CPS Board of Education — August 4, 2021

001this mrs bowers mr lindy yes mr messer mr morosky president jones yes 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 questions you might have also we are providing a new feature tonight throughout the meeting there will be opportunity to respond to a couple of poll questions and we ask that you look for the um the announcement of the poll and that you respond to those poll questions using your cell phone now am i correct about that cell phones gotcha okay thank you okay so i think our first presentation

002um is from um the superintendent of mine if you could introduce um miss trimble oliver safety presentation yes we will have a safety update our chief strategy officer trevor temple oliver will be leading this presentation thank you can you pull up the safety thank you good afternoon um so last month we presented um some recommended changes to the district safety plan so today we are bringing back two of these items for further discussion and those are the last two shown here which is quarantining of closed contacts and mask requirements first for mask requirements we do have one new update to share which is um was a new update from the cdc from july 27th which followed their first update on july 9th so very quick updated information where the cdc is recommending universal indoor masking

003for all teachers staff and students and visitors and schools just a reminder the american academy academy of pediatrics also recommended that all students and staff were masked as well as when we presented previously ohio house bill 244 which says that a school district may not require a student employee to be vaccinated also says that a district may not um require unvaccinated individuals to take precautionary measures that vaccinated individuals are not required to take so somewhat of an all-or-nothing mass guidance so from the administration's point we do still recommend mask requirements for everyone and now for a new update um um from miss bunty's recent meeting with the health department the health department has um agreed to a recommendation that if a student has been identified as a closed contact from us from a school exposure

004that the student may continue to attend school while free of coded symptoms if a student does develop symptoms the student will need to quarantine at home and this recommended change will be very closely monitored to make sure that it doesn't impact our in-school transmissions or other safety data that we are measuring and so that is a new recommended recommendation that we are bringing forward to you today for discussion and so that does conclude the health and safety update okay um well we we are going to introduce the resolution because we can discuss the resolution and the thing as part of the presentation of the resolution if that's okay um did you have a question about that ms bolton i have a question about safety issues okay so you want to have a discussion before we

005introduce the resolution right now i have a question of the administration okay go ahead but i just wanted to say because i i'm a little bit confused about the format i didn't know if because it was listed under the presentation i just assumed that the discussion would occur but i'm fine with your question yeah i think that go ahead discussion would be great uh part of the resolution i have a question though from a standpoint on the safety on the distancing of requirements can you describe more about the distancing both in the transportation and also uh in school sure so um in classrooms and in schools um it's a we are still striving for six feet where possible um with a minimum of three feet in classrooms um on buses um there is uh we

006are placing um two or three students per bus seat um which is per the usual capacity um on buses yes go ahead so we are not reducing the number of students on the yellow buses correct great okay thank you appreciate that okay any other questions or comments go ahead mr messick hello um it's gonna be back it's gone for a couple of weeks uh on vacation so just uh back in trying to make sure that i'm caught up with all the latest and greatest could you just clarify where we sit today as it relates to staff vaccinations so um the last data that we have in the health department was that we are um above seventy percent of staff vaccinations what is it seventy seventy above seventy percent oh and and so it might understand

007that there is not a mandate for those who are not vaccinated to be vaccinated correctly um you know i i think uh there's another variant that now seems to be even worse that was they just came out i'm sure you saw that the lambda area um you know i was listening on the way back to uh some press conferences that were happening around new york and some were about schools some are about public institutions etc and i thought one of the recommendations was fascinating um in that a um they they they weren't requiring people to take a or to get the vaccine but if they chose not to then they would agree to a weekly testing um and so i would be interested in the thoughts of the sport and the administration on something like

008that because um you know i'm all for choice at the same time i'm thinking about my kids and all the other kids across this district who then have the opportunity to transfer it back to families who are at high risk um so i just wanted to bring that one forward to something to be considered um that if we are not going to mandate um then i believe we should ask for that testing and then part two and i mentioned this back when we uh had the discussion several weeks back but i would want to be notified as a parent if the person sitting in front of my children all day has been vaccinated or not and so did we determine if that was something that was possible um given hipaa and everything else um that

009i could be assured that when my kids are in a classroom now of course they're going to be masked whether we change our mass policy that's in existence today or not my kids will be in a mask um even still i want the person in front of them to be vaccinated or i'd want to know if they're not going to be so um was that something we found that we could inform families i am not sure that we have looked into that um that possibility uh but we could we can do that if you'd like to have that assignment thank you mr marowski so just to clarify mr oliver because i think ryan's suggestion is sound about the unvaccinated temperature checks but we cannot do that because of new state law correct um that is

010definitely something we would have to research whether we could do that um and still comply with that new house still 244 okay miss bolton yes um in the agreement in part with mr messer on on that would like to have an update if possible as to what the state of ohio would allow us to do or not allow us to do uh and the the the status of legislation and rules and regulations because obviously this varies apparently from state to state unfortunately we don't we don't live in florida or texas and you know as much as we say bad things sometimes about columbus at least it's not it's not uh well i better not go there um the the other the other question i have is on the vaccination piece do we have that by

011sight or by school or is that an aggregate district-wide because that to me and i don't know if we're allowed to not us know it but allow for you to know it i think that would be important as we move forward to know what it looks like side by side i believe that we we only get the information from the health department we don't have the specifics and i don't believe we have it by sight that's right we don't have it by sight but if we have the names we do not have names we only have a percentage we have an overall percentage we have it by employee group no nothing but some of these sound a little less and less significant to me miss powers yes and and maybe um our general counsel can

012clarify that you can't see it isn't there some confidentiality or legal issues around reporting people's uh vaccine status mr horns coming down to the mic uh yes the answer to your question is yes there are confidentiality rules regarding um protected health information with respect to the previous question about the current state of ohio uh statute that um as i understand what's been passed is a law that says schools may not mandate that vaccines mandate that persons presumably employees or students must be vaccinated prior to the vaccine receiving full fda approval additionally the statute says that schools cannot discriminate against persons who have been vaccinated or not vaccinated with respect to programs that they're allowed to participate in or requirements such as masking or not masking so uh there's a specific reference in the statute to

013prohibit schools from discriminating on vaccinated versus unvaccinated persons i hope that's helpful miss bolton so things could change upon the approval of fda which some people say is going to be happening in mid-september or thereabouts under the current legislation that was passed yes it would make a difference whether it was approved by the fda high hopes for that to happen yeah i mean that'll shift a lot of the decisions that districts and other places would need to make could i ask one more question about the students uh what is our regiment what is our plan to help our teenagers uh get vaccinations uh in a in a kind of a quick and comprehensive way um so that as they return to school uh it's a opportunity and i believe susan bunty is making her way

014down to the mic good evening we will continue to partner with our health department and offer vaccination clinics so as you may remember in right before the end of the school year we sponsor vaccination clinics at every high school site we anticipate being able to do that again and we're also working closely with our athletic department to provide vaccination clinics to our athletes hold on second uh miss balance yes thank you um assistant superintendent bunty i think previously there was i had an inquiry of or somebody did about the percentage of students do we know that i know we had we had information for students that were vaccinated on our site but we were going to check with the health department about additional students so we can get a number of students who may be

015um totally vaccinated in our in our schools correct that number we do not yet so as our students return to us in august we are hoping that we can get that information from the vaccinations that occurred over the summer and our nurses will be entering that information so maybe by the beginning of september i'll have a number that i can miss morales would it be a correct assumption since we did such a in my opinion at least a good job partnering with our friends to take care of the high school kids that when that the younger the younger kids vaccines available that we would follow a similar model yes very much so and continued repetition of those clinics as well yes other questions comments for the administration okay uh mr marowski please present the resolution

016thank you president jones um as folks will remember when we talked we talked about this in policy and as a full board and this body uh elected to not make changes to the mass squaring policy so this resolution simply just puts it down on paper and makes it official so there's no question i present a resolution to maintain the requirement to wear masks at the start of the 2021-22 school year that's policy 5321 i present the policy as written is there a second okay any discussion miss powers yes i just want to clarify maybe and discuss a little bit the last sentence of that um um resolution can you read that very last sentence of board member morowsky be it further resolved the board of education may consider suspending or rescinding the mandatory mass policy

017should the transmission of covet 19 significantly decrease and if all students become eligible for vaccine can we be more concrete with that when you say eligible doesn't actually mean they get vaccinated so i mean that's thing you know what i mean when i'm why i'm asking that eligible because like teenagers are eligible now but we know i have percentage or not um so does that go together or does that seem like there are some variants that need to be a little bit more concrete and they are are we okay with just saying eligible eligible doesn't mean that they're gonna get it i'm okay with it but i i'm kind of married to this yeah if you want if you want to offer a suggestion feel free um when the numbers decrease i think it's part

018of it right in our in our county so it would have to be two things it's not a it's not an or it's an and that the transition to covet would have to significantly decrease and all students become eligible because right now since we're only emergency status with vaccine we can't very well put get vaccinated no i was thinking about a percentage of our of our student population that's what i was thinking um i don't know that we can understand i don't know but i'm just thinking that eligible doesn't we it's similar to what what's going on with our teenagers they're eligible but we know probably a high percentage or not um so i'm thinking that if that's not the case the numbers may not go down so it'll just be ongoing prolonged but i

019mean i it just seems pretty variable not really it can stay like that i just thought that that was interesting it was written eligibility means something different than just offer a thought i i think what you may be referencing this bowers is the implementation piece of it that i think what i'm hearing is that you want at least some assurances that we're encouraging students and helping students to become vaccinated if they want so i i would say the word eligible is fine because we know that there's going to be some sort of information implementation plan that helps the students get vaccinated if they want it is that am i paraphrasing that right or it is it's just it's a caveat that's what i'm saying too and the numbers are lower and the eligible okay yeah

020because that's not really wrong to me but okay i got it yeah okay any any other any further discussion oh i'm sorry mr lindy thanks president jones i i would just love to hear from the administration either the interim superintendent or someone on the team how they feel about the resolution based on what cyber shared with the latest research from the cdc uh ohio health department and american pediatrics i think it's aligned with research to keep the masking policy in place um i do have a terrifying question i'm looking on the powerpoint so we can be explicit about outdoor masking where are we there so we can be clear for the public so our recommendation is to follow the cdc guidance and not have a mask requirement outdoors we you said we do not we

021would not have a mastermind outdoors okay i think that's great and i just i was inclined to support this because it's consistent with everything i'm reading it's also great to know that it's something the administration is proposing not us telling you all what you have to do but you leading on what you think the right thing to do is thank you miss bolton yes and uh knowing that many of our athletes and other extracurricular folks have uh already started maybe the superintendent can address that i know that's been shared with the families and maybe you could talk a little bit more about the extracurricular uh plan for not just masking the attendance and what have you are you referring to the other safety protocols like temperature checks i'm not sure i understand your question yeah

022the safety protocols obviously followed outside for athletics and and perhaps field trips or whatever yes but then also i know the athletic department has shared with uh families um about attendance and about mass wearing at the at the games and other festivities so the biggest um decision factor is indoor and outdoor so if it's outdoor masking is not required if it's indoor it is so that both the same for after school programming that goes the same for recess um or in classrooms so whether it's indoor or outdoor we are following those both guidelines and in support of those guys great and then and then people will be allowed to attend their uh students uh festivities and games this year i know we had the kabush on that yes so we um miss murphy and i

023were just discussing this today um and being able to announce um what the what the fan and spectator um safety guidelines will be um if for indoor there will likely be a capacity uh limit uh but we're excited to announce that very soon thank you further discussion roger wagner please call role ms bolton hi mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer mr morosky yes president jones yes okay so the next um superintendent of my you could introduce the second um presentation yes uh we have a transportation update and senator clinton oliver will be leading that presentation as well so um tonight we are sharing a significant challenge that we are experiencing with our metro transportation services cps as you all know has partnered with sorta for many years to provide cincinnati students with transportation

024services via the metro public transportation this is especially critical for our high school students because we are a district with high school of choice for the students that attend school outside of their own neighborhood metro has created extra service routes to supplement their regular service routes and that minimizes the number of transfers for students getting to and from school the extra service routes also help with the difficulty of supervising children who are arriving at school and leaving school at dispersed times in july cps learned of service changes that sorta is proposing for next school year due to a national driver shortage specifically sorta has announced the elimination of the extra service routes we spent the last few weeks trying to understand this impact and exploring other potential solutions cps has issued a strong objection to

025eliminating the extra service routes and urging metro to maintain or reinstate the extra service routes florida has announced a public meeting for comment uh which is actually tomorrow from four to six it will now be a virtual meeting uh that anyone can attend and join via the metro website cps is proceeding with plans for opening of school on august 19th families will still be receiving bus cards through the normal channels in anticipation of a resolution as well as orientations at the high schools which do include a metro attendance at the orientations about how to navigate metro's services safely and finally this challenge with the metro services does not affect any of the yellow bus service and that concludes the presentation okay so as we open up for questions or comments i'd like to ask miss

026uh bolton if she ms bolton inherited the task of sort of spearheading the conversations about it in my absence last week i'm going to ask her to give some brief updates as needed and then we'll open up for questions or comments thank you uh i believe that uh oliver took care of kind of the historical piece in those many years actually represents at least three decades maybe four depending upon whom you speak to regarding extra routes uh the extra routes are available to the general public which allows this to continue and use that for these many years but generally they are filled with our high school students uh particularly seven through 12 for our 15 high schools but also something that keeps getting lost is that it refers also to charter schools as well for

027those grades and also some parochial schools as well that are within our district so what we're really talking about is when the extra routes have been recommended to be removed and actually we as was mentioned were told in july a month before school would open that this and many decades of practice would end uh the reality is that that struck a nerve probably with all families that have teenagers whether they go to cps or the archdiocese in parochial schools or charter schools the concerns that have been raised over the time both have emanated as well from the county commission and individual board members school board members uh have expressed concern and our administration our superintendent has sent a very very important letter to the ceo of metro and so for some weeks now two weeks

028perhaps metro has known that this is in all likelihood unacceptable and that we view this as dangerous and untimely and untimely at best because it is so soon to the opening of school the reason that was stated and i appreciate it is that the worldwide bus driver shortage whether it's metro or yellow bus or special bus or what have you is is a critical problem but also metro has now stated publicly uh that it is not the issue that is making them think about eliminating our routes and they have actually said that publicly so that's a change in their understanding or in their representation the issue for us as we return from covid is that we are thinking in terms of this as an issue for not only reduction in instruction or the tardiness of

029students or the need for multiple transfers but the other reality is it makes a very big difference from our issue of dismissal dismissal at these high schools would be a major problem that someone would have to address because of the numbers of kids in dismissal and i know we're going to be talking about that as we discuss the resolution that there are any numbers where we are taking all this time to make sure our kids are covered safe we're now mixing them with the general population instead of with the kids that we know are coming to and from our schools so there's a great issue because the sort of board was apparently based upon individual comments to the press and also in conversations uh the reality is that the sort of board was taken and

030blindsided as much as we were and now the issue is there's no time to change this and that's been the response i think the superintendent has heard and i'm anxious to hear the superintendent's summary of this as we go through this but the reality is it's never too late to do the right thing and it's never too early or too late to avoid what will happen by all expert views at least at the sites where our children are educated we will have to be changing this within a week of starting it in part because of the issues raised by our kids and our efforts so this is a to me sorta's need is our vendor our vendor has told us they cannot meet our needs and we are responding with the fact we need you

031to meet our needs on behalf of the kids so uh the reality is the leadership and the board were made aware of this later in july too late to um talk in terms of a formal meeting this is our first formal meeting since that time business meeting and so we are taking action tonight based upon what we have heard and if if you look at if people are worried about the time to get something done uh of course if you work eight to five there probably isn't enough time but in the crisis i don't know any serious public agency that doesn't work the hours that it needs to to resolve this kind of problem and i'm hopeful that we can continue this effort together thank you okay so we'll uh we'd like to open up

032for questions or comments from board members miss bowers yes thank you um board member vulture for that review you touched on a lot of points that i was going to make especially with the instructional time i spoke to a lot of parents over this last weekend we're very concerned about the safety of our students i'm concerned about pedestrian safety with this situation especially in some of our large campus sites that we've identified already issues um and then the responsibility of um supervising students at bus stops and mass numbers that dismiss or even having to stagger dismissals if that's the case that's still loss of instructional time so um and who's responsible for that how this will be a community issue um based uh on the number of students transferring back and forth between government square

033i can't imagine what that would be like even for um our police department we're talking about police and children relations that's a bigger issue so this erects a whole bunch of of possibilities that i am not happy about at all um so i am um very disgruntled about the situation of my heart is hurting about just thinking about a 13 year old first time and then one parent explained to me this weekend that she and her family might can bring her children back and forth to school but when we talk about families who are single-parent families who don't have that option uh that's disenfranchisement with um a high population of our students who are struggling already and then their families and then trying to get the school and parents relying on them to do so

034i'm having to learn this different they can impede on even their uh quality of life as work working parents so this is um this is a catastrophe across the board mr marowski just second and third everything miss powers ms bolton said as unacceptable and tenable situation yeah i do my best to empathize we're metro users uh our family and certainly appreciate their partnership with us and if they you know are having hard times obviously empathize with that but if this is a service they want to take away we need at least a year to figure that out certainly not three weeks um i do have a couple questions and um i would also like to say how much i appreciate interim superintendents um stance and um the past week on this and leading us um

035through this what is i thought we had seen a lot of messes the past year and a half but this one this one may very well take the cake um so we are going to get an update he said from the superintendent eve okay then i then i won't ask you any questions um yet um because i was gonna ask for an update um so a couple a couple first one only two questions really for now the one is i've heard the same thing miss bolton that the driver shortage piece may not be the thing so what is it that's what i can't figure out can i i don't know that i have a real answer but i can tell you that i got the impression when i spoke with um their board chair that's

036somewhere in this early convert in the early conversations that there were other options but now i believe that metro is holding with this this is the only option thing and so i agree with you that that maybe we need to pursue that a little bit more if there were options um so and i'm i'm not going to add to that only to say that and then i'll make my comments after you have your chance to finish yeah i appreciate it i just that's the one the the one piece i can't seem to get an answer about is the driver shortage the other the other question i've had in my head that i can't seem to pin down is if it was a driver shortage this is the other side of that coin when did metro

037become aware that that might have it does anybody know that there might be a driver shortage just to give my quick update i would like to say that uh the ceo of metro and myself did have a conversation um in that conversation i specifically asked what were all the options proposed the response was to maintain the service or to eliminate the extra routes so there were no other options really but to maintain or eliminate the extra extra ounce um in that discussion i made it clear that we would love to restore as soon as possible because of the short notice and really advocating for our families and students in that discussion um i did direct several oliver to meet with uh their ceo and um she can give an update from from there so yesterday

038i did meet um with the metro administrative team and um it was discussed that cps is strenuously objecting and urging the return of the extra service routes um even despite uh the challenges with driver shortages it was indicated to me yesterday that that is the root cause is the driver's shortages and the subsequent disruption to service that they experienced last spring with our extra service routes and not being able to cover all of the trips last spring due to driver shortages the metro administrative team indicated that they will have discussion with their board about redesigning the routes being able to restore the possibility of being able to restore the extra service routes at that time it was not indicated that that is something that could be achieved before the start of school go ahead mr

039morasson thank you mr mueller thank you president jones um that's helpful so it sounds like the driver's shortage then was known about it this spring at the least which would explain why we had the woes that we had kind of what i intuited but i didn't want to assume and so it's nice to hear that there might be an ability to do it but that may not be in time for the start of school my brain immediately goes to delaying the start of school um i don't think we can start school with this bus service but if it is possible i'd love to know how long it would take them to do it and why why it would take extra extra time than say like two weeks not it's not because i don't believe them

040i'm just curious like what that process looks like and if we can be helpful in it i just want to just as far as the delaying of school if i can address that yes i think we need to start school on time um but can you talk about a timeline was it a two week or was it what did they share with you what was shared yesterday it was likely to be a several month long redesign process uh for all of their routes um one challenge is that um there it's not as the one challenge that was expressed to me is it's not as simple as restoring last year's extra service routes because we had many high schools changed to a healthy start time so it was a redesign and hence why it would um

041take several months i'll be done they'll shut up i promise i certainly don't want to i was thinking a couple weeks i certainly don't want to delays for a few months i don't even want to use the the v word uh the the v word virtual but i just i just have bad visions of starting the school year in two weeks with this current plan uh miss bolton i have to listen carefully and i appreciate sarah trimble oliver having kind of having to relay such a message uh from from metro um that's absurd that it would take several months to do this we might have to get the people that helped them a couple of years ago when we had this kind of resistance to changing routes where we actually had people in the community

042that could do it better and faster than we were able to get the metro people to do it and that's because they don't have the will to do it my concern about this is at the start of school this will be more than disastrous it will be catastrophic and i'm interested in knowing how many of our students at our high schools dismiss at a particular time into price hill college hill walnut hills i really want to know that because i think we need some visual images of more than several hundreds of kids standing on madison road waiting for the next bus where we do not have jurisdiction you talk about us having to supervise or our teachers or our administrators or our security people going out we can't even direct traffic legally so what does

043that mean that means cincinnati police department is going to be managing our children and they will be in the hundreds waiting for the next bus now that's unacceptable that's unacceptable people don't understand that there are 10 buses waiting or 13 buses waiting or that there are dozens and dozens and hundreds of kids in particular zip codes that can be returned to their home and now they're waiting for oh they have enough bus drivers that we can have 500 kids waiting on belmont avenue for the next bus well that seems like even more drivers so this is a false statement from them and i'm encouraged that sarah was at least able to hear them say well we'll have to see what our board wants us to do meaning the sort of board and finally i on

044the start of school i come somewhere in the middle of that we have to assure people that this is not about yellow bus it's not about our vans it's not about our ambulances that bring our children to school it's about metro it's about 7 through 12. my point is if we're starting on the 19th there's no reason why the little people using yellow bus can't start and then indeed the high school people start maybe that monday or maybe that tuesday i know that's a bad message but let me tell you what the worst message is going to be explaining the police officers with our kids supervising them as they wait for another bus that's the image that's much worse than us losing two days of in person or three days in person for four days

045and in person for our high schoolers and i and i think there's a change just real quickly too waiting for everybody and that's the seventh and eighth graders is there a state law that's about to be passed or be instituted for september about 7th and 8th graders why do i recall hearing that from the administration yes the biennial budget that was passed this summer included a prohibition without permission of transporting students in grades k to eight at charter or non-public schools on metro mass transit so somewhere in september that's supposed to hit i think or it's yeah i think the effective date is uh imminent it's so in september the charter and the parochial kids aren't that are seventh and eighth grade unless their parents say it's okay unless the school okay so that's going

046to be a change and we need to okay well that's just one more ripple okay mr lindy the start date until uh monday would that be with the idea that we'll have more information on what that looks like but for the two i'm trying to get clarity of the prolonged two days my experience with other times that we've been worrying about metro and these people are great people they work hard we've had great partnership but right now the issue is not whether or not this can be done this is not chalkboard and file cards this stuff is computerized this stuff is there it's happening you might the terrible thing is the entering the the entering of the particular names and addresses the routes are there what have you my point is i think it would

047be worth it to delay by a few days or whatever not so much that i don't think they can do this technical stuff but that it would take us extra time to inform our public and our families that's the thing i think can take time and we have to be able to inform them of something worth implementing because if we say yes to this and this goes forward people will hold us responsible because legally if i understand we're so we're a loco parenthesis on the way to and from school so can i just get clarity yes um we're not saying delay school for a quarter okay that's that's okay and and even from a high school standpoint only not the little people not all those folks because you know we've helped subsidize all those salaries

048at yellow bus to make sure that they were able to keep their stable if you will so uh metro also let's face it is in the midst of a of a negotiation the labor negotiations all the things that could be troubling them are coming and falling on our children okay so uh mr lindy get you in and then i also want to comment thanks president jones um i just wanted to share that from my perspective this also feels incredibly concerning uh and it feels incredibly concerning because you know i have concerns about what's age appropriate for middle school students and high school students i share all the concerns about safety and about transfers and about what dismissal looks like uh i'm also particularly concerned about the timing of when all this happened uh i do

049think that there are any number of things that we could prepare for in the long run that are impossible to prepare for in three weeks i also this was a comment that i think member bolton made to me earlier uh which was that if it is true that there's a driver shortage they're making choices about how to allocate that shortage and they're choosing what to eliminate and what they're choosing to eliminate are the bus routes for children and those are choices uh and i disagree with those choices absent some other information yet so i just wanted to share my my support i think for the overall position where people are um i also think to the administration i wanted to say two things um one is to um to the extent that i can offer

050some empathy for how hard this must be uh because this is not a challenge that you all created uh and the second thing is we also have to figure it out uh and i think what i wanted to ask you all was and if there's a presentation coming and we want to talk about this later fine but the big thing i'm asking is like how are we going to fix this um and so i'd love to hear uh what the current thinking is on that in any way if before you respond if i could add to it i agree with everything that everybody has said i am in strong opposition to what they're offering us it it feels like well it has it doesn't feel like it the reality is we were dealt a hand

051that we now have to play and the question is how do we play it we still have to get kids to school and and i hear the suggestion about delaying but i'm not sure what what what would we accomplish by delaying it and and i'm maybe i'm just not understanding it clearly about what the outcome of that here regardless of what the problem is and we know what the problem is okay we don't have that we don't have any options for buses but we have to be proactive in thinking and moving forward whether we delay class or whatever that is what we need to know from real concrete next steps that include community and community messaging communication around what's going to happen next all of that and that's the key that's the only piece that's

052missing for me it's not that we took a strong position we did but for me it is what what are we gonna do we have to do something even if we say delay school well what are the implications of that what is what is the impact of that and and and so i'm that's kind of where i am with it not really knowing you know all of the concerns that people have expressed about safety and security those are all real it's going to take us we're going to have to beef up to make sure that kids are safe and all that we can't do that but so i get all of that but i i i believe that there we have to also take control of our own situation to some extent and i just

053don't have a good sense of where we are with it we we're talking about all the things that have gone wrong so what are we talking about that's going to feel right to us and then my last comment i see your hand as well my last comment is um just trying to keep my ear and i think all of us are doing that to the pulse of the community i'm not really hearing a lot of opposition against us so we know that it's not our fault which says to me that there may be a silver lining somewhere with our public so how do we engage the public around what appears to be positive i want to know how many plan to send their kids on the bus with the past i don't want kids who

054are who have special needs or i or on ieps or something i don't want them transferring at all if they don't have to but but if that's the reality then we need to know what supports are we going to provide to these kids and families if that's needed so that feels a little more concrete to me and so i'm going to be quiet but um miss bolton go ahead i i completely agree about that we have to have some sort of plan and i know the administration's been trying to work through contingencies yeah because to mrs bauer's uh point uh earlier and previously we have to get the kids to school and right now there's a monopoly called metro but it is a monopoly that is paid for by tax dollars it's supposed to be

055serving the community they passed a historic historic level that we all supported and this is the answer to the children of this area now the concrete thing is i hope that maybe this is an administration assignment but my hope is that when we leave tonight we not only have passed this resolution of refusal if you will but also have asked the administration to uh author a letter from the board of cincinnati schools to the board of sorta because apparently only the sort of board and the 13 or so people that serve on it can tell mr haley what needs to be done that's apparently the message is that the lord wants to tell him it's time for the sort of board who got blindsided just like we did and i think to to mr lindy

056i think it was mr lindy saying it and and youtube president jones this issue is we're prepared to make changes indeed the whole new cps indeed the reorganization of how we want to have our programming and whatever but you don't do it in three weeks and you don't do it because of the catastrophe you do it with a lot of planning and thinking we're happy to do all that but this is unacceptable i hope we have a letter that is very clear and also very graphic about what this metro is actually advising yeah can i if i can respond i see you if i can respond i i i if the will of the board is to send a pretty strong letter i'd support that but i also think there's also an opportunity to say

057let's deal with the realities of this and so the the very open honest transparent conversation can also happen sort of one-on-one i mean we there's also an option for us to sit down leader to maybe and i'll just throw it out there as an idea um their board chair with our board leadership miss bolton you've been involved with it so you would be there because uh i'm gonna be gone you know so you you this is still your task with um superintendent ahmad and sitting with their board chair mr haley and have this conversation with them i don't know i don't know what what the uh resolution would be but is it going to be in a form of a letter and what are we hoping that they would give us and my feeling about

058that is they would give us another letter in response instead of verbally hashing this out so i would suggest that but whatever the board decides to do it's the will of the board mr marowski thank you president jones the first thing was to respond to your question about the delaying school and i'll speak for me not necessarily miss bolton um you know i think it might have been the same reason for me the reason i suggested it when before i thought it was a couple months was to give them time to get their routes back so we just don't start school with this plan um but if that's untenable and again if it's months long process and that doesn't seem tenable the second thing with the letter to your point kind of combining something you

059said with miss bolton in her letter i don't know what you were thinking but uh my in my head that letter needs to go to sort of ahead of their meeting tomorrow into your opinion president jones um you know the public opinion does appear very strongly on in our favor on this uh side of the issue and i think i think strongly worded but also like we need to figure this out for our kids and again the language that mr lindy has used is used repeatedly i think they're very powerful and i think will resonate with those appointed people um on the sort of board um that they have made choices and the choices they made impact our kids negatively agree any other questions or comments any next steps i i'm not hearing um sort

060of how we move forward with this and other than the recommendation for the letter mr messer yeah and i'll just say i mean a lot of this happened as i left for vacation and i thought this just doesn't even seem possible that that you would have this kind of change you know schools are starting you know when we were on our trip we saw schools we're starting like this week next week kids are going back and to get this kind of notification that affects thousands of families across the city and i know i'm saying the same thing but we just i mean some of the most ardent supporters of that levy were us and our families because of the services they provide to the district etc and the power to upgrade those services etc that

061was going to affect the city and everything else it just makes zero sense what happened and um you know i i personally love the idea of uh having miss bolton um with interim superintendent ahmad sitting down i think it would be good to be proactive of us having that conversation in addition to putting our thoughts on paper as a collective board but to sit with them to understand a little bit more of um you know versus you know kind of everything happening out here face to face eye to eye is there any sort of possibility here um at the same time um i don't know if we can do a uh mass text mass whatever to our families with this link for tomorrow but you know they might be there for 24 hours uh getting

062public comment um and i think it would be very powerful to engage our families and the people who depend on this uh into the process because as a parent no i don't have high school kids and you know we're within the distance that we'd be driving anyway but i don't know if we've seen any type of communication out to those families um who are impacted but what i've heard is is there anything we can do well i think this is the first thing they could do is let their voices be heard um so i would say three things i think we should have a letter from the board i think having a uh meeting with miss bold and miserable with their or sharing leadership maybe invite the press to to come and listen to the

063discussion you know we've had some of these roundtable discussions when we do done public work but you know i i think uh having those things and then i think we have to uh engage our families to let them know how they can let their voices be heard because i don't know about you but i've gotten tons of emails unfortunately there's i'm not on the sorta board so somehow we have to make sure that we show them who they can share you know you know the one email i got today mr messer can you please forward this on to the sorter board well i can do that but at the same time i think we have to help connect the dots so that they can hear from the community but it is it is absolutely outrageous

064uh that this happened uh and especially outrageous it with the lack of uh notice etc and um i believe these conversations should happen um so you just offered three very concrete steps one is to do the letter and as i understand the letter should go out the request is that the letter go out before their meeting tomorrow that if they should receive it before their meeting tomorrow secondly is let's talk about and this is more i want to say out in the far future but in the near future maybe next week to sit down leadership to leadership administration administration and um as you all know i won't be here miss bolton that that is your task i would like to be kept in the loop as i'm sure mr messer would in my absence but

065um to do a meeting regarding that and then third the communication to families to um ask their support in and and to tell them what's going on about this meeting or whatever but also communicating with families about what the next steps are school starts in a minute there have to be there has to be decisions made if if we delay there has to be decisions made if there's any changes there has to be decisions made if families have questions and concerns about their bus routes because not everybody's going to tap into the acts and all of that so we have to prepare for the for an onslaught i say onslaught may not be that much and then the other question that i have uh the other statement that i want to make is uh given

066that the students will still have bus passes we have to be let's be real some of the kids are going to come to school by a bus and we need to know i would like to know at some point i don't know how we monitor that but i would like to know are kids using that the bus routes i mean for future knowledge and conversation and planning we need to know if the kids are or are not catching the bus and and is it impacting our enrollment if kids are not showing up it's because they're not catching the buses this is information that i would like to know so it sounds like we have three concrete um steps right are we good with that then mr lindy i mean i i uh i think i

067am inclined to agree with everything i would just like to hear from the administration i mean does this feel right to you is there any do we make your life more difficult by doing any of this would you want to move in a different direction i absolutely support all three next steps from a letter so i will work with crystal boyle and dan hoing in crafting that letter to get out in time thursday morning i'm in full support of um a second notification to our families we did provide a notice to our families as soon as we heard when we sent the press release and when i sent my letter directly to the ceo so we can send something out again and then i'm open to a face-to-face meeting with board ceo and also possibly

068that's where we are miss bowers in alignment with um you president jones your comments around um having a plan um did their good administration also have a in lieu of these are the supports and these are the um security measures or collaboration or whatever has to happen to make sure our students are supervised or if it you know in lieu of not being able to uh move faster yes we have put together a task force made up of principles our transportation and sarah tumble oliver is leading that tax force will there need to be any collaboration with the police department um we could yes okay thank you okay all right miss bolton yes to miss power's point of view and again she's really been thinking far ahead on this whole neighborhood impact uh from the

069very beginning it might another step might be that our administration actually reach out to the city administration because it will fall to the city administration to supervise this if god forbid this goes forward and i it can't go forward but and keep in mind that's not just ours the city of cincinnati but our other municipalities and townships that might be impacted as well so i think that could be a fourth step with both the mayor of course and but most particularly the chief of police mr master yeah so um i know there was i saw just in trying to catch up at least one of our commissioners commissioner reese was public about her comments um and i think the other question i have is you know if you think about how that board is constructed

070is it 11 appointed by the commissioners the right anybody i don't know the numbers it's uh five and six the i think the commission has like six of them and the city council i think has five and then there are three that are appointed from outside the city not exactly is it so my question is um and i know some of those people on that board who are fantastic people that i cannot believe that i mean i'm shocked that they would have done on a couple of them i'm shocked that they didn't give me the heads up that some of this stuff was coming but my question is you know they are uh appointed by these other bodies would it be possible to also ask those other bodies to give a resolution that they believe

071that this is uh wrong for our city wrong for our children especially after the work that everybody came together past that levy could we ask some of our friends at city council you know many of them are cps parents or grads um i think the majority of our our commissioners have ties to cps yeah um and so could we get them to also do resolutions and i think having these bodies do a resolution who appoints these people would show that look this is the right thing to do so maybe that would be the fourth item is to ask for a resolution from our council uh partners and our commissioner partners okay thank you we we have four solid recommendations if we're ready to present the resolution we're gonna move forward uh miss bolton would you

072present the resolution gladly is there an interest in everyone reading parts of it or do you want to just go with the resolution and pass this thing go with the resume there you go that's the spirit i think we've said everything that's in it already thank you uh i appreciate this opportunity since i public schools a resolution opposing the elimination of metro extra service routes for cincinnati students and again that is not cps but cincinnati students it's more inclusive than saying cps i appreciate that title i propose and hope for passage for the sake of our kids is there a second okay any discussion about the resolution treasurer wagner miss bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer yes mr moroski yes president jones yes thank you okay so we're at the item

073on the agenda preparing the public i just wanted to remind our public that uh throughout the meeting we will have old questions up and we ask that you participate and and respond to the poll questions that appear before you um okay so we are now at the item on the agenda for hearing the public consistent with the state's direction to minimize public gatherings we are convening this video conference to to include opportunity for public comment each speaker will have how many speakers do we have six okay each speaker will have a minute and a half and we'll direct all their 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

074needed 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 to any questions this request is consistent with the board's protocol and we appreciate your compliance we reserve the right to not permit you to speak if you do not comply again each speaker will have a minute and a half and may 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 live stream meeting we ask that your public commentary be respectful of all those listening in

075thank you you our first speaker this evening is cft president julie sellers uh miss sellers will be followed by david brenner and then ryan winstrom go ahead miss ellerson thank you so much um i appreciate you allowing me to go first this evening i do have an important meeting at 7. but i do think that the district should talk with the legal department to find out about seeking a temporary injunction prohibiting any change until a real plan can be developed because i believe that the district has had decades of of past practice and standing on using the metro x routes i believe that there could be serious harm to many of our students and i think it could have a very negative impact to how how kids are going to get to school the safety

076of those kids getting to school walking through neighborhoods transferring throughout the city there are some neighborhoods in our city that don't even have any metro jobs for example amberly village i don't believe has one metro stop and yet they pay property taxes and taxes for um transit for their kids to be able to ride public transportation that is not available those the people in amberly and their leadership must also write a letter to the sort of board um i know from talking to leadership of atu that they were informing metro sorta county commissioners as far back as february um after the levy pass and we had the increase for expansion of routes those drivers were never hired and there that is a bogus excuse that we don't have enough drivers they have not done anything

077to try to hire enough drivers this is all about them not wanting to spend the money if they have to give a raise or an incentive to to hire people they should do that the school bus companies are doing that why isn't metro doing that they've known for more than a year they were going to expand routes they've known for more than a year that we were going to have healthy start times this is poor planning on their part and our children should not be at the expense of their poor planning if anyone in this city says that they don't think that it's going to be a big problem obviously they've never been near one of our high schools at dismissal rri our dismissal times can you just visualize this walk 3 000 students at

078walnut hills high school more than 2 500 of them ride on extra routes and they will all be dismissed from walnut hills to the streets of walnut hills walk to montgomery road and they're expected to get on one route at a time if you have ever been to walnut hills to see the dismissal and how much is put into the logics the logistics of those buses and those kids dismissing where you have 40 50 60 buses standing room only of kids how is that going to happen and how many hours will it take for them to be able to get on a regular route bus to get somewhere and then if they're all convening on downtown seven 000 students what is going to happen to the people downtown as the kids are out and about

079and they have a bus route till 9 30 at night we don't even know if the kids are going to be at school or not at school they could just be riding the bus for half of the day and we wouldn't know that and we have responsibilities as teachers so i don't know we have to really figure this out but i think it's way too dangerous and um the driver shortage is that is the negligence of metro and that is where we must make sure that everybody understands that and it's too dangerous for our students it isn't fair to our kids people that i know have put in to the metro tracker of how long it will take for them to get to school from their house to their high school is more than dollars

080of course the sellers um say that i okay but but i just want to remind you we the courtesy of you going first yes people behind you don't understand that courtesy and you're already at four minutes so i i do want to finish but just please be understanding that thank you okay i just have uh one more comment i don't think people understand the number of students projected at our high schools clark montessori 715 kids will be exiting onto erie avenue um aitkin will have over 1100 kids exiting onto belmont avenue for the route 1718 bus um hughes will have over a thousand students exiting onto clifton avenue on those same bus routes um scpa and taft and otr close together is over 2 000 kids that will be in otr in downtown dater high

081school and west high will have um several a couple thousand kids woodward which is on madison road it will have over 1300 kids exiting there is not enough security for for them to just be roaming the streets when they come out of school and get on the buses they're hours going out so thank you we get it miss sellers but i i am asking you are you if you're almost done you really need to know every parent needs to contact and every adult in the city needs to contact because this is a problem not just for families but for every first papers in the city okay thank you miss fellas we're going to allow the speakers behind her to speak two minutes okay our next speaker is david followed by ryan winstrom go ahead mr

082brenner hello thank you for allowing me to speak um i'll be brief um i am very concerned about the busing situation um i'm encouraged that you're you're passing a resolution but sternly worded letters are just that sternly worded letters uh resolutions are non-binding on anybody else um i would echo um miss sellers uh call for uh legal counsel to seek a temporary injunction against metro because there is irreparable harm and it is a huge safety issue for our students when i looked at what it would take for my students to get to school it was at least double so they would be on the bus at least an hour each way plus a substantial walk to get to school or to home and that is assuming that they don't miss the bus or you know

083it's overcrowded this along with the dangers of covid especially with the lambda variant potentially avoiding or getting around vaccination is a huge concern and this is um really unacceptable and the the board really needs to take more action than a sternly word letter thank you very much thank you our next speaker is uh ryan winstrom moore followed by sharon silver followed by stacy jones go ahead ryan thank you very much um first i just wanted to say thank you to the board i'm number one for keeping the math mandate in place i i have an elementary student and a high school student neither of which can be vaccinated by the start of school because of their age so i appreciate you keeping the mass mandate in place until all kids can be vaccinated and secondly

084just thank you for um recognizing that this bus stuff is ridiculous and metro is asking our preteens because that's what they are pre-teens to try and make two and three bus changes when they've probably never reached up left in their life because public transportation is not widely accessible in the city of cincinnati so like our previous speaker said like many of the board members have said tonight this is not acceptable uh we need more than a letter metro and cps in the city cincinnati i'm happy to volunteer as a parent we need to come up with a solution because i don't think delaying the start of the school year is a solution these kids want me back in school but there must be another way that we can safely get our children to school like

085we have in the past and metro needs to figure it out and then just thank you again for all that you guys are doing to make sure that we can get our kids to school safely thank you our next speaker is sharon silver followed by stacy jones goodness silver miss silver okay we'll come back to you uh our next speaker is stacy jones uh hi i just have a quick question i just want to know about as far as transportation for special needs students um are they gonna in high school are they gonna be expected to ride the metro or will they still get yellow bus service uh let's go ahead and answer that question if your child is currently receiving yellow bus service they that service will remain in place thank you very much

086thank you thank you miss jones our last speaker is sharon silver okay i'm not i don't think she's there that that would be all our speakers okay thank you all right so um at this time um we're going to transition into our budget retreat and there is information being handed out to board members so we'll give it a second or two to get around as we do that may i invite miss bunty miss murphy miss tremble oliver and miss boyle up to join me up here my four amigas i think we're gonna sit come on up we look it's a little lopsided so everybody's sitting on this side we gotta fill the seat we plan tonight to provide some feedback um and some dialogue around the concerns that have been shared in um the last

087board meeting we're going to talk about that feedback an update on the three-year esser plan and then our progress towards addressing the cliff um so at the last board meeting which most of you came we used an application called mentee meter to get your feedback we asked you three questions um and then the board members responded on their cell phones and then the responses were flashed up on the screen for the public to see the three questions were what information what more information regarding this budget they're fast approaching our 90-day limit to what are your concerns about the budget five or less and then at the end of this evening what would success look like to you so addressing the first question you responded with six questions or six responses excuse me um i won't

088read them all because i have a slide for each one of them so we'll just go right into the first one the first one was you needed more information about the um redesign of ada s and ms bunty's here to help answer that question so we recognize that ade ada has needs more than just a nation so going forward the ades will be known as the promise center and over the summer and early spring we had the opportunity to with a group of many people including some of our teachers and administrators and folks from legal aid and also folks from mind peace to really talk about what the promise center should be for our students we also recognize that this journey we will learn more as we go forward and continue to make enhancements and

089a few of the areas we talked about really focusing on academic success for our students and also really thinking through how to improve the overall climate including offering restorative training for the teachers who are involved in that if you look on the next slide one of the biggest areas in which we are really focused on in terms of improvements is in the areas of mental and social emotional in the past our ade a s center did an amazing job with dream builders and other partners but we recognize that some of the students there may require more focused therapeutic support so one of the pieces that we are going to add to the promise center this year is a clinical partner so that students can receive the therapeutic support that they may need in addition we

090are looking at how with intentionality we provide transition planning back to the school so that it is a smoother bridge between the supports that they receive and then the clinical supports that will follow them going forward and then finally during covid we learned a lot about how we can communicate with parents virtually and that will continue with the promise center going forward thank you miss bunty so we'll just pause after that on those two slides to see if there's any um additional feedback or questions from the board any questions miss bolton yes um i it shouldn't come as a surprise i've never been a big supporter of ade a to s so i'm i'm glad that we're changing it i had hoped that we would eliminate it and i know we did in kobe year

091but it's reappeared how many staff people are committed to this and how many students are we actually talking about and what's been the average attendance at the ades i can get those numbers for you i don't have in front of me but i would be happy to provide that i noticed that we were welcoming a principal so we have also a new principal so is this a new uh school that we're creating so dr fudge was previously the administrator who supported um ade a to s miss battle will be assuming that rule but we're not sure how much this is going to cost for how many students we know that our staffing overall is around the whole entire program is 2.2 million dollars and i think that charger wagner will that's in the budget information

092that you will receive i don't want to speak to the exact number of teachers because i don't have it in front of you yeah so we think that on an annual basis this promise center will only cost us 2.2 million dollars that's what we're budgeted for yes ma'am this year for this year this coming year yeah so it's a it's a it's an annual thing as we look down the road maybe there's other things it seems very in the redesign it seems very familiar to the original uh kind of intent of ade as well as the original some original language in the cft contract too about transitioning kids back and doing the workups and whatever so i'm not opposed to that i am concerned how does this interface with all the efforts that we are

093trying to make at the sites so one of the things that we did was that we made sure that the promise center has been shifted over to be supported by our positive school culture department so that we have very close alignment with what we're doing around sel around restorative practices and so that all of that can be integrated in a continuum of support for our students this i do recall and i don't need to be labor um i'll put it on a future parking lot uh about this but the my recollection from student achievement a couple of years ago was that the state was demanding that we have these kinds of services and these sorts of um supports at the site and we invested a significant i thought was a significant amount of money at

094the site level is that still in place or have we eliminated that help me understand what you mean by the site level school at the school level so we have invested money in terms of our alternative learning centers at each school that replaced our in-school suspension programs so we didn't necessarily increase the dollars of those programs in terms of the budgeted expense we shifted the overall philosophy of how folks manage and run those programs at the school site the students that would have been at the site are still going to be there and the staff is still at the site the school sites yes ma'am so the in-school suspension what we used to call instant school suspension those staff members have shifted to um alc alternative learning centers and with restorative practice training that they

095will receive so the best case scenario is that it as we layer in increased school social workers increase training for our alternative learning center sites that we can reduce the need for the promise center over time you are exactly right we are required to have some type of programming by state guidelines our hope is that the number of students who require that will diminish over time and so that we can reduce the footprint but the program we've instituted at the sites a couple of years ago or whatever that remains and this is in addition to yes the sites yeah right that's that's helpful i'd still disagree on the premise that we had to have this because i think we already added to our portfolio with another another school but uh considering where we are i

096i hope to see this evaporate after next year miss powers thank you assistant superintendent bunting um i just want to make note of that i'm glad that you have up there for the parent and community communication part the virtual orientation because i know personally and directly that that has been a barrier to families even comment and utilizing um ongoing education experiences at previously a to s a to e um but i'm hoping that that will be better and and are certainly more successful and not just not come at all because that was the issue and i'm glad to see that that virtual orientation is there so um the next question was resurrounding of the allocation of transportation could i just add on these things too can we as we go through these and you know

097we're talking this year and down the road some of the results that we might be looking for or what you're going to be monitoring i think that you don't have to do it with this one but just like because i know you guys have already kind of planned that out and i think that would be reassuring to the board and to the community thanks just trimble over so the next question was more details on the allocation of transportation dollars um which you see on the slide here the first two lines are the yellow bus expenses and the first one for regular service and enrichment services the second line for special needs and so total of those two lines for yellow bus is 31.7 million the metro line you see as is for public charter and

098non-public total of 7.7 million for specialized services this is often van services for students and special programs such as project connect or foster placement or other specialized programs at 1.8 million the shared services line our shared cert shared transportation services with other districts which sometimes occur in cases where students are attending attending a district other than their district of residence the parent reimbursement line is for charter and private school students who um based on where they live and where they are attend their transportation is deemed impractical the fuel line is uh four million the personnel line for the transportation department is 1.0 million and the other line includes things such as a significant portion of their expenses are with postage and printing for all of the bus cards and other communications that are sent home

099all throughout the year as well as professional services and technology equipment the total 49.6 million budgeted for this year with a combination of general and esser funds just to compare that to some prior years last year the transportation budget was 40.7 but remember it was such a weird year because we were not in session for the entire year and we reduced that budget from what the original budget was knowing that when the kids were on distance learning that was a savings the prior year to that the transportation budget was 47.1 million you're talking about eligibility on the outside yes sorry brad i had a second slide um this is just a little background on um how cps has chosen to spend eligibility for transportation and this was alluded to in one of the earlier presentations

100is that we do go well beyond the the minimum required from the state for eligibility so for example for ohio revised codes school districts are required to provide transportation and grades kindergarten through eight for families that live more than two miles from a school first cps policy we provide transportation in grades k through eight for those attending elementary schools more than one mile from the school so well above the minimum and for students in grades 7 through 12 attending high school a minimum of 1.25 miles and for k12 since they're special um special they're they're at a one mile minimum so just wanted to point out um the investment in um transportation services well above the state minimums and i just wanted to before we go into feedback um i participated in the budget analysis

101and discussion seminar from ode today um and we learned that the pilot payment value more than doubled for this year and so we're going to have to do a budget revision on that line item and we don't know what the how that's going to how the whole metro thing is going to impact that line more than likely it's going to increase the payment in lieu of transportation went from 250 to 539 per child so um there is i'm planning to put together a presentation sometime soon as a result of this um budget bill because there's a lot of stuff in there but um so then we'll pause here and see if there's any more questions mr owlski i have a question that popped up this is great thank you and thanks for uh the last

102one too assistant superintendent um it just came in my mind it's related to the budget for next year but not necessarily the line items here when you were referencing the bus passes it occurred to me that in our last conversation about transportation um some actions were taken by somebody without really any notice um here people read about this in the news i'm curious was were was anything purchased on our end without us knowing were bus passes ordered for our students for a plan that we do not accept i just just hit me i'm just curious if anything happened beyond improper communication um so we're still investigating we've not found a contract renewal that was that has been in place for metro for this coming year you have questions yeah just i think that i think

103it must be regarding our dedicated fleet not the extra routes but the dedicated fleets for like field trips and our athletics is that the enrichment piece actually the the dedicated fleet for athletic events is in the athletics department's budget uh this is for other enrichment programs so so is the athletics are separated from the in-school field trips the dedicated fleet is used for field tricks as well and how much is the dedicated us not to be too specific it's just it's so critical we will we will need to get that to you i don't want to provide an interactive but we do have it that's that's good i appreciate that um uh 50 million how much of the customer service that we really get dreamed about often uh is in this budget so the customer

104service is really spread out through all of those lines through some of our own personnel as well as through the yellow bus contracts they provide part of the staff that staffs our customer service center so they would be in those lines having lived through the last several years it would be great to have a kind of a i don't want to say a printout but at least a sense of how much money and staffing we do spend on customer service as it relates to transportation thank you miss powers i i think i heard a question from board member marowski about bus cars being purchased but i didn't think i got clarification on if we purchased bus cars for our students but this school year so the the contract is not in place okay so that's

105no correct okay thank you okay i i i please forgive me i'm not trying to be mean but um we got a whole lot of material to get through and so i'm just pushing us and encouraging us yes let's ask questions but let's try to keep our questions short and so that we can move on and get to the entire presentation thank you any other any did you okay thank you yes just again pardon me for being out for a couple of weeks um so are we going to think because i thought what we did for items that we set it to whatever committee that it was supposed to fall under for this dialogue are these the thing just i so i didn't do the poll but are those the items that were omitted from

106the committee discussions for that process there hasn't been any committee meetings since the week rather this information no i mean i thought what we did so that we could ask questions is line items were going to be assigned to the various committees so that we would do kind of this deep dive and then we could trust that those conversations took place across the committee so that everybody didn't do every single line did we not do that we did not not that's what we did i think you and i i don't want to assume anything but we had in committee because there was a lot of talk about the committee piece the one thing i know that we did at least was come with like our priorities there was that piece of it where i know

107policy at least and actually the next slide i think is the bulk of ours where we count the priorities out of committee but yeah we haven't yeah we did do that though yeah okay so we did five priorities if i'm maybe i'm i think i'm trying to interpret what you're saying but uh there's another sheet this is sort of that line-by-line item that's for the three-year cares plan the cares plan okay all right we're just trying to address concerns about since we went with a 90-day plan there was concerns about adopting a whole plan right um and so we're trying to adjust what how can we get from the 90 day to a full annual budget and these were the questions that came out okay all right go ahead let's go ahead okay so the

108next question was about the asking about the investment in the new diversity office and um thank you jen so michelle baltam is our new diversity equity and inclusion manager he did begin in our school district on july 1 and she's off and running so we did a very early onboarding with her but as you can see on this uh draft uh key driver diagram we are investing a little over a half million dollars in this work for this school year and we have asked michelle as she's into her review of our um equity policy and our anti-racism policy and other aspects of our district that she would provide us a more robust plan for moving forward he has basically a focus at this time on curriculum purchasing and talent looking at our policies practices and

109procedures the interventions are listed on this cube driver diagram things as they relate to our students as they relate to our families our faculty and staff and our community we are also utilizing the support and the help of cohere for small group discussions with students with families with teachers etc um she is also working very closely with our peer leadership collaboratives including speak up speak out she's beginning the audit process for all aspects of this work including speaking with our young people our students via a survey that survey i will also be developed for our faculty and staff to be able to respond to the diversity equity and inclusion practices in our school district ms marowski thank you assistant superintendent that is great news i'm excited to have miss bill tim here i understand um

110so and this this all looks great so if this year she is a she is a an office of one correct yes i just like to encourage and i and i get that that's i think this is awesome just as the future goes on i've seen these offices get created and a person get hired and sort of tacitly told to figure out racist systems and them and those people leave quickly because it's really really hard so i just as we look at how this builds out because we don't know yet how it builds out it could build out that maybe you need one person but just our eye on it and make sure she has what she needs to do her job which it sounds like she does right now so that's and just to

111share we're sticking very closely with her she does have a navigator in our district and is really highly engaged uh with our team so we're keeping our arms wrapped around her as she gets started thank you just a suggestion and this has been the case for a number of years to pay close attention to the united states department of justice and equity as well as the united states department of education because their major focus really is on the students uh and and i think that would be really useful whether it's special needs kids or whether it's a kids of color whatever they they set some pretty high standards so i would encourage using both of those especially in the current administration and in the on previous to the last one some really good uh material

112and and hard goals to reach thank you okay moving on to the fourth area was the questions about the esther plan and the cliff plan and so what you have the big hand that you have in front of you um the first page front and back is the revised three-year plan and what we added over to the last right three columns is how we're phasing things back into the general operating budget and so if you'll take a look on the back of that page fiscal year 2023 anticipating that 6.2 million dollars will come back so if you assume that our state uh budget fund revenues are going to stay flat then we're going to find 6.2 million that we're currently spending money on to bring this back into the budget and stay balanced does that

113make sense so some we have an opportunity to balance this out amongst the three years a little bit because we have you know 6.2 and then we have a little bit in the next year and then a whopping 59 in the last so the second page of that report it shows you the cliff that's organized by employee i'm going to go through this in on the slides a little bit but by employees contractors and then everything else and the third page is the different that changed on how we were able to balance if you remember the last time we talked about this esther plan we still had 27 million we were over allocated to the grant value and so we were able to come within that um grant allocation um and this shows you how

114we did it i figured you would want to know what we either phased back or reduced or shifted funding elsewhere um so the summary up there is summarizes this this document this humongous document that's too much to go into a slot the categories are what's allowed in that grant application so for help you know how much money spending on health and safety and personal learning um and so forth and so you can see sr2 is a 93 billion dollar allocation and we have a tiny bit of room there in terms of our uh total allocation compared to the grant and then esther three was a 204 million dollar allocation and we we've reduced it down to 202 so we have a little bit of room there as well um by august 20th i have to

115file the fiscal year 22 s or 3 plan which is remember we're doing a thought exchange to get feedback in public um and then i have to allocate it out based on year so for fiscal year 22 it's much smaller because we're focusing on estrogen2 first there's not a requirement to spend estrogen first um but we're trying to be very deliberate about how we move forward so um looking at the cliff plan this is a summary of the employees that will are still in the in the grant in that fiscal year 24. so at the end of these are the people that are going to be left without a funding source unless we make a difference like we only find them in the general fund or another fund we've made great progress as a team

116and so right now we have the reading specialist the safety specialist the super subs that we brought on because of teacher absences because of covid um summer scholars i didn't have time to get the ft number of teachers that were participating but we anticipate um an elementary summer school returning back to the original summer school plan or something modified but elementary summer school is typically funded on title one and high school summer school was funded at general funds and that was about a million dollars a year for the general fund for high school um and then so when we get closer to presenting with the summer planet but that's at the end of this cycle next year we're anticipating another summer scholars like we had this year funded by esser and then at the end

117of the plan we'll have the student success center teachers that we have to bring back um moving on to the contracted services we have the nurses contracts as we've been we've talked about several times i use that as it's a perfect example of what to do when the money goes away the crossing guards that are in being paid at sr um and then some coaching contracts and the uh bus services that are currently in the us are playing at the end of that plan we'll have to bring them back into the general fund this i know you can't you can't read it i can't read it um is the cliff plan um oh no i'm sorry this is all the other stuff so there's another 30 million and this would include um curriculum evidence-based curriculum

118and i did want to note that the next cycle of curriculum adoptions world languages and science if i'm not mistaken we're anticipating those values to be higher than they were the last time they got adopted so we're gonna have to work through those estimates but it's too early yet we don't have enough information to determine what those budgets are um oops oh so addressing the cliff got lost on my slides um so we looked at every line item for every year for the three years to determine is this the right value for this year will it reduce because of kovid's getting better and we're getting better at what we're doing we don't need to spend these services or bodies or cleaning supplies um so will it get phased out by the end of the year

119and if we decided to keep it we identified a measure that's going to help us determine whether we're going to reinvest that's also on the cliff plan it shows you the measure for each line item um so the summary of coming back to the general fund 6.2 and 23 500 024 and then a pretty large 59 million dollar one at the end of the three year period so what our next steps in order to finish this plan is to review the thought exchange and and brooke is um gathering that information for us now um we're going to balance the return of that between the three years because it looks kind of goofy and then we'll finalize there are some things that we're still looking at information those are kind of highlighted yellow those are areas

120of question and then we'll present back to the board on august 9th um hopefully the finalized plan um so i'll pause there questions questions miss bolton yes um how far away is fy 23 and 24 what do you mean that we're in fiscal year 22 right now right so 23 is the year after this coming and then the next one is so that's a couple of years right and you probably haven't suffered this conversation before um with me i am very disappointed about the high school success centers being that far away help me out with why on earth when we're trying to accelerate learning and make up the difference of what we've lost and we have a model that's worked uh at a particular school i mean i just it's it's it's concerning especially for

121our title one high schools it's a i think it's a promise we didn't necessarily keep when we made the big move from k-8 uh to then a 7-12 piece that we would really focus in on those seventh and eighth graders so how in order for us i mean how many title one high schools do we have like 11 or 10 i'm not sure the number superintendent well what we have here well it's not in this plan is all of the services that we put in place that is not necessarily the student success center i will send this memo out to you um it's listed by school and was it funded before or after the attendance what's in this plan is a scaled claim for student success center and it's scaled because of staffing i believe

122each site is three three teachers three teachers so we are going to absorb walnut hills because that was initially a grant right so we are maintaining that and then we are going to um jail for our student success center but what i will send to you is all of the programming i will read some of the um programs at all of our high schools so i don't want anyone to leave here to think that interventions are not taking place at our high schools and i i will send this memo to you anything from extended hours of tutoring sort of recovery bilingual tutors home visits um community engagement with tutoring and tracking students mentoring um so i will make sure i will get this document to you but all of our high schools have in place

123some sort of support for all of our uh high school students and i appreciate that and as a person has been here for 13 years i know that there's been tremendous growth in all of that i appreciate it and much more in the last few years than you know the previous several i'm with you i'm just saying that the success centers focus is my understanding on seventh and eighth grade kids being able to compete academically stay academically not drop out have success with within their group within their school where their specialty is and and i just rather than thinking in terms of individual remediation or intervention which is all so important there's a model that has worked for seventh and eighth graders it is it has uh uh caused a significant help at walnut about

124kids leaving i can remember years ago you know get through the first two quarters and everybody'll be a run on dater at walnut that this i just think that the concept of the success center is so important that as a body it seems like we're delaying it and doing things that we've been doing which is the intervention and individualized which is fabulous but it just i'm very disappointed that we're delaying the success center for especially for our title one high schools okay um okay so moving on to the fifth answer response was how much is money was devoted to high schools to do cps in meridian and so we've given you a summary um the high school budgets just the general fund and schoolwide pool totaled 263 million dollars under new shore 39.2 million um

125year three of the strategic plan and those initiatives was another 22 million so combined 61 million dollars on the strategic new cps and then there was a hundred thousand dollars budgeted for the meridian for planning any year be implemented next fall i believe the next application cycle is it right what's that pending decisions yes okay so um you'll recall my little honeycomb picture here those are all the new shore initiatives um and you have those in front of you and then these are some more initiatives that are color coded by the category yes ma'am so so this chart shows us how much is being spent on high school yes because that was a question we wanted we want to make sure they were getting the kind of priority that they need considering they need it

126on that same one it's the new cps we have the new shore and the strategic initiatives and combining that these are this is the new cps based upon budget requests or based upon the board's dialogue that we had about what we wanted to see on the new shore both okay so they took your dialogue and your request to the new shore initiatives they went and estimated the cost for the implementation of fiscal year 22 and that's what's included on this document they're trying to address your needs and we if we if i may if we looked in terms of actually the new cps and what those savings and what that new vision might be as we calculate or we have i think we're probably having to calculate and think about it based upon old cps

127i mean just intellectually i don't know frustrated from that standpoint okay so we're spending a lot on high schools that's great but we're not spending on success centers are we spending it on career efforts career expansion careers yes there's money in that we're spending supporting wallet hills and then all the other initiatives that johnny's going to send you in the initiative so we are spending money it's not called student city centers and then um all the college and career readiness continued to grow and then we added 14 employee specialists out to schools so we do have those i think that's great and it would really be greater if we had this but i won't belabor it but on that one chart uh i think the last month in the last two or three weeks have

128taught us that we are under funding the reorganization and replanting geographically and programmatically in something that's been called the meridian plan i mean the last month it doesn't have to be the meridian plan but if we don't fund rethinking this district we're going to be in the same boat we are right now so i would i would like to see additional monies devoted because part of that's even moving the iv to the east side of town that's kind of part of the meridian so i think giving it a hundred thousand it doesn't really even cover maybe the kind of engagement that's going to be required let alone some of the probing and staffing so i just i'll just throw that out there for you i i'm totally lost in this conversation and and um because

129and and maybe i think miss bolton is maybe thinking way beyond where i am and i'll have to own that but based on what i'm hearing and i'm hearing you saying you're frustrated because certain things aren't getting funded but i thought the purpose of this was to really think through how we get from here to year uh to fiscal year 24 and where that cliff is so we're gonna have to even if we add i'm sorry yeah but even if we add money to what you're asking we have to cut monies from somewhere else so that's what i'm hearing you say you i'm hearing you say let's add these things i want these things but i'm not hearing where we're saying we're going to cut them treasurer has heard me say that it's a double

130standard for the board to have to come up with where to cut as well as but my point is there's a great giant block of money that is is ours okay as well as money coming from the federal government i think they've done a great job looking at the clip and knowing how to absorb where they're going to pick it up or what have you but i i part of that is also saying we want to be spending the right money at the get-go of this uh as well so that's why i keep throwing in things that i think are particularly crucial and and i can think of some things that we wouldn't be but that's not my job to do that well so my my question to you miss boulder because because the last

131comment struck me when you said well we're not putting enough money in the meridian plan well how do you know that what are you gauging your assessment of that on well first because i rely and just to say i'm relying on the numbers that they're given so i have no idea uh looking at the you know what the meridian plan would cost at this very moment so they're just kind of projecting that out and the learning plan is a name of basically reorganizing ourselves geographically and programmatically i mean it's not meridian or whatever it's and my thought is that if you have you're going to spend 677 million dollars if you're going to give to the attempt to reorganize geographically and programmatically and transportation okay chances are out of 677 million dollars 100 000 is

132really not even pittance it could just just in the scheme of things what we have to be doing in the next year or even half year facing what we're facing i would think that that probably generates would probably generate a need for greater than a hundred thousand dollars out of 677 million yeah i don't know how much it's going to cost i know it's going to cost 100 to figure it out yeah well and and you know i i give you all the kudos because you do think in that level of detail you do and there's nothing wrong with that i mean i think that's great but that's not i mean for me i'm i'm look listening to what the treasurer is telling us but which i think that the whole leadership team has developed

133these figures yeah and so i and i i have no way to gauge whether it's enough or too much especially when it's out in fiscal year 24. go ahead mr messer yeah i mean i think i'm hearing two different things i mean i think the the meridian plan is something that's been talked about because that specifically affects what is now a 50 million dollar uh line item which is transportation so i think it's prudent to have that amount and i my opinion for the meridian plan that's probably sufficient anyway miss bold is talking about are dollars allocated specifically for strategic planning um and knowing that uh you know we kind of got whopper jaw on the street plan with a year remote etc um are the dollars for keep that alive because to me that

134would be the process that would be the aging community you know what is the next three and the next three so do we have dollars set aside for strategic planning um that would be used for updating uh the strat plan probably in this coming year given the duration we did in that first iteration not yet no i don't know if anybody put any money so maybe that is maybe that's something that a separate line item that probably is one that should be enduring that you know doing a strategic plan and then having you know the tools and resources to keep it alive along the way um so maybe that is just an air area extra like we have it work there's a line item specifically for um long-range planning it's just just what you do

135you just use that those funds for the consultants and tools and resources you need to do that i think that's an excellent excellent idea because i think the meridian plan is so detailed um and it's something that you can't do overnight and it should be a part of a collaborative community engagement process um through the strategic planning process and the timing is absolutely perfect because we will be wrapping up uh this school year um and that's something that we can do the part of this meridian plan is planning right so it's not the plan itself is a hundred thousand dollars so i want to be uh clear on that uh several temple oliver is working with a consultant based on a ford assignment to look at really looking at our growth because it started off

136with growth and transportation so at this point we are planning um and and seeking counsel and advisement from people in the field and experts so that's where this money lands but i absolutely support having a strategic plan line and then having those conversations about the media meridian plan as a full builder as a community and engaging our staff as well the okay so the last item on number question number one um was have we maintained accelerated learning as 2024. we spent a lot of time talking about this this week and some of it this dress is addressed in our clip plan but we uh spoke a lot about the new budget that we designed um and focusing on using academic return on investment for decision making what we're going to find um and so if

137you remember the susan budzie ice cream cone i always give her credit for this idea because it really helped me to visualize what we do but the bottom layer the core budget to be what we find for every student in the district for stuff then we layer on top of that things that groups of students need and one example that um i came up with was a career tech classroom that might need a specialized equipment or curriculum and then we focus on layer on top of that needs of individualized students um special needs english language learners um so here i try to put together a graphic that might be a little bit easier to understand i did some examples based on plt's health um and so under the groups like the court would be curriculum

138transportation staffing technology food right every student gets access to those things um and then we have groups of students so examples are social workers counselors and reading specialists not every child still have access to reading specimens and then an individual needs specialized equipment curb to curb service one-to-one pairs lpns those are just a few examples but guiding our efforts will be the fair funding formula um which is house bill 110 that was just adopted by the state budget and then um the board of education policies for anti-racism and equity so any questions about that and spoken no i i don't have a question about that but you did you mentioned the honeycomb yes is everything in the honeycomb funded for this coming year yes ma'am our night school for nine hundred thousand dollars is that

139cda or what is that that's actually some of the uh support services that all of our high school students will have we actually i started that uh late winter and received um just great results from it and we're continuing the um extended hours for students who need it [Music] mr morosky is that different than the second shift school we had talked about there's nothing good yeah yes okay yes is there going to be a second shift school an entire school no you do not have in the budget to do a complete second shift oh okay i wasn't an impression there was and now i remember being told in the conference room that night school was the second shift school i don't remember where in this past few months it happened um did i miss that

140where is anyone else under the impression we were gonna have a second chip school well maybe it's the language when you say second shift full i'm thinking [Music] i was told that that was the second shift school but it's not no we are providing uh extended hours at all of our high schools we did not develop a new school [Music] which which is great um that kind of concerns me i i was really uh hopeful that there was going to be a second shift school and i thought okay well we will make note of that yeah second shift school is a priority of the entire board well i don't i don't i don't know i don't think it seemed like it was when we had that conversation but i i can't speak i i i

141see a lot of hands but i do recall us talking that as part of our neutral planning that we wanted that that was a priority so i'm seeing all these hands i saw yours first if you just go down the line thank you yeah and just to address that second shift school that was definitely uh something i brought up quite a lot when i ran for the school board and uh it was due to the fact that hey i could have heard it happening i don't know if it was texas or colorado or somewhere out there um and that it may be an option for families who work um second shift they would kind of do twofold give them more quality time with their families and meet some other needs that they may have all

142that said i think it's still theory um and i think uh so i saw it more as new shore in that i can't imagine like i think we'd have to do a lot of modeling if you're gonna get that many teachers which you know i think i've heard that there are teachers who might be interested in that but a what is the demand so how many are we going to need and then do we have that many teachers so i think it to me it was a new short thing in that there's a whole lot of work to make that happen and then when you do it during coverage that's what i think it got complicated for me in that um because i did talk to superintendent mitchell about this previously and then kova hit

143and then it was like well shoot now we can't use the same buildings because we needed the time to switch them out and clean and do the deep cleaning at night or whatever so to me i think um as it relates to that i still think it's worthy of exploring because you actually get instead of having to build new schools you might be able to maximize capacity in the same building at the same time providing better service so when people say oh they should be reading their kids oh well schedule the kids where they can go where they can read the kids so to me if the new shore but i think there there's obviously the work that would have to be to see what's the demand um and then uh do we have staffing

144and then what would that look like uh postcode without the need for disadvantages miss powers yes so um thank you i'm right because i you touched on some of the comments or questions i had when i when i think of night school second shift school north pole but i was thinking accessibility to teachers on a second shift i wasn't thinking brick and mortar physically going to a building that that could be an equitable issue unless you open up all your schools and if this is one school does everybody go to the same school i i was really thinking of accessibility virtually me to me as teaching working second shift and being accessible for night school that's what i was thinking when we thought it might be not actually rick and morty so it kind of

145made me go with the concept that i think with extended hours that you're talking about i don't know if that is the concept either but that was what i was thinking about accessibility to staff and teachers working virtually okay sounds like there may be some different differences of opinions about what even the model looks like but um let's go ahead mr lindy you okay mr prosky was your hand done i don't disagree with anything um mr messer said i just think my concern is at at best i think i was either misled or or misread that we were going to have an actual second shift school i don't deny that it needs planning and it needs modeling but this has been talked about a lot and unless i've been extremely unclear uh this this is

146not what i was discussing what we had discussed we talked about the facility we can go re-watch the videos if we have to and that's fine but i just wanted to be known that i don't disagree that it would take some time but it just just bothers me okay miss bolton yeah i'm just on the honeycomb because again i like this graphic and it was able to understand that i'm just uh on the night school was saying that's about the high schools being able help me out with that again superintendent you come on the purple knight school how what is your question what does that entail i think you described it to me but i've missed it this is an opportunity um we kind of drilled from the euler model um where their percentage went

147up from like 30 to 90 graduation rate um and we scaled it we learned from that model and we scaled it to all of our high school so a lot with credit recovery a lot with mentoring and tutoring [Music] to president jones's point some of this is a matter of vocabulary yes yes that you know it didn't get lost in the translation it got changed to me the night school looks like redesigning cda from in a way i mean part of it's there because you're increasing to to uh bauer's point the the access piece and we have done or putting i know we talked about student achievement which i recall a couple months ago where you're talking about the credit recovery needing to be centralized rather than at sight that i mean so so some

148of this might be that that we're thinking of it as something else uh then or these titles are catching more things than we think they are so based on what you described then i would say yes we have it so i think it's a little bit of vocabulary um so what you just described yes we have that but it's not it does not pull under night school but we do have the option where you can have education anytime anywhere in cts to our online programming yeah so maybe that's that's part of just like a couple things from new shore are here which is fine i mean the green initiative not the outdoor i'm thrilled to see that but i mean like i think it was mr messer that mentioned that aligning with the city i

149mean this isn't this doesn't mean this is all we're doing right this is this is the stuff that's been carried forward from discussion like 20 some new initiatives that layer on top of the day-to-day operations of the district and that's a lot to accomplish in one year so that i'm clear with because i don't want you to be misled or felt misled um so i want to be very transparent and say based on what i just described does that um meet your understanding of a second shift school it does not but i think it's great and i support it and i would still like to over the next year so you know follow mr messer's suggestion look at what it might be to have a second chip school for people whose hours don't align with

150the standard typical school school day but i do that but i think but i do think it's great and again it could have been a combination of many things at once meaning unclear they're fulfilling unclear so it's no bad blood but it just took me by uh surprise tonight and so but i think it sounds i do think it sounds great i really do okay okay so moving on to the next question the question was what are my concerns about the spirit 22 draft budget you responded with transportation which i think has been addressed the cliff which we've already discussed growth um and then not enough to do cps continuing new things and projecting costs so for growth ms boyle wants to take the first part of that thank you so just a quick reminder

151that undergirding all of this is a lot of look at a lot of research and looking at data specifically we've partnered with crystal kendrick and voice of your customer to really take a look at kind of where did students go and and why so um we know from that that mostly what we lost for young families um and so we're really looking at a market a multi-tiered marketing plan that includes ongoing pre-k kindergarten focus but then really looking at all the different levels so kind of across the district to very very focused groups and school specific so um i'm really excited about the shift to kind of to individual schools and their recruiting activities in the spring and early summer we rolled out school specific toolkits that included everything from yard signs to posters but

152really highlighting for individual neighborhoods why their schools are exciting and great places for students to go we're looking at charter schools and competitive information neighborhood by neighborhood and then really taking advantage of new channels so community events thank you to those who have participated in those tv advertising additional radio a door-to-door enrollment effort with cft that's happening right now partnerships with the herald for example as well as hispanic media partnerships including we have an upcoming event at roberts on 8 14. so we are really trying to tackle this from all avenues but but making sure that underlying all of it is is the data to help us be very targeted and how we do that and then i'll turn it back over to right so also included in the general fund operating and schoolway pool

153operating budget are the schools that had grade level growth or classroom growth so cairns added a grade i think it was fourth grade spencer added 12th grade and gamble montessori and gable high school added classes to expand their population so we were able to fund those additional staff and um curriculum textbooks furniture to handle that in addition to that they we started the engineering for the dome walnut hills dome project to expand classroom space there that's not really an enrollment growth but just to get better social business services students any questions about growth it's both always about you did your homework uh now you all make me do this finance thing forever um just the prm expansion is in this correct the hyde park efforts are in this they're in the estrogen the wallet is

154in it yes um we took the hughes annex out and and determine that we would have to use cops to do that there's no plan for that use so the other three were higher priorities we got a plan but yeah but okay so the that's it is what i would ask about would be xanax mike to i'm really going to respond to what chris was saying we have to have a new product the market from a standpoint or a new perception of what cps is to really market it i think that we know that site-by-site thing works really well where you know recruiting that has been fantastic even just postcards something as you know old style is that olivia thanks um but that's part of that whole new cps look it have we can't we

155can't keep marketing the same thing so i just i keep wanting to emphasize that but glad to see the growth piece and and people have been around a long time i'd wait for the maps that's their the maps that actually for every single building show where the kids in that building are actually coming from and i know you're contracting with the very people that know how to do that that will be so good for the board to see those maps and it will help all of our planning it just can't emphasize especially as we look at high schools and also as we look at neighborhoods so as much as you can accelerate that activity with that contractor man that really spurs discussion and it sounds like you're on that on that path now thank you

156so the next um one was not enough new to cps um and we thought this would be the area for more dialogue all right that's okay i i would just put my comment here in that i think we you know planning doesn't happen unless you dedicate funding and then uh build work around that so to me that's where i think this would uh be the enduring strategic planning section of the budget so i was given that a lot of thought process um and they probably need to have a scheduled conversation about what we want that next process to look like so we know how to fund it i just go about the fun so um hopefully soon that could happen yes i'm sorry um this is a question actually for board member messer because i

157like a lot of what you said about kind of an ongoing commitment to that thinking out in cycles of three years ahead of time i agree a thousand percent the question i have is we're in an interesting spot as an organization we're an interesting spot as an organization because we're going to have some turnover on the board and we're we have an rfp out for a new superintendent so how do you or not just to ryan but for anybody like uh that seems like a different kind of space when it comes to long-term strategic planning because there's going to be some change at least some change if nothing else on the board uh and who knows about you know what what vision is behind that that makes sense can you just play out like what

158the implications of that would be from your perspective or or if anybody else has a perspective on that yeah i mean my my two cents is that um you know when we began that i was new and then you know likely it'll be people that are sitting around here on the board as well as some of the new people who are candidates um and so i think as the board kind of aligned on some of those uh foundational assumptions and guiding principles that would be done and even with the administration i want to miss that part that was obviously the key um i think i my opinion is it would have to wait until after that person is in in place and then the board's in place but i don't think i think the process

159was actually pretty sound in that i think that it is a working committee would be in my opinion and i think it is a kind of an administration board joint effort with the community partnerships and the people that were involved as bolton and others uh know that there were quite a few people that had had a a brick in that foundation of that that plan so i think we could do a retrospective of that process and which has been captured pretty clearly and when you populate the new people and then you go through the work of establishing guiding principles this is where i think all of this new cps hey here's what we're thinking because a lot of the you know the new shore i love that because it's it's what we think but then

160we also have to pressure test that against our public and so to me that's where that process thing comes to life because now you get it in a planning process where you're starting to work through like what is your one of that your two your three how do you measure what does it look like feel like based on all that so that would just be my two cents miss bolton yeah i i would i'll follow up with what mr messer said i think that that process worked well um i think too right now it's just like with an lsbmc they get the biggest participation when they're choosing a principal it's like everybody's on that lsdnc may not have seen them for two or three years but boy we have an opportunity right now it's the

161same thing district-wide regarding the superintendent search that will get the biggest play of anything we do engagement-wise jen has told us again and again that there are parts of the esser piece that demand community involvement for sure and then when you think in terms of whatever the growth piece is if there's a way over this time while we still have this current board and in preparation for the next board if there's a way that we can merge those sorts of dialogues so that we really have a lot of participation even in person and and throughout the district physically as well as virtually and we have krista and those folks that know how to do this allow those streams so separate streams somehow to be part of an overall piece that'd be a great way to

162close out this the third year of our current strategic plan and then lay the groundwork for what is going to be the next whether it's an extension by two years or something brand new but there's plenty of groundwork that we could be laying this particular semester and very frankly as we learn if we don't make changes before the lottery system or before we have sign up you lose another year and i don't think we're in a position if we've been talking about new cps for 18 months now we can lose another year that doesn't show that we've moved towards the new cps so it's a it's a to ryan's point the new people are going to have a lot to say about this but there's still tremendous work to be done in this particular semester

163prior to january 1st real a lot of work i mean more than i can imagine and a lot of it controversial but a lot of it really intense so we can't delay we have to be making decisions here and then playing the groundwork for the new board okay moving on to this is the phrase that was responded to continuing new things i interpreted that to mean what's the sustainability so we tried to do that through the escrow funds and address things that needed to continue through the clip plan um initiatives that are funded by the general fund we'll go through our new performance metrics to determine whether we're going to continue because we need to free up money to let this stuff in and do stuff in you can't just keep growing the budget unless

164you want to go back for a big levy um and so new initiatives will follow the same process i know your sentiments on a new levee and mine too so but math is math right so um any response to that question what happens i don't have a question but to that point about no new money and no levy when you look at the five-year plan that you put together and shared with us and we passed what are you thinking in terms of the annual uh 22 is 677 or whatever what's 23 look like what's 24 look like are we going to have these continuing that so i i need to do an analysis of based on the new budget cycle but so 22 is not going to be 676 because they just took 80 million

165dollars in tuition and expense away from oh yeah okay but but that is where it starts i mean it but it goes that 80 goes someplace else it goes right without revenue we don't have to pay the expense but so what they did for fiscal year 22 is they just said okay you're going to get the same value you got last year and here's some other little things that they're adding on our simulation i will share a finance committee in a couple weeks we're working through that um and then the new formulas will kick in based on the cut patterson and recommendations and so i have to revise the whole forecast for that because they took student wellness out of a separate fund threw it back into the general fund so it's going to make

166it look really wonky they didn't fund student wellness as they said they were going to so we're having to take our budget for next year and use this year's carryover money in it um and but suffice it to say this year 24 is when we were going to hit a cash deficit if we continued at the spending rate that we had forecasted our revenues are going to stay flat or they're going to grow a little bit enrollment growth and re recruiting kids back from charter schools is they are going to be the biggest revenue increase for us they more than doubled the investment and voucher program the cost of the voucher program in the state last year was 162 million they added 163 million dollars to that budget it just blows me away so but

167i'll give you more updates um when we finish with the analysis from the raw dollars forget about the 677 or whatever the percentage increase over each of the following the previous years our budget has been growing correct because we had an agreement that we were going to invest in the first year of the strategic plan to get a big bang for a buck but that we had an agreement we were going to return back to a bit of balance spend which means you don't spend more than the revenue you bring in that year right we did our cash reserves to help fund that strategic plan can't continue that so like last promise so when we talk in terms of 23 you're looking at budget cuts we are looking yes at replacing things that we're spending

168money on to bring six million dollars back in and then whatever step increases in poland that we've already agreed to right but 23 and 24 the budgets will be smaller um well it's flat but they will be spending money on different things okay this is the last big step yet this is when this could be like the last bigger spend year that we have yeah this is absolutely well with us or it'll be the next couple years but in terms of general operating but yes this is it okay and thank you i hope i'm making sense when i say this but it's like knowing that that's the reality and knowing that we have to start figuring out where the does that make sense where the cuts are and so but it's hard for us to

169do it because we're always thinking about like like and i'll use the night school because i'm with you i heard something different than we wanted okay so you gotta have the money to do it but then you gotta cut somewhere else that and that's always the dilemma is where do you cut how do you prioritize around that maybe maybe some of that dialogue in our strategic planning can help us with that that's why it's the new cps the old one is we can't afford the old one so here's an analogy and i hope this doesn't come across wrong but this is our budget we can't keep adding more water to it we have a cat right so if you want new stuff you have to take stuff out to make room for it that makes

170sense yep okay okay and you have to design a new bottle that's my plan it'll be this big legacy you have to have a new bottle yes about the old wine in a new bottle okay all right so somebody asked for projecting costs and i if the word was cut off by assuming priorities so without a dialogue i'm anticipating but so for fiscal year 23 budget building um coming up we're getting ready to start a whole new cycle we haven't put this budget to bed yet but so we're going to start talking about the scope of annual priorities now or soon we're going to implement the student-centered process the multi-tiered system budget redesign using our academic return on investment [Music] and how do we that second line was supposed to be about engagement so we're

171going to continue to do the stakeholder town halls the virtual ones they've been very well attended versus some of our old budget hearings where we had two people show up um continue with thought exchanges ventivator of board feedback um interactive menti meters interactive feedback tool and that we are continued to fiscal transparency and positive financial stewardship so if i missed whoever put that in the thing if i missed the point please help me okay the third question at the end of the evening what is success look so there was a comment about we won general alignment around dollar allocation general alignment along those items ate we want our students to have equitable resources and services to see so once again the because it was your definition of success do you feel like you have general

172alignment on dollar allocation for the fiscal year 22 budget no comment i heard them you heard a no no no i heard it yet give it up oh yes yeah i mean i hope so yeah okay so that's good news all right so do we have general agreement on the bottom line 88 s continuity plan the cliff items the philadelphia unified voice and a budget that seeks to build a new cps ahead mr mess i'm sorry mr lindy was first go ahead thanks president jones um treasurer wagner i sent over a couple questions today um i know i was not at the last meeting um and i um if i was been waiting for an appropriate time to just kind of go through what those were and what i think the answers are because none

173of the none of the issues i raised are any different from what we've talked about in the past is now inappropriate before we end the discussion i get to do that but i'm agnostic as to when i'm happy to address your questions no okay so i think um i think the overall um kind of lens that i've been applying to this whole budget process is are we are we clear about the challenge in front of us do we have some clear goals for what we want to make true for kids and do we have a budget that is aligned to that and i think the answer on all those fronts is yes i just like to check um i think we're all clear on the size of the challenge in front of us we got

174the most recent map data from the administration which i appreciated um and it looks like at the moment about of students are on grade level in math and about 29 are on grade level that's even though we're missing 25 to 30 percent of kids in this number so my hunch is that that overstates that uh and so that the vast majority of kids we serve uh predominantly low-income kids predominantly kids of color um we're not providing them a chance to compete on an even playing field uh for academics uh and i think we're united in the idea that we want to do something about that we have a once-in-a-generation challenge and we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something um i think the reason why i support this plan is we have very clear goals

175for what we want to do about it uh we didn't see those tonight but i know we've seen them in prior meetings uh and there are clear outcomes for meaningful increases in third grade sixth grade and end of course assessments uh as well as not just academic outcomes we want to see reductions in racial disparities and discipline i think it is a holistic meaningful ambitious set of clear outcomes that we want to accomplish and one of the things i like a lot about the plan is that um it gives us the opportunity to get information early on on whether or not the things that we're doing uh so i do like these two week assessments that we're gonna do um because they're shorts 15 20 minutes um but it will give us information about whether

176all of the strategies we're trying are actually having the outcome in the world that we want them to have um so long as all those things are still true uh it feels like a great plan to me um and i wanted to check that those things were true and then i had one follow-up question about community engagement but let me pause there yes all of the things that you listed there are two from a very clear specific measurable target on increased achievement increased uh graduation and the budget supports all of all of those items with measurement that's great thank you um uh that um that's great to hear it's also not surprising because i appreciate it when you shared it before i want to make sure nothing changed um i think my question then on

177the community engagement was um when we get the results from the thought exchange back um and when we get any other results back on monday are we going to be able to tell like which groups of stakeholders are we hearing from are we going to be able to see like are we hearing from low income families are we hearing from families of color are we really getting a robust and diverse set of perspectives that was that was one question i had um i don't know krista stepped out of the room did she leave oh okay so hold that question we'll give you an answer when she gets back thank you any other comments or questions are we at uh did i see yes go ahead misspoke what i'm most pleased about on that list is

178the continuity plan regarding the cliff items i'm much more reassured that we know what we're doing about this extreme amount of money and and absorbing and it's the thing we know the least about but i'm very confident about the cliff the rest of it oh you know i'll hurt my comments um but i this is far better than where we've been but i still say you do need to redesign the bottle and whatever we're doing about this new bottle and the new product i don't know some bridge analogy i'm gonna do a bottle analogy no bridges uh but but i i don't i think we have to almost every day figure out a way to talk in these in our meetings about that big piece which is what is the new cps because i know

179in the midst of all the changes in the crisis and whatever that we've had lived through we lost focus on the bigger picture of the new cps we've got the blocks to build the foundation we know we want that we know we want this that but the big piece of whatever that new cps needs to look like and we have to come up with that fairly soon so you don't have a product to sell or a bottle to fill bridge does that yeah i think i'm i don't disagree with what's been said already i think for me it uh you know i rely heavily on the finance committee and the treasurer to make these kind of financial give us the financial pieces i do think one of the places where i saw in this discussion

180or heard that uh we probably could like make a little more clear is as we're defining some of those categories and the wording the concepts and all of that so that we're following like whatever we discussed in new cps when we did the planning around that we should really make sure that the language is tight and i think that that might help ultimately when we're looking at the budgets for those things and we can see it this is what we talked about this is how we define it and this is what we're funding for that for me i mean this was it's always helpful i have to go home since i'm gonna have time i'll go try to digest it a little bit but um it was a lot of information to digest so but

181it was fine it's good so the last slide was about the request for students having equitable resources and so i love this graphic it's even changed since when i first learned yeah about equity and it for a financial person it was really hard to figure out how do you financially measure equity but my teammates are helping me a lot and we have some exciting ideas about the new budget process and i am energized to get started on it so the last slide there was just as in case you asked me questions about the roi but um that was really all we have for tonight okay i believe krista returned we held this question just for you krista thank you mr lindy i waited strategically until crystal was out of the room that's not true um

182i i just wanted to hear a little bit more about the community engagement and the arp dollars um and the specific question was you know if you look across thought exchange plus whatever other engagements that we're doing um how much are we going to know on the other side of that about who we've heard from and whether we're getting a really representative sample whether hearing from low-income families families of color and that we can we can make sure that um we're truly making this a plan that is responsive to the needs of our community uh may i ask a clarifying question in terms of community engagement do you mean the kind of the research in terms of why families are leaving or do you mean that just more broadly no i was thinking of as

183i understand that there's some new federal regulations around needing to engage members around the plan for the federal dollars oh specific to the esser fund um so we should be able to break that out by type of person so kind of where they are you know there is if they're student if they're a parent um i'm i don't know how much deeper than that we can go with that exchange um but one of the reasons we chose it is because it allows for that open-ended commentary so it allows us to harness things we wouldn't have thought of versus hey can you choose kind of a b c d or e that makes sense but there are definitely some trade-offs within that tool yeah yeah i mean if it's what i'm hearing you say is that

184when we the there are upsides and downsides to thought exchange upsides are you can really uh get nuanced interesting open-ended feedback from people downsides are we don't actually know who they are that are responding in terms of race in terms of neighborhood contains in terms of income level um and that makes sense and i think it's good to go after the plus sides do we have a plan to get from some other source the things that we won't be able to get through exchange um so i it is possible i think potentially to use the possible tool i know we've done that in the past um but i will say thought exchange really was the primary sort of survey tool we were looking at i'm glad to put some more thought into how we might

185supplement it to get to that additional level of detail yeah i mean cbs is such an interesting place right because we have both uh low-income families and middle-income families uh we have white families we have families of color i think like unless we can know that we truly have heard from a variety of stakeholders and then used that feedback to influence how we're spending federal dollars i don't think we will have done our job yet uh and i think there are probably lots of ways to go about that but finding at least like some way to go about that yep that's right thank you for the feedback yeah thank you okay so um are there any final comments or assignments yes yep okay yes sorry i just want to make sure although those there are

186no assignments but clearly i have kind of adding a line item for strategic planning um and in that process we can do some engagement around a second shift school um because it's outside of the definition that we were under although we are providing um online options but i'm hearing another option described online and then um we will look into the supplement to the thought of exchange for those three items okay all right having no other agenda divorce clear the meeting with germ thank you