001i call to order the west lake city schools board of education regular board meeting for monday august the 23rd 2021 roll call craft here the new can here here you're not here if you would stand with me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice strong the word says hello to everyone that's joined us today as well as those that are joining us online thank you for being with us tonight is there a motion for approval of the agenda second discussion at this time we have a hearing of the public if someone would like to address the board please move to the podium and if you would please state
002your name and address and uh each person that would like to speak has three minutes to speak how are you today i'm good how are you doing good thanks for joining us today thank you this was really hard for me so i'm gonna do the best that i can sure sure if you would start with your name and address my name is michelle and i'm at 25745 cook road in olmsted falls i do not have any biological children of my own but there are children that attend your schools and nearby schools whom i love and i am here to speak out against the mask mandates i was stunned when schools across the country mandated that students wear masks all day every day when they returned to in-person learning i assumed parents everywhere would be outraged
003forcing school administrators to lift the mass mandates and allow their students to return to some semblance of normalcy in their school sadly that never happened well i am here to say that what you are doing is wrong this has nothing to do with which side of the political aisle you stand this is not about left to right this is about right and wrong and what you are doing to these children is wrong children do not need masks and experimental drugs to protect them but they need protected from our decisions like these forcing children to wear masks deprives them of their need and right to see their friends faces it deprives them of their need and right to see their teachers faces it deprives them of their joy and worst of all it deprives them of
004taking in the full amount of oxygen they require to be healthy and well long-term mask wearing causes hypoxia which is low blood oxygen hypoxia in the short term can cause headaches irritability light-headedness and difficulty concentrating hypoxia in the long term leads to permanent and irreversible brain damage and an increased risk of cancer if you don't believe me do your own research i sent that research to all of you i know you've heard from me many times i am appalled at what is happening but i will say this you do have time to change you don't have to continue with these mandates show your children these students what it takes to have courage when it really counts show them what it looks like to do the right thing when everyone else around you is not i'm
005fagging you do the right thing for your students let them breathe fresh air you are going to damage them for life and once that damage is done you cannot undo it thank you thank you is there anyone else who would like to address the board please if you would state your name and address you'll have three minutes to address the board thank you jacob runamaki uh one seven three zero post post run let's take ohio hello my name is jacob rinomaki i'm a senior at wesley high school and i'm here today to explain why i am scared for ohio's educational future this isn't a generalized fear but rather one born from two bills currently in the ohio house of representatives house bills 322 and 327. these bills are attempting to inflict heavy penalties including the
006suspension of teaching licenses alongside slashing school funding for public k-12 schools that dare to discuss current events related to race gender and sex or even mentioning the biscuit concepts as a student a scientist and someone who has worked for years made my voice heard because of fragile x syndrome these bills are absolutely appalling the entire point of an education is to learn and grow from challenging discussions suppose students can't discuss fundamental topics in the classroom how will we be able to become effective members of society the answer to my previous question is we won't but there is some good news these bills haven't passed through the house yet the goal of these bills is to suppress our voices from being heard but we still have time to protect westlake's educational system this is why i'm
007calling upon you the westlake city school board the publicly opposed house bills 322 and 327th westlake is a very established schools district and has good relationships with many nearby schools by creating an official public statement against these bills you the board could inspire other communities to put pressure on our legislators now i understand that this is a big ask especially for you to go public with an official statement it's not an easy thing to do but i want to finish my speech by alleviating these concerns with two final remarks first the most prominent opposing arguments parents and educators will bring is that these bills are trying to prevent critical race theory from being taught in our schools critical race theory long for crt has been made into a boogeyman as as of late it's not
008taught in k-12 schools westlake or anywhere in our current grade school education believe me i've been here for 12 years never mentioned a single word instead it's only taught in law schools and only as a framework not a doctrine for understanding how race interplays of our lives our teachers are not attempting to brainwash our children or anyone in our schools they're just trying to do their job by promoting healthy educational discussion by opposing these bills you can help them to do that job finally i understand that the major goal of wesley city schools is to educate for excellence if you want to uphold that goal then we as a community need to stand against house bills 322 and 327 because no one ever became excellent by remaining silent thank you would anyone else like to
009address the board this year seeing none we're going to move to informative reports and recognition that if i may i would like to invite president mary essek president of the westlake educational foundation president of the board to join us um behind dr goggin yeah sure thank you just brief background uh about two or so years ago scott gagan and joe craft decided to look into resurrecting the defunct dormant westlake educational foundation and then started their recruiting process and a little over a year ago we held our first board meeting and decided that the first order of business was to define our mission and we defined our mission as we wanted to enhance the educational opportunities and experiences of the west lake city school students and the endeavor to educate their excellence and so that set
010the foundation for us and we knew that in order to achieve our mission first thing we needed to do was raise funds and thankfully unbelievably serpentine chevrolet of westlake donated to 2020 chevy trax we were able to raffle it off and had an extremely successful first car raffle and that has allowed us to continue to work towards achieving our mission and in order to enhance the education opportunities we decided to have our first round of staff grants and so we implemented that process this summer and that is why i'm here tonight the board the westlake educational foundation board has decided to grant an award to three teachers at westlake elementary school and if you guys want to come up here we have award we are awarding a grant to them randy mattingly becky kowalski and
011aaron vanick for the purchase of kiva plans and if you have questions about what those are you may ask and you can build all kinds of different things you can use them for problem solving um creative thinking with math you can use them in language arts as well there's so many things are exciting to try so watch for pictures and we'll send you some updates on cool things you're doing yes and and that's one of the things that the foundation will do is we'll be checking in with them periodically over the next year to um see how the students have responded to the use of the keto flanks in the costume how it's working out and the success stories we hope to hear from that and will students typically work alone while they're working with
012kiva blocks or will they um work work in a group uh it's you can do either we're hoping to do a lot of group work and we try to reinstate some of the communication skills and collaboration that we might have missed out a bit on over the last year so being so isolated well congratulations and thank you also to uh president essec for your leadership with the educational foundation good work thank you at this time we'll have dr goggin with the superintendent's report sure i'd like to start by talking a little bit about the west side educational foundation i know uh mrs essik talked about uh joe and i and mr hopkins wanting to bring this uh out of the dormant stage that it was in um but i have to say it was uh
013mariessa gambeyer craig katanza wright paul nebraska that that board led by mary that really kept us going you know obviously over the past 18 months we are a little bit um i wouldn't say distracted but focused on other things and that easily could have fallen back apart but uh mrs essek and the board there really kept it going and picked us up and and so being able to have uh a big check right now which she can't cash will give you it is something that's fun to put in a car but you know um but it is and it's really nice because i and i don't know todd do you know the last time i was trying to think of this this morning during convocation do you remember the last time we actually gave an
014award for um uh the west psych education foundation the last award that was issued i don't know the answer but it's been a substantial period of time probably about 10 years yeah so i'm probably about a decade so to have one of the things that i talked about this morning is to have something like this come about during such a busy time to then you know come out of um last year and be providing a 2500 is that 20 27 2700 award as soon as we're coming out of this is really just a tremendous thing and it's fun to be able to do and the teachers you had selected um just uh top notch we know you're going to do great things with it so thank you for writing the grant thank you to the
015others who've written grants as well [Music] so tomorrow uh we do start we do have our first day of school with students and and we're very excited to have um all of our children back in into the schools all of our staff back into the schools uh watching uh the end of last week and even today being able to go through the buildings and seeing everybody getting ready uh has just been a lot of fun and seeing people reconnecting with each other and doing that so it's really an exciting time for the westlake schools we did have our convocation this morning where we did also honor years of service as well as recognize just other members of our staff that dedicated so much to it with that being said um uh it's just uh it
016i can't tell you how much it means i think to all of us and i think i can speak for the board and the administration and the teachers to have everyone back and and the simple act of opening our doors again is just going to feel so special tomorrow um and even just feeling the buzz throughout each of the buildings today and last week is is really exciting so i celebrate that my that is really what i wanted to focus on in my report and then i will hold the rest of my report for the different recommendations that i have super thank you we'll move now to the treasurer's report thank you uh mr craft um to be honest with you uh with having a uh this is our third week in a row where
017we've had a board meeting so i have no formal report for the board i just have a couple of recommendations so we can move directly into those if there's no other questions please um so uh the first um recommendation 3a is then announce certificates we have four of them listed there if you have questions please let me know as i try to hit on as we have done in the house that announce we see typically quite a bit at the beginning of the school year as invoices are dated like july 1st or something like that but our pos were dated after we closed the fiscal year the first week of july so we run into those types of things and then the only other resolution i have tonight is 3b it's student activities purpose statements
018and budgets you'll see uh three student activities that we missed from our big grouping that we did in uh in july but if you have questions please let me know uh if not i'm happy to combine the two if it so pleases the board into one vote is there a motion to approve treasurer's recommendations 3a and 3b second discussion yeah i have a question for xena that was the emergency service calls due to the lightning strike that's for all the repairs that were necessary yeah so um we had a near lightning strike on the dover campus and that knocked out a number of our uh electronic devices it um caused some issues for us so zenith uh does a number of uh uh work for us mr kosovar i think he's back there was that
019the fire alarm system or is that the uh they were the skirt security system video camera and uh they've done a number of work that uh to be repaired uh we've also had some technology that was uh blown out network switches things of that nature um wireless access points that were damaged um all of it is going through our insurance company so we will ultimately be reimbursed for everything except for our deductible but as we have to pay it as we go that's why further discussion yes motion carriage moving on to the superintendent's recommendations thank you mr kraft uh letter number four a that we have is our donation and i will read that separately from the william corley foundation of the westlake bay village rotary club there is a donation of one thousand dollars
020to circle a friend's best buddies club at west lake high school um it was circle of friends and i think it's now doing business as that's best yep nice program there and we definitely thank our rotary club for that donation letter five four b you have one other donation i do oh the anonymous donor all right thank you very much i missed that uh donation of uh two thousand three hundred and three dollars to provide a reward for each student completing the tier three summer intervention program this was a fantastic donation and kathy if i know it correctly this is cedar point tickets yes that was just super cool for our students who went through the tier three program tier three is uh designed not to use the educational terms is designed to catch students
021up so students who needed remediation a private donor did donate money to um uh to send all of those students to cedar point which is very nice thank you mr hopkins 4b uh is for tom faske to fill in as the lee burneson principal right now paul wilson is starting the year and it's really fun seeing paul back at the the middle school again so paul's in there he's enjoying it he's going to get the middle school going and uh up through the end of september and then october 1st we want tom to come in and take over for the rest of the year this is just a one year and and you know we'll look for another middle school principle after that letter c is a resolution to approve uh employment for extended learning
022program administrator this was paul paul stepped in if you recall paul had a gap between being the high school principal and then we had him lead the extended learning program as the principal with with that letter d is a resolution to improve employment of extended learning program classified staff members these are staff members who work for us in a classified position in our extended learning plan letter e or extended learning program letter e is a resolution to approve employment of a licensed staff member what we're doing here is having amy davey who has been a math teacher with the westlake schools for a long period of time she's been working half time back to the the catching kids up as she's going to be running an intervention program we're just going to make her full
023time instead of the halftime and she's going to help catch some of the kids at the high school letter f is a resolution to approve increased hours for extended learning program instructors this is another one that has been completed uh our extended learning program where is this for this upcoming or is this the summer yeah the high school okay so it's from summer you got it letter g resolution to approve employment of extended school year licensed staff letter h resolution to approve friday school supervisors letter i is a resolution to approve employment of classified staff members these are some of these folks are new to the district and some are moving from one position to another j is a resolution to approve classified substitutes for this upcoming school year letter k is a resolution to
024approve employment of project link personnel letter l is resolution to approve activity club and supplemental contracts let's go through there letter m is is a resolution to approve athletic supplemental contracts and this is for cheerleading coach tennis coach assistant football coach letter n is i'm not going to read this one do we have a longer list there but this is a resolution to approve athletic event workers to have folks help us out during those events letter o is a resolution to approve volunteers this one in particular is in regard to if you recall we talked before about the teals program at west lake high school to have people uh experienced in microsoft to be able to come in and volunteer letter p is a resolution to approve contracts and purchase services one is an esc
025agreement for tuition of pupils um audiology and or hearing impairment the other contract is an esc agreement of admission of tuition of pupils for visual impairments and then the last one is for mary o'doherty who serves some physical therapy services for us i believe in occupational therapy letter q uh is a resolute resolution to approve the bus routes for this year so uh mr house really needs us to get that done tonight and then uh this last one is a resolution to a crew approved uh professional van service contract for uh runs that our subscribers are not running and last but not least is letter s so which is a resolution to approve some student parent handbooks these are specific handbooks we already approved the building level handbooks these are directly related to early entrants
026english as a second language our acceleration handbook and our gifted handbook if you do have questions about that when we get the discussion we do have kathy here who can answer some of those as well so um if it does so please the board if we can do 4a separately a nice thank you on its own it's always nice i'm comfortable with 4b through 4s unless you want to pull out a discussion otherwise that would be your prerogative is there a motion to approve superintendent's recommendation for a phone moved second discussion it was a very generous uh announcement and a great idea yeah sure was very well received by the students i don't think so discussion yes yes craft yes they're not yes motion carriers are we all good with uh uh grouping together b
027through us is there a motion to approve superintendent's recommendations four b through four pass second discussion i just have a question on kenneth kitchen the football coaches any relation to freddie i don't think so not to i know bob do you know many further discussion yes motion carries at this time we have a second hearing of the public is there anyone who cares to address the board at this time i hope everyone has a great first day of school tomorrow for all of our staff and our students and remind parents to be a little patient with buses because they always are there's always a little bit of a delay on the first day so i'm glad you brought that up and when it you are absolutely right you're going to have kids getting on new
028buses drivers doing new routes and even though they run the same route they can have different stops and different kids and who do they expect and who's typically riding traffic onto our campuses this is another one where we usually get phone calls about buses the first week of school and traffic the first week of school people are learning new routines give us a couple weeks and and these things will be sorted out so thank you for bringing that up speaking of traffic i know we're changing how the dis and lbms pick up and drop off work is are we gonna have anybody any officers on the back drive a basset just for the first couple days just to make sure there's no issues you know what i saw uh officer foy and and morley today
029and i did not discuss that with him it might be worth just asking someone to be back there just for the first couple days um i'm curious do we have a an update on how things are progressing with our new uh bus we have uh we are we are reconvening with the planning commission on september 13th i knew it was a team so in mid-september we are reconvening with them and we did follow their we did work on some buffering and some other things that they had questions about and you feel good yeah we feel yeah we feel good very good they were very complementary of our plan i think that the concern was just making sure that you know we were um having the appropriate amount of offering would there be if things continued
030progress would just still need to be moved into the spring or i would say yes also for bidding it might be better too just because the things kind of settle down thank you and on behalf of the district who we'll be representing the district number 13. uh definitely dave kosovar i was there as well and our engineer is also involved we want to schedule a finance meeting for september absolutely sometimes i don't you have anything going on in september is good because we will um at the last meeting in september i'm going to present the uh i apologize i'm just trying to log into my calendar um we will present the budget for the year permanent appropriations so it would be a fantastic opportunity to meet with our finance men before that board meeting okay
031so looking at the calendar we will have a september uh 13th work session september 27 14. uh so with the week of the 20th work tuesday or wednesday maybe i know in the past i know dr gagan and i are part of rotary and sometimes following a rotary meeting on the wednesday morning what do you think of those mornings work for you or usually afternoons or afternoon yeah any time after three and so at tuesday tuesday the 21st would work best for me yeah does that work sure yep do you want to be right at three o'clock or four o'clock i'm talking anytime after three any other board comments is there a motion to adjourn don't move second discussion roll call to adjourn at 6 30 pm lesinsky yes you're not yes the newton yes
032correct yes