BOE Regular Meeting Nov. 18, 2021

001all right 701 i'd like to call our board meeting to order mr robson will you please call the roll when you're ready dr demarco here mr eckenroad here mrs barkowski here mrs tomas here and mrs newman here please stand and join us 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 thank you everyone for joining us this evening in our audience and um in our virtual audience we appreciate your participation and engagement with us i know parking was probably a little tight tonight we have parent-teacher conferences here at the high school so thank you parents for doing double duty tonight as uh board members did that as well we'll start

002as soon as dr lloyd comes back okay i'll keep talking i never have problem with that um dr lloyd will uh do a present on true accountability and give the board a summary update now yeah that's the first thing but we can pivot no we're good okay are you gonna be i'll move um i'll just yeah i'm not so i don't want any i want everyone else to be able to see i'm just gonna go over over here okay all right uh no i got it right here so um what i wanted to do was just to provide and i know i'm not going to be too uh verbose at least i'm going to try not to be um because mr robson is going to talk about uh the forecast but the purpose of this

003presentation is to provide you with an update related to the uh transformative accountability work that we're doing um and i'm gonna provide you in the audience with some background and and some information that we're doing as it relates to that particular work so first um learning organizations i'll say this to start with have some bureaucratic processes involved in them and i don't want you to think that when i say the word bureaucracy versus learning organization that somehow bureaucracies are bad because certainly there are some bureaucrat bureaucratic kinds of environments that are good um but if we defined ourselves as just simply a bureaucratic organization than that has certain kinds of implications long ago when we created our strategic plan we realized that in order to work towards the district's vision of inspiring empowering kids we

004had a choice that we needed to make continue in kind of a more of a bureaucratic sort of framework or try to shed that and really look at what a learning organization might be and one god would hope that schools would be learning organizations but i don't think it's necessarily the case all the time and so certainly there are some bureaucratic things that we must follow as a school district we have policy we have revised code we have some a few other different things but what we're learning is that those sorts of bureaucratic kinds of things aren't going to help our organization our school organization really be a great organization because the purpose really of bureaucracies aren't to be great but really to be bureaucracies and as a result of that there are certain things

005associated with learning organizations that we really needed to uh to think about and there are certain behaviors that learning organizations have first is they talk about the elephants in the room and they don't ignore those things that are there um that are unpleasant to talk about um i think that we've made some certainly made some strides there we share responsibility for the organization's work it's not just the board it's not just the superintendent but really everybody in the organization has an understanding really what inspiring empower means and has a a role that they play as it relates to doing that and then um [Music] learning organizations also reflect and really look to continuously learn whereas bureaucratic organizations just kind of function and do what it is that uh um that they do so i think

006it was about eight years ago um that we created this and this is this is the elevator speech at least in my mind of what it is that we're trying to accomplish within olmsted fall schools and when we wrote this we really weren't sure uh fully what the implications were but they certainly were to to do something different i think than what we had been doing before so this is our elevator speech as far as uh what it is that uh what are you doing in olmsted falls this is kind of my go-to um that uh we're trying to inspire and empower kids to achieve their full potential and become meaningful contributors in a global society i think that is that's overall what our vision is our brand is really through the inspiration and we

007do this through academics arts and athletics in our district's professional development focus has really been on student engagement so we thought we said we want to inspire and empower kids how are you going to do that we're going to do that through academics arts and athletics and what's the kind of like fuel that you're going to put in the tank in order to do that well we're going to engage students well how are you going to do that we're going to get to know them and then we're purposefully going to design work that engages them it to deeper kinds of levels of understanding um and then what we did is uh we said okay well in order to do that there are certain things that we're going to have to do uh it's annoying that

008ringing there are certain things that we're going to have to do instructionally to that end and so we learned about these uh these design elements right and these are the 10 design strategies that our staff has been focusing on and learning about really over the course of the last five years kelly wright six going on six now so everything we do from kindergarten to high school really is learning about these particular design elements and then rather than teachers as it used to be going into their classrooms and doing these things individually they're working in the context of grade level teams subject matter teams and they're really taking a look at what are the learning outcomes uh the kids need to know and be able to do and what kinds of design strategies might they employ

009on a day-to-day basis that will allow them to learn those at a deeper level that will engage kids and ultimately inspire and empower those kids so just to touch base on a couple of those uh content and substance really is like learning to do something but the substance part is learning to do it at a deeper level right product focus is really focusing on work the kids care about now certainly there's going to be some things that they don't care about there is going to be some busy work and things that they don't necessarily want to do but our product focus is really trying to engage them and have them do work that they actually care about the content or the organization of the knowledge is organized in a clear and easy to understand manner

010and so we're going to check for understanding throughout that whole entire process because that helps to engage them the clear and compelling product standards really are students understand what the expectations are and those expectations are are very clear for them the protection from initial failures isn't that everybody gets an a but as people and you know this is adults as you're learning new kinds of concepts and you have this cognitive dissonance and you're sort of figuring it out you're free to uh to experiment and to try different things because if you're constantly getting a grade and there's this accumulation of points for everything then there's this consequence so the idea is is that you're free to experiment and innovate do those sorts of things affiliation is really working uh together with other kids and we

011see that certainly in our math program and the other things that we do in the real world people don't necessarily work by themselves they work in groups affirmation means that students are going to have the opportunity to showcase their work and we will restart that again here at school board meetings where kids will come in teachers will come in and they'll talk about the different things that they do they're doing this certainly within each building as well choice that doesn't mean the kids get to pick uh whatever it is that they want but what we know is that when somebody has when people have some autonomy and choice over their their uh work really i choose to report my learning in this particular kind of way whether i want to talk about it i want

012to present on it i want to draw about it i want to make something we look to try to have that as a as a design quality novelty and variety allows kids to try and do things in new ways and in different ways it doesn't mean that everything is uh you know that the teacher is the sage on the stage it constantly has to act and entertain um really it should be students are going to do things in new ways and then the last really is the authentic part of why uh the work that they're doing um has a sense of realness to it so the big question is why are you doing all these things and i'll go back to uh to really this is that if we're going to try to be this

013learning organization and we're going to try to inspire and empower kids we made the decision to strive to become a learning organization and as i said learning organizations behave in different ways and what we need to do is to figure out ways to break out of the bureaucratic box that we're in knowing full well that the state's going to have requirements of us there's test scores there's tests that we have to take quite honestly i don't believe do a very good job of reporting out how kids are doing and what it is that we're working on but nevertheless we have to be we're forced into that box but those are the reasons why we're doing what it is that we're doing is because our vision requires us to do that so if you remember back

014at the last i think was the work session um that i had you do this uh this which way exercise does anybody remember any of the things that they put in there um and so for those that can't see it the idea of the which way exercise is this would be from anybody's perspective your board members or for citizens residents is to say from your perspective provide five reasons why we educate kids and then there are five different things here that people would have the opportunity to uh report on and then the last two are filled in uh and they say test scores and graduation rates that's the first part and it says is the reason easy or difficult so whatever it is that you cite is the reason for educating kids is that an

015easy thing to measure or a difficult thing to measure that is is the reason that you identified over here within the current accountability system and then the last is is that reason oriented towards the future or is it something in the past so whatever data or the reason you're getting is it forward looking in front of you or is it behind you right does anybody remember anything that they may have happened to i do oh they throw me what you say i said that we educate uh to so they can uh exist and be productive citizens productive citizens that seems like a pretty good idea right yeah okay what any other reasons to spark and enhance creativity and share that creativity is important have the opportunity to explore and find really what they're calling or

016their special so school is a place where you come in and you learn different things you experiment and have the opportunity to find what you like and find what you don't like right so that's all great and i think those are things that probably those of you that say here go yeah that seems like a pretty good idea that's the reason why we move here that's what it is that we that we want to do then i'll say do those things that you find are the reasons why we educate fall within the context of this particular reporting system that is in in the state law this is the the report card everything is not rated at least at this particular point in time because um you know the circumstances that we've been been living in

017um and then the question i have is that how does this accountability system hold up against those questions that you asked here before the reasons why we educate is it in the system is it forward-looking is it backward-looking and the the answer is really no i mean these are things that we just do to check off um on a list however these are the things that the media reports these are the things that the realtors like to focus in on but these are the things that really aren't the things that people want or expect from their school district it doesn't mean that these things are bad because certainly you want your kids to achieve you don't want your graduation rate to stink you don't want kids to not have progress the problem is is that

018each one of these things is based on a standardized test score on a test that was designed to not do and measure these things it was designed to measure reading it wasn't designed to report on whether somebody's prepared for success or whether or not you're closing the gap it wasn't designed for any of those different things it was really designed to help teachers within the context of the classroom and it's been used in a much larger way than what it's been designed to do so if you're a learning organization and you're trying to inspire and empower kids and engage them and do all those other things this isn't going to help you do that if this is what you're focusing in on so for us we began this uh this transformational accountability journey for what

019we've done it for a while but really we formally began it this year and it's a pretty heavy lift um as you know we've uh had contracted with john tanner from brave ed is our thought partner with this and um john aligns with the whole idea of what a learning organization is and quite honestly um the things that we're doing is it relates to this true accountability or the transformative accountability aligns really within a learning organization and so our district used some of those coveted resources that uh that we received we partnered with john and we meet monthly with him and we'll meet monthly with him for the next 18 to 24 months to learn more about what is a transformative accountability system what benefits are we going to identify and how are we going

020to report to parents on those and then as we're learning more we're then going to engage parents and community and say what kinds of benefits do you expect from your school district and we're going to say well we think we're doing pretty well on these but we're not going to rely on what it is that we think we're going to talk to our constituents and our stakeholders and ask them their opinion we'll use a process to make the determination so all voices are heard and everything but that's the overall thought what we've done is we have 24 people as part of our team in the morning we learn from john and then in the afternoon we debrief is a group and we look back based on what it is that we've learned um and then

021we plan and do things um for the next time that we're going to meet we focus on organizational coherence because we want to make sure that our leadership group understands and our leadership group is teachers administrators julianne allen who's our family engagement specialist is also a key member of that group but the things that we do we say well what it is that we just learned the things that we just talked about how does it help us inspire and empower kids do we see the connections and what it is that we just learned with the previous things we've done as it relates to our strategic plan and our our desire to become a learning organization and what supports do those in our school buildings need in order to feel supported in doing that work and

022then during the off weeks what they do is they spend about an hour and a half with a homework assignment kind of processing and thinking about those different things as well so that's that as far as our organizational learning focus again this is what we're focusing on and what we have focused on the first uh session was what is the history of the educational reform movement and what are the pitfalls uh of it and what is what's about this over reliance on testing because that's really what it is this all stems back from the nation at risk report that came out that said you know school districts aren't doing a very good job and then school districts really weren't taking control of different things and so when that doesn't happen you don't set your own

023vision outsiders come in and they set that vision for you and they force you into a policy box and then herein is the bureaucratic kind of work that we've been doing for the last 30 well more than that probably 50 years in education so we're learning about education reform and the pitfalls of it and we're analyzing the benefits and challenges of implementing this new model of accountability one of the things that we're supposed to talk to the board about because we all have homework assignments was this idea of um and i talked a little bit about this last time that you guys had a board meeting was a different forms of accountability the accountability model that the state has that the federal government has that everybody has is a protectionist accountability model and you need

024those kinds of models in place to make certain that we're not drinking water with like metal in it right or other horrible like the air is really bad and we can't breathe you need certain protectionist accountabilities in place but those things in and of themselves aren't aimed at making an organization great they're aimed at compliance and we don't want to be necessarily just an organization this is a compliant organization we want to be a learning organization and our goal is to inspire and empower kids so we're really looking at more of an institutional um accountability system because such a system helps to make an organization great and so the formula that we're taking a look at is this and there are a few different parts to it i want to just quickly review this the

025idea is the benefits um are going to be identified and john has worked nationally on on this work and um there are 31 national benefits that have been put out there we'll take a look to see from our school district how our benefits that we identify align with those national benefits but there's a list of educational benefits some of which you already said right creativity i mean for us we think of the benefits of the list that we've already created with the portrait of a graduate communication creativity critical thinking self-directedness those kinds of things but those are essentially the benefits and then what you do once you've identified that benefit is you ask yourself as it relates to that particular benefit what kind of effort are you doing right now are you cr are you

026building capacity on that particular benefit um are are you staying course on that particular benefit so think of a particular benefit as it relates to trying to prepare kids to be lifelong learners and we would have by what evidence are we willing to accept that that's that we're doing well there and if we think we're doing well then we don't really have to measure that you know deeply at this particular point we're going to look to another benefit we're going to take a look at that one the kind of effort is uh are you building capacity for that so think of the benefit um is you know um 24 i'll use 21st century uh kinds of skills are you building capacity on those yes we're building capacity on those kinds of things well what's the

027timing well it's going to take us and this is the kind of communication effort that we would have with our with the board and certainly with our constituent groups if that's something that we're working on we're going to be working on that between the next six to nine months and we're going to report out on how we're doing as it relates to building capacity on that particular benefit so that's the last part which is the signal we're going to signal to our community we're going to signal to the board and we're going to say here's what we've done over the course of the last six to nine months of how we're making an impact on this particular benefit and we're going to report out on that so you could foresee identifying somewhere around think of

028these as like indicators benefits think of it like a dashboard like 31 different kinds of things you're not going to turn on all 31 at the same time because that would be overwhelming you're going to pick the things that you're going to do that you're focusing in on that you really need to work on is a school district and not all school buildings are the same while they may all be working on the same benefits they're not all going to necessarily be reporting on those exact same benefits because the high school may have a need for one particular kind of thing and falls on ox may have a need to report on something else or really to do more capacity building or professional learning on that particular kind of thing so what we're learning about

029is really this kind of model of identifying benefits determining what kind of effort capacity we need to do what is the timeline for that and how are we going to report out to others as it relates to that particular kind of benefit and that's a really key kind of thing for us that we've uh that we really need to focus on yeah i'll forget my question if i don't answer it if i don't ask it now uh how true to ourselves are we going to be about here's our here's the benefits and yeah you'll like your things yeah so it doesn't matter what we think because the benefits aren't ours the benefits are the ones that our constituents are saying that these are the ones that you need to work on and then we're going

030to say here's the evidence that we have and they're going that's not enough we don't we don't get it we don't accept that we need more than that or they could say that's good somebody else may say well that's good but i need to i want to like you know i want to see how the car works so i want more details on whatever benefit it may happen to be so we're going to provide you with more detail the idea of benefit is when you communicate it to the stakeholder is you communicate it in non-technical language and language that the stakeholder can understand as opposed to all the educators speak that we use all the you know and kelly and i she mentioned like map reports you know the different things that we send out

031you know it's fine you know it's fine it's like all kinds of things on there medium low high whatever parents don't necessarily know what that means so we're going to communicate in the language that they understand and they're going to let us know whether or not they understand it and if they don't then we didn't do our job so it doesn't matter necessarily what we think if we're doing well what matters is what they think okay which is a pretty big shift because this doesn't really care about what anybody thinks except uh the ohio legislative group they created this okay um in session two uh we learned again about protectionists and institutional accountabilities and really this is um uh are some of the main things that we we looked at and we found that um

032standardized testing is the ultimate protectionist kind of accountability because it isn't in place in order to make school districts great it's in place in order to be compliant now there are certain school districts that do well um and you know because they focus on those things and they get high grades on those and we also know that there are school districts that do particularly well because they have a particular population that has a lot of background there's a lot of things at home i mean you take a look at and correlate the kinds of things i showed you on that report card with the median income levels of families and it's a pretty hand and glove kind of uh of thing we've done pretty well at that game but that's not going to make our

033organization great and it's not going to help us to inspire and empower kids and so we have the advantage i think of we can do well in that particular kind of realm um but we need to break away from that in order to to become a different kind of organization and and um be a learning organization so as we take a look at the kinds of uh um institutional accountabilities there are four that um that we explored the first is they're not up there but the first is personal um accountability i strive for excellence because it matters to me because i want to be better i have a personal accountability that's an institutional accountability it's personal accountability um think of for those of you that have read like daniel pink's drive of mastery autonomy and

034purpose that's what drives people that's a personal kind of accountability an internal accountability is an institutional internal accountability uh it's the kind of accountability that comes from wanting to do well to impress my supervisor or my boss i want to do well because i want to move up in the organization i want my i will respect my my boss my supervisor i want to do well that's not the kind of stuff that really that organizations like ours are but certainly there's personal accountability that individuals may have to themselves and internal accountabilities that they may have to their superintendent to their principal whoever it may happen to be the third is a professional institutional accountability so when i meet with my first grade team and we collaborate and work out design qualities and create units of

035instruction the accountability there is i want to be a contributing member to my team i don't want to be that one that like slacks off right i want to be i want to contribute the fourth is um again it's an institutional accountability isn't organizational accountability and our primary stakeholders determine how well we do within that accountability based on the benefits that they expect so personal accountability i weigh in on that internal accountability my boss weighs in on that professional accountability my team weighs in on that organizational accountability we're certainly going to weigh in but it's our primary stakeholders students and parents that are going to weigh in most heavily on that and let us know um how it is and what it is that we're uh that we're doing okay so that's uh was in

036session two um and then what we started to do was really to take a look at those uh 31 benefits and they're in seven different categories um i'm not gonna come i have a couple different slides i'm gonna show you uh what those look like but these are the seven categories it makes sense student learning student readiness engage well-rounded students well-being of kids effective adults community connections and effective systems some of these are very student-focused some of these are to make sure that those that we hire are doing the things that they need to do the community connections is making certain that we're asking and talking to our stakeholders about the benefits that they expect and then the effect of systems takes a look at how we're performing overall um is the school district these

037are some student these are the student readiness ones that were identified nationally so some of them um we still have to do this work internally but these are the ones that came at a national level readiness for the future lifelong learning habits learn to think ahead own the work and be noble and fair and then there are a series of questions like to what degree do we prepare students beyond academics for the next set of milestones in their lives to what degree do we promote and model habits of lifelong learners to what degree are we able to create a future-oriented focus for our students to what degree are we able to create to conceptualize or contextualize learning is part of the big picture that it's not just i go to math class i learn a

038few things i take a test i forget all that i move on to the next thing the math concepts are supposed to build on to one another um the whole purpose of understanding really what mathematics uh might be but those are just some examples of student readiness effective adults and community connections so here's the effective adults one caring and committed adults effective teachers student needs ahead of adult needs and great teacher or great training and support so the questions that you would ask are to what degree is every adult committed to our values principles and culture to what degree does every adult contribute to student benefit what degree do teachers create the benefits the students and their parents expect from school remember we may report on what that is but that doesn't matter what matters

039is what is what they say but they see as far as the benefit to what degree do adults put students first in all aspects of schooling and to what degree is training aligned with the mission and vision of the school can't just go and send people off to professional development everything that we do should be aligned with trying to help inspire and empower kids that's where all of our resources should go to the community connections community as partners parents as partners and students as engaged citizens to what degree does the school engage the community and understanding the schools and partnering for their benefit to what degree do schools create meaningful parent collaborations in support of student benefit and to what degree do we create students capable of and who participate as citizens engaged in the

040future of their communities i mean i think when you look at those that is a far cry from like this garbage back here and these are the things you know my kids are all growing now but these are the things that if i had a first grader these are the things that i would expect from my school day i want them to you know read i want them to be literate i want them to have mathematical reasoning all those things are assumed in it as well and that's actually part of the learn the benefits as well i just pulled some out i wanted to focus on those but that's the uh the student right is i feel that like this is us in some ways right all these fish are going this way and it's

041kind of against the stream um in some but really it's really more of this i think of trying to go up the hill it's really hard to see this right now because there's a lot of noise out there i mean some people here i'm suspecting they want to talk about masking and critical race theory and things like that these are and that's fine we can certainly do that but these are the things that we focus on as a school district these are things that we've been focusing on for the past five years and what it is that we're really trying to do so that's it if you have any questions i'm certainly more than happy to take them jim how does the process go beyond the building leadership teams you know the the people that

042have been really engaged in this and it's a big organization to shift yeah so we have this rule we learned so this is not going to happen i mean there's a reason why it's 18 to 24 months of just learning right because this is a huge lift john has talked to us about the 20 rule 20 rule is that you can't change more than 20 of what it is that you're doing with 20 of the people so you have to take small incremental steps the first thing is for those 24 is they in that room they have to understand what it is that we're doing and they have to stay a step ahead and we have a job as a group to communicate out to everybody else so they will meet as a building leadership

043team and they will talk and then um we're going to be developing strategies on how we're going to report out and bring others into the fold as well that's part of the capacity building is the most important kind of thing because this is something that can't just be for two years it can't be honestly with who the superintendent is or who the principal is it really needs to be embedded into the culture i mean organizational development really shouldn't be about i know it's influenced by who's leading the organization but it really be really should be about the strategic plan because that's what's in place it should be guiding everything it's going to take a while to do that john is based out of texas but has been working in pennsylvania mississippi georgia um a few

044other different states i mean this is the one thing that we that we learned from this crazy thing is you can bring people in right who's doing this or is anybody doing it well right now yeah i don't have a list of school districts for you but i can get you i don't even like midwest there's more than there's this is the good thing it's a good question this is we're not the first one why there was one yellow fish in that whole entire thing there are plenty of others um that are doing this work as well that have been doing it for um a number of years we haven't talked to those people yet we have right now it's the olmsted falls cohort the idea was that there was going to be a buckeye

045cohort but there's one here there's one in pennsylvania there's one in georgia we have not brought that whole group together i mean you could see for these kinds of national networks that you're doing that you would want to you would want to have a conference and bring people together to share ideas on what it is that they're doing so they can learn from one another i can find that out from him though yeah i wish i had the answer for you i mean right it's a big deal it is worse than ohio and he talked a little bit about texas today because they've been doing some work with their state legislatures on on that and i think once once john gets in front of a group of um elected officials elected officials want to do

046right i think really they just um we're doing what it is that we've done because we don't have anything to put in its place and when you try to put something in its place then they say that you're making excuses and we're not making excuses we're trying to build something different so we'll say we'll exist in both those worlds we'll build this and then we'll go look what we did and we'll talk about what conflict's about are some of those other organizations further along in the process oh yeah they are what it looks like on the report outside and we can see what it looks like further down well that's how he knows it works i mean that's the thing because it's been done in other different places i was at a superintendent conference in

047the summer and i talked to somebody from kentucky's and kentucky as well and they're doing that work it's difficult it's not easy but there are there are those people yeah there's some i mean there's there's risk associated with it but it's not we're not cliff diving we're the first one off the cliff well it's never risky to engage your community no that's not the good thing that's a good thing absolutely it's trying to create a different sort of measurement well evidence system any other questions before we move on from the board thank you dr lloyd that was super informative okay uh so i guess we're not a no pta report tonight unless joy do you have a joy okay let me know she's not here okay thank you so much dr demarco polaris nope none

048they have not met since the last meeting okay dr chapman is it working oh yeah i just want to focus on two things my written report is attached to the agenda for the board to read number one is we continue to be recruiting and searching for substitutes certified substitutes classified substitutes bus drivers there are some districts around us that are upping their teachers substitute daily rate and so we're keeping a monitor we're monitoring that to see if that impacts our uh fill rates and then if we have to respond as well at this point we're feeling like olmstead falls offers something a little special compared to some other districts it's a good experience for the substitute they get experience in homestead falls where they may want to have a job at some point they also

049have students that are excellent students and they're supported by this the other staff and the administrators in the building so we feel things like that give a competitive edge to us without having to necessarily just continue to up the rate so but we are watching that we're going to watch those fill rates um because we we need to make sure that we can staff when we have pd or when we have staff simply offer you know sickness and absence but really the other one i want to focus on is november 2nd was professional development day and the professional development day in november typically is a focus on technology and so as we looked at the support staff custodians cleaners utilities bus drivers we spent time their directors spent time with them focused on tech tech

050integration so reminding them of the absence management platform and different settings they can set on there in order to increase the chances of getting a sub or a preferred sub so that increases the call call rates working with staff on the employee access center there's a lot of good information out there pay stubs w-2s leave reports that they can go look at and it's right at their fingertips so we reminded them of that made sure they could get access to it and get in there and then also our vitality wellness program so it's an online platform encourages wellness for staff healthy staff our happy staff and working staff so that's always good but you know the staff were engaged in those activities they were excited about those activities a lot of this a lot of

051the staff custodians cleaners utility bus drivers they're not typically sitting at a computer they're not typically working there they're working their job and so um so that was good to have that opportunity to do that tech aspect of that with them from the tech department on november uh second day in the past they've been running around tech supporting this this year joe worked with his staff to offer sessions and professional development on those so the tech staff have worked to earn google educator certification level one second half of the year they're going to be working on level two but they were able to come and present some tools and tricks and and and whatnot with google google tools google sheets google forms and so that was excellent for them to get in front of the

052teachers and show them you know we're not just the guy that changes your light bulb on your projector or you know restart your computer when when there's an issue with it but they also know the instructional side of that so that's very good and then with sam and his food staff on november 2nd they hosted both breakfast and lunch so they were busy with that but then also sam took time to review processes identified by the food inspections that occurred in october so everyone had stuff to do everyone was engaged and busy with that so it was good work but unless there's any other questions that's it for me all right thanks so much dr chapman mrs cogan hi everyone as we um continue to try to think about ways to design uh opportunities for

053our students to be inspired and empowered we have an opportunity where we've worked collaboratively with baldwin wallace college and starting this spring we're going to pilot a program at the high school it's a lean six sigma yellow belt certificate program for high school students we will be one of the first high schools to have this opportunity in a pilot form so we're meeting next week to discuss the logistics but in phase one this will start in the spring and for most of you i think for most of the board we know you've heard of lean six sigma which basically is a team-based problem-solving methodology used by businesses and organizations worldwide so this is something that is recognized in industry organizations businesses it's recognized if someone puts it on a resume someone applies to college so

054there are various levels of the belts that you can earn but yellow belt is the first one this program would start in the spring we're going to start it with a small cohort of about 15 nominated we're going to work with just seniors for this year they will have four half-day opportunities where they will be instructed with the ohio lean six sigma person who kind of does all of ohio so he will come in and work with them we will have the students work they will figure out a real-life problem that they will work then through this process to solve they then as a culmination of the work that they've done after the four half days have to then present to a board of industry and business and college leaders so they will then have

055to get up and present which is part of their earning of the um the belt and then they have to take an exam and after that they will have successfully completed this and then be able to say that they are a yellow belt in lean six sigma we are going to target students some of our students who we know may be going to college and some of our students who may not be taking the college path but maybe taking the i'm going to go into business right away i'm going to maybe go get a two-year while working so this is going to be very different types of students not just for the college bound and not just for the career so i think that'll be a good opportunity for our students as well if that

056goes well then we'll start phase two next year which would be a combination of both juniors and seniors um and then after that we would move into just a junior only i mean we've talked about if we did the juniors and they earned the yellow belt then moving to the next belt the following year so we're really excited about this opportunity and hope to have them be able to maybe come to a board meeting at the end and share their experience with this any questions whose idea was it so well to give credit where credit is due so dr lloyd was at a business um we have a business advisory uh meeting that superintendents um and local businesses business people attend and um baldwin wallace was actually talking about a program that they're doing with

057vitamix so it looked a little bit different so they're programmed with vitamix it's called a earn and learn program so when you are hired at vitamix in an entry level position these employees have an opportunity to go to baldwin wallace and take classes to be able to then be able to advance in their career at vitamix and earn credit while they're working so they work together with that they're given time during their day at vitamix to do some of their homework um to be able to get some of the things accomplished that they need to and then they go to their courses at night so when we heard about the partnership of the earn and learn we dr lloyd was like hey maybe we should talk to bob wallace and see if there's an opportunity

058for our students to do something like that however when we brought in connie king who is kind of the director of their professional development through education through their business at baldwin wallace she came in and said you know i see this program is more something for businesses but let's kind of think about what are some different ideas and she said you know i don't know we do this lean six sigma thing that is a program that is at our college and i said oh we're familiar with that many of our administrators have been through that process so then that just started the brainstorming process of what that might look like in a high school all right that's it that's great very good any questions okay mr robson i'm gonna have kind of two sections here

059the first one i'm just going to talk briefly about our fiscal you know performance today and if it's okay then i'll just jump into the five-year forecast yes that'd be great that's later on in your consent june so we ended october 2021 with the cash balance of 7. 7.2 million higher than the same period last year revenue was 278 000 higher than last october and 3.5 million higher year to date compared to last year expenses for the month 1.3 million higher than last october this was driven largely by that first tan installment payment so that's that's the reason for that and 554 000 higher year to date than last year we'll be updating our spending plan to be in alignment with the forecast that we'll adopt later this evening a couple highlights here the efforts

060of the food service department continues and once again they received a reimbursement through the national lunch program in excess of 195 000 for october activity you know sam uh ended october with the cash balance of 204 000 um in october and as of today he was sitting at 302 dollars so a tip of the hat to sam and his team over there heath krakowiak and joe magray have worked with us on reducing our telecommunication cost they have identified and removed a variety of redundant phone lines uh under utilized cell phones and directory listings their efforts provided a comm communication cost uh savings of about a thousand dollars per month with no effect on the services that we're receiving uh heath and heath and sean misik continue to explore uh possibilities and in different manners in

061which to upgrade our bus fleet uh and and they are working now with uh the exploration of electric buses uh which is uh kind of a new a new arena with potential assistance coming from the the new infrastructure bill that's out there so there's been some new information released and i you know what's exciting to me is they're not just going with the same thought and same practices that they've had here's an opportunity let's explore it and see if it provides benefit to us or not so we'll take a look at those the five year forecast will be provided for your approval for submission to ode here in november have we discussed we can expect some changes to be made probably in january to what we adopt tonight again ode is is behind in releasing

062those settlement statements to us they're not exactly sure yet how the new funding model is is going to be rolled out what all that means to us they're saying now january is when we can expect that we've had a variety of webinars lined up that were supposed to take place uh in october they were moved in november moved to january now they're they're out into february so again when they release those uh reports if there's changes that we need to make if there's significant differences we'll bring that back to the board we'll review that reapprove it if necessary and we'll uh we'll refile when i look at the november uh 2020 submission compared to what we're going to review here shortly on the revenue side we're very close to what we have projected for fiscal

063fiscal year 22 back then we're a difference of 135 000 so despite all the changes that are being made you know we're benefiting from a little larger valuation increase with properties they're going to offset some of the changes made on the on the funding model so we're right in line with that not a whole lot of change was projected on revenues back then nor today on the expense side there's there's a bit of a difference and remember there's a couple things that are happening here one is with the new state funding model they're going to be [Music] paying directly to those schools where the child is educated before if it was a resident student we would get that money and then wherever that that child was being educated we would you know that money would

064transfer over to them it would be reflected as a cost on our end so those expenses will go down a bit as a result of that so what am i trying to say here total expenses so coupled with our performance from the second half of last year our projected cash balance for fiscal year 22 is 5.4 million dollars higher than it was in november and i think the point i want to make here is expense control and those changes and decisions that were made a while back has really been the contributing factor of of the improvement on the cash balance side our revenue is still pretty much in line with where we thought it would be we're projecting it to be very similar down the road to what we thought it was so the changes

065and benefits are coming on the cost side of the equation coupled with you know the ability now to to defer or or move some of those expenses over on the yeser side for a few years as well those will come back to us at some point but you know in the in the near term anyway i think we're looking much better than what we are so many thanks to to everybody involved in the process for their care attention and decisive actions contributing to the direction we're heading now the finance committee we met for the third time monday night we went over the draft forecast with them as well i think 10 minutes into it everybody was sound asleep so um if if you want a recording of that if you have trouble sleeping feel free

066to ask me for it we'll we'll take care of that for you but no a good group you know so we've had three meetings now we focused a lot on on the ins and outs of the financial picture and we're taking december off we're coming back in january and we're going to shift our focus into the area of messaging and there's a variety of things that are coming up here in the spring that we want to work together and and find you know what what are what are the main points that we need to communicate how do we best get the word out uh combination of text and graphics and so on and delivery methods that are there i think jim mentioned the state of the schools in the spring we've got the quarterly school

067report that goes down goes out and then in the fall we've got that annual finance report too that we'll send out so that's where our efforts are going to be focused on here coming up gaap which i enjoy so much the medicaid audit the state audit we've got one last report that will be given to uh julian and group tomorrow that will complete our when you say our contribution to the gap report once they get that they've got everything ready to go that's going to be submitted on november 30th state auditors have been provided with the documentation they've requested today they're kind of in this holding pattern um once the uh the financial statements are released from from julian and group then they'll jump in uh and start the the deep work on that and

068then you know a variety of questions and back and forth will occur at that time medicaid uh agreed upon procedures you know we've completed that so we can check that one off the last item we have is coming up and it goes with what dr lloyd was just talking about with true accountability our piece of that is is kind of being coordinated with uh steve paris with in lit and there's a variety of benchmarks that we're establishing and then data that we will provide that he loads up into his system that we can see how we're doing based on you know how we've done the past where we want to be and this will give us a nice dashboard to review that so he has been patiently awaiting the delivery of that any questions on

069what we talked about month to date year to date correct those 10 payments those are just once a year once a year once a year yeah you know if our this is my view today if as long as our second half real estate collections are in line with you know where we think they should be we'll either go ahead and make that second payment early um and then pay it pay it off the first of after that first collection next year but i think we just we want to get it you know we don't have the need uh right now for that cash with with the full collection coming in this year three what's the payment did you say 553 000. no the payment the payment on that is uh the principal was 833 and

070the the interest was about 45. uh with that then maybe we can jump i guess jump into the forecast you want me to be your i can do that if you want you can explain i think what we'll do jim we'll just kind of throw this picture up here first i'm just going to cover this briefly and then there's a powerpoint presence we'll just run through the powerpoint because you've seen you know you folks have seen this already from the last session on the on the revenue side up top you know real estate taxes you can see uh the collection results from the 8.9 mill levy the past so this is the first year that we're getting the full collection so we want 22 million 25 million 28.3 for this year that's the first year

071full collection you can see here it's pretty it's flat from there on out you know we're going to get a little bit of new construction with the inside millage involved with that and then three years later maybe a little bump on the next round of reappraisals that go on public utility personal property taxes is really following that same pattern of the increase from the 8.9 mill levy the past here's what we're seeing one of our you know our next big changes that unrestricted state grants surveyed like 1.035 you're like 72 and then we start to trail off a little bit again too but you know we've recovered quite a bit uh since then as well next one just a graphical of your your local versus state funding local local revenue in red state revenue in

072gold there house bill 110 which is that new funding model is really restoring funding to fiscal year 21 levels when considering the direct payments state aid still remains flat for us challenges to operating revenue and this i think is what mrs newman was asking before you know the the fair school funding plan uh made many changes to to payments and expenses the state's delayed we talked about that a bit in getting those models to us so we're using the legislative services commission simulations in the meantime what that means is the state's going to be paying directly to those schools where students are being educated so open enrollment is a big one for us we don't have uh open enrollment in right but we have open enrollment out in the past that money would still come

073to us and then we would pay those districts for those students were attending now the state's just going to pay them directly direct payments student wellness success funds a couple years back uh the state uh governor dewine uh had some things uh some additional things he wanted uh schools to do and to prepare students i think guidance and special services were a big part of that and those monies came to us separate separately from the foundation so we put those in a separate fund now what he's done or what the state has done they're just baking that all into the to the formula so are we getting more are we getting less are we getting the same we're not really going to know it's not going to be broken out like it was before it's

074just baked into the formula but the new model ensures it will continue to have to rely on local taxes general fund expenditures you can see wages and benefits we talked about before 84 of our total spend and then purchase services would come in next at 10 percent that 84 some might consider that high we like to be at 80 or below i think what you have here though is not unusual a very seasoned veteran staff they're higher on the salary schedule you know so you're going to pay them more in time those folks retire and you place them with new or younger teachers and then you just you're on the opposite end of that is increasing 3.3 percent year over year uh and revenue uh is is a little bit less than two percent so

075that's why we're seeing that uh that that change in 25 and 26 revenue stagnation is and a little help from the state is a major part of the issue so as we discussed 35 percent of our revenue is controlled by the state and does not grow house bill 110 is not providing substantial net new money it has given us a little bit esser funds are going to be a big help to us we're able to divert those costs as we discussed earlier from the general fund over to to esser a future funding is uncertain still for 24 through 26 as the the house bill 110 fair school funding plan is not funded beyond fiscal year 23. um i think we're good with that jim next one is that it any questions any questions so a

076little bit a little better picture than what we had i think a year ago um and and we know still still the uncertainties with the state which are a concern um i've always felt the state has had played nicely with us and even when when times were tough we could count on a certain level of funding from them but in in 20 you know the rules changed and they cut us hard in 20 didn't fully restore us in 21 so you know at this point they you know we have to uh regain some confidence in them and their ability and commitment to fund schools thanks yeah are there any questions from the board that would be the time because this is on the consent agenda to approve so we can file with the state again

077just reminding the board and um our audience we do file a five-year forecast with the state two times a year in our fiscal year so we will file this in november and then we'll file again in may of next year toward the end of our fiscal year so a good check and balance okay thank you everyone for your reports tonight lots of uh good things to talk about and understand we're now out to the hearing of our public and we have several people that would like to address us tonight i would like to first call up uh mrs kirsten avens i'll remind our speakers you have five minutes to address the board um hi my name is kirsten abens and i have a first grader in the district it's only november and the children on

078our little tiny street have been involved in two bus accidents i understand accidents happen and thank god no one was injured and dr lloyd thank you for putting out that memo regarding bus safety it's very very important the issue that i'm bringing before the board is the lengthy response time and notifying parents the first accident was earlier this year and it was involving two transfer buses at office um so my pickup time for my son is three o'clock so i'm standing out there waiting with all like my neighborhood parents um and a gentleman who lives on our street comes out to tell us hey did you hear about the bus accident we're like no he's like oh yeah it happened 25 minutes ago so we're like all right fine it's a beautiful sunny hot day

079so it's like all right we'll just hang out here and talk and wait for the kids we waited 30 minutes for our bus to come late and after my son arrived home was the first time i heard anything from the district my son told me they were forced to sit on a hot bus he was hot and so sweaty and forced to wear a mask on the bus if the district is so concerned about the spread of kova 19 on buses wouldn't the spark choice be to remove the children from the bus so they can be socially distanced and not sit in a hot car for who knows how long i was unhappy with this but i did give the district of the benefit of doubt i was like you know what stuff happens but

080a few weeks ago our children were involved in another accident this time it was a passenger car hit the bus on the way to school similar situation almost an hour until parents were notified that timeline is unacceptable i can't speak for the ecc or office but the students at falls lenox were taken to school and taken straight to their classrooms many children in the district take advantage of the free breakfast and lunch program all of these kids who take advantage it went without breakfast that morning the accidents and the response demonstrate that the district is ill-equipped to handle emergencies thank god there weren't any injuries but what if next time there are the policies the district has in place for emergencies need to be looked at looked at obviously changes need to be made especially

081in parent notification an hour is too long to let me know my child has been involved in a car crash thank you i think it's a combo answer of james and kelly because it's something that we know that was there was a delay um and that and we have some things that we're working through i don't know if james if you could talk on the specificity that kelly if you can add color commentary yeah because we have assignments for the bus to get the students right for the neighborhood is you know it's a problem one hour you're right it's absolutely too long for that and that's one of the things that we were looking at and i think that software it you'd be surprised of how it was antiquated it was before and that's going

082to help out considerably so we hear you we agree great next up mr matt avens good evening as mentioned my name is matthew avens my comments tonight relates to board member karkowski's remarks meet near the end of september 20th 2021 board meeting the remarks i'm referring to which were in response to a rhetorical question as to whether the police presence we've seen at past meetings were meant to intimidate us as citizens begin at approximately the one hour 22 minute 40 second mark of the youtube video for the 920 meeting in her statement ms parkowski claims she wants police presence at board meetings because she quote personally i'm sent a message as a school board member that it's time to thin the herd of the school board and talk about weapons that that person owns end

083quote and quote i have filed police reports my day here against people who have threatened me end quote public records however do not reflect them ms parkowski was personally signed a message as a school board member that it's time to thin the hurt to that end a public records request was made on october 7 2021 specifically for requesting the message or messages ms barkowski referenced all that received was in response were some facebook screenshots from mr klein the first of these dated april 26 shows some tupperware containers with ammunition there's no reference to the board ms barkowski nor the district in the post the second is mr clem's profile picture dated december 14th 2020 which is a skull and says kill them all let god sort them out again no reference to the board mrs

084barkowski nor the district finally there was a post from a facebook forum of some kind the post in that forum again either mentioned the board i'm sorry neither mentioned his park house guy named nor reference any weapons again these were the only documents the district produced in response to a request specifically asking for the message ms parkowski claimed to have personally received threatening her but these facebook posts were not personally sent to mrs parkowski nord referred to her directly by name moving on mrs barkowski also said that she filed police reports against people who have personally threatened her i'd like to take a closer look at that pursuant to public records requests for police reports made by ms barkowski or reports concerning her home address from january 1st 2013 which was one year before ms

085harkowski was elected to the board through the present outside of minor traffic problems there were only three police reports that were made of those three were police reports only one concerned ms karkowski is a member of the board that loan report was made on february 18 2018 regarding another facebook post heard the police report quote ms perkowski said that she noticed the comment made by a member stating hang the liberal school board then get rid of common core mrs parkowski was also upset that her jenny sanderson mckeeg liked the comment ms barkowski said that she felt concerned by those comments made online and say that she has been having online arguments for months now with those individuals listed above over issues within the school system end quote however what is quite telling from this report

086is the concluding paragraph which reads quote ms tarkowski was advised this appears more of as an open threat and not ones directly made to her or putting her life in danger she agreed she was advised to come back up if the comments become more personal and she feels threatened for possible charges again mrs parkowski agreed that she was not directly threatened and since february 18 2018 despite allegedly being personally threatened mrs parkowski apparently has not gone back up and made any other reports of the olmstead falls police department regarding being personally threatened and just in case anyone thinks i'm picking on ms parkowski public records requests were sent to the falls and township police departments related to the other board members and dr lloyd for any and all police reports made between march 1 2020

087two weeks before schools were shut down for the rest of that school year and the president those public record requests reveal that no police reports related to these individuals worked with the districts were made within that time period nor were there any other emails or documents produced by the district documenting any actual personally directed threats to the board or the superintendent from march 1 2020 through november 1st 2021 but then again why would they make any reports because even the thinning of the herd comment which allegedly prompted the presence of officers at the board meeting was viewed as a joke by the superintendent and at least one of the board members specifically when discussing the alleged threat and having police present ms newman texted to dr lloyd quote let's do this dr lloyd joked back

088which part firing the superintendent or thinning the herd honestly both is like killing two birds with one stone and mr eckenroad laughed at dr lloyd's response if this was perceived as a legitimate threat would it really be something that would have been made light of or jokes about given the fact that during her tenure on the board ms barkowski has made just one police report where she actually agreed that there was no direct threat to her or did not put her life in danger and there have been no other documents detailing direct personal threats to the board or the superintendent for the past 20 months the question still remains if the police presence that we hadn't seen in the past was actually meant to protect the physical well-being of the board or to protect the

089board from community criticism via police intimidation by the way it has now been 79 days that my wife's email has gone unanswered thank you i just want to make a comment about um you know and i can't answer for everybody else as far as what you personally felt i mean i didn't feel intimidated by anybody in a meeting and i didn't what i did is i asked the board whether or not they wanted a cop here and it wasn't to threaten anybody but you know during the course i think of the last eight months we do this and i'm sure you've seen different facebook posts of different board meetings and kind of like the discourse between those who are in the public and those who are who are sitting at the table and what i

090didn't want was uh for that kind of discourse to happen so the purpose of a police officer and i appreciate our police officers a lot i'm sure that you guys do as well wasn't to intimidating anybody but if something were to happen we would have somebody there who could intervene and that was the purpose of it um for me um you can draw your own conclusions matt on what it is that you found but that that's the reason why i contacted the chief and asked him to send somebody there's actually supposed to be somebody here tonight too but they must not have been able to get coverage as much as what my assumption is and it's not to scare anybody but it's just if anything were to uh happen of people yelling and screaming which

091i've been very thankful that none of that has happened i'm not going to lie and say i didn't have some concerns at the onset that that might happen but i think that we've been able to have um discourse uh with things and i'm proud of all of us for that because that's not how it's been in some other different places so that's the reason why i did it i asked and they said do that but that's what the reason why i made the call our last speaker tonight mr travis tomlinson sorry for my sweat suit but i was coaching my son's basketball game good evening my name is travis tomlinson i've been a resident in the olmstead falls school district for six years i have three children that live in the district my son is

092in second grade and my two daughters will be in kindergarten next year i made the decision to send my son to saint mary's of the falls because of the restrictions placed on students education in the olmstead falls school district this was a difficult decision because i always wanted my children to attend public school i am currently evaluating what to do for the for next year for for my three children i would like to see changes in several carriers regarding our district in order to feel comfortable sending my children to homestead falls i have a lot of concerns but i don't have time to address them all this evening so i'll start with the school board i have no doubt that all of you have good intentions and are good people any criticisms or concerns that

093are expressed by me are not intended to be taken personally instead i hope to provide my input to improve the trust and relationships between the board and the community transparency as elected officials it is the role of school board members to represent the community in regards to the school district's decisions and policies it is an important role and one that should be done transparently when the superintendent directs the elected board members to withhold their views from the public so that they do not run opposed in election that is not transparent the strategy was effective in chi in achieving the superintendent's goals but it carries a cost in creating mistrust in the community accountability the community wants a board that represents the community and not one that exists as a rubber stamp for the superintendent regarding

094the massey issue a majority of parents opted to unmask their children four days into the school year the superintendent unilaterally overruled the desire of the community and implemented a face mask mandate his reason was that it was unfeasible to implement his plan as submitted to the state and that the only option was to implement universal masking in his own words the superintendent stated i believe it was two board meetings ago that he was submitting his plan to the state when submitting his plan to the state he thought he was engaging in quote silly paperwork to satisfy a state requirement the result of this approach was the abandonment of the desire of majority of parents and students to attend school without a mask as a school board it is your duty to hold the superintendent accountable

095for his actions maybe it was an unthoughtful approach and that led to the chaos and sued when trying to implement the plan some people in the community believe that the plan was not haphazardly constructed but intentionally created to cause chaos so that universal masking could be implemented against the will of the parents and students i don't know what to believe but i do know that neither of these scenarios are acceptable the lost the loss of trust has consequences integrity parents and community members are beginning to take more interest in their schools as a result of the pandemic this is a good thing schools should encourage community input and oversight even if it generates opposing views and policy disagreements some parents in this district are afraid to express their view publicly over fear of retribution by

096some members of the school administration this is harmful and should end case in point as a re as a result of a policy disagreement and parent activism a parent in the community who is a doctor was disinvited to a health fair that he attends annually because the superintendent doesn't tolerate dissent accountability integrity and transparency are all things that we want our children to hold in high regard if we expect this out of our children then we must expect them out of our elected board members and school administration thank you yeah travis where you been i mean we've been we've submitted plans conferences will um at 8 30. i just ask that we're respectful as we wrap up the conversation the teachers do have a long day tomorrow educating our kids and so that i'm hopeful

097that we can conclude conferences here in the next few minutes thank you uh well it was it was you had to submit a plan at the beginning of the year to the state right in regards to policies and quarantine and contract tracing and all we had a requirement that we had to submit a plan that we wrote uh in june and then updated that probably about four to five different times yeah and that plan um was submitted without masks um originally and the board and this is why i asked where have you been because at the at the march 2020 board meeting the board put a policy into place that said specifically that the superintendent is supposed to make the determination of when to implement the masking policy and when not to implement the masking

098policy and so um i guess i would you know at this point we're not we don't have masks uh in homestead fall schools i'm not sure what they're doing at st mary's but we don't have them um for our students here but we started without and then we we put them on because of the rising levels and the got the quarantine guidelines were significantly different than compared to where they are at this particular point in time so it wasn't an arbitrary move it was a a move that the school board requires me to implement that policy or not implement that policy and when you implement a policy you don't submit a survey to the community and ask them you know what they you know what do you want to do or what you don't want

099to do you implement the particular policy so i would argue that it wasn't arbitrary that it was the board that passed that particular policy the board always has the right to take back that policy if they want to but we've changed that recently and we have what three weeks worth of data now on and we're not masking i'm not gonna lie that i'm concerned where things are going but because of the um kind of the the freedom i guess or discretion within those quarantine guidelines um i think we're able to continue to do what it is that we've done if we didn't have those we'd all be wearing masks at this particular point in time just because we'd have a lot of kids in quarantine they'd all be home we would probably be home so

100i can't really i guess answer the other i mean for me the integrity thing and why scott was disinvited to the health fair um people have the right to uh freedom of speech um freedom of speech you know certainly people can say whatever it is that they want but we have the ability to choose which vendors and which which vendors we're going to deal with and which vendors we're not and we chose not to so why i mean we're gonna have somebody who's uh saying you know bad things about me and bad things about the school district and we're gonna say hey come on into the health fair and be around our staff i think people would look at me i mean just being absolutely candid with you um i think people would look and

101say that's pretty silly don't you think i mean i gotta stand in front of my people as well so people always have the right to criticize you can do that all day long that's fine but you think i mean you're gonna come into the health fair and like be around staff and do that i mean come to a board meeting and criticize scott you're more than welcome to call me on the phone and do that but we're gonna invite you to the health fair and we have that ability to be able to do that he received no resources for for that um for doing it or not doing it but we have the discretion to be able to choose who we invite to uh to the events and who we choose not to i'm not

102going to get in on the facebook posts that you have on there i mean we all know what they are so we're going to move on with the agenda now if this is not a back and forth this is just an address of the board so we're going to move on with our agenda thank you very much uh for the people that did address the board moving on to our consent agenda i'll accept a motion from the board for the approval of consent agenda items in categories five through eight so moved is there any discussion on consent agenda items listed in categories five through eight from the board mr robson will you please call the role dr demarco yes mr eckenroad ms sparkowski mrs tomash yes and mrs newman yes motion carries we have a

103separate action item item 10a approval of technical support agreement with kyogre county board of developmental disabilities i'll accept a motion from the board on item 10a mr robson will you please call the rule i'm sorry is there any discussion before we call the role yeah it's a um it's an annual kind of thing just to accept their services um non there's not a financial kind of thing at all but because linda's affiliated with it yeah that's right so much consent mr robson will you please call the role dr demarco yes mr reckon yes this is tomas yes and mrs newman yes item 10b is um the uh rev uh the meeting dates for 20 the calendar year 2022. um mrs walker i'm assuming you got these dates did someone send you oh no because they're

104on the board agenda okay uh can we have um debbie fallon please send these in an email to us and not just on the board agenda mrs walker needs those dates as well so board members you need to look as well administration that's at the table you need to look at those dates [Music] mr spagnola the man from above so we need to everyone needs to look at those dates and [Music] understand the dates for the calendar year 2022. um so just to remind the board work session dates sometimes move around we try not to move any dates around but that is unrealistic we are a little bit more flexible to reschedule a work session we at all costs try not to reschedule the third thursday meeting which is this meeting um because the community

105knows that the board is meeting on the third thursday of every month in room 606 and we don't want to change that so you need to look if we do change it we need to do it at the beginning of the year and we will be voting on this at our organizational meeting in january so um by our next regular meeting which is december 16th everyone needs to send emails to say this date is i need i have a conflict on this date and again we get it that um it's hard to predict when you're gonna go maybe on vacation in july or something but um we it seems to work out every year so kelly we'll we'll have an email come out for those dates um so you know so one more thing i

106would like to talk about this and um this is a proposal that i would like to make to the board so um forever since the existence of the olmstead falls school board we have met at seven o'clock on the third thursday of every month and i like the third thursday i'm thinking the seven o'clock um would like to propose that we change and meet at six o'clock and our work sessions as well instead of seven o'clock and i would like some discussion on that from the board it could be problematic for me in the second semester next year because so for example in the spring i teach until five o'clock in akron so but not on thursdays so i'm good but i don't know that until but you know at a minimum it would only

107be september october and i could i mean we may have to have i i just can't i can't know second semester which starts in well fall i'm sorry fall i'm thinking of the second semester of the 2022 year or fall semester of 2022. just six could be hard 6 30. it could be that would be so so it would be maybe three meetings or not because if we're gonna if we decide to move our work sessions to six o'clock um this is this is so i i chatted with dr lloyd and mr robson about this the reason why i'm proposing the changes there are so many school events that start at seven basketball games you know sports events play you know uh things that students are in that people want to go to they also

108might want to attend our board meeting we have children of our own that are in those events that we don't get to go to because our board meetings you know starts at seven if we started an hour earlier would we be able to make some of those events that we don't get to make also i think about um there have been many long board meetings and late nights that were discussing very important things for the district at 10 o'clock at night you know is there a way that we can push that up further so i think this is something that we need to think about and not come to a conclusion tonight but maybe by the december 16th meeting when we've kind of all had a chance to look at the dates and say we're

109good um and then think about you know would you be able to make a six o'clock meeting and is that something you're interested in doing um you know uh brett uh lives an hour away so he could sleep for him again he's not complaining but it's just something to think it's just something to think about um i think 5 30 is too early right um a lot of people can't make 5 30 because of their work schedule and you know people that want to attend our board meetings that's hard six there's many boards that meet at six o'clock i think i know now i think i know so all right sorry linda you get off and now we're switching until you've gutted it out all this time it's it would have been nice six o'clock

110right being here downtown it might not work right so uh i guess it's it's a it's a proposal it's a thought uh maybe 6 30 i mean yeah maybe and maybe it's 6 30 even a half an hour i think would help us out so let's uh say that we'll kind of decide by the 16th of december if we're going to make that change because i think if we make it we should make it at the beginning of the year of the calendar year next year if we can i guess we could sort of postpone it and start it at the school year in september but um you know i'm just throwing some ideas out there okay any are there any other questions about board meeting dates and stuff like that okay board retreat um

111we have a date right we have tentative date that was sent out i could look at my email 11th and 12th isn't that what it is of february right it is yes that's and a friday so i uh when i had a gender review meeting with dr lloyd and mr robson we chatted a little bit about the board retreat and dr lloyd made an outstanding suggestion that he's going to implement for us so he's going to um if he's still agreeable to do this which i think he is send out a send out a serve you know kind of like a survey to uh the board on uh broad theme topics would you like to talk about this would you like to talk about that and then there'll be an opportunity for you also to

112input what if it's not on there i'd like to i think we should talk about this um you know do you want to stay overnight you know do it friday afternoon stay your friday you know early evening stay overnight and then most of saturday you know be home by late saturday afternoon you just want to make it one day um those things will kind of be on the survey and then gather some information from the board and then we'll be able to um then set the agenda for the retreat sound good i like that idea i like that idea too and i was glad that he brought it up i felt we were i felt i was struggling to try and get it together and this way it's kind of like fill it out and

113then we'll gather some themed ideas so we know where to go again we're trying to um parlay it with anissa rowland from schlechty her her work here and being here in the district at that time so then she can attend our board retreat for a party and yes so that's where we're at so i guess at the moment put that on your calendars all right is there any other general board discussion at this time our next meeting is december 2nd our work session is december 2nd and our regular means december 16. have you you've gotten any topics from trying to think what december second yeah yeah yeah what happened what the board means to uh yeah to talk about or what the board would like to talk about so we so so we did also

114kind of talk about this um setting work session topics for next year and so i i recall a time when i was new on the board we never had work sessions for years never we had one meeting a month and that was it and i think somewhere between that and a work session every month maybe is the right answer right and yes it would be great to try and predict when we don't need a work session but sometimes that's hard to do and i think that since we got back to having work session regular work sessions um we have accomplished a lot of really good things in the district so i think they are necessary one night yeah we didn't do july or something like that yeah but the whole notification thing was interesting too

115so that's what i like to think of right so we need right so and again we certainly don't we don't if if there if there's nothing immediate to discuss that couldn't wait till the december 16th meeting we should not have a work session right um that's that's right right and i i don't to my knowledge there's nothing like we don't have a list of topics at the moment so it looks like maybe we could cancel the december 2nd work session right yeah i mean we're saving up things like um what's the totality of our capital improvement projects for like a a board retreat to have you guys understand the different capital outlay projects that we have roofs and other kinds of things i don't i i guess i would ask james or kelly if you

116can think of anything that you've set the goals and objectives for brett and i that's done we don't have policies i think up for review right now the information's out there to parents every you know so we don't need to meet for that i mean right okay well it looks like it looks like we are canceling our december second work session well that was easy so um let's agree to this to blast it out in every way possible and that night put a sign on the high school door right yeah let's let's do that i mean i let's put a sign on the high school door i mean we do have the emails of people who normally come to the board meeting do we not could notify those are the people that probably are going

117to show up to just say just letting you know we've canceled the work session right yeah the sign on the doors right because some of the people that are coming don't have kids in the district right i mean you guys came last time did you not for the one that got canceled what way would be the way to let you know that it was um canceled i know you mentioned before you know the website was you know kind of outdated so that to me that that's my primary way of looking you go there okay like the home page and then the board meetings okay you did it right digging yeah yeah we'll have a blog update won't we can't yeah we can put it on there but again i'm thinking like mr dean and it's

118true yeah i don't know if he's coming i don't know if they're coming to work sessions or not he was here last week he had the last one oh yeah he was good we did the forecast all right um okay i like kelly's idea of people that have been coming that have registered then we have an email for them right so why not yeah i don't know is that i don't know what i mean what we can do is we can think about how we're going to notify them we don't have to solve that problem tonight and then admit that the way that it occurred last time was bad and we need to get better at that and so we'll get better well and this is like this is a further notice out that we're

119canceling it so um that's good right great if there is no further discussion from the board um i will accept a motion for adjournment at 8 50 pm robson will you please follow the role dr demarco yeah mr road mrs parkowski yes mr stoneman yes mrs newman yes happy thanksgiving everyone