001i called to order the october 11 2021 business meeting of the cincinnati board of education we welcome everyone and request everyone in the audience to please silence their cell phones and electronic devices ms wagner please call the roll mrs bates miss bolton present mrs bowers here mr lindy here mr messer president mr moroski here president jones here thank you okay i need a motion to waive the discussion of the resolution on the alcohol waiver which is typically done in policy meeting before it comes to the board um because of the date of of the meeting uh and the event it's being a request to present it tonight i need a motion to waive the discussion okay second okay i believe that's a roll call ms wagner um miss bolton this is this is a 48-hour
002wait where you're going this is just for the waiver the motion no mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr master yes mr morosky yes president jones yes thank you okay members of the public who wish to speak may do so by clicking the chat button now the chat feature will be open for your request for five minutes please submit your name your affiliation to the district your school community your topic and your contact information if you want a direct response to any any questions you might have approval of the minutes um i need a motion to approve the minutes from the special meeting september 27 2021 business meeting september 27 2021 all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed motion carries minutes are approved as presented ms bolton please present the priest present
003in five minutes your budget finance and growth report thank you very much and since we had a discussion about this previously i'm really only resubmitting this for the record to be accepted this this week i will pay particular attention uh to a couple of items one we had a great report from the preschool promise folks and cps preschool we also began the discussions or continued discussions regarding the growth plan uh for the district which is a responsibility of the finance and budget and growth committee obviously and uh in that we were really pleased to see the work being done by the administration ahead of time over a number of months to be able to demonstrate to us the enrollment issues that we face and i know we'll be talking a little bit about that later
004as well but particularly the enrollment geographically as to where our students are coming from from particular areas of the district to particular schools and that will inform us i think uh very greatly about what the future might hold i again also want to emphasize besides the enrollment and the growth issues uh i appreciate the treasurer and her staff's work uh on uh if you if you will continuing to keep us up to date regarding grants and also the esser funds which is something that mr messer suggested we need to be able to be doing throughout this process and again included are the enrollment numbers and we look forward to discussing more about that later thank you thank you admit for acceptance this week thank you okay mr marowski you president jones uh the policy committee
005met on friday september 24th uh 2021 at 9 a.m in uh in here actually it's our second in-person meeting since um uh kobe began we were also virtual we had a few folks in attendance and spoken hearing of the public we began by looking at our committee of the whole review of bylaws that was presented for acceptance at the last board meeting and so i'm just submitting it here for the record since it's already been taken care of board employee communication same thing was submitted at the last meeting when we discussed creating a new policy because the old one was outdated so again submitting it here for the record but on september 27th it had been recommended for approval the district organization piece we will continue discussing on october 28th uh i will point out
006a couple things committee member bolton reported that the district organizational chart needs to be more operational and go further than directors uh needs to capture the current operation of the district as well as the board's vision mission and goals committee member lindy added about i'm inquiring about benchmarking on what other districts require in their org chart and so at october 28th uh general counseling will inform uh admin about the committee's desire to update the chart and benchmark other districts again we'll meet at 9 00 a.m in person and virtually um then we had an update about the new required vaccine policy um that is is going very well and i'll let other folks in the administration i think talk about that later on correct president okay um so we'll have an update on that so
007i don't need to spend a whole lot of time on it but as people are aware we have a required vaccine policy for staff and co-located partners in our district we also had an update from assistant superintendent bunty about our strategy for vaccinating eligible students and she reported the district would have vaccine clinics the week of september 27th which has come and gone that students being vaccinated would receive a hundred dollar gift card uh students taking their second dose would receive a gift card um additionally a clinic for student athletes was held in october 2nd 2021. um a couple board meetings ago i had a signed administration to um research and draft a potential policy uh requirement for students similar to the one we have for staff and co-located partners uh we right now that's
008only students 16 and up due to state law which says that you cannot administer vaccinations in a required fashion for anything that is not approved out of emergency status by the fda as such uh we had an update from assistant general counsel stephanie scott um who did some good research there's not a lot of precedent for this right now in the country um and so we you know she took the version we had for staff and co-located partners updated a lot of the language um that we will discuss again at our uh october 28th committee meeting so i just want to point out a couple things i think were significant that were brought up by my colleagues who serve on the committee committee member bolton recommended making the policy more universal so that when another
009age becomes eligible due to say the fca saying well now for example say 12 and up um you know we're able to get this we would then be able to administer it if we had a policy like this um and so committee member bolton uh suggested more universal so we don't always have to revisit these things um every single time a new age is is added board member lindy asked the administration um if it was a good thing to do for students and if parents and unions have been pulled mr hoyne stated several variables come into play as well as the district's goal and getting students back into the classroom um i reported for for my own my own piece that you know as legally possible we need to in my opinion do what we
010can regardless of what the state is saying again legally because the state of ohio's government has made it clear that they don't value keeping the priority of public health for the student's best interest in mind at least in my opinion our action was ms bolton advising the administration to think about kids in high risk venues like extracurriculars career education out in the community and other activities the administration will present this report on october 28th again at 9 a.m in person and virtually the administration will also advise the committee about the district's legal responsibilities in vaccinating students at that same meeting on the board social media policy we ask that folks look at other schools and districts so we can have some sort of benchmarks for that that have been assigned by board member messer and
011so we took it up and we'll revisit it again on october 28th and then i reported the last time mr lindy had given us homework to look at some policies we thought would be a good idea to audit and see if we're you know abiding by them and we came up with four big ones uh 2255 our equity policy our anti-racism policy 2256. you all may remember uh we talked about 2261. parent and family engagement federal programs which if we were to follow to the letters like the best family engagement policy in the world it's very long though and so we're going to take a deep dive into that one and then 6320 the purchasing of goods and services which you'll recall um due to board member lindy's leadership on the committee we sort of
012revamped it in its entirety um just recently and lastly uh transportation policies ms bolton reiterated the unacceptable plan and metro's transportation of our students she stated metro is putting the district in a position that is violating our own policies i as chair um would agree with her she advised we look at her transportation policies holistically and recommended reviewing vision zero and safe routes to school when we do mr lindy asked if student experiences are at a better place in transportation than last year and suggested he would like to see a comparison of data from and when i say last year in the last year the buses last school year is kind of not the one we're talking about we're talking about 2019 um and see uh how different things are with student experience and i
013brought up the idea of an rfp for another bus company which we talked about last week as well we had a few hearing of the public that are reflected in the minutes i present these as written thank you um i'm actually going to go back i want to ask first if board members have questions or comments about the policy committee report yes mr lindy i do have a comment i'd like to add at some point about the student vaccine discussion i'm happy to do it now i'm so happy to do it later does it relate to the minutes yes yes go ahead um thank you and i'll do this very quickly i just um on the topic of whether we have a student vaccine mandate at some point um i do think that was an
014incredibly important discussion and i want to thank mr moroski for putting it on there i wanted to just share that um my thinking continues to evolve on this and i'm a little bit more inclined to support such a requirement than i was when we met and i wanted to make sure i said that in public session um i do think it's going to be incredibly important to learn what families think about this idea uh in a quantitative way so to do some kind of survey at some point um and also to hear from our medical experts but i wanted to share that i was a little bit more inclined to support this currently than i was in that thank you thank you okay thank you and i neglected to ask if board members have questions
015or comments about the budget finance and growth any questions mr messer yeah i brought this concern up the last meeting um you know i know board member bolton and some of our staff worked on the report that she presented um the documents that she presented while i think it's perfectly okay for board members to offer that i would put it very clearly in the minutes that this was what one board member brought um i think there's a lot of claims that may very well be the perspective of the person who wrote that at the same time i don't know that we've had the conversation uh as a board um to go into the amount of detail that was presented and i wouldn't want somebody in the public to read those and say oh my gosh
016they've been behind the scenes working for three years to develop a plan that's going to limit access to certain schools to certain people based on geography etc and let that be the first time they see it i think everybody's you know we've had lots of conversations about the need for the board to have that conversation is part of our growth plan um but i think we have to be clear that we haven't officially begun that work the work hasn't been chartered hasn't even been officially named so somehow some way if that can be included in the minutes um that that wasn't a board report that miss bates or i had anything to do with it was something that um miss bolton presented and i think it's a great foundational piece but i think it has
017to be clarified that that's you know an input to a much broader conversation that this board needs to have with its community um i'll i just want to clarify uh that statement that i think miss bolton presented that she she was representing the minutes just so we could get it on record as having been submitted i think our last board discussion what we said that we would consider putting it on the agenda to your uh comment that about the one person presenting the information so that topic will be on our saturday work session agenda we will start from scratch in terms of doing the general overview and presenting the information the background information so we're not adopting by passing the minutes tonight we're not adopting uh any action items related to that we are going
018to begin to discuss in great detail so that people have a chance to question um uh anything related to how that plan uh how that was developed we're not i'm not even calling it a plan it's just a way a step to get us to a full blown discussion about it so as i understand just so we're clear you're presenting the minutes because we didn't approve it the last time but we need to get them on record as recorded does that are you okay with that as recorded okay yes if i might president um respect uh uh what member messer is saying and can certainly agree that uh uh this is in no way approving anything but i do think the minutes do represent the dialogue that occurred that day and i think the public
019records will speak to that but i look forward to the further discussion uh as we proceed on this growth issue okay thank you any other discussion questions or comments about either of those committee reports okay thanks um miss bates is not here tonight that is there someone from her committee who can present the uh health and safety report i was looking at ryan okay thank you mr um yes before me i have the report for the health and safety committee um that met on september 27th we'll go through this quickly because i did not really review all of it and you got five minutes thank you so the good news is part of it's the open update i'll be giving you in cal because it was basically the same right okay that piece well we
020just had updates from our government liaison uh mr glover and mr kearney who actually in person good to see them um there was some updates on house bill 327 the prohibited school districts community schools stem schools and state agencies from teaching advocating prohibiting divisive concepts that was really receiving a lot of attention and there was a presentation or discussion with assistant superintendent bonti around um updates on our school-based health centers and she didn't give us information that based on the cincinnati health department school-based health center 75 of our of students have been vaccinated i hope i'm saying that correctly okay and then she gave us updates on do uh suicide prevention programming um inclusive of grants us hope um and sources of strength or hope squads and sources of strength there was also some information
021provided to us around cps discipline data and currently to date in 2021 we have have had 681 student discipline reports and they were broken down into categories as to what those um discipline offenses were and where they ended up as far as uh learning centers returned placement um out school out of school suspension um and then we actually had a um percentage of the percentage of referrals for um discipline and then would behooves me to see that it's 80 which is not surprising but it's kind of concurrent or conducive to what we've been talking about of african-american students 80 of those are are part of the discipline referral um we also got an update from assistant superintendent bonti regarding um the because of the breakdown in the system or something happening with our system regarding
022covet input for our staff so we uh there was a request and it has already occurred past october 1st be extended to october 8th so we're past that we'll have more information about that later um she also identified that surveillance testing is currently going on in 18 schools and by thanksgiving all of our schools would be able to have surveillance testing we had updates about the sro we talked about the memorandum of understanding ongoing professional development and restorative practices we designed the promise center uh collecting data and highlighting the results of the sros um actual collaboration a meeting between the principals and sros were coming up um also and then we had a presentation on miss connie solano about civil rights data uh from the department of education there was a comment box um chairperson
023base that she wanted to see the data that was submitted um to the civil rights data collection approved by the young activist coalition and david submitted by cps to the um civil rights data collection because there were some concerns about discrepancies um the task force i spoke about with sros and the administration um i did make a comment during this video and advise it and be clear in the mou about the roles and responsibilities of the sros as it relates to disciplining students in the use of sros at elementary school we did have another action item for the school resource officers to will be a topic of the november second committee of the whole meeting uh and mr bill will lead the conversation with um with an invite for lieutenant shantia pearson the sro supervisor
024these are the minutes um i'm presenting them as britain thank you okay miss bowers you've got student achievement oh wait a minute i got it it's here all right student achievement what's on october 1st um ms reeves updated the committee on the topics of a gifted identification process english learning identification process identifying students with disabilities there was an inquiry because the number appeared to be low for students suspected of having disabilities at our term at our alternative facilities such as ph settings and things like that our partial hospitalization i'm using lingo the problem nobody knows partial hospitalization settings um ms reeves knows that the number is only inclusive of those alternative facilities that have cps teachers teaching and that's why that number uh looked a little bit different we also had an update from mr
025hoover and miss morales regarding ap placement offerings we discussed initiatives that were in place to strengthen support to students in preparation for taking high school ap courses such as boot camp i inquired about additional supports being available for students in intermediate and middle school and an effort for those students to be prepared before going to high school and enrolling in ap classes dr williams explained that accelerating learning helps focus on some of that academic rigor that i was inquiring about dr williams also uh gave us a math update um we talked about math specialist support plans school supported by math specialists um there was some conversation as to which schools were selected to have math specialists and how they were selected um and dr williams was the action item was for her to provide information
026about that and she did and she explained that the data as to how it's determined which schools get um math specialist was based on 2019 um data and i had concerns about that knowing about the money muslim pandemic um miss wang informed the committee about professional learning opportunities um she talked about the importance of having engaged metrics and then being tracked for staff and the importance of professional development to learn and grow and staff identify that it makes their you know help them do a job better grow in advance of their careers and staff improvement in their performance other business um that we talked about as was making sure that the families knew that an understanding that the district was moving toward um having uh our montessori elementary to be feeders to specific montessori high
027schools for example um schools parker woods amblin dater would be feeders to gamble montessori high school and schools such as pleasant ridge stands in north avondale fetus to clark to help balance out some of that um those spaces committee bolton reiterated to the board in support of additional montessori high school um in our district like a third high school and um assistant superintendent murphy identified that that would be something that we could look for for fiscal year 22-23 um chairperson bowers and mr lindy we advise the administration to make sure that we are being equitable in our sibling enrollment there was talk about a teacher allocation committee there was some concern about that we've been hearing from the community and so miss uh murphy was going to follow up with the assistant superintendent bunny regarding
028attack enrollment numbers there were three um candidates for hearing of the public i don't believe mr nicholas was able to get on but he was advised to send the email to us so we can follow up mr oz davis had a concern regarding teacher allocation as well as um cft president miss julie sellers also talked about teacher education these are the sac minutes and i present them as written thank you and again i forgot to ask about discussion for the health and safety but we'll start with student achievement any questions or comments student achievement report yes interested to know if there's any development since that committee meeting or prior to that committee meeting about where we are the status of of tax and status of teacher reassignment um i thought that might be something that
029perhaps the interim superintendent would be interested in sharing with the public and with the board yes absolutely i'm um proud to share that our team customized the approach we talked to each individual schools and made decisions based on school needs and i would like to stress that no one lost their job everyone still has a job and what we were able to do was match the licensure uh with our teachers so more certified teachers are in front of students and then we shifted other um positions to support with our subs so it was double fold it also helped with our staffing need as well any other questions or comments about the student achievement report okay so going back any questions or comments about health and safety yes miss bolton um i notice in the in
030the health and safety uh update regarding the resource officers and that continuing discussion there's a community committee that is cited as an advisory committee um who appointed that advisory committee or was it a you know volunteers or how that committee uh was formed i think it's great uh would and then the other part is uh my concern about improving our statistics and improving our ability to more fairly um render uh discipline whatever one way to improve the statistics obviously is to do it right and and do it fair and correctly but also it would be to limit some of the reporting by schools and hope that the the district administration is watching that very carefully so that self uh school self reporting it doesn't decline because it's not being reported i'm just interested in that
031absolutely i think accuracy and reporting is important um and how we report and standardize the approach and then uh assistant superintendent murphy can speak to the community engagement thank you for that question uh like many of our other community engagement opportunities we've reached out to our good friends cohere um we did ask them about some of the people who participated in the past with our policy around racial justice uh some of them were able to participate others not and then they did solicit other community members to participate i think the names of those members were in the report and if you want me to pull that out and send it separately i'm happy to do that most of the names some of the names appear in the minute so i think that's that's great if
032i recall so it's i just wanted to know we were continuing to build with our partnership with cohere and then follow up from the anti-racism policy that makes sense thank you mr flowers yes thank you uh president jones i just want to um reiterate my concern regarding the um grana's hope or hope squad um suicide prevention program um the concern around the uh cultural equity or cultural awareness or responsiveness of that program and i wanted to note that they have identified two of our schools already on their website and we're not using i don't believe yet that program but we're listed on their website as using their program so that that's concerning too because i was trying to find data on how it was working in the schools um if they're using it because that
033would give it some background with being culturally responsive in our population with our population of students but those schools are not using this curriculum so um i just don't think that i'm concerned about that that i want to know that i'm concerned about that okay yes mr morowski thank you president jones and thanks for the presentation of all the minutes um chairs um so my uh i guess comments unsurprisingly about the dual resource officer piece um ms bolton covered a couple of them and uh the only i had uh a question and a comment really the question piece was about the ongoing professional development for restorative practice anyone can answer you don't need to call if you don't want to i think it's a quick answer but um is that is that for the sros
034or for our staff well both so the sros would go through restorative practice training implicit bias training anti-racism training what we're trying to do is work through our mou agreement on clear roles and responsibilities and that is one of our expectations great um and i'm happy to see the redesign of the promise center i'm happy to see that we're going to start collecting data as i've been asked asking for quite some time i just want to point out that the minutes say collecting data highlighting results of the sro program and the presentation in the minutes ms bowers noted that the committee found some discrepancies between aclu data presented by the young activists and and ours but i haven't seen those discrepancies so i'm hoping that we're not just highlighting and finding things to highlight but
035that we are actually presenting the data that counters the aclu data because we still going on a year i've never seen it so i'm happy and encouraged to hear that it's happening but it we need to see it see something i believe is that we are on the agenda in november for a full presentation thank you i i agree with you mr moroski it's been a long time and i think it you know it's good to hear that now something's coming forward because i think we do need to review thank you okay um i believe mr messer you're presenting committee of the whole yes thank you president jones um committee of the whole just a week ago um three major topics preschool promise health and safety and um additional transportation discussion as relates to preschool
036promise a very uplifting year for update from our partner ms jackson and um dr hinder um who gave a comprehensive view of where we've been and where we're headed and an expanded view of how we're looking at the whole child um which fits very well to what we do here at cps so that was a really nice update to hear that progress and the accomplishments of the four years health and safety um assistant superintendent bunty gave a very thorough update on uh and fairly standard kind of where we are today um throughout our community um but also gave us an update on our progress towards achieving the expectations established in the board policy that um called for a vaccination requirement or testing requirement for all staff um i'll save any additional updates for the uh
037superintendent report a little bit later that's very exciting the progress has been made there um we also then switched to transportation and um a couple of things first ms amon gave a summary of the meeting with sorta that took place on october the 1st and i want to make sure i get these right but a couple of things that came out of the meeting some key takeaways dps made it very clear that families and principals continue to be concerned about length of bus rides timeliness agreed to meet with the uh schools and families cps inquired about the length and of on-time bus number of transfers buses uh passing students up etc um cps has several clarifying questions including the current state with chartered private schools getting to school definitions of unique ridership et cetera sort
038of indicated that they would not restore routes this academic year and continues to have challenges recruiting bus drivers and then cps is researching yellow bus option for our seventh and eighth graders um a couple of the other updates again i will read these just so that they're uh hot on dps will continue to share data with sorta regarding late arrivals and dismissals long bus rides one plus hours so they can problem solve sorta will meet with families in high schools to develop uh or to discuss routes that are longer than they should be and share correct route information florida will send a letter to families to clarify routes and sort of to email interim superintendent ahmad daily writership numbers for each student and how long on their rides to and from school um so that
039we have those because it did appear that their estimates seem to uh exponentially increase since the last time we met um and then uh there was uh discussion on the specific plan forward that i'm sure we will be getting into um on our next steps for um exploring alternative options as we work on uh the bigger problem to take care of our seventh and eighth graders to us a yellow bus option or something similar more details to come on that and i submit the report as written the board members have questions or comments any further discussion miss bolton yes thank you uh i think uh to add to that um uh we did have a report from doug palmer uh from the ohio school boards association he's our transportation consultant and we are very appreciative
040of the administration for including him and he spoke pretty specifically about yellow bus and the public is very well aware that there's the metro issue and then there's the yellow bus program and those are two very significant pieces of our transportation plan it was said at the committee too that the administration is contemplating or rather contemplating and they have been for many many months the issuing an rfp and i know that the committee at least a few members of the committee that day did express some concern about fast tracking that rfp and wanting to wait until the board had had further discussion and the superintendent and treasurer were able to report back to us of more information about our situation with both metro and yellow bus so i think that's important and again as mr
041master said we're waiting probably for that opportunity further discussion and data and and really appreciated the fact that the interim superintendent was able to to get the sort of um board chair and a board member as well as mr haley the ceo to in a very declarative way say that sorta has no intention of restoring the extra routes this academic year and at least uh did not seem interested in engaging in the discussion about future years thank you okay thank you any other questions or comments on that report okay all right i need a motion to approve the committee reports i moved second second all in favor please say aye aye any opposed motion carries okay superintendent on my uh please introduce uh this evening's presentation it is with great delight to introduce principal jack
042corey from north avondale montessori he will be presenting our cps bright school highlight well thank you for that introduction i um it is a pleasure to be here but before i begin i do want to say thank you to all of you um your time during the pandemic and the commitment to excellence and to do what's right for our kids whether people agree with you or not um you stood fast and you showed up every day for a very thankful thankless job so i do want to say that that is very appreciated on our end um i also want to say thank you to interim superintendent ahmad because uh there was one day where i just invited her to come out and see the great things that are happening at north avondale montessori and she
043dropped her schedule and came on out and she uh had a wonderful time i still owe you an invitation so you can do your uh brown bag biography for our students they were doing that and they wanted to see uh the superintendent ahmad uh what three things she treasured the most in her life so uh we'll make that uh we'll make that happen i was only told 10 minutes so this list that i'm having is not going to be extensive and is not going to be complete but uh the first thing we're going to talk about is academics and when people think about academics they think about our classes our math our english our reading the grades the test scores it's so much more than that next slide please when talking about academics i need
044to expound what goes on in both our building and also in the district and so we're moving right now to become a more true montessori uh have a true montessori experience for our students and um the montessori work group that was started in the district last spring and the work how it's evolved from going from an accreditation piece to looking at the curriculum and becoming truer to our montessori roots is um really being uplifted in our building and on october 4th professional development we got together all the montessori elementary teachers on a google me met and we had this cross district dialogue about what we needed to do and how we could serve um students better and that has just uplifted a lot of the montessori teachers so just within our own building we're getting
045excited about moving away from taking the standard curriculum and quote unquote monosorifying it and really running a true montessori curriculum also the teachers just working across buildings getting all the six to nine teachers that was the group that i led um and to have input from north avondale and data and all the different places this is the first time i've ever experienced that in our district and it's something that we need to continue um also all of this moves towards what is our goal as a district every first grader reading okay and we truly believe we can do that with a montessori curriculum but more than that what you did when you approved a k1 reading specialist that is a game changer we had one reading specialist that was trying to serve the whole building
046and looking at some of the reading or the losses that happened during the pandemic to add another person that can concentrate just on that k1 piece um i put out to the staff hey i got to talk about great things that are happening here uh narrowed down the list for me and the first thing that came out was that k1 reading specialist so that really is truly a game changer for us takes our other reading specialist who's now going to concentrate on our second through fourth grade uh readers and then two weeks ago i found out we were going to become a targeted uh title one um user a targeted assisted title one program and we're going to put that toward reading to address the reading losses also in the fifth and sixth grade and
047to add some more tutors teaching reading and recovering from this pandemic is a case of infinite needs and finite resources and so what you have done with uh adding the reading specialist and now that we're going to become a targeted assistant title one school has really addressed some of those resources that we needed also our kids can't learn if they're hungry i gotta get a shout out to our kitchen people our manager we have to change our lunch schedule our breakfast just because of the pandemic and how we we are now serving a hundred more breakfasts and a hundred more lunches than we were when we were at the end of last year when all the students were coming that makes an impact on our academics and then finally the reinstatement of a full-time assistant
048principal this year when i'm dealing or i'm in meetings or i keep getting these clips she's in the classroom she observed this teacher she's provided feedback to this teacher it has now doubled the amount of feedback that we can give the classroom teachers but it also takes we're not always dealing with just this kid over here who is struggling to find his way in school we can tag team we can work together sometimes parents they don't want to talk to the principal oh my gosh my kids are in trouble but i have an ap who will work with me and so that that really has been powerful next slide enrichment player games you can go ahead so uh i think mr master i think you went on uh our field trip to uh the cincinnati
049zoo thank you for volunteering we do we need uh one of our great partnerships we have is our parents and our parents who are willing to volunteer and so the cincinnati zoo provided free admission for our field trip and we had a private donation for transportation so we had our kindergarteners go over to the cincinnati zoo and get to experience some hands-on while they're studying uh animals in class now they get to actually go out and see them also our north avondale crc we work hand in hand together when we have rainy days i mean mr johnson calls me up and says hey our gym is free do you want to use this extra space just so your kids can get some place to run around and it's like absolutely um tomorrow we have a
050student store that's provided by um uc and they're going to allow us to use their hallway so our students can go by and uh with the points that they've acquired buy things from the store that uc provides we work with a civic garden center and they provide training for staff and opportunities for our students the camping and education foundation provided grants so our sixth graders went on a fall canoe trip this spring they're going to build the canoe i've seen this done over when i was at parker woods prior to the pandemic that canoe is going to be left behind for the by the sixth graders so this year's fifth graders can actually use it on the canoe trip next year and so they'll be doing that um we have our namm foundation which is
051really like the fundraising arm to provide different opportunities um that we couldn't provide again it's infinite needs finite resources they provide even more additional resources than our um the district can provide our names father group they take care of a lot of the social things we do i mean i remember last year the first thing they asked me is boy in this pandemic we used to do grandparents and donuts and what are we going to do what's our mission and so instead of the fall festival where you have a lot of people coming in we're going to do trunk or treat again which is just a pandemic safe way prove it safe way for kids to do trick-or-treating out of the backs of volunteers trunks and we're going to do that at the end of
052this month our art club we were able to start that up again this year and um while it's on a limited basis because of space it really provides an opportunity for you know what some people may not be just that math student or that reading student but art keeps them engaged and keeps them coming back and wanting to come back into our school and then a cross-country team again we have students that may not be textbook kids but they come back into school because they're engaged because they get to go out after school and run competitively i keep telling them as soon as i don't have a meeting i'm going to go out and run with them i promise i will um our first meet was actually going to be at wikrow this week so
053excited to see them next slide so we have new staff we actually have one more to add to that list um and thelma lear has uh started last week so didn't uh make the list but new to the position so we have lori davis who was a reading specialist she has taught nine to twelve she's taught six to nine she is now doing three to six she has a great understanding of what goes on in montessori and where our six year olds have to be in order to move on to the next level michelle balti was one of our super subs and when we had a position our hiring committee said hey we want michelle to come and teach tia minor also one of our super subs and when we had a hard time attracting
054a montessori credentialed teacher um we put miss tia minor in there as a long-term southerner she's doing a phenomenal job billy scott was one of our parents and he had a college degree and so because two of our super subs are gone we moved billy's uh scott up into the superstar the guy does everything if you've been in our building it's like can you do this yes he can can you he is now our testing coordinator had to be out last week just when we started testing guess who stepped up and was able to do the test mr scott um stacy armstrong she is our great our grade two to four reading specialist and then amy hawkins who was in three to six is now the k1 reading specialist that i talked about earlier we
055have miss karen ross who uh comes from new york i think he went through her classroom yes and uh she has over 20 years of experience in teaching and uh she's new to montessori but she's already enrolled in the uh montessori classes at xavier and she's rolling up her sleeves and diving right in mr adam bauer uh bauman used to uh was at uh gamble montessori he was a para became a long-term sub and he was one class short of his montessori credential before we uh we snatched him up and uh hired him into so he's doing a phenomenal job miss christina holler is our intervention specialist and here's another piece that you guys get out of the part a full-time school social worker that has really it's not just the attendance clerk who sends
056out letters mrs harris works with families finds out why they're not getting their kids to school or why their kids are constantly late and she works with them and really and truly like kids can't learn if they're not there and so miss harris is making sure her kids are there miss corey brown is a new addition actually her mother works at the school she is one of our pairs now in the uh three i'm sorry six to nine uh classroom and mrs tina pitts has a student there and she's working with our 9 to 12. we have a lot of people that they like the little kids and she goes i want the 9 to 12. and so it's just great to have somebody there who um the kids respect because she's a mom she
057knows how to handle students she's just gifted that way and then also uh thelma layer who is now a new three to six para she is just brand new but she has that grandmotherly um approach to students and i see her walking students out three to six you know the energy they have they follow her like she's mother not so uh just um again i can go on and i know you've probably seen in my newsletters there's many times where i just say i just felt like i hit the jackpot of schools as a principal and i couldn't be happier to be there the big piece that makes it all work i don't teach a child but our staff and our community and what everybody just digs in where there's a need and it makes
058it a great place for our kids thank you board members board members have questions or comments mrs bowers yes thank you um i'm a montessori mom so i appreciate everything you said in this all on point from a parent's perspective um but i love when you mentioned the moving to more true montessori experience for students that's very key to keep um the um the spirit of uh montessori and i'm glad when you know identified the reinstatement of your full-time assistant principal you identify the meeting the need of your staff and the staff you need the support that they need as well as family so i think that's key when we start talking about equity that is an equitable piece of um getting um needs met for each school and i just have a couple of
059inquiries when you said the uc is that stat program that's the biggest school user yes very good that's an excellent pbis tier one i love step program um and also the cross country is that through abc yes very good okay and then congratulations on going from within you said some of your new physician staff have been long-term subs or what have you yes congratulations on realizing that that community and knowing your curriculum is important for your staff great presentation thank you it's always nice when we have talent that we can bring up to fill the needs absolutely thank you other questions comments miss bolton yes thank you um as uh who has close friends whose family attends parker woods we're still missing you at parker woods but at any rate um i wanted to ask
060you and maybe this goes to sac a little bit the student achievement committee um you mentioned the montessori curriculum as well as our curriculum or the state standards and i know that's always been an issue about the purity of montessori the requirement of the testing and the state standards that it often is in conflict as we work through that montessori curriculum all that will still have to come to the board for adoption as well as finding a way to interface it with the state standards so i look forward to seeing that that could be you know really be addressing one of those issues in the montessori world the other uh piece you mentioned about montessori training or recruitment again that's been a hard thing for us as many of us think it needs to be
061expanded do you have any particular insights i like this internal thing that you're doing you know growing our own so to speak and and perhaps the city and others don't know that the montessori training here is where i mean people come here to the to uh to greater cincinnati to get that training i think even our secretary of transportation i think his husband came here for that training if i were called correctly so how can we build that up so that we can do maybe some of the expansion that i know mrs bates has been talking about for quite some time do you have any kind of insights as to how we can do this that's a heady question to ask right hey put me on the spot but i i would to be honest
062i know we have a pipeline where our paris can go through i think it's western governor's university and become certified teachers i would love to see something similar maybe through xavier where montessori perez would have that same opportunity to stay in montessori instead of going to western governors getting a teaching degree a traditional teaching degree to actually work with xavier and say you know our montessori repairs are already in the classroom they are true instructional assistance and we have some who when they work with children they they're working side by side with teachers so they already have that understanding and so i i would if possible work something out that way that again it's part of growing our own looking at the talent we have and then giving them the tools to uh go into
063the places that we i think that's a great idea we have that uh ael and alternative uh education license and stuff that's a great idea thank you very much thank you other questions or comments mr messer yes um i think this is the first north avondale presentation since i've been on the board so it's fun to hear you know of course i love hearing about all the schools but it's especially great because as the father of two little north avenue rockets and uh the grand finale coming next year i have to say that i am just in awe of our school every day every single staff member um and you know i think i've learned in the school where do people very sensitive anything becomes about their kids and people have lots of opinions and
064i have never in the past two you know i guess you've been here a year and a half i guess not heard a single negative thing people are so inspired you're part of that unique class of principles that took a building during coven and brought people along and i've i saw a lot of leadership helping people through change in the way you communicate to them your predecessor i think with my first entree in north avondale said one of the things you'll find that's special about this school like other schools in the district but this one almost mirrors the diversity of the city i think that's another piece that i really love and it's it's celebrated in every corner of that building um up into it including even on the field direct field trips but i
065did get to participate in the father's group you just feel like uh great things are happening and um we've had three starts with new teachers so far and affords because we switch part way through the pandemic never did i know who we were getting every single time i've been blown away and special shout out to miss davenport who has lillian now and miss rashna who has olivier who's reading well above his station and i'm very proud of everything that that school has done for all the kids in north avondale and suspicious specifically say thank you for what you're doing for my children well i will just say that it's uh been said it's easy to play quarterback when you have a great team around you and so i i feel blessed to be the quarterback
066on that team and because uh it's hard to be accurate when you're running for your life and so i got a great team i got uh great receivers in the line and um they do good work thank you any other comments mr lindy thanks president jones i'll be very very fast i just want to say thank you for all your work principal corey i think we're lucky to have you and grateful for everything you're doing for north avenuel montessori and for the rest of cbs thank you appreciate that okay well we really appreciate your presentation we love hearing about the great things that our schools are doing and uh um i look forward we all look forward to uh seeing you back here again with another glowing report wishing you much success for the year
067anytime any time i just one last thought on this and i always feel like we're just like diamond to cps and and i should because but as i hear other stories and i hear all the things i talk to other principals especially in meetings and those things get me motivated it's like we're this bright diamond in a tennis bracelet there are a lot of bright diamonds in our in our schools and you know one diamond has its birth but when you put them with all the others the worth just goes up and so uh just fortunate to be in cps and very fortunate to be where i am at north avenue thank you great [Applause] okay so how many speakers do we have two okay because i think i think earlier i forgot to say
068cut it off in five minutes but we have to speak yourself okay we are now at the item on our gender public consistent with state's direction to minimize public gatherings we are convening this video conference called to include opportunity for public comment each speaker will have a speaker we'll have two minutes and we'll direct all comments to the presiding officer consistent with the board's bylaws the board has the ability to limit the hearing of the public on any single issue and will exercise the right to do so if needed once a request to speak has been granted you will be invited to enter 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 want a direct response
069to any questions you might have this request is consistent with board protocol we appreciate your compliance again each speaker will have two minutes and they only speak once when the timer goes off your time is up please refrain from discussing any personnel items after speaking you will briefly see the welcome screen again as you transition back to the live stream meeting we ask that your public commentary be respectful of all those listing in we're ready it's our first speaker this evening is oozie davis go ahead mr davis hey dan thank you very kindly um madam president i love you we um can you hear me yeah you guys i'm very sorry i was gonna call about a few things but i thought it would be much better tonight if i said to you guys we
070love you we thank you we appreciate you you know elective service is not very easy and running a school district like the city of cincinnati public schools is anything but easy so forget what i was calling to say forget no teachers forget how great that presentation on north avenue montessori was forget the uh kudos i wanted to give uh superintendent ahmad and assist superintendent murphy tonight forget all that me and rep jensen would like to say thank you hello everybody it's the state representative cedric denson from the fighting 33rd district just want to thank you for all you all are doing we've been paying close attention and watching everything you do in the coming days we're going to be making the right decisions to make sure that our food system is functioning and has the
071leadership that we need in this community thank you so much for your leadership love you guys god bless you you guys are invited to black political on thursday evening at six o'clock uh at 4 29 i've sent you to our invitations we would love to have you i really really really appreciate you guys y'all know i do god bless you thank you mr davis um our last speaker is cft president truly seller she has not accepted the invitation she say that again she has not he has not accepted the invitation okay well we'll move on okay does anyone have any kudos mr messer yes um this is going back uh just kind of briefly mentioned but one thing i didn't want to miss you know let's face it transportation is not an easy job transporting
072uh a huge percentage of the 36 000 plus kids that we serve and one thing that i took away from the committee the whole meeting was the consultant from the state and i don't think he had to say this but he complimented our team and you know i think that's a thankless job and i thought it was very very important to note that the consultant from osba right complimented them on the work they're doing um some of which was outside of their control and they're doing the absolute best they can so thank you to everyone who's working on the transportation uh topic and that portion of um educating our children you're appreciated and it was so nice to hear those nice words from him and then second um anybody who knows me knows that i'm
073the proud papa of a very strong minded young woman um and uh today is international day of the girl child and um we had a little celebration over breakfast at home this morning to talk about that and the boys were trying to understand olivier specifically well why why would they be treated differently so we talk about that um and as you look at the theme for 2021 a lot is making sure that girls have equal access to technology and information etc and i thought wow i wish every little girl in the world had access to what cps has made available to all of our children with getting devices in the hand and making sure children had access to internet etc obviously that's not the way it is globally it's an important time for us to
074pause and celebrate our little girls and our big girls who once were little girls and do everything that we can do to ensure that we're raised them both at home and within our district to make tomorrow better than today so happy international day of the girl child thank you mr messer other kudos mr lindy i'm sorry that's next okay we're still asking for kudos if anybody has them if not now we'll move on to retirement i i was just worried i had messed up the order so i apologize you're good um i wanted to announce retirements for the evening we have one tonight um this is uh principal harry vol from rosemont condon i wanted to thank him for his career of service to cincinnati public schools and wish him the very best in this
075next chapter thank you very much thank you okay so moving into our board matters items um we have two the first two are uh were put on the agenda by miss bolton and so i'll turn it over to miss bolton uh thank you uh i think we uh for all intents and purposes uh covered the comments about transportation and we look forward to that fact-finding and further uh exploration and discussion uh with the administration about the future as well as the present so i think that's been covered um i just put on the enrollment challenges i mentioned this a couple of weeks ago with the development of immigration and uh refugees from both afghanistan and also uh from south of our border uh as well as uh other places there if i recall the last
076time we had large numbers of immigrants and refugees arriving in the united states many of them came to our school district because this has been a sanctuary city for by the state department and indeed we have seen enrollment increase significantly during those times and i just hope that we are preparing ourselves for that is it uh is a is a challenges and it's a welcome challenge some of us will recall when we did multi-language resolution a few years ago of welcoming folks to our district but also it's come to my attention by some folks too that the archdiocese uh the catholic church uh in greater cincinnati and in a couple of i think three of our counties uh is also reorganizing itself and its reorganization is um it's called beacon and as they are reorganizing
077the south and the southwestern districts of that reorganization fit within our district uh as a school district and one of the things they are i hate to use the word as a presbyterian trying to say this consolidating if you will a number of the parishes together and it will be impacting possibly the local schools within those parishes not that that would necessarily uh cause us to increase our numbers but indeed i would hope that we will and maybe it could be an assignment at the end but i would hope that we would be ready and prepared and have a better understanding of what that means not so much for the high schools but for the elementary schools as well as as it might mean something although the archdiocese has not been that interested in sharing
078their buildings as we've looked at preschool promise and a few other things but there might be some facility issues and there might be some enrollment issues as a result then of that consolidation where they are gathering several parishes together um i think they are calling them families if you will and deciding who's going to be uh the priest and who's going to be the assistants and the staff and what have you so i i think it would be great for us to find out more about that and i would encourage us to do that i would also encourage us to be prepared even if it means dialogue with the state department um regarding refugees coming to greater cincinnati as they come to our district so thank you thank you okay mr lindy i believe you're
079gonna give us an update on the superintendent's search thanks president jones could we bring up one slide okay great thank you very much um we've been able to share a few updates on the superintendent search over the last couple weeks and wanted to share a few updates tonight as well um our whole board believes that community engagement is just critical to the superintendent search and it was one reason why we selected the search firm that we did because they have a particular community particular commitments and a particular expertise when it comes to community engagement in in following their lead we wanted to make community engage central at the very very beginning of the search process even as we're developing the profile for what it is that we're looking for uh we want community voice and
080community engagement to be a central part of that process so we're excited to mention again we've mentioned this in past board meetings it's been on the cincinnati public schools social media pages it's been on our website we wanted to mention it again tonight but there are going to be three community conversations coming up uh two of them are next week and then one of them is in two weeks you can see the dates up here on the slide um it's tuesday and wednesday next week uh we're doing these from six to eight the idea that parents um we didn't want to do them during the work day because we wanted to find time when as many parents could come as possible um and we're trying to be thoughtful about where we hold them so each
081one's going to be in a different location one in the center of cincinnati uh here at the ed center uh one on the west side at roberts academy and one on the east side at schroeder so um please i hope many many many of you will join us uh if you are a member of the news media and watching this i would love for your help in getting this message out there and encouraging folks to attend um and look forward to building a really wonderful diverse and engaged set of sessions to help build our profile for the next superintendent is bolton am i missing anything no sir you did it just great and it's very inclusive and i would well i have one thing and appreciate all the work that you are doing on this
082i think it's very important and i too am excited about the search firm and and the other piece of it too is that there's an interest in not solidifying the profile of either the district or the profile of what our superintendent needs to be and seem like or whatever until we have completed the community input and i think that's that's a very unusual i know it's a departure from what we've done before but it uh it lends itself to proof that the community is going to have a major role to play in this i agree a thousand percent i just forgot a couple things i was supposed to say and i forgot so um in an effort to capture as many voices as possible i just want to highlight a couple things people can attend
083these in person or virtually so if either you can't make it because of the commute or you're thinking about your own personal sense of covet safety whatever there's a way to attend each one virtually in addition if you can't make these at all we also are going to be launching a community-wide online survey and then in addition to that we have some stakeholder groups happening some focus groups with specific members of the cps community teachers parents uh staff members um so lots of ways to gather feedback uh to try to get as many voices okay thank you for that very important announcement and update and uh we we want this to be an exciting time not only for the board but also for the community and i appreciate that you added that community engagement is
084going to be ongoing and that people will have other opportunities as stakeholders in the process to participate so thank you okay so moving on mr marowski i'm gonna ask you to present the resolution did we not wave it though or the 48 hour number one got it um sorry um i'd like to present a resolution to request a waiver for alcohol to be served at an event at woodward career technical high school celebrating melinda tubbs wallace's selection as a cincinnati enquirer woman of the year present the resolution as written okay is there a second second okay any discussion miss wagner please call the roll miss poulton yes mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr master yes mr morosky yes president jones yes thank you okay interim superintendent of mine do you have a report yes
085i do thank you we will start off the report it is school lunch week this week and we are celebrating with our friends at the cincinnati zoo the theme is wild about school lunch and highlights the importance of nutrition for students to be successful in and out of the classroom cps leadership team will visit with a different animal each day and talk to zookeepers about what they like to eat and other fun facts about the animal's diet classrooms will be able to view live segments and will be shared on cps facebook page and the youtube channel daily friday's visit will be live streamed on on facebook 9 45 to 10 a.m with the famous hippo fiona i will be the guest for our wild lunch and then i also want to highlight students from hugh
086stem high school who are enrolled in our zoo academy will be participating in the daily event what a great opportunity night oh it came so quickly october 21st 5 to 7 p.m here at the ed center um representatives from 20 colleges will be available and they will also be assistants for financial aid we will have our quarterly parent meeting on october 13th 5 30 to 7 pm facebook live hosted by our office of family engagement um and hosted by laronda thomas from our office of family engagement and i will also be there to meet parents and answer any of their questions it is the end of the first quarter it ended uh it will end october 15th report cards for the elementary students will be sent home october 22nd on october 27th high school report
087cards will be mailed and i will also like to remind families that there is no class on a no school on november 2nd because of election day and i would like to close out with this absolutely fantastic news we have had a successful implementation of our mandatory staff fascination policy the first in the state of ohio with 99.99 compliance with the policy [Applause] 87 percent of our cps staff is vaccinated 408 newly vaccinated staff as a result of the policy and 12 of our cps staff who participate in weekly testing i want to thank our incredible staff for prioritizing safety and helping keep our classrooms open in person thank you so much that concludes the report along with our my written um superintendent's report submitted for your approval thank you do i have a motion
088to approve the revised superintendent's recommendations got a lot of those is there a second second any discussion yes ms bolton yes thank you just wanted to ask on the revision is that that is in red regarding uh an appointment i think it's on page 10 is that a new um appointment not a new person or a new position or is that the replacement that uh or filling up the uh resignation that occurred earlier this year that is correct it's not a new agreement it's a vacancy thank you very much okay any other discussion okay miss wagner please call the roll miss bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr master yes mr morosky yes president jones yes okay do i have a motion to approve the revised report of the treasurer so second okay
089i believe uh treasurer wagner did you want to add there's apparently another revision yes um there was a typo on page 12. um item b the assured and agency the ending date could read october 31-22 and not june 30. okay everybody note that okay any discussion miss bolton yes just a question on the uh facilities piece and the treasures report i believe on the walnut hills high school dome is that the new dome or the historic domes that is above the library this is the mountain no this is the new in purchasing it um i think the money that we've spent in the past was and i'm not sure if miss alana knows yet but um was on the design in the architectures information and this is the materials beyond that i don't know we'll
090have to get some further information for you did you want to add to that mr horn okay i just wanted to add that that's the rf we did an rfp for a construction manager at risk this is to approve the construction manager at risk subcontracts will be separately approved and uh by the board so as as we get bids in for the smaller or the sub components of the project they'll be approved so the amount that we had in our budget we budgeted six million right the 2.7 million is for materials i think you're referring to the blurb that you put in there yeah that's okay there's also another line item on the bot on the bottom of page four 2.7 million dollars for the construction so that's those these might represent additional costs or
091are they within the cost it's within the budget simple question is it within the budget we made it more complicated i apologize all right any other discussion okay miss wagner please call the roll miss bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer yes mr morosky yes president jones yes okay under inquiries and updates that was actually my item i don't know if it's an update inquiry it probably is an assignment so since assignments follow i'll just go ahead with it um we uh we usually do a tax budget hearing um january in january beginning of the year but it wasn't noted on the calendar so i i wanted to ask the two people who did the calendar if you would just take a look at it see if it makes sense there i
092believe that's the date it says organizational meeting i'm not sure what the daily organizational meeting is but just let me know if that's a date so we can make sure that our staff put it on the calendar and if we need to um formally add it we can do that so if you would follow up on that i'd appreciate that so i guess that's more of an assignment since i'm we're moving into assignment i'll just make that an assignment present yes we ask the treasurer the requirement this is the only budget hearing that i think is required by state law and we usually squeeze it in and it's not necessarily it's a tax budget it isn't any kind of a where people are participating what they want to spend or don't want us right what's
093the time frame if i could ask the treasurer so by the end of january we have to file our tax budget with the hamilton county budget commission when we're required to have a public hearing that you're right is the only requirement that we have on the other hearings we do in the budget is just for engagement this is a requirement and the tax budget is for the auditor to certify that we're bringing in enough resources to make our out pay debt obligations and that's really all that's for and so is it best to do it earliest in january yeah they're usually the second week in january i think is their meeting so we always have to do with that first meeting in january okay all right so if you could verify if that is the
094first meeting make sure that it aligns with whatever we're doing that day okay assignments the assignment we'll just start down the line miss morocco do you have one okay mr lindy go ahead um a little less of an assignment but a very short announcement is that okay okay more of an update go ahead update great um do you want to go first so i just wanted to wish everyone in the cbs community a happy national coming out day today october 11th um i have many fond memories of being in the first group of what we then called the gay straight alliance at walnut hills high school this was back in the late 90s i'm sure there is a group today i imagine its name is a little bit different but i'm very proud to be
095a board member as the equity policy that we have and it really does say everyone should feel a part of our community um regardless of any background including lgbtq background and i would just offer that you know that's our aspiration i think it's another question whether that aspiration is true uh and i think we just want to invite um if people in our community are having experiences that say either yes we're absolutely living up to that standard or no we're not i just hope you'll share that feedback with your teachers with your principals um so that all of us together because i think it's everyone in the district's job um to make sure that we make that aspiration a reality for all kids today um so happy national coming out day uh and thank you
096thank you mr marowski yeah mine was along the same lines as far as an uh update or an announcement um and that would be to recognize in similar fashion but hispanic heritage month um similar to mr lindy's comments uh you know we always welcome feedback are we doing a good job could we do better in places i will say for my part uh i've been on this board going on four years now and in those four years i have seen a tremendous amount change for the better regarding our hispanic community and this is along the lines of miss bolton was talking about this as well we had a number of immigrants at the beginning of this calendar year that were coming into our district i know we did a lot of work in the summer
097time with folks i know that we have put immigration attorneys in buildings to work with families i'm proud of that work but again if we can do better please let us know if you think we're doing great let us know but i wanted to similar to mr lindy recognized hispanic heritage month and say uh we're glad you're with us and while i used to be quasi-proficient at spanish i'm not going to insult any of our community members by trying to do it tonight so thank you so much thank you any other updates oh was that an assignment no this is not me oh okay no more updates all right assignments yes um it's terribly mundane after those two um but back to back to a specific request to the superintendent to have a list and
098it doesn't have to be names but it should be numbers and positions by schools that are long-term sub-positions that are currently uh in effect i think we heard some very interesting uh internal promotions so to speak or pipeline work uh kind of knowing that uh and it would be great to have that list again i don't need names but i do need the numbers per school of long-term subs um that would be great thank you okay thanks any other assignments are we sure having no other business i declare the meeting adjourned