CPS Board of Education — June 13, 2022

001good evening i call to order the june 13 2022 business meeting of the cincinnati board of education we welcome everyone and request everyone in the audience to silence your cell phones and electronic devices ms hughes would you please call the roll yes miss bolton present mr craig here miss jones here dr moffat here mr marowski mrs weinberg here and president lindy here thank you we're going to start this evening with a school safety update from our superintendent ms wright okay good afternoon um in light of really the recent concerns from uvalde as well as house bill 99 we do think important to review our current safety protocols as an overview we also have here with us tonight uh captain doug snyder who is captain snyder is right here in the front uh who is the

002director of youth services for cpd and does have the oversight of our district the sros that work within our schools so we think of this in in three ways the first is to be proactive and just as a reminder for each of our schools there is a badge entry for all staff all staff members badges do work at each of the schools in our district so it gives them access into the buildings without having to use a key or even wait for entry so that's for staff each of our schools also has a lobby guard kiosk so as you visit our schools you'll notice that as you go into the school building in the office where visitors are signed in there is the the lobby guard kiosk which really is a review for predators as

003they're coming in the building there is security at each school and is based on the size and the enrollment an annual security review is conducted at each school as well as an emergency plan is submitted to the state that emergency plan does include evacuation if necessary there are three scheduled lockdown drills per year that is a requirement as well by the state and we do have to report that data to the state also and currently across the district we have 190 security assistance to date there are approximately 18 of them that are former cb cpd officers so the second is thinking about being proactive and this is where we're talking about social and emotional learning social emotional lessons are present in all of the grades advisory during advisory time for seo lessons in grades three

004through 12 and also included in our different curricula there is access to a variety of social emotional learning activities that are already embedded in the curriculum all of our schools have a social worker that is included at the school they provide small group and individual seo support and we have mental health and therapeutic counseling provided at each school in partnership currently with mind piece and the last of course is prepared and this is where we talk about training and this is where captain doug snyder if you have additional questions for him he will be able to share more about the sros because they are actually uh cpd officers so first our security staff is staff is trained and warning signs of adverse adverse behavior and one of the reasons that this is important and that

005we do our own training with our guards is because our goal is for them to build positive relationships with children to ensure that if there is something that appears to be different about their countenance or they're not having a great day or they're feeling poorly that our security staff is in a position where they are observing this and they know how to respond to this review of training procedures and use of security equipment is also a part of training for all of our security team um security at each school participates in 44 hours of training which includes but is not limited to cpi which stands for crisis prevention intervention training alice training is more specific in terms of safety and security most officers go through alice training as well youth mental health issues including youth

006mental health first aid and how to do random search and random random search procedures our safe school training is for all staff and it's done annually it's done through our online system for all of our staff all staff members in all schools annually it is monitored if staff have not completed their training by the beginning of the year they are they do receive notices and reminders for them to do that by a day certain so safe schools training is a popular training that's done across the country for all staff annually which is it also includes but it's not limited to emergency procedures and safety orientation also alice cyber security bullying and child abuse and each of our schools also has a cpi trained team at their school so for our sros that are really sworn

007officers by cpd the school resource officer is a sworn officer the partnership with cps and cpd began in 1967 so just to add some context to the length of the partnership the other thing that's important here we know that there has been some energy and conversation around whether or not sros are to be removed from schools or whether our security assistants are to be removed from schools and by the same token and i know that all of us have received these responses as well one of the questions that we've gotten especially since juvalde and in terms of hbi99 is in is whether or not we're going to increase presence at schools and so it is important for us to recognize what the the partnership has been the sros are funded by the city the district

008does not fund the sros there are 13 sros that support the district they're shared with high schools across the city that is not just cincinnati public schools high schools but that is high schools across the city each of our each of the cbcpd officers and this is not just sros this is all cincinnati public cincinnati police department officers across the city have access to our schools for with the badge entry so just like all of our employees have access to the schools with a badge entry so do all of the police staff so if there is an emergency and the staff would need to come into the school building they have access to the buildings as well all sros also participate in alice and active shooter training and the sros are visible in schools including

009lunch before and after school and special events captain i want to just make sure that we covered everything there before is there anything else that you wanted to add for us okay great so as we think about next steps one of the one of the major next steps is as we continue to align with those that are providing support in case there isn't a a true emergency at a school is training between our cpd officers as well as our cps security team we do think that continuing training for all staff is important and not just the training around um the the code red or the lockdown drills but also how we're working with students that are in crisis how we're identifying crisis what we're looking at in terms of restorative practices and how we work

010through restorative practices as well as really understanding mental health issues or mental health concerns mindfulness training for all staff we we do recognize that it is also traumatic it's traumatic for students to even go through lockdown drills is traumatic for staff but we do understand the importance of practice in case there is an emergency and so we want to make sure that everyone knows what to do in case there is a challenge so making sure that we're thinking through that and we're doing any follow-up that's necessary we're currently in the process also of planning that it is proactively done by the district a community conversations town hall around school safety in partnership with our community partners so just to talk more broadly and we've shared this with the board but just to talk more broadly

011about what we're really doing in terms of safety in our school buildings and how we can ensure that our students are clear on those expectations that they have a safe space to share if they have concerns so that parents also have information that they're able to share with others or have their questions answered and any questions at this point from the board thank you superintendent white do we have any questions from board members mrs weinberg if i can get my mic working today thank you superintendent wright um so much for sharing that information and especially sharing the fact that you're going to be having town halls um for the community i do have a quick question just wanted some clarification um i received a email from a parent in the community and the concern is

012that when they are having alice drills or they're having a lockdown or let's say they're actually having a serious lockdown situation at a particular school they are finding that after this incident has occurred the students are sent right back to class there's no discussion there's no debriefing and the question or the concern was what are the next steps that this district will do to ensure that we are checking in on the students and making sure that they're mentally safe that they're emotionally safe as they're moving after an incident has occurred in the community great thank you for the question so um in the in one of the last slides around next steps it really talked about mindfulness and my additional mindfulness training and that is for that purpose for staff um so that we are

013able to share with staff you know as they're working through their traumas and any triggers that they may have because of the the drills that we're doing that they know how to address those things as well as addressing it with the students i think the other thing that's important to this to um the question is with everything that's happening across the country our students are nervous and so if we know that it's just a drill or if it's been a little longer than they're usually accustomed to we want to share that information with them so that it it releases some of their anxiety it's challenging enough to go through the drill but so that it releases some of their anxiety and they realize this is just a drill you know this is a drill that

014we're working through um so that they are in a calmer state you're welcome thank you mrs weinberg other questions from board members dr moffitt thank you for the presentation i um we have i have a couple questions we have a very large student voice population from the young activist coalition that are opposing sros in our buildings and i've encouraged them and i will continue to do so that they meet with you to sit down and speak specifically is it possible that we can survey our students utilizing some of the current things that we have in place around not only sros in the building but then also um how they feel about the climate of the school i would really be interested to learn from students around school safety and what they think and we really

015already have mechanisms in place and i don't know if that would just be google chat or i don't know i'm not promoting chat i'm just saying can we get more data around student voice um with regard to sros in our building and safety in schools and then get a report back from that because i would really be interested to see what their what their perception is sure thank you and we were able to do that um i want to say within the last six months and i'm going to ask staff to correct me if i'm wrong within the last six months um we the district did have a survey that was done um that had the question around sro specifically uh in the buildings and based on that feedback and we'll provide that raw data

016as well but based on that feedback there was and it was across the district it was students were included but it included all stakeholders that were in the district and overwhelmingly there was support for having sros and security assistance in buildings but we can do that again um just as a part of where we are right now just so that we keep the pulse current i think especially in the climate that we're living in um if we could have it consistently maybe once a quarter so that we let them know that we are listening to them and that we really are concerned and if there are any changes to how they feel from their social emotional we can support that and i would even be interested to see from a staff perspective um how are

017they feeling about safety in our buildings and then parents and we do have a parent advocate so maybe that could be um something as well definitely we have a couple of different mechanisms that we can do that in thank you mr poland yes thank you very much and thank you so much for the update i know the community wanted to hear that update and and needed to hear that update just several points i'd like to make you know we're so fortunate 20 years ago when we started the fmp the facilities master plan and i knowing how meticulous you are about carrying out all kinds of activities and work it'd be great to make sure that all those things that the taxpayers paid for hardening our our facilities making our facilities much more secure and knowing

018that the age of our buildings and the fact that indeed we can review that but more particularly that that's all being done and we're using the safety features that we have in our facilities i think that would be helpful what alarmed me in in texas particularly was and i don't know that we addressed it and i don't know that it's something publicly we need to address but was that issue of communication where all those law enforcement folks apparently were confused as to who was in charge or who decided what or what have you i have complete confidence in cpd and our secure security staff and that kind of thing wouldn't happen but i think that would be something that would be great for us to be able to know um and understand a little bit

019more and and then i would also say that to the student advocates regarding sros those students have already accomplished a great deal it caused us an 18-month review of of the agreement that we have with the city it has caused us to rethink what all the relationships might be between principals and police so they've already accomplished a great deal and i think they should be cited for that but i also then finally apparently the nation's fathers and mothers in washington dc have finally become courageous enough to maybe pass something that will mean more money for mental health in schools and also pardoning the target regarding schools so i hope will be the first in line for that additional money thank you uh board member bolton and just to address it as a follow-up um in

020the last two weeks well today is the beginning of a week so in the last two weeks i've actually met with the interim uh the interim chief from cincinnati police department as well as her team twice in the last two weeks the purpose of that has been to review our protocols to make sure that we're in alignment with those protocols and to ensure that all of our team members are aware of what those protocols are and so one thing that we know that there is not a question about in our district is any law enforcement matter goes to law enforcement so law enforcement would be the one that's responsible our security personnel are security assistance and one of the reasons that we shared that that we that that name was changed and it was changed

021prior to me getting here but one of the reasons that that name was changed was to be more responsive and more supportive of the role that they're doing so the the feeling was that guard um sounded a little too punitive or or too um too harsh and so security assistance that's just what they do so as you go to schools and i think everyone knows by now i've been to 45 school build i don't know if you knew that 45 school buildings uh since may the 2nd and you're able to see those interactions and so are there things for us to continue to work through and follow up with of course but for the most part you see individuals that are in the school buildings that are being responsive to the needs of students mrs

022johnson yes thank you um a couple of questions and or comments one this bolton reference sort of the pending legislation and as a 40-year 40-plus year veteran in the mental health arena i have some significant hesitations about some of that legislation but hey i'll take it because it's a step in the right direction but i could go on forever about mental health laws and what what i perceive to be areas of concern as states begin to implement their own policies around that but that's another day another conversation won't go there um i'm glad that uh superintendent wright you begin to talk a little bit about the uh security assistance as you call them um we we do we have security assistance in every single school we do and it just it kind of broadly what

023what exactly do they do right uh so the security assistants do a variety of things they assist with um entering the building as exiting the building we do have metal detectors that are in the building as well and so if there's an issue with the metal detector they follow up or if the student goes through the metal detector and there's a challenge they follow up there they do random searches i i want i won't begin to say that they actually search every child that comes through the building because we do have the metal detect metal detectors but they do random searches they assist in the hallways they assist with cafeteria duty as necessary they do cursory checks of the buildings so they're checking things like doors as the school as the school day is progressing

024we do know that that's also an area for us to continue to educate our children around because while we have essentially the one point of entry at the beginning of the school day there are other doors that are on the campus and so if you're at a school for example like walnut it is impossible to get all of the students in the school at the beginning of the school day through one entrance so that's why staff is is strategically located around the building so that students can come in after the school day starts there's the expectation that there is the one point of entry the reason we have to continue to educate our children on it is because all of our students all of our schools have multiple doors and so as you're walking the

025building you may find a door propped open you may find a rock that's been placed in the door and so it's important for everyone to take ownership and responsibility of that yeah actually that was going to be my next question or comment was around security at each building especially as it relates to exactly what you said that doors are being propped up that we need to have that it is everybody's responsibility but there my opinion is there needs to be a a protocol or something around door checks and all of that um you know on one hand i'm concerned if there was a fire and all the doors were locked i understand that but by the same token um any door that's propped open is an entry for people who don't want to come through

026the front door for whatever reason so i am concerned about that and hopefully we can follow up to make sure i mean maybe we can talk about it at some point uh protocols around that okay then finally um i just wanted to uh relate and maybe board members have seen this but you spoke to more doing more town halls and forums um which i support um we we did receive an email from a church in clifton that wanted to reach out to us and ask how could they help and wanted to meet with us i'm just i'm looking at our president so you probably got that email and it would be great if we could respond um let them know that we do anticipate um working more collaboratively with the community around that one of

027the things as well board member jones is the audit that we do at the schools also monitors all of those things in terms of the doors the outside the doors that are propped and there's a report that goes back to school leaders to review that as well so that's an area that we're continuing to work through and continuing to beef up that's something that's done by our actually security response team thank you you're welcome thank you ms jones um and thanks other board members who had questions i just wanted to add as we i think transitioned from this part of the agenda um both as a board member and a former teacher but primarily as a father uh i want to say how much i appreciate the care and attention that you all take uh

028to the safety of our kids um in this national moment that we're living through um and i i feel like it's it's um incumbent upon me to ask do you feel like we're doing everything we can and everything we should be to make sure that kids in schools are safe i think that we're doing everything that we can to ensure that our children are safe i think that our our staff is responsive to students i think that they are paying attention to students in terms of their their mental health needs i think we've provided support in school buildings to deal with those that are having mental health challenges or mental health concerns or or they don't know what they're feeling so not only do we have social workers present in all of our schools we

029have mental health support available in all of our schools and we know from just doing the research on on many of the challenges that happen or the shootings honestly that have happened across the country um one of the signals were challenges with mental health and things that were observed um that sometimes there was follow-up and sometimes there was not so i think that our staff is really being proactive our teachers are doing their part in really paying attention and leaning into to our students but i think the the part around their own their own mental health support is also very important because this is also very challenging for them thank you very much so we'll we'll keep things moving then and go to the next section on our agenda which is on our three-month board

030priorities i'll ask for rob's help and pulling up our slide there we set these priorities exactly three months ago and so tonight is our summative final update uh to the community and to each other on how we did um and i appreciate those board members who volunteered to share their updates with us on priority one i have carolyn on priority two i have kareem on priority three i have eve and on priority four i have brandon if those folks wouldn't mind sharing you know what color they're recommending um in a quick sentence or two why that would be great okay i get number one um i would say uh in terms of a color we we and and i forget what the total color scheme is but yellow sounds good to me um is that

031right oh green is completed oh thank you that's why i asked i didn't i didn't see it okay so green is completed yes um to ensure the new superintendent has a strong start in the district um i feel that that uh the superintendent has experienced a strong start in the district she's been here every bit of a little a month a little over a month and she knows everything about our district she's attended 45 schools she's interacted well with the community on several levels uh seems to have a good hold on um where the district is and where we're going um and i think the interface particularly with the board and with the community has been solid so bravo i would say green and i i agree any descent on green for number one all

032right moving on to number two we're going to hear from kareem and so i get support passage of strong fiscal year 23 budget by positive five-year providing a positive five-year forecast by also informed by an analysis of what has had strong impact for students and also a meaningful stakeholder feedback i think that our treasurer jen wagner has done a really good job with our town halls we've been able to have two successful town halls with the treasurer wagner and the superintendent and board member bolton and myself we've gotten some great feedback that we'll hear about later on today so far our positive five-year forecast shows a great promise we do have a levy coming up and we need to get that passed and i think that we've been very very intentional with informing stakeholders um

033and analyzing and trying to be fiscally responsible so the colors are green yellow and red so i do i think that um that we're on our way i say yellow so yellow here is started or slightly off track green would be completed or substantially completed if you think yellow we can we should so are you are you trying to say like i heard i think you said a lot of really good things that felt substantially completed to me of felt that gentle nudge like are you sure um i do think that we can get more stakeholder feedback which is one of the reasons why i am a little hesitant i think we've done a great job for new and intentional dialogue with the community i do think that we can do better but i'm i'm

034open to what my colleagues feel i'm like uh what's a green yellow i'm a i'm a grillo so somewhere we'll let rob figure out what color to put on that i'm an orange i guess um my colleague is correct it's yellow until we pass that but i think okay that's probably fair because we haven't passed it yet thank you oh was that so hard why was that so hard how could it go say passage there doesn't it yeah um so cream if we will put that yellow and then we'll go flip the eu for number three oh transportation yes ma'am thank you uh my favorite topic for a year and a half i would right now say that we have made great strides particularly as it pertains to our pk 8 transportation we have made

035a major effort to make sure that our 7th and 8th graders are being transported yellow bus at greater cost to us but i think with greater sense of security for families and for students we remain though not yet finished with the efforts regarding our ninth through twelfth graders which as the community knows are all metro uh uh transportation issues uh we um so i for k pk8 i'd give us a green uh but uh for our nine through 12 uh i would suggest that we have only just begun uh because uh our legal counsel and superintendent and whoever else our treasurer are going to have to negotiate a new contract with metro and get it done before the school year begins and i'm in hopes that indeed we can do that so if there it

036is what is that uh is it a roy g bib or something uh it's grello if it's green and yellow if it's a green and yellow is it blue it's grillo i'm gonna let rob uh figure out a color there but but i mix a mix of but i think it's helpful to hear though that that there's a there's a important body of work that's happened there around k-8 uh pre-k um and that that the the remaining work to do is is work that's on the 9-12 front yes and there are new stipulations too uh from a standpoint that the law now requires that if it's charter students and uh private and parochial students they can't have more than one transport transfer so that's going to impact and we have to decide about passes do

037we want the open passes so these are all the administration is going to have to come to grips with with the contract with metro so thank you thank you eve we here from brandon now on number four all righty so number four was to select a program started and uh complete uh first self-assessment for personal governance coaching as well as uh discuss topics such as our role clarity communications engagement staff goal setting and all the other lovely progress monitoring things that we wanted to do um and so we engaged in what was a really uh really great experience with council on great city schools for two day uh session last weekend friday and saturday um and i think we've made a lot of progress i think we were all tacked with doing an assessment of

038ourselves uh based on that training so hopefully everyone did their homework and therefore uh i would say that i think we are a green uh on this one i think again we we did the first round of training we've had a meaningful discussion around topics like role clarity and how we begin to set the goal setting and progress monitoring uh again this one did not require us to complete the whole process and so therefore we don't have to have all the goals set before today's session today so i would give it a green thank you brandon um i i appreciate everybody trying this on together for these three months i know this is a little bit different from how we've done things in past years i think there can be such power in us deciding

039as a group what are the small number of most important things we care about as a board and then committing real time and also shared accountability for outcomes on those priorities um one of the things that i challenged us to do three months ago was to look at how we're spending our time as a board and whether we're really spending at least half of our time on what we said we thought the most important things were and so i want to thank pat and phyllis who have done a wonderful job of tracking all of our meetings over the last three months and i'm uh happy to say that we spent 56 percent of our time on those most important items now well i will share that that two day retreat gave us a lot of

040help there the ninth inning but it was very helpful and the numbers don't lie um and so i i uh i appreciate people trying this together i hope we can continue as we move forward with the governance training to really look at where are we spending our time and is it on the small number of things that we as a board can do as a board to make the biggest difference for student outcomes in the district uh and i think we will so um with that i think i'll move us into hearing of the public unless there are any last questions about the priorities okay so we are now at the item on our agenda for hearing of the public each speaker will have two minutes and will direct all comments to the presiding officer

041once a request to speak has been granted you'll be invited to enter if you're online please click on the camera icon to go interactive provide your name your affiliation to the district your school community your topic and your contact information if you'd like a direct response to any question you might have this request is consistent with board protocol and we appreciate your help in the unusual event that someone is not willing to follow this protocol we do reserve the right to end that person's time again each speaker will have two minutes to speak when the timer goes off your time is up please refrain from discussing any personnel items after speaking if you're online you will briefly see the welcome screen again as you transition back to the live stream meeting finally we ask that

042your public commentary be respectful of all listeners thank you uh mr hoing how many speakers do we have online tonight no speakers online no speakers online i think we have several in person uh what i'm gonna do is read the first three so that they can all come down uh and then i'll try to keep folks uh updated on who's next so we have first tonight uh dick friedman jason manzel and bella gordo thank you mr president and thank you to the board my name is dick friedman i am the president of the activities beyond the classroom foundation i am pleased to be joined today with several of my board members who are up there carol gibbs and bob bettinghouse but in particular i'm happy to be here with brian lester who i understand will

043be commended today for his 18 years as the director executive director of our foundation i joined brian with dave durker with uh ken cashel and with my good friend dr johnny bryant late uh friend to do the word and to work for children in the public schools um brian has done a magnificent job we are so pleased and we thank you for the commendation and the resolution uh mr lesner deserves everything he is the best of the best thank you very much thank you very much next we have jason manzel followed by bella gordo followed by yusuf meniere hi my name is jason munzell i recently graduated from mcnicholas high school and i'm a friend of many cincinnati public students and i used to attend cps i'm here to support young activist coalition and our

044fixer schools campaign i also want to thank dr moffat for bringing us up earlier in the meeting that was nice of you so we really want a completely new discipline system in cvs focus on restorative justice meaning that kids would sit down with people who've harmed them and truly come to a conclusion and build stronger communities to avoid the same mistake happening in the future and to make everyone more satisfied and build stronger communities and just one small part of this is removing sros from cbs it's nice to believe that sros would protect us from school shootings i would like to believe that myself but the data does not support that idea and we need to be very data focused in our in our whether or not we'll have sros in schools because i know

045it's something we've been talking about recently and estros do arrest kids every single day in schools but there's no data to support that they would protect us and it's they would prevent a school shooting and i know that's very like dire to think about but it's just what the data supports um students deserve better than punitive discipline and the threat of an arrest thank you jason next is bella gordo followed by yusuf meniere followed by ruth de bono all right hi my name is bella gordo and i'm the president of the young actress coalition i'm going to speak today about what my fellow organizers here are demanding for and the improvement of school safety as you correctly stated earlier we have been advocating against police presence in schools for the past two years now we've

046done this because we feel that police presence instead of increasing school safety threatens it and data that we received from cesar police department we saw that over 400 students a year in cps are entered into the school to prison pipeline to either arrests or referrals i have to ask considering that horrifying number how is sro presence anything but dangerous for young students and when disciplined data that we also receive shows that exclusionary discipline and arrests are targeted towards our black and brown students at a disproportionate rate how can we say that sros are safe for our black and brown students um you know when we speak about school safety we have to consider um like you sort of talked about our mental health and our social emotional health but the school to prison pipeline directly

047attacks that and damages that and we cannot have um effective mental health resources without considering the school police presence and how they affects students mental health and their emotional health thank you thank you bella next we have yousef meniere followed by ruth de bono followed by isabel hi nice to see you guys again my name is yusuf meniere i am an alum of both young activist coalition and cincinnati public schools when i was a junior in high school my safety was threatened my safety wasn't threatened by an outside threat though it was threat it was my safety was threatened by the cincinnati public schools by the district and by the board and by them allowing police officers to have free reign inside of cincinnati public schools to be able to criminalize children to be able

048to threaten me with the rest for the crime of sitting in a car in a parking lot to be able to traumatize me and make me scared of seeing police officers ever again and i am one of the lucky ones i'm one of the ones that didn't get arrested or didn't get a referral i'm one of the ones that just got suspended um for the awful awful crime of protesting and practicing my first amendment right to speak when you guys talk about student safety you operate under this assumption that the cops keep us safe that the cops are here to protect us but the cops have never done that for students like me for black and brown students in cincinnati public schools they barely even keep white students safe they're just not actively threatening them

049most of the time the police in cincinnati public schools are not trained to be around kids because that's not what the police are there to do the police are there to criminalize children to threaten their safety and continue violating our rights and our safety you want to care about student safety listen to the students that are here and that have been here i also want to talk about the fact that it's pride month and i understand that you all have a resolution celebrating pride month so i'd like to talk a little bit about the origins of pride month the origins of prime month that include queer black and brown trans women adjectively fighting against police brutality just like we're here doing now you are passing a resolution to celebrate pride when you don't even understand

050what it's really about you don't understand that it's about fighting against police brutality that's about fighting against the police presence in our schools that's about fighting against all racism queer phobia homophobia transphobia you all are passing an empty worded a resolution of empty words while you continue to violate our rights thank you very much next we have ruth de bono followed by isabella followed by uh aaron hi my name is ruth de bono i'm here again as a member of the young activist coalition and i'm a recent graduate from walnut hills high school the board has talked a lot today about school safety as students this is something very important to us as you can imagine where people who spend so much time in the school building to answer the board president's question no the

051board is not doing everything possible to make our schools safe the board has continually refused to listen to the data we have been presented and ignored our explanations of data and the multiple surveys we have done one of which was polling done by the aclu covering a large and representative population of our schools but no this is just pushed aside of something that probably isn't isn't accurate and probably isn't an accurate representation of the data because it's something that the board does not agree with again school safety is very important there is but there is no empirical evidence as jason said demonstrating that sros prevent or stop school shootings as we have unfortunately had to see as you said sros are sworn police officers they are sworn police officers just like all the other police

052whose job is to criminalize and these police officers are criminalizing in our schools and criminalizing our children disproportionately affecting black and brown children and unnecessarily entering them into the criminal legal system which um contributes largely to the school different pipeline and makes it much more likely that they will end up in that place again in the future cps cannot claim to care about our school making our school safe while allowing police officers in our schools the board has suggestions that maybe we should be happy with what we have done so far because yeah we have forced the board to talk about this issue but we will not stop we will continue we want more and we will continue to want more until our schools are a place where students can learn and grow without police

053presence in their schools without pollutive discipline without the threat of suspensions or expulsion for normal childhood behavior normal things that should not result in the kind of harm that those things do to our children and we'll continue to want more until we can you the cps shows uh shows that they truly want to protect black and brown students in our schools by not allowing sros in our schools by not allowing police officers in our schools because that's what they are they're police officers as you as we learned today they are normal sworn police officers in our schools with all the things that a normal police officer has and so by allowing those people in our schools you are actively harming our children especially black and brown students thank you very much our next one will

054be isabella followed by uh aaron followed by uh cft president julie sellers hello my name is isabella i am an alum of young activist coalition and i am an older sister to uh two cps students um i'm here today to speak in favor of the young activist coalition and their work to remove sros from cincinnati public schools um as my fellow organizers have already said today um i know that student safety is at the top of our minds right now i know that it's really scary um to have children in schools right now and um for many of us it has always been this way um as my as my fellow organizers have pointed out in cps black students are five times more likely to face exclusionary discipline than their white peers times more likely

055the sros inside our schools are are enforcing uh race racist racist policies against our students um and um yeah to further that black students make up 63 percent of cps but 85 percent of in-school suspensions 60 or 78 of expulsions 93 of out-of-school suspensions and 89 percent of police referrals i know that there is a question will these cops make our kids safer are we doing enough to make to keep our kids safe and the answer is the data that came actually directly from cpd is showing us no actually these sros are putting our children in in further danger particularly our black and brown children and we cannot allow this to happen anymore and the fact that um you've had to have young children uh who are amazing by the way um come in here

056for the past two years begging you begging you to to put their safety before thank you very much thank you uh we're going to hear from aaron and then uh cft president julie sellers uh hello board my name is aaron dirico i'm vice president speaking on behalf of the young activist coalition first of all i'd like to echo yusuf on the issue of pride month it is a blatant insult to the revolutionary nature of queer pride and queer liberation to perform acts of apparent allyship while refusing to take action that would truly reflect the movement's legacy now earlier tonight the question was raised of whether or not the district is doing everything it can to keep cps safe the answer from the board of course was that they are but we know that that's not

057true how can you claim you're doing everything you can for students when cps students continue to live in one of the most significant school-to-prison pipelines in the country how can you say that you're doing everything you can when so far your response to this reality for so many students has been to just commit to considering and rethinking every few months instead of doing something to stop it how is that safe how can you say you're doing everything you can when instead of changing the nature of things you only change their name you talked about changing the name of security guards because guards sounded too harsh and punitive and we've seen this with many other policies and roles within the district but the school-to-prison pipeline is harsh that's the reality of it shouldn't reality matter more

058to elected officials than how something feels it's also worth noting i think that this board has been able to recognize the fact that arming teachers even with training is something our schools don't need and something that even when done in the name of safety actually puts our students in more danger than it protects them from why then doesn't this compute when it comes to the police with all the statistically proven harm that police presence in cps does why aren't you doing anything how is the public supposed to interpret this refusal to act in the face of daily harm to students other than shocking and obscene ambivalence this is a public health crisis act like it thank you aaron and now from julie everyone where's the podium i have never been here without a podium um

059so this is um this evening i have multiple things that i want to speak about but one of the first ones that i want to talk about is the importance of how you are negotiating the metro contract that contract must be robust enough so that all students can get to school on time throughout the school year attendance is down and this goes hand in hand with graduation rates which is um a negative which has a negative impact on our state report card metro needs to be extra accommodating to our students since we all actively supported the metro levy to expand services not only for the county but also for the city and our students with this expansion of services were completely cut out of the mix as you have read metro is operating at a

060great excess with a great excess of dollars i'm proposing that they provide passes to our high school students and special routes as needed because many kids are living in areas where they cannot access those metro bus stops as an additional service we need to provide a dedicated fleet of buses and vans to provide transportation for sports practices and events field trips which include even like the holocaust museum where the kids every child can go for free through a special grant honor band competition marching band career tech opportunities and so many other possibilities that our students miss out on in comparison to all the surrounding districts many times by that you have to go through the scheduling with those private bus companies and the field trips must be scheduled outside of their regular routes sometimes they

061cannot schedule a field trip until 10 o'clock am because buses are doing multiple routes and they usually have to be back between 1 and 1 30 in the afternoon which leaves for a very short period of time for field trips this is not sufficient for our students and because we have the type of transportation that is not owned by the district our students are really missing out they can never go out of town to say kosai or to kings island without it costing so much that is prohibitive to most of our students the issue the other issue that i would also like to talk about this evening and i can't get answers from anyone and that is the cpp ncps master agreement in the workforce development committee i've heard rumors that it's being rewritten i've

062heard that they're taking out the workforce development committee i don't know how many most of you were not around when that committee was even formed you were not around when the um when the levy passed when the master agreement was written why we even had the master agreement but we set up that workforce development committee because at the time in 2016 we thought there would be a different political outcome and we knew that there would be federal dollars flowing through districts and that committee is something that was going to be necessary for us to receive the dollars that we would have been able to um to achieve and receive from the federal government but that did not happen but we still our group has been meeting for since 20 the 2016-2017 school year it's the

063head of the education department from uc the head of the education department from mount saint joe cincinnati state cft asked me because they have an early childhood union just for step up to quality we were helping districts or private providers get their step up to quality but we never really had the funding and it was really difficult to get the funding through cps to do what we needed to do but now there are dollars that and i read it in business courier about through hamilton county are giving dollars to the chamber and some private organizations to do some um workforce developments and it's it's insulting to us we are the ones who will be training the people we know what is necessary and not one person has spoken to us about writing us out of

064that contract i believe that during the time of the master agreement everybody was on board with that the united way was on board with that the business community was on board with that the district was on board with it and it never could get off the ground because we really did not have the funding to really do what needs to be done now that there's funding and there's earmarked dollars millions of earmarked dollars for early childhood now all of a sudden they want to write it out us out of the agreement when we know what has to be done we know how to do the articulation agreements we can have access to those students i mean all through covet it was difficult because you weren't allowed to have students and outsiders in those early childhood

065rooms now we need to get back on track and i don't think that i think it's very disrespectful to write out all of the professionals who've been working on this for the last six years and not even have a conversation with them about it so i and the money's going to private llcs and that money during the obama years when the stimulus dollars were out they didn't know their dollars did not go anywhere our dollars were the ones who were helping the workers to get re-certified for other jobs and so before that master agreement is finalized i hope there's a conversation with the workforce development committee who's been dedicated to this work for the last six to seven years thank you very much so we'll move now from hearing of the public to the approval

066of the minutes i need a motion to approve the minutes from special meeting may 23rd business meeting may 23rd special public meeting june 3rd special public meeting june 4th still moved is there a second any discussion all in favor signify by saying i i any opposed the minutes are approved as presented uh we're going to hear our committee reports mr moroski is uh out with a sick son tonight so i think uh ms bolton you're going to present the policy committee meeting minutes yes president i will do that as we've heard earlier today at the meeting we've heard from our young activists and they also did a presentation before the policy and equity committee uh in this last month at that time it was a wonderful presentation it's been attached to your minutes i will

067refer to three of the things that they suggested to the district and they were expand social emotional learning restorative practices and youth mentorship programs and also write a clear intervention guidelines for mandatory police actions and pass a policy to prioritize funding for social workers counselors and psychologists again the report is attached to the minutes and this quote will be posted upon completion uh we also uh continued our work regarding the cincinnati digital academy uh and part of that was to help regarding some of the processes and policies regarding admittance to and also timing of admittance as well as timing of leaving the digital academy it's well over a thousand of our students right now and the policy committee has been very interested uh in thinking in terms of the enrollment of the digital academy being

068something that indeed we are able by law to make statewide so that is still being continued of discussion uh and then also uh we talked in terms of uh the administration's going to be working on social media policy geared towards students and update committee and that will be happening this month at the board meeting on the 24th committee also recommended the approval of the regular business meeting regarding a mistake we made in one of the transportation policies and that's been updated we also are putting forward a number of policies tonight that you are aware of and hopefully will be passing and the committee will next time review uh the policies as they pertain to classified employees ethics prohibit prohibition of harassment intimidation and bullying excuse me whistleblower and also perhaps a policy regarding uh cda

069or digital academy i submit and hope for approval when we vote for record speed thank you ms baldwin thank you um while you're yes for you while you're there would you present the report for the budget finance and growth campaign this one's about four or five hours but i'll i'll do the best i can to do that in three minutes that's so impressive thank you uh as many of you know we like to have the treasures staff highlight several items and those several items that were highlighted uh were at the beginning of the minutes and they include issues regarding our revenue and issues regarding expenditures a lot of it pertained to the fact that we no longer have those pass-through dollars which we've discussed any number of times we also have this fabulous effort that

070we are monitoring the many many many grants appreciate the work that's being done and are following the percentage of the expenditure and the timing of the expenditure and we're right on target regarding expenditure of the of the grants that are both you know federal state and private grants that we're watching as well as once again we are trying to line up a meeting and i think this pertains to dr uh moffatt and also uh well i guess you remember craig uh regarding the connection between city and the school district again want to talk in terms of having the city making a presentation uh and our assistant treasurer is making that happen regarding our community reinvestment agreements and updating that and we've talked about that as well also we have been talking about referring some policies

071that we had to do referring it back to policy committee when those are the some of the financial policies that pertain uh for us in finance to review before it goes to policy we also been working as everybody knows on the passage of the resolutions for our levy renewal as well as been monitoring the like the developments the outline of the new budget process that we're deep in as well as referring often to the monies that we refer to as the cliff which are those monies around 208 million dollars that we can still be using over this year in the next fiscal year but we'll be gone and therefore we have to figure out if we're absorbing or not absorbing it and how we're going to be using it we also looked in terms of

072the dedicated fleet for buses uh internally and had a report on that as uh president sellers has mentioned also up not only in the metro contract but also as was mentioned by president sellers we have the preschool promise a master agreement that is up and needs to be done in this next month and also the issue regarding crossing guards that contract is up and ready for renewal as well so a number of things that we have to do we've also is thank you board we've passed the five-year forecast we did that on may 22nd or so and then uh finally um again the metro contract and dealing with sorta as board and and finally uh we had a presentation a discussion not a presentation about continuing to fund the cps outdoor uh facilities uh for

073each of our campuses um and on our meeting this coming week uh we will be talking in terms of the metro contract and preschool promise agreement crossing guards and i submit and hope for approval thank you thank you member bolton uh mrs weinberg would you share the report from the health and safety committee what one point of order before you do that are you asking or is it for discussion on any of these or just regulations so we'll have a motion and then a second and then discussion on that before so this is for the health and safety committee uh we met on monday may the 23rd at 3 pm uh the individuals who attended obviously was the health and safety committee members we had presentations by our cps government liaison mr glover we also

074had community members do some presentations in regards to women helping women by nicole mora she's the chief strategy officer in casey fraser cats advocacy and policy director we then had a piece a presentation from susan shelton on mind piece um just to kind of talk a little bit about women helping women the goal of this particular organization is for cps's to provide and prevent and empower teen dating violence and sexual violence prevention training in a hundred percent of our schools um it's to also be in accordance with the house bill 19. uh some of the things that they want to propose again is to empower cps to be in compliance with the house bill 19 and then to also work with collaboration with the cps administration in order to communicate and support a connection to

075the principal leadership at schools that have not had a recent or historical engagement in preventing and in their empowerment program we then moved on and we had a presentation by the mental health awareness it was mental health awareness month by susan shelton in which she reminded us about mind piece which was cps's first school district partner she reported out that the organization leads the school-based mental health network for all of the mental health partners in the school there were some important pieces to add to that in terms of that there are 21 cps schools have opened a mind piece room and there are two more that will be opening up this month about 889 students visited um a total of 2809 times they also reported that there are two staff mindpiece rooms that have been

076implemented one at reese's price and one at ami's and then next we had our government liaisons come and report on house bill 616 we also talked a little bit about some other bills that have some multiple hearings such as house bill 151 house bill 492 house bill 497 house bill 529 house bill um and i know that i'm not going into kind of what each of these house bills are but you can kind of look them up if you would want some more information last a couple more items we talked with our resource coordinators um and we talked about our community learning centers in which we were um discussing that there are 46 resource coordinators in the schools and the goals um is to increase that for next year and then assistant superintendent bunty reiterated

077a conversation regarding bullying that took place in one of our committee meetings the concern was about the bullying notification system that is being used and how to make it a little bit better i guess what was discussed was that it was confusing for those who needed to fill out the form so the goal is that the language will be updated it will make it more clear and we will provide additional education about those items i send them a report thank you very much mrs wenberg ms jones would you do the student achievement and district instructional support report please sure thank you i present to the board for its consideration and approval of the sac committee our meeting was held on thursday june 2nd um the first uh most of our uh uh meeting consisted of

078various updates particularly because our spring testing window was between march 7th and may 26th so we receive updates on some of our benchmark assessments like the map growth assessment i ready acadians or dibbles uh all of these have different um reporting windows and so the results are not um ready yet and the results will be reviewed by the leadership team and then subsequent follow up with updates to sac and or um and the board so we await those um in addition to that we had update on our state and national assessments same thing applies it was a window and so we don't have all the information yet but we're talking specifically about our ohio state test and advanced placement oel pa and the oelpa which is the ohio english language proficiency assessment the alternative assessment

079for students with significant cognitive disabilities and once again because of the windows of these testing we don't have the final data yet um and we have asked that um they come back to present the results after it's been reviewed by leadership and we can get on the calendar for presentation at sac and to the board um we had a report an update on kindergarten readiness um i think vera brooks was there to talk a little bit about where we stand with growth just for your information we have 44 sites with 135 classrooms the end of year enrollment data in 2021 we served 1413 students 2022 1926 so an increase of about 500 students number of children returning to cps schools um we're up about 300 over 2021 so we had for 2022 797 and then

080the number of students transitioning from preschool to kindergarten um in 2021 it was 9 25 and 2022 is 1129 so growth in those areas ms brooks also discussed with us uh the how we're working with various components of preschool and and i'm sorry kindergarten readiness in the kindergarten readiness assessment talked about the components of the kindergarten readiness services and curriculum um we then discussed the components of the health and social emotional learning which consisted of things like where students are having screenings for vision hearing blood pressure height weight medical things and the continuous support to school sites staff students families and some of the collaborations that we're having with other departments and other community partners so we're offering a lot um in preparation for kids in in preschool and kindergarten also providing uh um supports

081to the school sites in in terms of staff professional development and compliance training um she made a point in saying beginning in 2022-23 we will have a new partnership with leading men's fellowship in 15 classrooms so uh let me go down to the three e's of enrollment enlistment and employment data um we did receive an update on some of the measures for that um the one thing that i can say in terms of summing this up without going into a lot of the the detail is that we are showing significant improvement and growth in enrolled enlistment and employment in the follow-up of that data and i think miss maroney gave some good information about how we're tracking that information and the the overall goal is to make sure that our students that they're working closely

082with the students early enough that they can identify with the students which one of those pathways they're choosing so all of the information for the class of 2022 for the 3e pathway were self-reporting and we are very pleased to hear that we have significant um numbers in in terms of growth of where our our children where our children our students are moving forward in these three pathways and um all of this information is available online for you i won't go into a lot of the detail but i think the important aspect of this is from year to year what is being reported is growth in how we're tracking and even for the future um there was discussion about how we track for retention so that if our students are in college we will have ways

083that we know that they're staying in college that they even made it to that level and uh entered college so we will continue to do uh some follow-up on the three e's piece um and then we had uh the career tech education update mr turner reported um on some of the programs that have been offered across the district we anticipate growth again we we've done a lot in terms of growth over this year with students so we have about 200 students who were part of the career readiness option to graduate and so we continue to align with partners in the communities for a lot of the internships and the apprenticeship programs the job shadowing and all the support services for those students and uh there was data presented um regarding the career technical education program

084and i would encourage people to take a look at it online um and then finally um it was shared around some of the um scholarship dollars that were awarded to our cps students so i did want to highlight this um cps only scholarships which are those developed in partnership with universities that are available to cps students for uh school year 2021 was 2.7 billion and for school year 2122 was 6 million around that area so you can see the the amount of growth for students that um attend college and some of the universities that we've partnered with and then overall scholarships self by students school year 20 to 21 30 million school year 21-22 a little over 47 million so lots of college dollars being awarded to our students and then um we had a

085very brief summer scholars update um the the board has been receiving ongoing communication from the superintendent about where our summer scholars program stands at the moment we will continue to get those updates we did we are asking that more specific data be provided for student achievement and i will be working with leadership the superintendent to make sure that we get those that data um if there i would ask though that if there are board members who want specific data if we could rather than seven people send seven different emails if we could try to centralize that a little bit that might be more helpful as we communicate with the superintendent about what it is we want to see so there were no people for the hearing of the public so i present this report as

086written thank you very much ms jones so i do want to make sure we have a chance for any questions for any of the different reports um can we have a motion to accept the reports please is there a second second great any discussion questions about any of the reports please okay so i do have some questions about um and just so the public knows all of us do not attend every committee meeting so i have to read the reports just like everyone else and so when i have questions about finance or student achievement i'm assuming that this is the appropriate time to ask them so i do i'll start with student achievement please i encourage the public to go read the committee report so but some of these questions are actually from the community

087so it says here that um and maybe this is for superintendent wright and her team it says mr turner reported that high school-based career coordinators worked with over 200 students who needed the career readiness option to graduate those students were not able to graduate using state mandated test scores and he informed the committee that career coordinators are reviewing preliminary data from 2021 2022 test scores to identify who may need that career readiness option so my question is what um what what the what is the plan to reduce that number that's 200 students that needed an alternative assessment i'm assuming so what is the plan um that's like almost the equivalent of a entire school class so what's the plan so that moving forward that number shows decrease um through the chairs so a few different

088areas there um i think the first is working in partnership with our school counselors and so that there are audits done on the students much earlier than some of the audits have started now and so thinking about students that are entering into ninth grade as soon as they enter into ninth grade starting the auditing process during the ninth grade year not waiting until they get to 10th grade or 11th grade and in some instances it's almost there going into their senior year before there is the review of the data the second is um the the the information for what it takes for graduate for for students to graduate we want to make sure that we're starting and continuing to share that information with students and families much earlier so while it is a part of

089the student resource document that's in the code of conduct making sure that there is clarity for seventh and eighth grade students even as they're entering into the ninth grade year what's necessary and what needs to happen for them in terms of overall graduation the third is increasing the opportunities for touch points with students around what they've not passed how they're doing in those courses making sure you know we offer some of recovery but making sure that we're offering that those recovery opportunities so that all students regardless you know before they get to the next grade they're able to recover those courses if they were not successful in them during the school year and and then the fourth area would definitely be encouraging all of our students students have an opportunity to select the pathway as

090they're going into high school and making sure that there is clarity early on around those pathways so one of course is getting the 20 credits for graduation but the next is making sure that they're passing um algebra one and english two which are are the two gateway courses and then the seals that go along with those so not waiting until the students are already entering into the 11th grade but starting the conversation earlier so that as they're starting those pathways there's very intentional work around um the courses the coursework that they're taking and how those courses do apply will apply for them for graduation so having more set up to start with versus now we're reactive to these students are off track and now this is what we need to do to help them get

091on track so that is in place moving forward for the 2022-2023 school year that is the plan right now that's conversation that we're having with our school counseling team so that we have the protocol set up for that um this year at the high school level um the dsls worked with the high school principals and met with them with their teams uh two to three times a year to review the data the challenge that we've talked about however is sometimes that's reactive so how do we make sure that we're proactively looking at this so that it's not you know toward the end that students are being caught up i will applaud the team at this point having the conversation with them students that are that were in jeopardy going into the 12th grade year they

092have been identified there is the process in place for those students to have the additional career and technical education pathway added to their coursework to their schedules so that it's not the end of their senior year and then they're having those challenges okay i just would like to see the data on that um that we see a decrease if i could respond to that thank you for the clarification around that he did talk a little bit about that because in our pre in a previous meeting in an earlier meeting he did talk to us about kind of where some of our students were in terms of not being able to move forward or graduate or whatever and so we talked a little bit at that time about needing to target students earlier and making sure

093that they cannot help to identify kind of what areas they needed assistance in and support in and in relation to the graduation seals and all that thank you i want to make sure we give career a chance to ask all the questions thank you okay i just wanted to respond thank you well thank you um my other question is now for the health and safety report um we did have a report that there were four schools that do not have resource coordinators and at the end of the meeting towards the end of the meeting it was stated that the admin team was going to look into why the rfp process was put in place knowing that those schools would not be able to have a resource coordinator for this year because that process by its

094very nature takes a year so um was there an answer as to the explanation and how those how those schools got that yes so sure uh so through the chair understanding uh doing the follow-up with the team that was a protocol that was put into place but was not clearly decided on across the board by the team in terms of what that protocol would be so right now what we're doing collectively is working with those four schools trying to help identify a coordinator for them a a a elite agency for them so that they're also working with the coordinator therefore schools um the other thing that we've discussed is not closing that opportunity now you know not closing that opportunity so that once the school year starts if there's still an opportunity to get a

095agency i think the question that you're referencing is during the i happen to be in that particular committee meeting and during that meeting um one of the team members shared that they could only look at um candidates twice a year that the rfp was only opened up twice a year um but we do have that included right now in the budget and so there's an opportunity to maintain that that open you know keeping it open or keeping it open longer until we find the actual agencies okay um let's see for the finance committee yes ma'am um it says in here that um give me a second that um um it was about one second you know what paige um i think i do i had a couple questions for you but i'm only gonna ask

096one it says on page one the general fund expenditures through april 2022 as mentioned above are down related to the elimination of the pass-through funding alternatively salaries and benefit expense expenditures are higher based on collective bargaining agreements it also says school-wide pool expenditures through april 2022 primarily salaries and benefits are higher based on collective bargaining agreements can you explain what is that yes we have less revenue as a result of no pass-through dollars you know we've talked a lot about that and we want to keep talking about it so that the public's aware of it as we as we get to our renewal uh discussions and the uh expenditures are higher largely due to the six different unions now settled and a new contract being in effect so the three percent or the one and

097a half percent or whatever other changes financially occurred in the collective bargaining agreements are now kind of impact for real so i think that's the those those are the two explanations okay gotcha i know i think that's it uh the other one was was with respect to a correction that needed to be stated in the minutes that says um committee member moffett reports that she supports what's being asked of the young activist commission committee and that she supports restorative practice i do but that i didn't support their entire presentation so that needs to be corrected because i did not support what all they were asking for i just supported restorative practice and that's why their support so that that's why you know that's why i read the three things that they actually officially put forward

098which did not include things that they were talking about tonight sure i just wanted to be corrected in a minute that that is not what i said and since it's specifically related to me i just needed to be corrected right otherwise i'm fine any other discussion we have the reports have been shared we have a motion we have a second we're in discussion any other questions okay uh all in favor of accepting the committee reports say aye aye aye aye one x thing so maybe we'll just do a roll call then to make that a little bit easier uh would you miss huge please call the roll thank you yes ms bolton aye mr craig yes miss jones i will abstain on policy and yes on that all the other thank you dr moffitt yes

099with the correction to policy that i mentioned ms weinberg yes and president lindy yes the uh board members and administration um if there isn't objection i would like to suggest that we go ahead and recognize um mr brian lesner with that resolution now before doing the budget presentation uh just given the hour and our guests uh is there any any objection to us doing that now wonderful um well then um we have a resolution to share here um that is going to be presented by i believe mr craig are you gonna ask would like to come down and join us we would love to have you uh down here at the microphone or board members or guests or any board members yeah and then mary will pick up after a brand we don't have mike

100so brandon's going to read mike's all right so we have a resolution we're going to hear first from i think mr craig the resolution recognizing brian lesner whereas brian lesner has devoted close to two decades of executive leadership for activities beyond the classroom whose mission is to ensure that cincinnati public school students participate in activities that help to develop the skills they need in life and whereas brian is exiting from his role and duties as executive director of abc and whereas in 2004 a dedicated core group of cps district leaders and community partners committed themselves to re-establishing athletics for the schools and students of cps and whereas in 2004 brian service the principal founding architect of the original students activity foundation later become abc and whereas together this group proceeded with a vision to make

101a difference in the lives of the students of cps and whereas brian's leadership in matters of fund development organizational management and strategic planning from day one allowed abc to establish a most meaningful community collaboration with cincinnati public schools and whereas through brian's leadership abc has been a trustworthy and steadfast financial steward of cps funds and resources raised and grand dollars won from the greater cincinnati community and whereas having achieved the initial vision of a district-wide athletic program abc through brian's leadership guided by an eye on providing equitable opportunities has expanded its ongoing efforts into the arts student leadership and multiple student-centered activities and whereas through brian's leadership abc continued to evolve its role by embracing cincinnati's community learning centers model becoming the lead agency at nine cps schools and whereas brian has always completed his

102executive obligations and duties for abc with understanding consideration and good humor and always with a sense of integrity keen intelligence and gentleness of spirit to everyone now therefore be it resolved the cincinnati board of education recognizes and commends brian leshner a proud walnut hills high school graduate and cincinnatian and extends to him a debt of gratitude for the passionate devotion to the welfare of the students of cincinnati public and be it further resolved that the board of education thanks brian leshner for his service and dedication to the students schools and families of cps and wishes him the very best in all of his future endeavors so we have a motion that's been read uh do we have a second second um any discussion before we vote yeah just a quick question will we have this

103engraved in a plaque for him oh my god like this right here i didn't see it i think i think we'd like to invite brian to share a reflection too but let's vote to approve it um and so well i hope so um miss hughes would you call the roll please miss bolton you think about that i very loudly mr craig yes miss jones yes dr moffitt yes mrs weinberg yes and president lindy yes congratulations [Applause] mr lesnar you do not need to but if you have anything you'd like to share we'd like to invite you thank you i will be brief uh for those of you who know me that's a hard task i'm not comfortable with these accolades but i can tell you that i truly appreciate everything that you all have done

104for kids in cps the partnership that you've formed with abc like to thank the people behind me who kept hiring me back year after year bob wasn't so sure a couple of those years uh it's it's when i took the job i said it was going to be my legacy job and it turned out to be my legacy job and i can't i can't feel any better about anything i've ever done than than head up abc but thank you all very much and this goes up on the wall in my office yeah thank you [Applause] so we will then move now uh back to our only presentation of the evening which will be from our treasurer on the fiscal year 2023 budget good evening hello is that really loud very loud yes rob are you

105fixing the sound it's too loud just let me know when you're ready okay we ready jen we are ready go ahead okay thank you okay so good evening everyone and i just wanted to um add my accolades to mr brian lester it's been a pleasure to work with you if you're still in the room um we will certainly miss you um and tonight we just wanted to give you a very brief update i'm going to do a couple slides introduce kind of a new concept to the board in the public and um my new partnering in work is superintendent right she's going to take over for the next couple slides as well they can move on rob so just to remind the board and the public that everything we do financially we do with the

106mine with our minds on the equitable distribution of funds to support our students needs and i'm moving on to the next slide so this is the new concept and it's it's a good problem is a problem to have but a good problem to have and so every year when we uh when the board adopts our cps general fund operating budget you do you do so in the form of a appropriations resolution um in this year we're going to ask for in a four million dollar addition to that general operating budget not because we're not balancing the budget but because of the growth of our preschool expansion efforts and so i'm going to explain why how we got to that point but so when when we do adopt the budget in the june 27th i believe

107it is we'll be asking for an amount higher than our budget's going to be the same 609 but we're going to ask for appropriations of 613. the next slide so this kind of explains how why we're asking for that so if you recall in 2016 we had asked for some new money it's a 48 million dollar five-year levy um 15 million of that was promised to the public to be set aside to expand preschool in inside the district and in private providers and hence the the birth of the cpp so what was unusual about this levy was um we asked for it to be collective immediately so typically when we pass a levy in november we don't actually start collecting those funds until 14 months later because property taxes always paid in arrears this levy

108however we started collecting in january of 17 so we passed it in november started collecting in 17 so we had a full half year of property taxes that we collected that we had not used yet because dpp was still ramping up their operation and we always said that we would save that money to the back end of the five-year levy because taxes are on a calendar year versus a fiscal year so we knew that if we did not renew that five-year levy at the back end we would need money to finish out that count that school year so we collect about 15 million a year in property tax revenues related to the preschool expansion and this year's budget request coming from ccp cpp is 11.5 million dollars um and i believe chara might be in

109the audience to answer any questions about that if uh or hector maybe but together collectively our budgets are going to exceed that 15 million dollar set aside so that four million dollar difference is what we're going to take out of that unspent cash so if you see in the table below that you see what we collected in 17 and so over the first few years we consistently underspent the budget cpp consistently under spent the budget so that money is being banked in a special cost center so that can't be used for other operations so as we're growing both sides are growing we're going to use that unspent money a lot more rapidly than anticipated originally anticipated so if you go to the next slide it's a graphical depiction so um hector the the controller of

110cpp did a pre his line is the blue line the projection to show that if they do meet all their growth um percents that will use that unreserved cash by the end of 27. now he had made an assumption that cps would grow at a three percent growth which is kind of a fair assumption except that we fund the staff that support this students with disability preschool students with disabilities in the private providers so we have a diagnostic team and then some itinerant teachers that provide services so already next year we're going to be adding in another itinerant teacher i don't know yet when that next diagnostic team has to kick in and so we're looking we're working with the early childhood department on that future forecasting but so the orange line represents my edits

111to hector's assumptions and so still we're going to hit that use up that cash balance in fiscal at the end of fiscal year 26. and the reason that's important for us to talk about is on the next slide this five you remember the spaghetti um this five-year levy the next renewal comes up in 25. so we'd have to consider whether we want to maintain the same 48 million dollar levy or d1 you want to increase the 15 million to support further preschool expansion um and so that's a conversation we'll start having after we pass this next levy but i wanted to introduce that as we're starting to dip in that savings account because of the growth next slide so how about if i just pause there and see if there's any questions from the board

112um did i explain that concept clearly enough you have people nodding their heads here okay cool i can't see you because you're a tiny little icon on my laptop okay so we'll move on to general fun then so you know we set our budget target at our current extracts at 616 and so we have a about seven a little over six million dollars on the seven million dollars to go we've worked very hard and we have a plan to continue um to balance a budget and um from there i'm going to turn it over to superintendent wright she's going to talk about the investments and activities that we've been doing together okay so back on march the 7th this was feedback that was provided by the board and at that time interim superintendent in terms

113of overall budget investments and priorities and so from the slide we see at that time the recommendations around investments or where we wanted to prioritize was in the area of science and world language curriculum adoptions making sure that there was an elevation of diversity equity and inclusion operations continuing with reading specialists for our first grade students and that was specifically through essers so an increase of 45 reading specialists continuing the expansion of student and instructional technology and that's new technology as well as replacement technology absorb the cost of the re of resource coordination and there was a previously a school a student wellness fund that was provided to us from the state that's no longer provided and so to maintain that resource coordination role uh we wanted to look at the recommendation was to absorb

114the cost school social work full time in every building so 81 social workers workers as well as there was an increase in school counselors so that there was 67.5 and the expansion of english language learning teachers to eight teachers we do continue to work at trying to close the gap between the ratio of our english language learners and the number of teachers that we have so so far in our work together um with with our treasurer we've looked at the following steps to work to balance the budget and this is talking about the general fund i will note that there are still areas that we're reviewing again in terms of esser to make sure that we're maximizing eso dollars for the support of students so this these are some of the things that we're looking

115to bring to the board in terms of balancing the budget so first funding shifts at about 11.2 million dollars and so this includes a shift in it expenses as well as the increase for cpp and increase to cash carryover and that's what treasurer wagner just was referencing the shift in the resource coordinator contract to student wellness carryover which was three million dollars uh the promise center to esser and promise central is one that we've talked about in a few different spaces and it's one of our alternative programs we want to make sure that we are maximizing that location but we're also maximizing opportunities for students that are in an alternative setting the athletic trainers to esser as well athletic trainers was one that came up it was a previous grant to the district so stu

116the athletic trainers were provided as a grant that grant has since then gone away uh so there's half a million uh 5 million 0.5 half a million dollars there for the additional trainers and the unique part about the trainers is some of the trainers were maintained but there were a group of trainers that were not and so that's to maintain the additional trainers and the school community coordinators there are about 23 ftes there that we're recommending that we delimit those positions it's some um duplication of services when we look at what the resource coordinators are doing um and what other staff members are doing as well and so some conversation around um making sure that we're moving forward in that area additional steps to balance and these are kind of general in nature but just

117to give you an idea of where we are in terms of the other areas doing the breakdown in terms of pd and system upgrades so that that's to the tune of about forty five thousand dollars um an additional fte request and other line items so we have gone through each line item of the ask for the budget uh reviewed it with each of the plt members which would be the department chairpersons and we're continuing to do the same thing again and so that's how we're really digging in to determine where we find the rest of the dollars the in terms of human resources there are multiple non-personnel issues we are really trying to make sure as much as possible that we are protecting personnel where we can and looking at vacancies as well vacancies that

118will not change operationally what needs to happen for our students gifted there was a budget correction there in terms of the gifted line the positive school culture this was specific to some of the supplies that were asked for because there was a duplicate in terms of requests uh diversity and inclusion uh there were two positions there we looked at really as a part of the reorg routing that role into a cabinet level role uh just to make sure that we are looking at and following up with the policy the policies that the board has already put in place around that and elevating what that role is uh overall the the team of interventions in innovations there was one fte there um the role the reduction of dsls we know that came up in the last

119conversation as i understand i was not here yet but we are looking at repurposing uh several of those roles and the curriculum reduced um estimated resources and so in this area that's a pretty large number so i want to add some clarity uh to why that number is how it is we did go through line by line there were uh asks that were in there and i think the best way for me to explain it is there is the cadillac version of what we would ask for in terms of curriculum and then there may be the toyota version in terms of what we would ask for or pinto maybe that's not a good analogy you know maybe give me two other cards okay so nevertheless in terms of looking at that um we did go

120back with the team we met with the with the um with the vendors as well and there were additional asks that were in in the request for curriculum um that were just over and above and so essentially when we are purchasing a license for a textbook and when we're purchasing a textbook essentially that's two textbooks because we have to pay for the license as well and so there was an additional ask for not only the licenses that students would receive on their devices but additional textbooks on the on top of that and so outside of what we need to provide for students that have special needs um doing those additional ads was really where we were able to look at reducing some of those costs without changing the product for the student and without changing

121the the quality of what students are receiving uh central administration so there are some positions that we've already found centrally that we are not looking to replace at this time we have are having a lot of conversation around the the role of the employment specialist role because again um some of the services or actions are duplicative with other roles that are already in the school so how we align those things to make sure that we're still addressing the student's needs it service delivery model changed we looked at three different opportunities around i.t and how we're still providing quality services to schools around i.t but not doing the kind of con the level of contracting that we had done with it services previously in addition and other positions that we have reviewed vacancies uh in terms

122of types of positions and we're continuing to do that as well to determine if those positions and this is all really centrally located in terms of positions um if these are positions that need to be filled or if they can be repurposed in other places i think the last one that gives uh both the treasurer now just a little bit of concern but it's an area that we've monitored over the last several years and that is looking at if there are vacancies of the savings that happens in terms of vacancies we noticed that we have a lot of vacancies we're focused on reducing those number of vacancies and this is not as much around direct teaching vacancies but but all vacancies across the district and so because of that that does become a savings i

123don't want there to be a misconception that we are not looking to fill vacancies because we are and we are adamant about trying to fill those vacancies and really on top of trying to fill those but looking at our data historically that's an area that we are we are looking to add to this in terms of being able to balance the budget so at this point our reductions are we're right at about 20 million and we have about six million more to go uh and so the next steps if you go to next rob okay so in term before we go to this one at the end we'll talk about next steps for where we are in terms of really getting toward that other six million as well any questions for that part before we

124go to the next yes yes superintendent right i do have a quick question whenever you're talking about eliminating positions um just have a question about the school community coordinators back on slide 10 it states here you said 23 positions that same 23 positions it does so with the 23 possession position excuse me um what would be the plan for those individuals who will be laid off will they be offered positions will they be offered another job right so one of the things that we've looked at in terms of this area and and as we share you know we cannot keep everything the same and then get to the the negative numbers that we're looking at so what we shared in terms of the vacancies that were in those positions closing those vacancies and not replacing

125those vacancies and so if there are vacancies that come up we're not replacing those individuals that are already in them we're also not looking to rift them at this time so really it becomes a phased out approach but doing that would allow us to reduce the 1.2 so the 23 individuals who currently had a position they don't have a position anymore so for clarity there are 23 ftes not all of them are field positions so the so the field positions will be eliminated if there are other positions that the um any of the individuals that are actual bodies in the position can go into we will move them to those positions if they so choose if not it's not one once those positions are vacant that we would then fill those positions do you know

126out of the 23 how many of the positions are actually filled positions that are being eliminated i'm going to check with my team i i don't know if that number was nine it was between nine and 16. so i can get that number for you and send it to you so uh superintendent right excuse me for jumping in um but we we put those positions in esser to buy us another year while we figured out this new strategy so they're not losing their jobs today or they have a job for this year so so so and and i'm hearing dr moffat's questions down here as well sh the question is they will lose them so when we cross-reference the positions there were 23 vacancies i'm sorry 23 fte um within the fte and if i

127can get one of the team members to share with me the actual numbers for the positions that were vacant we did not refill those positions over the course of the year when we did a cross-reference of what those individuals could do in the district there was another position that all of those individuals could go into in the district with the exception of four and so over the course of the next year we will then work with those individuals to see where we can get them in the organization and other vacant positions we didn't close that position completely but it's a position that we're not continuing to feel thank you you're welcome ms baldwin yes thank you thank you for this report and look forward to finishing it up uh of course everything that's in the

128budget can't be put up on the screen so i just wanted to make sure that i was reentering reiterating the united states uh the mitchell administration was the ib program uh from the west side being mirrored in the east side with the same kind of feeder if we can look into that not tonight but just as a reference to you and nobody will be surprised of me saying something about the cps outside uh and some of that's facility some of that's esser in in the other piece uh uh some of those community uh resource folks could maybe be resource coordinators since the the the board policy is that eventually every school would have a resource coordinator and a community learning center itself but those would be a couple of things and and it sounds like

129facilities you know i'm very focused on the rawson uh facility uh that's gonna be out of the facilities kind of budget i would assume and that isn't necessarily reflected here in the slides but it's part of the possibly part of the budget in facilities or we could look and see if it is it's i'm not right so in terms of i heard you mentioned um i think all of the areas are being reviewed to bring back to the full board for their support or like thereof to determine where we go next super thank you you're welcome other questions from board members okay thank you okay treasurer wagner we're now on the next slide so um this was the results of this after each town hall there was a survey that came out and so we've

130been collecting information um cumulatively so as a result of both town halls and i think as of yesterday or the day before these are the roles that show from parents and teachers and the community about where their budget priorities are you know as you spoke before a lot of concern around mental health employment support and career education um and so i won't read that slide to you but we're using that to help us guide where we are investing or um you know idea looking for areas that we can maybe go back a little bit um next slide shows actually the um date around the town hall so after the may 3rd um we actually had a revision originally we thought we reached 314 on facebook and that grew over the time to 624 so i

131showed it as a revision but um on the second one we even had more uh people reached on facebook and more participation so we were very pleased um and we're going to continue to use these town hall experiences um in fact dr moff and i are in between meetings we're talking about our next the topic of our next one might be around um the tax abatements and so we'll be planning that one and advertising that soon but we're very pleased with the um participation from our public and helping us determine our budget priorities um okay so moving on to the next slide i think is our next steps yes so um we're continuing to review all of our professional service contracts determine whether they're focusing on our priorities and reviewing all the vacant positions to

132determine whether their opportunity to repurpose or or not fund something and then also using the feedback from the engagement and from the board to determine our priorities we're working on as everything as we're changing every budget things coming in and out of esser i'm trying to keep that updated and so we're gonna actually present an update on esther at the very next meeting on the 22nd and then going for adoption on the 27th next slide shows you what we're going to be presenting thank you and so there's a lot of questions about i've had a lot of questions about changes in staffing and so we'll show you the fiscal year 22 by job code to the fiscal year 23 funded positions um we're hoping to show you the financial impact tool surrounding the reductions excuse

133me once again the revised budget and then um any additional recommendations for reduction and then um the cost per impact those decisions but with that i think that's the last slide for today we would open it up to further questions other questions from board members ms bolton yes um and i'm sure the administration's more aware of this than certainly i but again just so the public knows the so many things are still kind of up in the air when you talk in terms of the metro contract or you talk about the uh master agreement if you will between us and preschool promise uh and in the crossing guards or whatever so i think it's i think it's great to be where you all are at this point in time and considering where we still have

134to go in the next two more meetings and board meetings but we know you have dozens of meetings so uh i'm i'm i'm pleased with where we are and i i think you've it's having doing this in the midst of a transition i think is astounding i agree are there other questions comments okay hearing none we will thank our treasurer and our superintendent any last comments superintendent wright or treasurer wagner okay we will then move into our resolutions um and we're going to hear first from mrs weinberg with a resolution opposing ohio house bill 99 all right thank you um i want to present the resolution opposing ohio high school house bill excuse me 99 um i submitted as written and i hope for its passage i also want to thank um my colleague board

135member morosky for also um taking a big stance in this as well and really being able to present this to you all today thank you um ms weinberg do we have a second second second from ms bolton any discussion yes ms bolton yes um i'm uh much in support of of this resolution and have spoken with the the uh chairman weinberg i think in order to make it more timely considering that the governor has now signed the bill uh i've mentioned it uh through some texting uh briefly to mr moroski and to uh chairman weinberg and would like to propose from the floor some amendments uh and would like to share those amendments and see if uh they would be acceptable rather than us having a revised version one that is revised from the floor

136so i will pass that with the rule of chairman weinberg i will pass that that is fine forward thank you in the emphasis there is to make it more uh in keeping with where we are so we're striking the first paragraph adding this additional whereas striking another paragraph and doing a different whereas and then a couple more whereases which are four or from the original uh proposal and then striking another one and then adding some more and keeping some efforts one of the things we wanted to emphasize was make it more uh timely the other was to emphasize that in one paragraph this is astounding whereas in spite of opposition from teachers unions like the ohio federation of teachers with 55 locals and 20 000 members in the ohio education association with 748 locals and

137121 000 members the ohio house bill 99 has become law so against the approval against the support against the oppo the opposition from so many people that this would impact but the best thing about the only good thing about 99 and that has now become law is that it does secure the individual board's right and that's something that the initial uh proposal proposers if you will uh made sure was there because it allows for local effort local discretion to determine both whether or not there will be folks carrying weapons that are part of the school of personnel as well as to determine the nature of training so i would i submit these and hope for approval from the motion maker and the seconder i kind of can guarantee the secondary they'll be okay about it

138thank you miss bolton i i certainly don't have any concerns ms weinberg um but i just have to just redo my motion again if i accept everything you just accept okay i accept the new editions and the new edits thank you to members weinberg and androsky for introducing us any other discussion before we vote all right miss hughes would you call the roll please ms bolton aye mr craig yes ms jones yes dr moffitt yes mrs weinberg yes president lindy yes motion uh or the resolution passes um the next was going to be a resolution uh celebrating pride month for mr moroski who is not here i would be happy to make this motion but i wanted to offer it to anybody else if you'd like it okay i introduced the resolution as written is

139there a second second with a second from vice president jones any discussion ms bolton one one point of discussion in the third paragraph at the end the board of education will continue to oppose these political attacks against i just would say i would really like to enter into there that's the ohio house legislature that is making these particular attacks that's referenced i believe but yeah last sentence in the third paragraph these political attacks from the ohio general assembly yeah yeah i certainly accept that as a friendly amendment even though it's not friendly what's happening um it's an unfriendly miss hughes did you get that okay could you repeat that please in in second to last paragraph um it ends with a sentence the board of education will continue to oppose these political attacks against the

140lgbtq community we're wanting it to read almost the same thing but the board of education will continue to oppose these political attacks from the ohio general assembly against the lgbtq community any other discussion did we put the plus in there lgbt i don't i don't know i'm asking out of ignorance too the lgbtq lgbtq plus i hope i'm doing that right to my friends i think it should be plus [Music] okay so and i a then plus lgbtqia plus yes any other discussion okay misuse would you call the role please bolton aye mr craig yes ms jones yes dr moffitt yes mrs weinberg yes president lindy yes um we're now jumping to number four since we did the recognition of brian leshner this is going to be a resolution from ms bolton thank you very

141much mr president the uh one edition for all of the ones that are coming out of policy we did catch a mistake that doesn't require revision as such but where it says the uh board of education policy committee that's not the correct name it's a policy and equity committee that's being changed and but does not require any activity because it's not a substantive change so i introduce a resolution amending board policy 3419 group health plans and i submit and hope for approval is there a second second from dr moffat any discussion miss hughes ms bolton aye mr craig yes miss jones yes dr mafia yes mrs weinberg yes president lindy yes uh also from ms bolton number five again the same change on the name of the committee uh but i submit uh resolution adopting

142new board policy 3422 benefits for non-represented employees second second any discussion misuse ms bolton aye mr craig yes ms jones yes dr moffitt yes mrs weinberg yes president lindy yes ms bolton you're on a roll you have number six right continuing a again a change in the name of the committee which is being done by staff a resolution we're sending board policy 4419 group health plans i submit and hope for approval there a second second any discussion miss hughes ms bolton aye mr craig yes miss jones yes dr moffett yes mrs weinberg yes president lindy yes uh number seven from dr moffitt um okay back on the screen i submit as i find it on my page i apologize um a resolution to rescind ward policy 44.19.02 which is about the privacy protections of fully

143insured group health plans i submitted as written second second any discussion miss hughes ms bolton aye mr craig yes miss jones yes dr moffitt yes mrs weinberg yes president lindy yes also from dr moffat number eight this is a i submit a resolution to again rescind a policy this is 4422 benefits for non-represented staff i submitted as written is there a second second any discussion ms hughes ms bolton aye mr craig yes ms jones yes dr moffett yes mrs weinberg yes president lindy yes uh dr moffat number nine last but not least i submit a resolution amending board policy 8600.02 transportation of students i submitted as written is there a second second any discussion misuse ms bolton aye mr craig yes ms jones yes dr moffett yes mrs weinberg yes president lindy yes uh we

144have in our revised agenda a tenth which is a resolution determining to proceed with submission of a renewal tax levy which i think will come from our finance chair ms bolton thank you president lindy uh to repeat i submit a resolution determining to proceed with submission of the renewal tax levy uh whereas the board had determined that this would be going on at the 9th of may on 20th may 20 may 2022 my resolution duly adopted and the administration has completed all the necessary work associated with that submission and it's a double pager so be sure to check but i submit and hope for approval so that we can proceed with the renewal effort is there a second second any discussion ms hughes ms bolton aye mr craig yes miss jones yes dr moffat yes

145mrs weinberg yes and president lindy yes okay thank you everyone we have finished our resolutions we're gonna transition to the superintendent of schools and from i think mrs weinberg will hear the retirements um yes i will be announcing the retirement for today i'm going to start off with our certificated personnel and i like that we now have a slide to go with the announcement as well so first up is deborah burris a teacher at walnut hills catherine dameron a teacher at um this college how are you on my paper sorry kimberly johnson a teacher at dater montessori joel b mcconnell an intervention specialist um with dss linda miller a teacher at fairview joyce morse a teacher at withrow and in terms of our civil service personnel we have um tanya ferguson a student dining services

146keith fisher a building engineer and i'm going to try this name hopefully don't mess it up thomas senior rollinson so sorry if i've messed this up paraprofessional at pleasantridge and then we have sandra romero a senior support specialist so we just want to thank them all for their service and their commitment to public schools and we wish them all the best in their future endeavors thank you so much thank you mrs weinberg do we have a motion to accept the recommendations of the superintendent thank you miss bolton to the second thank you miss jones any discussion on the superintendent's recommendations miss hughes ms bolton mr craig yes miss jones um recuse item g certificated personnel yes item g yes certificated dr moffitt yeah mrs weinberg yes president lending yes um we need a motion to

147accept the report of the treasurer please moved sure second second any discussion ms bolden uh yes i have the question uh for the treasurer and again it is uh about transportation as we discussed uh last meeting uh whether or not the uh transportation dollars were up to date and current and what have you and in this treasures report in roman numeral 2 um starting with i think b and going through ced and all the way over to h again we if this treasurer could explain the uh amounts of money and whether or not this concludes uh the dollars for um transportation for fiscal 22 obviously maybe not including the summer transportation because we i think we were i think we were close to being closed out but i'm hoping this represents the closeout of transportation

148dollars and would like some guidance from the treasurer either tonight or at a later time well what i can say because i'm not sure that mrs wagner is still here but we did meet with the transportation department to go over their budget and we did get the finalized dollar amounts where they were able to put in their final amendments for fiscal year 22. so the balloon drop is happening right now for me from a standpoint is this does represent that we may not necessarily be carrying over costs and what have you from fiscal 22 into fiscal 23 which will be my recollection an accounting that may be the first time in five years that's not happened to keep our fingers crossed i've got them all crossed that's that's really so helpful yeah and you'll notice

149this is super expensive even under our certain our current circumstances thank you thank you thank you miss bolton any other discussion on the treasurer's report ms hughes ms bolton aye mr craig was that loud enough yes miss jones yes dr moffitt mrs weinberg yes and president lindy yes thank you um so we have finished part one uh and we we still have a little bit of time i think to do a few other topics on board matters um inquiries updates uh and the rest um we only have two tonight um the first one i think is from dr moffat the second one is from me so i'll turn the floor over to dr robert [Music] i don't think this has been an issue in the past but board member weinberg and myself clocked our mileage

150for all of our school visits and um for any interaction that i do for what i'm saying are school events um it was shared that only mileage was paid for um board approved events and so the question was brought up to bring back to everyone can we adjust or i guess interpret the bylaws to mean um the way i interpret it is if it's a school event then that's ultimately a district approved event um and so the way that it was interpreted is well it's not a board approved event so we just needed to have some discussion around that um we i do i can't speak for anyone else i do a lot of engagement with regard to school visits and school activities for students and so i would love to have my mileage reimbursed

151i will say this it doesn't 52 cents a mile does not compute to anything with regard to the cost of gas and i'm not going to stop engaging it just would be nice to have those i'm going to track them anyway but it would be nice to have that 52 cents reverse i was hoping that um folks maybe miss bolton or ms jones who've been on the board longer than i have could speak to what past practice has been um it was a new topic for me um you know i'm not i'm the questions in my head are things like do we have a budget for that um but i also would be interested in hearing what our past practice has been since i've been here i've not known there to be any practice or

152policy related to us receiving mileage in terms of board events the types of events that i believe that at least the way i understood it were things like particular trainings that you attend and you you actually have to submit the request and it gets approved in the um i want to say trent is it the treasurer's report the treasures report it gets approved presented to the board and the treasurer's report and the full board approves that so it's it's board training um anything related to the cost of that training such if you do an overnight or meals or anything like that it relates to that it's it's never been a practice or written in the bylaws that we get reimbursed for mileage to my recollection and so you said in the beginning you said you

153know that this hasn't been something that has been done in the past typically we just go it's it's what you're choosing to do how you choose to do it and and um it's pretty much been left at that i don't know if miss bolton has anything to add to that no i i would i would add only several things but i think you're you're right um in my 15 years uh we've not done this uh on and because of the way it's written in the bylaws maybe we want to change the bylaws down the road or something we can certainly do that but right now uh everything that happens in a school is not board approved or bored acknowledged um and it starts to be a sticky wicket if indeed it's seen that way because

154it's it's a chain of command piece it's not necessarily even endorsed by the district leadership necessarily but they supervise it but board to school is is really a big leap um we do get mileage if we are assigned to do something like technically we probably could get mileage to confer diplomas as an assignment as such or when we go to columbus for oea or when we do something else that's a board assignment and actually oea now pays for for that by law um so i think the community real quickly should know that we are limited by law to receive only five thousand dollars a year and that accounts for the way we do it about 40 some meetings which of course we have far more than that uh and um those limits are placed on

155us because they for whatever reason but um it's not we we don't have an expense account either in part because we are not seen as as that we have an expensive expense account only when we're on assignment so this would be a change we can talk about this um and i think it's reasonable to figure out we should be i think being paid some additional monies for training and i think as we look at this next coming year we ought to spend much more time talking about training and maybe with the governance that we would be rather than necessarily just noticed meetings as such but no it's not been practiced to receive mileage and what happens in the schools well and i'm thrilled that a member is being involved with so many things that are

156happening at the school and but even that if i went to a school i'm not necessarily representing the board i'm representing myself as a board member so it's it's part of that bigger discussion that i think we'll be dealing with in governance yeah i think i think that you're absolutely correct on that but i do want to also submit that just because something wasn't done in the past doesn't mean that we need to continue not doing it and then also let me read to you the bylaw and how it is written and so and and i do disagree with you that a school event is not in some way sanctioned um we approve liquor on school property you know we we adjust policies and all those things for certain events so i i do disagree

157with you on that but it says and this is where the conundrum comes in it says um the following guidelines have been established by the board to ensure appropriate and proper reimbursement of expenses for board members a expenses will be reimbursed only for activities authorized by the board b reimbursement for mileage to attend board approved activities will be at the current irs rate see when attending a board approved activity all fees parking mileage meals and housing can be submitted for reimbursement d purchase of any printed or other materials necessary in the performance of the board member duty will be reimbursed if within the board budget e entertainment expenses are not reimbursable and f a voucher detailing the amount and nature of each expense as well as a receipt for each expense must be submitted to

158the board for approval so the inference was like okay what is the board approved activity and so that is what really the discussion is about is attending and i don't think that i don't know and you all can certainly give me some some guidance but i don't know if the level of engagement that we're speaking of to really make a significant impact financially has been done before for my personal um opinion so i think we're talking about a significant amount of money and i'm not meaning for it to be but i'm just saying i'm we have never really done that prior to it it's just him well i have to disagree with that i think we i mean you guys and you have chosen to do that the level of engagement everybody does engagement differently

159sure you know and i i think that you know what i interpret as a board-approved activities well actually miss bolton explained it better than i could is that um you know we don't have unlimited budget amounts anyway and so if this this is not out of the realm of of uh possibilities for us to be reimbursed uh for mileage if if that's what you have but i still think that there has to be some limits to what we call board activities i mean you're choosing to go and engage and that's fine that's your personal style and what you want to do and that's certainly welcome but i also think that when we talk about board activities and those things that we sanction we talk about what's fair in in general for what's or what's fair

160and what's available for all seven board members to be able to participate in a reasonable way and those are things like trainings and and things like that so that's what i think that's why it's written the way it's written i i wouldn't be opposed i'm sorry i wouldn't be opposed to maybe assigning it to policy to look at um if they want to come up with some recommendations but you know again everybody engages differently so and i just want to add something to that um in terms of board member bolton was giving some examples so if we have a town hall at a particular school would that be considered a board approved because we have been asked to be there so could that be something that we're seeking reimbursement for and i think it gets

161into the conversation of deciding on what is board approved or what is district approved because that is an activity so i'm just trying to get some clarity but dr moffat brings up a good point in just in addition to the question that i just had as well yeah i would i would that's why i suggested this is something that can be reviewed to its certain extent i think if it's uh let's say levy uh if this is a board-sponsored town hall and our superintendent and our treasurer are both showing up and the board there's some expectation that board members will be there but often then that would mean that it's a noticed meeting so you so that's that but i think we can review this because i i do think it needs to be clear

162that the there's the schools and or up here in my view the schools and and then there's us and there's this entire chain of command that exists that has nothing to do with us so i i think we should have some good listing as to what would be some examples like graduation right right i would agree with mr craig thank you yeah i mean i think this is an issue that comes up again to that question of this idea of representing the board versus representing you as an individual board member and so i think in times we can define it a little bit better with regard to board approved activities to really distinguish where we are tasked with representing the board as a whole at an activity or an event or a a um you

163know so that could be for instance it could be a uh a town hall or a forum where it could be uh you know like graduation where we're task representing the board for those type of things as opposed to per se activities where we're doing it in our own manner as a board member um which we've all at some point in time done something where we just happened to show up there because they wanted folks there um then we don't always represent everybody while we're there doing it and so i think that's a maybe a distinguishing point that can be discussed through policy so what it would work then as a next step to refer this to policy and have all these issues vetted and then come back with maybe an improved clearer version of

164that great thank you um i'm going to move then to number two on board matters which was mine um i don't know if i'll be very quick about this i don't know folks know school board partners or not but this is this um non-profit organization that um supports uh aspiring anti-racist school board members and they offer a like a leadership development fellowship for board members in their first or second year and so for mr craig mrs weinberg and um dr moffat i would recommend them if you're looking at a opportunity for next year was free um but they have a nice community of board members from all over the country a number of whom have been rallying around an open letter from school board members about gun safety and gun violence in schools um i

165would i would love for us to sign on to that letter but i wanted to create a process for us to figure out how to do that so what i was going to propose is just between now and our next meeting can i share a copy of that letter with you all and then when we're back in public session just talk about what people thought about it and if you feel comfortable with us joining if people have a different process i'm very open to it good great okay thank you any inquiries or updates hi mrs weinberg did you have one i just have a quick update and i'm not sure if this is probably where i want to share this at but um you'll tell me if i'm right or wrong in terms of the

166board assignment sheet sheet that we have come up with i just wanted to alert all board members that that will be shared with them in terms of the assignments that we have um put out there from the different committee meetings in the different state again it was shared today all right just wanted to make you all aware of that that was my announcement thank you any questions for mrs weinberg okay any other inquiries or updates an update around the committee that the partnership committee with cps in the city of cincinnati um we've had not a physical meeting in person with um vice mayor kearney but in brandon and myself but there is interest in creating a co-education city committee and so um i think the assignment was to find out if there was interest and

167to discuss how that would look and bring that information back and so um vice mayor kearney is in charge of is it healthy neighborhoods um mrs weinberg is it the healthy neighborhoods committee and so it would fall under her and she has said that they are very willing to have a partnership much like what we had previously prior to my time where the city and the the city council members and the cincinnati public school board members would meet quarterly around topics that we both share namely crossing guards pedestrian safety is specific and so i just need we just need to know how the board would like to proceed because we've done the assignment i think we should get a first meeting scheduled what do you all think get a first meeting scheduled i'd support it

168opposition no opposition i my issue is at the full board meeting with uh parts of city council because that's what it was is that it pulls full cps board in parts of we the last time we did a full board and full city council i think it was mayor mallory and one of us didn't come properly uh clothed and he said that was the last time that he would ever meet with us so we've not had a formal one instead i'm sorry but that's the truth but but so over time what we've done before what we've done before what we've done before uh you cannot just like say that and then we don't we all over here like what is she talking about any current member this is years ago okay another problem is used

169i'm confused but what's worked out is invariably we do that that and i think we should and i think the topics that we share are vital and important it's just what it's tended to be is it's one committee of council but it tends to be whatever board members are able to show up at that at that time so okay we look at the structure it'd be good to do that that's worked and we've had them notice the meetings because we anticipate at least four board members coming okay miss johnson yeah i was going to add um it was actually their education committee which they dissolved right so they would have to decide i mean how they want it i don't know is it she said that cps falls under health and her healthy neighborhoods committee

170okay so that's the reason why it's underneath all right okay all right so does that get you clarity that you need yes and so i guess so what i'm hearing is the health and safety committee which she chairs and all of cps once a quarter i think we try it maybe let's just schedule the first meeting and then what we can do from there is figure out if there are enough topics for us to continuously have the conversation around that does that would make it a quarterly because i mean we may end up being something like every six months or every well she just asked me like what was our expectation based on what we had and i told her i would come back and say what you all had and how you felt about

171it so she had proposed once a quarter but you know she just wanted to give them an expectation oh i do like what you said i like i like that idea but i just wanted to hear what you thought i think that's i don't i wouldn't commit to quarterly yet but i do think of meeting but we do need to have an agenda before that meeting i was going to say and what topics would you all consider she suggested pedestrian safety prosecutor what other topics was the cras uh the community redevelopment uh i think that would be good we've been trying to get cities here so i know assistant treasurer would be very happy if we finally got that taken care of and off of her plate uh and yeah i was gonna say i

172think the first meeting can be pretty general just to get the dialogue started and we can just talk about as a joint group what what where what we what priorities we want to talk about okay at that time i like that a lot and and we also probably you know what is the structure who's going to facilitate you know all that kind of stuff needs to be worked out and how long did you all have them last time because it the notes looked a little different that i got how long did you have them were you scheduling them for two hours they scheduled an hour about 14 minutes i think it was hour and a half my last record was it was a your watch okay thank you dr moffat any other um ms jones

173yes i'm not sure if this is an inquiry it's an inquiry in the sense i want to know if we can do it but it could be an assignment um just reviewing the uh calendar that we approve the boards calendar one of the things that we used to do in the past is meet on a quarterly basis at a school site that's a nice idea i would like us to consider that we would do that in the start of the year on a quarterly basis and um that's a great idea to leave the decision of where we go to you don't ask us because i'm telling you you're going to get seven seven different answers but um i think that that doing that to put that back on our we didn't do it when cold

174we stopped doing it we covered but i think this would be a great time to get that back it's a great idea yes um then we've if there are no other assignments um we've been putting uh kudos here at the end to end on on some upbeat nice news about cps so folks have any kudos they'd like to share this evening and i am so excited about all of these uh don't worry there's not dozens but uh this was uh uh communicated to me uh by sue wilkie down in the in north side uh this is huge i think that our resource coordinators uh i hope saying this right jillian pratt from case and jeremy culpepper from parker woods montessori are going to serve as the grand masters of the north side 4th of july

175parade the second largest parade in this city and it's our community center community learning center folks that have made such a remarkable uh transition they're particularly being cited for all the work that they did particularly during the covet experience but also for the kind of re generation of both of those schools so uh congratulations and boy the great representatives and you know uh the uh the the parade is looking for anybody else from cps that like to uh participate uh but we've got these two schools represented and two wonderful resource coordinators serving so that's cool and the others are the rotary uh announcements from the rotary clubs greater cincinnati we had an administrator of the year james boyd we had a community service humanitarian uh winner as well carrie hopkins innovator of the year uh

176aaron kernohan arnold uh who knows forgive me aaron uh teacher of the year uh elisa veidt so congratulations thank you ms bolden other kudos okay um hearing none and having no other business before us i declare our meeting adjourned 909.