll focus the principles on those same sorts of goals and how are they doing those same things with the building as what teachers are doing with the students the other thing is we do have some individuals who obviously don't fall under the teacher or the principal categories so we have a number of other evaluation systems that we use in the district we developed an evaluation committee one of the things that that evaluation committee is going to do is

017going to continue to look at our other evaluation models for example danielson is the model that we use for non-teaching employees so school sites nurses individuals like that and then we also have evaluation systems that we use for our non-teaching employees so bus drivers educational assistants secretaries custodians so we're going to continue to be looking at those evaluation systems and one of the things that we really want to focus on within hr is making sure that they're meaningful we want to make sure that the evaluation system is meaningful to both the individual who's being evaluated as well as the evaluator and it's not just let's go in and check box and move on so we want to make sure that these evaluation systems are meaningful and they're really there to grow individuals to become better

018at their craft so that's a 15-minute snapshot of everything that's been going on in hr that's all that's all we do that's all we do we're going to hire people and evaluate people and uh negotiate contracts but obviously those are just some of the highlights we have a ton of a ton of things going on within the hr department we're always looking at trying to make things better for our district you know we're in this for people and that's our job in hr we want to make sure we're taking care of our people and that's what we continue to focus on within our within our goals and objectives of our department so questions well i was just going to say i want to thank you very much on this i know how important it is

019hiring the right people from the very beginning because if you don't that solves a lot of problems when you're able to hire these people and such a big class of 163 is that what it was is incredible and of course the the 80 some that we were using as co-teachers and i just want to say i know the mrs blevins mrs blevins was involved with the uh local 12 report uh we've gotten some good press out of that it's in the been in the paper um it's it's nice to see that we're able to do these for our kids and we're hiring quite getting ahead of the curve and hiring quality individuals to fill these positions and that's what we want we want quality and like i said once we if we get quality from

020the very good beginning it takes care of a lot of problems as we go down to the roads well we know and and i think mr holbrook has spoken to this previously we know that the most important commodity we have as a school district is our teachers i mean they're the ones that are in the classroom every single day they're the ones that have the greatest impact on our 10 000 students in this district and we really take pride in our district and within the hr department of making sure we we go through a true vetting process you know we're gonna we're gonna ask some questions and we're gonna interview and we're gonna find out um the other thing i think that some people often take for granted is it's it's always about fit you

021know there's there's a fit for each individual building in this district and there's a fit for this district as a whole and we have to find the people who fit our mold and have the same goals and the same initiatives that we have as a district and and that is growing kids we want to make sure that we take every kid and we grow them every single year every single day every single second so we have to find people when we go out and do interviews that have that same mindset and if we do our work up front as you as you said that saves us a lot of issues on the back end where you know we're having to maybe you know work through improvement plans and some of these other things that we

022have to do when when needs aren't being met well i know with the old teacher perceiver back in the day it was all the mission mindset and having the mission that you're going to grow kids it's it's what you have a passion for and so i just appreciate it and also um i want to say kudos on the diversity of of of new teachers you've brought on board um i know it does sound like a small number but i've been around this district long enough to know that that how difficult that is to find quality individuals just to get them into our district and finding that many it's it may look small on the outside but on the inside that's a huge leap and i can only hope that it will continue and i forget

023the name of the program is that unity educators united education that gives a a support system for those teachers um to be part of this so yes congratulations thank you any other questions no i just want to also say as uh mr sprague has said yeah we appreciate the hard work that's being put in to everything that you do including the hiring of the teachers including the dealing the deal dealing with students that you have to deal with in the hr there's a lot more that people don't realize what you're doing and to have a low number of turnovers it seemed like a lot because we had to hire the additional but it seems like a lot but that retention speaks well and also it helps because new teachers you know take time to get

024a little acclimated but if you're now in your third fourth year as a teacher you know how the system is working you know how the system needs to work and i think that's a big plus that that we're a death spot yeah i remember when i first came into the district i mean we were hiring 140 150 teachers a year i'm sure lauren you remember and you know up until this year obviously with the co-teaching model that that change that was a little bit of a game changer but you know the last couple years we've averaged between 30 35 maybe 40 teachers that we've been hiring and that's the number we want to continue to shoot for i mean you know we want to we want to obviously bring them here we want to grow

025them we want to continue to to refine our our our craft and i think we're on the right track with that uh and i do i do take pride i know a lot of other people take pride in the fact that we do see those lower turnover numbers from year to year so saying want to definitely say thank you for all your hard work and all the different areas that you have to navigate through um and keeping all that in nice sneak power because it's a lot of you know it could be a lot so but also um that diversity piece i'm glad that there has been um intentional work on that piece because that's very important um to me as well as others so i'm glad that we as a district are being intentional

026about that and you know we were gaining traction so i definitely um look forward to continual update and you know in in hiring in in all those areas i think that's you know really great to have that kind of diversity you know it will help even more so speak to the kids that we educate every single day that that representation is there and they get to see people that look like them so i know how important it was for me and my education and others and so i know that that piece will be great so i'm glad that other educators are coming together in butler county they've you know formed that alliance i think that'll be great to have those conversations there and to just help piggyback get information and ideas of how others are

027doing things in their district so i appreciate that piece being addressed and being a part of the presentation and like i said you know we're we're scratching the surface we we're we're making steps yes and we want to continue to make even larger steps in the future absolutely so that shoots down greatly i'm grateful for that mr wright i i don't know if you properly describe the scope of work of which an hr department does when when mr wright took over that department he was the only administrator with some clerical support we would think that that is so understaffed if we had a building that had over 1200 students in it we have over 1200 employees you know the teaching staff is a significant portion of that but but everything from bus drivers to to

028food service to educational aids to clerical so so we added an additional administrator this year and we're probably still a little understaffed when you consider the scope of what that job entails and mike has come in and has just done a tremendous job on refocusing the emphasis on we are a people business and our most important commodity we have are are the people that are in front of our teachers every day that are serving them meals every day that are driving them to school every day that are answering our phones and and and talking with our parents every day and so i just want to compliment yourself jesse and the entire hr department because we have made huge leaps and strides towards the vision that i would like to see that at and we we

029are right there we hired some quality quality quality individuals this year and it's because we were aggressive we went out we didn't wait for them to come to us we went to them we visited colleges we visited universities we we did those things and and did them in a difficult time when covet and restrictions were there and so i just want to complement the entire department on their efforts with that and there's only great things ahead thank you mr holbrook thanks mike thank you and thank you jesse yes we realize the stuff miss wise bro but yeah we don't want you can carry him [Laughter] the second update we have this evening is from our business operations um executive director he's going to talk a little bit about bridgeport drive and some of the things

030that are happening with that or didn't happen with that years ago when bridgeport was initially built and then so mr kelby i'm going to turn it over to you at this point thank you good evening um so if you recall about a month and a half ago i spoke to the board about what was going on over at bridgeport with the property there we started looking into sorry we started looking into um separating that property across bridgeport drive from the main bridgeport elementary property at the beginning of the year it's been a long process through that process we found that we had started some steps back in 2008 and then again in 2015 and for whatever reason we never completed the process during the last few months we've just found out that bridgeport drive is

031actually not a dedicated city street that it's actually an easement going through our property so in order to complete the separation of that property we've been advised to first dedicate that street as a city street so we went through the paperwork the drawings with bear becker and last week we met with the city planning commission and they approved to move forward with that dedication of bridgeport drive so moving forward that goes now to city council for voting it'll be on three um city council meetings first as the caucus and then there'll be a first reading on december first second reading on december 8th that i will i'll attend both of those just in case they have questions for us about that property and then once we get through that process and that is approved again

032during this whole process we've discovered that the detention pond behind bridgeport elementary is actually no longer up to date so once we get these plans approved the street dedicated then there will be another process of going out to bid in order to get that detention pond up to uh up to date so that's really about the jics of the update on that so the the retent detention pond that's where some of the sucker it's uh so we asked that question we were worried because when you look on the drawings it looks like it creeps up pretty close to the soccer field behind bridgeport but it does not so we're feeling pretty comfortable that we're gonna we're gonna not get into the soccer field where is that located it is if you go behind bridgeport elementary

033it is south of the tennis courts you'll see some cat tales and things like that over there at one time we've done a lot to clean that area up but it's based you know okay i thought there was runoff from the school into where the soccer field is there is nothing okay cool okay that's where we're at is there anything that would that you perceive that is going to be a roadblock to does not sound like we've definitely done our homework i mean we've there were so many things on file i can't believe it was never great and this is a it's going to be a drawn out process with contractors the way they are right now everybody's backed up materials we don't expect this to happen quickly once we go out to bid then

034we will have to revisit again this just gets the street dedicated then we'll revisit again once that's done the detention pond is completed of separating those that property into two so the detention pond has to do with discreet dedication okay okay thank you for figuring that out thank you anything else mr sprague that's what we have this evening okay we are going to take a short recess and start again at 6 30 for our regular scheduled meeting thank you good evening let's rise for the pledge of allegiance and i'd ask that you stay uh on your feet before uh i have something else to announce so fight 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

035justice for all this evening i'd like to just spend a minute we we had some bad news in our district today of the passing of a teacher and i'd like to read a statement can you hear me before beginning this meeting we ask that each individual record take a moment of silence to recognize the untimely passing of wilson wilson middle school teacher jennifer williams miss williams has worked in hamilton city schools for seven years as a science teacher at wilson middle school during her career in hamilton city schools jennifer positively impacted thousands of students and she will be sorely missed her love for the students she taught and the hamilton city school district was evident daily the hamilton city school district and the wilson middle school community send our thoughts and condolences to her family

036please join me with a moment of silence thank you please be seated ready yeah before we get started uh i don't know if there's any veterans in here but if you are and to all the veterans since this is veterans day i want to say thank you for your service your dedication and your time uh i have a facebook post i put every year my grandparents my father's parents were immigrants from sicily in world war ii she had five sons they had five sons that served the united states army uh and they had another daughter and a and another son that actually worked in the war plants during world war ii so i just want to say thank you to all the veterans and god bless you thank you steve thank you board members we

037have in front of us the minutes from our last meeting i'd like to have a motion for uh to approve those minutes i'll make that motion to approve the minutes a second mr hancock mr israel yes mrs matthews yes mr sprague yes i'd like to read a statement regarding covet 19. the hamilton city school board of education has always emphasized the safety the importance of safety with students staff and the community additionally all board of education believe members believe that parent input is a critical critical component of a child's education over the past several months school districts and the local boards of education have been placed in positions to make many non-traditional decisions currently the question of mandatory coven 19 vaccinations has become an item of discussion and debate unless required by federal state or

038local authorities the entire not just the people sitting here the entire hamilton city board of education has no interest in mandating covet 19 vaccination for students or staff the decision to receive the coven 19 vaccination is a parent family and or individual decision and the hamilton city school district board of education looks forward to a safe and productive remainder of the 21-22 school year thank you at this time i we have a moment for a member of city council mr ryan uh good evening and good evening to all staff and parents and guests first of all just want to extend my deepest condolences and sympathies to to the family of miss williams and those students that she affected if there's anything city council can do please let us know moving forward secondly i just want

039to thank all of you the board and superintendent for coming to the state of the city back in october it was an exciting night to say the least very explosive in my terms it just shows that we've got the best people doing the best job city councils making the right decisions they're going to move our city forward and um if if there's any indication of how explosive the city is but the next couple weeks is is going to be very very exciting so hopefully by christmas we'll have some really cool stuff get announced and you mean explosive in a good way yes okay you just want to make sure just one minute yeah so uh the the only update i i really have is um as most of you know the infrastructure bill in washington

040was was passed late friday night with the infrastructure bill amtrak is going to be getting their federal allocation of monies to upgrade stations build new ones and build new lines and as you know uh city council including myself been working really hard to get amtrak to uh come back to town it's something that we are passionate about when it comes to uh economic development initiatives and travel and tourism especially with uh the nook coming online here and next spring so with that being said we have dusted off our plans we've begun discussions with amtrak and they are ready to proceed so we we have a long way to go but the biggest thing is that we are proceeding together so we were able to go to the next step so like i said a step

041forward is better than nocep at all so we're excited we're going to continue to pursue that um we might be able to get uh both lines on the 3c which is cincinnati columbus uh cleveland and then the indianapolis chicago cincinnati line so we're going to work hard to get both lines and stay tuned for further announcements when we hopefully get the new station location figured out we'll let you guys know so other than that happy thanksgiving and maybe we'll see you by christmas thank you michael thank you michael thank you thank you that's exciting news for our city mr hobart yes you have two items in front of you this evening um and these are both first reads to um policy the the first is the adoption of some language from the resolution um that

042that we created um regarding board policy and public participation with with signage that that is a first read tonight the second the second item that we have is the district calendars for the 22 23 and 23 24 school year they're both first reads they don't require any action this evening but they will be voted on in december okay thank you and we don't need to take any further action right now okay this time it's our opportunity for public participation just want to remind everyone of most of you should be aware of our policy at this point but each speaker is limited to three minutes and the total amount a lot allocated to this is 30 minutes so i will ask mrs uh tanya starjo to come up and i think it's done janetta i'm sorry

043you're uh luis you're on deck and please say state your name and your address please thank you you can pull it down that's okay i don't really think i need it anyway you guys know me i don't need the microphone um i usually prepare a speech um but i didn't really think it was necessary um i think i speak for a lot of parents right now that we do not feel heard i personally emailed every single one of you this week i got no email back from anyone but mr sprague no one took the time to email me back that's happened dozens of times i find it hard to believe that you find time to do all these other things but you don't have five minutes to reply to an email from a parent of

044many students in your district are we that unimportant that you don't have that time to just send an email back when is it that we're allowed to ask you questions and you actually have to be held accountable to answer those questions because you're not available by phone you're not available to come into the building and speak to you you won't answer our emails and we're not allowed to ask questions and hear where you respond and answer us so when is it that we're allowed to talk to you and you have to just i i don't like responding in public but i will say that you wrote the same email to each board member i did respond on behalf of the board member and you broke me about not responding to your phone calls i've never

045received a phone call from you our phone numbers are posted thank you so continue i'm sorry your emails are also posted and i emailed every single one of you and i i'm pretty sure all of you can talk so only one of you is allowed to email me back you work for us not the other way around you this is dewees and andrew davidson you're on deck [Music] hi it's janetta dewey 74 west persimmon i just want to first of all i want to thank the board for the statement that you just made opening up because it is such a personal decision um god gave us our bodies and it should be our choice what we put in them so i appreciate that for the teachers and the staff as well that they can make

046that choice and i want to just say thank you to all of the teachers in our district many teachers have reached out to me personally and just thanked us for speaking up um and i i don't think they've i think it's been a hard road uh throughout covid for the teachers but we appreciate them so much and the staff i did want to extend my condolences to miss williams family that's tragic and i wanted to thank all the veterans including my well my son's not a veteran but he just graduated in the spring jonathan hughes and he's actually serving he's at fort benning and i'm so proud of him he decided to follow in the footsteps of his grandparents and uncles and cousins and everyone else but i do i do want to echo what

047um tonya mentioned is i know it doesn't feel like you know we can come up here and talk to you every month um but there's no we don't get any response like that we can't there's no open forum or i i think it would be a good idea to have a town hall meeting maybe maybe once a quarter or a couple of times a year um i know some districts do that and um it does feel sometimes like we're having we're talking to the wall it's a one-sided conversation and we we've had questions many of us have raised questions during these times but it's i mean they're not rhetorical questions but it feels like oh okay well you know so anyway that's all i have for tonight thank you so much thank you andrew and

048charlotte hale you're on deck andrew davidson 224 south carson avenue i simply want to talk about i really can't tell a story of the week that i've had dealing with the district on wednesday afternoon i went in to the fine arts department to fill out my paperwork to volunteer with the hamilton show choirs as i've done every year since i graduated in 2018. my paperwork wasn't even sent to this building to be approved or denied in any way on thursday i received a phone call from the fine arts director stating that i would not be allowed to volunteer with the district in any way at all i asked for reasons on that and was given none i was told to contact other people about it i attempted to make those emails and phone calls and

049did not get a response i do want to say i have not contacted a single board member about this at all but it's very concerning to me that my paperwork was not even filed it wasn't put through the proper chain before i was denied so there's not even a record of me being denied outside of what i have to say and outside of what the acquire director has to say about it um and i'm not simply just a volunteer to go there and help out with kids you know on the bus and watch over them i am their drummer and band director i've done that for many years now i was doing that while still in high school as a student no one had made the director aware that i would not be allowed to

050volunteer so now there is a scramble to fill you know just to replace me on that um and we don't know what other people will be denied volunteers so we don't know who is even going to be allowed in there and i really just want an answer as to why you know as long as it's a valid reason i you know i'll shut up it won't matter but if anything it's the students and the staff that are being hurt by this right now i don't get much out of doing it personally i have to i give up every saturday for three months out of the year 18 hour days and i'm just sitting around with kids that are not my age i'm not really having a lot of fun but i do it because i'm

051there to help them i've done a lot i've put in more hours than i've been given credit for doing that and i simply want a reason why and i don't know who can give me that reason but if someone could reach out to me mr sprague i know you have my phone number so you can contact me about it anytime but thank you guys for your time thank you charlotte hale and justin justin theodore you're on deck uh good evening to all the board i just wanted to take and would you just say your name absolutely my name is charlie hale and i am with ywca hamilton 244 dayton street hamilton ohio and i just want to first and foremost one extend the ywca's condolences for the loss of mrs williams that is very tragic

052to hear and we hope all the students and families involved receive healing and have our blessing one one to introduce myself on behalf of the ywca hamilton my name is charla hale i am the new director of racial justice and on behalf of the ywca just one two one share hopefully i have permission from the board to give you my card so that you have my contact information i also want to extend support and appreciation for all that you do as a school board especially on behalf of all the diverse students and parents and families in the district and also want to say that same thing to all the parents in the room we appreciate your consistent input into the community and how it goes and we're really excited to partner with the district in

053whatever resource capacity you all need so thank you thank you everyone yeah thank you welcome mr theodore and then uh jennifer mason i just want to say real quick looks like we have a lot of teachers and staff in here and if they would rather speak i don't want to take up anybody's time i've spoken a few times so i'm willing to go live just say your name and your address you're fine all right justin theodore 1563 northwest washington boulevard i'm here to speak about school board's a resolution to the osba's decision to terminate its membership and affiliation with the nsba i appreciate that resolution and i thank you for that but honestly the behavior and attitude of the school board towards the parents and community members before and after the osba's decision to terminate

054their relationship with the nsba needs to be addressed in my opinion the nsba's letter asking for federal law enforcement assistance was sent and made public on september 29th the osba did not terminate their affiliation until october 25th it's 27 days it's a month you know parents were called terrorists and for a month school boards school board associations i think they're just waiting to see you know what the reaction was up until that time the treatment and attitude towards parents was grotesque at best this really became glaringly apparent by the complete 180 degree flip of the school board what you exhibited on the october 28th the last meeting honestly all i see is reactionary behavior by this school board you know not the proactive behavior that i would expect someone of you know your position to

055have you know it seems like you're basing your decisions on larger entities the wait and see attitude um i'm just asking that you make a solid decision based off of your experience and common sense that'll get you 90 percent of the way i've managed people for over 20 years in my line of work trust me it works but honestly i'm sorry i don't trust you anymore i'm sure there's several other parents in here and in this district that don't to the point where i've actually removed my kids from this district you lost two students over the last month because of that okay the ship of trust and respect that you had at least for me or what little you had from anybody in my opinion it's gone okay i see you as politicians you know

056your decisions prove that to me your decisions are based off of what you perceive to be the most popular idea in my opinion that's obviously not always right it's not an example we set for our children you know i believe you kind of caught a glimpse of that by the reaction to the nsba's letter by other school boards school board associations you didn't you didn't see it until it was condemned and honestly i think that's the problem you're not worried about what really matters you're worried about what people will think thank you this is mason and then down acting your own deck hi jennifer mason 1655 stahlhaver road i just wanted to say i don't actually have any new complaints tonight um surprise and i do appreciate the fact that the parents are being allowed

057to actually be parents and make the decision for our own children in regards to the vaccines but i wanted to clarify really quick a few of my comments from the last meeting i mentioned that i had never thought about the board and didn't know any of your names it was never really a concern of mine i don't know how long any of you have been on the board i know that at least one of you has been a couple of years i believe one of you is back after being gone for several years but just as i didn't really know any of you guys i started to think that you probably don't realize who i am either so i wanted to make a few statements to maybe jog a few memories into who i am

058three years ago brookwood was having some major parking lot issues during the morning drop-offs my son was almost hit about three times while getting out of the car um nobody really seemed to care so i continuously sent the then principal and superintendent um emails and voicemails until finally the school got nice new shiny signs with the rules and regulations um there was cones put out where they should have been and the teachers were actually out there every morning making sure that kids weren't turned into you know happy little pancakes so then that was three years ago two years ago um y'all may have heard about the crazy parent who called the hamilton city police department to file a report and possibly press charges on a fourth grader for spitting on her son's face hi that

059was me so um then my history of you know mama crazy when it comes to protecting my kids in this district goes back a really long time um i believe it was 2007-2008-ish my then-eight-year-old daughter was refused a drink of water during gym class on about a 90 degree day by a very nasty gym teacher whose name i won't mention because she asked by saying can i instead of may i so long story short her superiors the principal and i assumed the then board members banned that teacher from speaking to my daughter for the remainder of her time at what was fillmore that was approximately two years that she wasn't even allowed to speak so the reason that i am bringing this up is just to kind of let everybody know that when it comes

060to protecting the health and mental well-being i'm not going anywhere and i just don't want you to to think that my not caring your names is passive in any way when it comes to the health and well-being of my kids okay thank you thank you mr acton good evening dan acton 410 columbia road i want to bring up a few things one of them were the multiple public records requests that i've put in that have been denied the first instance i'd like to bring to the board's attention and it belongs in the crt category where the programming being taught with the men of honor program my request has been in for two years now and recently again denied the right to review that curriculum denying a record should be a huge red flag to the

061board members the administration our community members and certainly the media i can't tell you how how upset i am that a board that we help support with our tax dollars would be so arrogant as to withhold that curriculum i've been told that you know recently i spoke with the representative from the administration who told me that based on some of the concerns that i've had over the last couple years that they indeed would kind of formalize what components would be taught out of curriculum well that's nice but they've had two years over two years now to indoctrinate those children in that programming i just and still because they were going to amend and formalize the programming i still can't see nor any of us in this room can we see that programming so we wonder

062where all this conversation comes from with critical race theory and all this kind of wokeness and all that kind of stuff it's at your doorstep board it's at your boards i didn't create this mess i've got better things to do than to live my life on twitter and social media and come to board we all have better things to do than to come here repeatedly to try and get answers and we never get them we come up here like little parrots and hey you know we've got a concern about this and concerned about that it's public comment time and we're expecting answers and not one less except the one directed to mrs stargell has been answered and that was kind of off the cuff but still didn't answer the underlying questions about why these why

063you as elected board members cannot reply to a simple email it seems that we've gone into campaign mode again just like the last time where suddenly the the deadline to file for election comes by and then a couple days later shazam we have an 8 a.m meeting and we can laugh and we can turn around look at the clock and see how much time we have but those are those are suspicions that i didn't create it's those that the board have allowed they still haven't addressed why so with that you know i can i can tell you know i can tell the board and tell the audience i'm right now recruiting members to run for 2023 i'm committing time and resources for that effort so you know please please address those public public records requests

064thank you board members in front of you is the consent agenda for this meet tonight's meeting and you've had a chance to review those um i would like to ask um for a motion to accept those i'll make that motion sir second first and second and mr hancock mr israel yes mrs matthews yes mr sprague yes mr hancock gets in your report can i interrupt one second please we just hired a new associate superintendent um oh yes and andrea blevins and i want to recognize andrea is here tonight and very well deserving of that honor so i want to recognize andrea and and you will be sitting up here starting the international meeting with us i think you have some supporters out there speaking yeah thank you congratulations yes congratulations absolutely okay board members uh

065the financial reports for tonight we'll look at briefly the cash flow analysis and this is through october our estimated 34 just over 34 million dollars we've received 34 million 163 218 90 000 218 better than anticipated at this point uh the general property tax uh we'd estimate about seven point eight million excuse me are you able to cast that yeah it just froze up on it okay that's why i tried to do that while she was talking um we've received seven million eight fifty nine o seventy five fifty six fifty nine thousand seventy six better than anticipated what you wanna look at here is the fact that last year you received eight million one forty nine two sixty four and eight point two million the year before could be some collection differences there it it

066definitely is in due part uh to the fact that there was a refund of taxes made to a taxpayer and so we actually had on we had these various columns one's called delinquent taxes collected those numbers are actually negative in the commercial side which is very unique yeah you wouldn't expect those and that alerted us very quickly uh we also knew last year that our collections ran about 120 000 better than you would have predicted that they would have done well there you go i got your mom all right and moving on the uh the tangible tax at this time is running a little better than planned about 18 000 better than plan uh and in fact about 23 000 better than last year those aren't huge numbers in our in our overall budget but

067certainly welcome numbers uh the next thing you want to look at unrestricted grants and aid and that's your main state funding line item uh estimated 23.5 million basically that's what you've received but what you really want to look at is that 23.5 million this year compares to the 24.6 million last year and 25.1 million the year before now don't get alarmed by that because there's so many state funding changes that those numbers went down but you're also going to have reductions on the expenditure side where they were taking uh charter school dollars out at choice dollars out those aren't happening to you as well so it's about about a 2.9 million dollar net difference we are going to be finishing up the forecast in the next couple weeks we are not going to have the

068state funding formula put out by ode until sometime in december so we're simply gonna have to run with simulations as they were and rely on some of the consultants work as well that helps us do some of those calculations the restricted grants in aid and that's just certain parts of the formula you know running as expected the uh expenditures at 32.7 million we're basically at that number as well 56 657 less than anticipated things are running in line as we would anticipate them to be salaries are actually a little bit down from last year that's to be anticipated you got a lot going on with uh the dakova dollars where you've been covering some positions so we'll watch and see how that continues but right now going as planned i'd entertain any questions you might

069have on the general operating funds okay can you get any feel for the funding formulas coming out well i don't think it's going to generate anything significant dollars from us for us based upon what we were seeing in simulations and simulations indicated it wasn't going to do much and so far that's what i'm seeing um but od is continuing to work on getting all the details on that before they release it the latest we've heard is december we'll see when they release it yeah okay i'm a motion we accept uh are you done assuming you're done okay i'll make a motion we accept mr hancock's finance report second mr hancock mr grisgrove yes mrs matthews yes mr spray yes being as there's no other items on our agenda our next meeting will be on december

0709th our executive and work session will start at 4 30 and our regular session will be at 6 30. that's on uh december 9th may have a motion to adjourn i'll make sure we are adjourned thank you everybody have a great thanksgiving yes and uh see you back here on the night you