CPS Board of Education — December 2, 2020

001good evening i called to order the december 2nd 2020 business meeting of the cincinnati board of education we welcome everyone and request everyone to please silence your cell phones and electronic devices um let's see mr messer would you would are will you lead us in the pledge please gladly i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you miss wagner please call roll mrs bates is bolton this is bowers mr lindy here mr messer president mr moroski here president jones here thank you members of the public who wish to speak during hearing the public must request to do so during the first 10 minutes after the start of the

002meeting to speak you will need to send a request by clicking the chat button submit your name your affiliation to the district your school community and your contact information if you want a direct response to any questions you might have in keeping with the board standard practice for hearing the public you must click the camera icon when you are recognized to speak individuals who request to be heard after the first 10 minutes of the beast will not be recognized to speak during this meeting thank you okay so we don't have any board minutes for approval this afternoon we're going to go right to miss fulton for our uh finance budget and growth committee meeting report uh thank you president jones i'll make this relatively quick although we went over a number of topics our first

003topic of course was hearing a report from our government liaison folks uh most particularly about some changes regarding uh transportation and more importantly and very important as we've touched on the last couple of meetings uh is the possibility of a new of way of funding uh and creating a new equation uh it's part of the cup patterson and so we heard a report as to how that is developing and where it is uh and that there's some now uh uh controversy or opponents uh kind of making statements against it so uh that is still up in the air but we're pressing forward uh per our uh resolution uh last meeting uh that would be very helpful for us according to our treasurer so that was part of it from the liaison folks and then also

004uh we have found in the treasurer's uh monthly update um and presentation too that there is nothing out of the ordinary but it does appear that what the treasurer kind of told us in our uh budget development is that it does appear that the revenue seems to be increasing somewhat uh as uh as reported during the finance meeting so that's somewhat reassuring based upon some of our adjustments that we made in our own uh budget efforts we also had a relatively detailed but not yet detailed enough uh because we're going to be spending some time in december on this too about what we really are paying and how we really are uh involved with our transportation uh costs and services and safety uh and the public will be reminded that we're responsible not only for

005our own students but also for charter students and private students as well and the parochial students so um we want more and more disaggregation and separation about how each of those uh recipients of our services are costing us as well as how much money we are spending in order to keep those uh buses uh kind of in reserve and and staff members in reserve so that we are again committed to in person when we can have in person most important item out of the transportation thing is besides the fluctuation two most important issues are the metro cards for our high school students so that there's equitably distributed across all of our high schools and uh what have you but the other thing that was critical and this will come up in finance in december too

006is that virtually all of our co and all board members are interested in this and need to help us and participate in this um all of our transportation contracts according to mr johnson are up at the end of this year and as we look at a new cps this is an opportunity for us to rethink and perhaps together redesign how we're going to be approaching transportation or alignment to our schools the other piece was that it was brought up that it's possible if we have transportation uh resources in reserve we might be needing them to help transport our students perhaps to keep current with our medical testing and medical services uh in some way shape or form so at least be thinking about that as the new calendar year rolls around and then we had

007a brief discussion and sharing of information uh regarding the development of the five-year forecast which we have now obviously adopted but also how we're going to start planning for fiscal year 22's budget uh and hoping that we don't we're not in a situation where we're still working on it for good reason in six months in hoping that we can come through the covet piece and hoping that we can get back to our strategic plan uh and what it may cost us and and how we can reach those goals and then finally we did decide and this has already been done by the board as a result of this we did have four members of our audit committee returning for service and we really appreciate those community members that are willing to serve and i submit

008for approval okay do board members have questions or comments about the report okay i i need a motion to approve the minutes as written so moved okay thank you miss bolton okay um at uh board matters mr marowski you uh please give us an update on the anti-racism policy sure be happy to um we will be looking at um hold on sorry my mistake i thought so but i do what i'm told i'm mistaken wait we're gonna take it again screenshot morosky does what he's told but thanks for being prepared you were prepared okay all right so uh superintendent mitchell this is uh our presentations yes thank you so a board member bolton's comments about the strategic plan it's a nice segue to our presentations tonight you know all of last school year when we

009launched the new strategic plan every single board meeting we had a presentation that provided an update on some aspect of the strategic plan and this year um with covet 19 we haven't couched out the work that we've been doing in our presentations under those categories we will do that moving forward because you will be able to see how this is an alignment of the five gold areas so tonight's presentation falls under gold area optimized capabilities if you have a chance to look at our strategies as well as our measures the presentation we're going to talk about as it relates to employee engagement provided by our assistant superintendent susan bunty is an alignment with optimized capabilities and engaging our employees in authentic ways and so i'm going to turn this presentation over to assistant superintendent susan

010bunty thank you thank you superintendent mitchell and i think that rob has our deck and here it comes so good afternoon everyone i'm happy to be here this afternoon with our director of talent development sarah brody and we're going to share with you what we have been thinking about and doing in terms of measuring our overall employee engagement so on the next slide you can see that we are all incredibly passionate about this work we believe that in supporting our cps employees to be their best that we can positively impact student outcome we're going to share two key messages with you this afternoon on the on the next slide you can see first of all that we are very committed to increasing employee engagement again to support student achievement but we also truly believe that

011in order to make sure that our overall engage engagement strategies are effective that we have to have the opportunity to be able to measure them as on the next slide as our superintendent message as mentioned and as you probably remember our work is closely aligned to the strategic plan under optimized capabilities and we're holding ourselves accountable even in the midst of a pandemic for really making sure that we connect and engage our employees this work is also anchored in many of our other initiatives across the organization so on the next slide you can see that we have provided training and professional development to all of our leaders through the leadership pipeline institute and we focused on functional leaders leader of leaders leader of others and individual contributors we know that although some leadership comes naturally

012there are also skills and tools and strategies that we can utilize to be more effective in our work you also recognize in the middle are central office competencies these are what drive our work and what we use for our central office evaluation and finally you see gallup which is the measure that we use to benchmark our progress in the engagement arena sarah brody now is going to spend some time talking with you about how we dig in and measure that engagement sarah thank you susan good evening um on the next slide i'm going to share with you a little bit about why we have prioritized employee engagement and as you can see here we know that employee engagement is connected to the outcomes that matter for our employees to be successful and for our students

013to be successful and the research tells us that engaged employees are more committed to their work they're more innovative and productive they work more efficiently they're safer and they're more likely to be retained in their roles on the next slide i will share with you a little bit about the employee engagement measure that we use which as susan shared is the gallup q12 employee engagement survey and this survey measures the extent to which employees universal needs so whether you're a cps employee or an employee elsewhere are being consistently met and when you look at this slide you might it might remind you of a maslow's hierarchy of needs kind of a pyramid and so at the base of that pyramid um for example employees really need to feel focused and they need to be free

014from unnecessary stress and so those bottom two questions kind of tied to the basic needs that employees have and they're measured by questions such as i know what's expected of me at work and i have the materials and equipment to do my work right and then kind of going up the pyramid at the very top um our employees really want to feel like they're challenged it can grow and so there are questions that tie to that and in the middle there are questions connected to feeling like a part of a team and being recognized and honored as an individual so that's what our survey measures and on the next slide um i'm going to talk a little bit about the process that we use to approach our employee engagement measurements and work so the first

015step is really of course measuring engagement using our survey and we administer the survey in the fall to get our baseline for the year and then again in the spring to measure our growth after each survey it's really important that we share the results out and then have deep conversations at the team level about the state of our team and then take concrete actions through and then monitor our progress and implementation along the way so i'm going to talk a little bit about what kind of goes into each of these elements of our process first on the next slide our survey administration we're really trying to find out each time we deliver the survey what are our employee needs in this moment and every time we do our survey we're measuring a snapshot in time

016so you might think about what was happening at the beginning of september when we did our survey in this fall and it was really the beginning of a new school year during covet but it's really important for us to take a pulse on engagement even in difficult times because otherwise we're really flying blind and so when we administered the survey in the fall we surveyed about 1900 employees across 20 pilot schools central office in iowa street and we included employees across all employee groups on the next slide i will talk a little bit about how we share our results and how the sharing of our results is so important because it helps us support a data-driven culture and it helps provide that feedback loop and transparency around the data and so we're very intentional about

017making sure that everyone who takes the survey really understands how he did in the aggregate as an organization and then again at the team level that folks have the opportunity to look at their data and their teams and talk about it i mean so we share it out across um across the board and then more specifically at the team level and then on the next slide i'll talk about really where the magic happens with this work and that's at the team level once folks have their data we're really trying to support constructive conversations happening about where we are and we help folks talk about what are our strengths when we look at our data and what is happening in our team to make those our strengths and similarly once we kind of talk about the

018strengths we also want to really push folks to think about what are our growth areas and what makes those our growth areas we ask folks to think about the results and whether they surprise them and whether or not you know they might answer a question the same now as they might have when the survey was administered a few weeks prior and those are really powerful conversations that teams are having across our district um and once we complete those conversations as a part of this third step on the next slide what all teams are doing is really thinking about what concrete action steps can we take to improve and this is really something that i love about this work um we we really are trying to marry this engagement work with the critical performance goals that

019teams have already set for the year so it's not meant to be detached it's meant to be really integrated and so we're helping teams think about this this data in the context of their critical work that they're doing to improve student learning um so we'll we'll prompt teams to think about what is the performance goal that we have for the year which gallup element would support that work the most and then what concrete smart goal might you set as a team that we can collectively work on to improve and so that's happening right now across our across our schools and central office and then after um state of the team meetings happen and action planning happens on the next slide we are really focused on following and tracking our improvement work because really that's what

020this is at its core and so the images you see here at the school level folks are integrating their gallup work into their one plans and this whole sort of qi quality improvement model and they're planning and and doing and studying and acting around what kind of goals they've said and tracking and monitoring their progress and with our central office and iowa street departments who don't use one plans they're doing that in the gallup access platform and that's something that we're looking at all throughout the process and throughout the year to kind of check and see how we're doing um and then finally you know after we kind of go through this cycle and we pull and we check again in the spring and we'll see our improvement on the next slide i'll talk a

021little bit about the learnings that we had from our fall survey and these are really interesting so i just wanted to pull out a couple of strengths and a couple of growth areas and then a point on equity so when we surveyed in the fall what we noticed bubbling up as a strength or that folks generally are feeling cared for at work they are responding positively to the need that they have opportunities to learn and grow in their roles and importantly are taking pride in the quality of work that we're doing together in our areas of growth we've we saw that we have some room to improve around understanding what is expected of us and recognizing the value of work and the person doing that work we're also looking at the data across different elements

022so from an equity lens we really wanted to check to see if there were disparities in how our employees are experiencing work and when we looked at our data in the aggregate this time around we did not see disparities in engagement scores when we looked at it by gender or by race but it's going to be really important for us to continue to keep a pulse on that and we'll continue to look at it if you can go to the next slide please so what we'll be doing now is taking a look at the action plans that schools and departments have submitted and synthesizing those so that we can focus and tailor our support as a department to help schools and central office departments continue to improve we plan to continue to pulse employee needs

023because as i mentioned earlier every time we survey it's a snapshot in time and so we need to continue to keep our pulse on how employee needs are evolving and shifting as the work evolves and shifts particularly during this time of cobin and we'll prepare for our spring survey administration and prepare ourselves to onboard new schools for next year we plan to expand our survey sample to include all schools in the coming school year and so we'll need to do some real leg work there to make sure that folks understand the purpose of this work and are prepared to implement it in their buildings and with that um there any questions i'd be happy to answer them thank you thank you thank you sarah um do board members have questions or comments um miss powers

024please on view yes thank you sarah that was a excellent presentation i just have one question do you um do any type of inter entering new staff gallops about expectation about what they're coming into also like for um onboarding um that's a really interesting question we haven't incorporated the gallup specifically into our onboarding content but what we do do with onboarding is really try to steep folks in our core values connected to caring collaboration and so on and so um but i think that's a really interesting question ms bowers and i'd like to kind of write it down and think about it a little bit with the team okay thank you great other questions or comments mr lindsey okay i got you go ahead thanks president jones uh uh sir and susan i think this

025is great and really exciting and i'm so happy that uh as a district we're continuing to focus on um the staff experience i think it's particularly great that we're looking for differences by race and by gender and particularly great that you didn't find any um i think that's i think that's really something worth celebrating um i just wanted to um check on the timeline so we we do fall and spring right so we don't know there's no like mid-year data that we're looking at now uh it was that you may have said this i apologize was the fall data like about what you were hoping to see was it less than what you wanted to see was it more than you wanted to see i can speak to that um so the fall data really

026was about on par with what other north american organizations early in their engagement journey might find so i think it was pretty on par with what we were expecting in particular during this time of covid we've seen nationally and i can't speak to globally but nationally that engagement has dropped a bit and um that's been a real challenge but i think our we the starting point that we identified in the fall was pretty much on par with other organizations in in the united states cool thank you very much mr master yes i just i would also add my um gratitude and and appreciation for the district focusing in this area um this is what good employers do um you know employers who don't care about their people are not always that successful and um and

027most often they have people who are not happy and leave or they're just disgruntled and as one of the largest employers in the region i think it's fascinating um i'd be curious to see how many districts nationally will look to this as a model to adopt later because i think the public sector is not as commonly using this yet but i will say every fortune 50 every fortune 100 company worth their merit is focused on employee engagement just like you're doing and and yes numbers are going to be down because some of the key things that make people engage i have the tools and resources to do my job i know what's expected of me this pandemic has shown i mean we it we don't even know we don't know what people need and i

028think that's part of selling this to our employees is saying we need to bring you into the process which gets them engaged to the work and then of course the most powerful thing is doing that impact planning where they get the power to say i'm going to change my my work group by doing this and this so congratulations to this i do think this will be something that we will see cincinnati public schools share on the national stage at conferences etc because it is a totally different way to look at how we engage our employees and i commend you for all your work thank you any other questions and comments okay looks looks good thank you sarah brody thank you uh susan bundy for the great presentation all righty the next presentation superintendent yes the

029next presentation comes under health and safety of our strategic plan and we're going to have sarah trimble oliver our chief strategy officer present the health data as it relates to the city of cincinnati as well as hamilton county following sarah trimble oliver donna murphy one of our assistant superintendents will give the board some highlights as it relates to the data related to our sports uh teams who have been operating during sp winter sports thank you hello good afternoon um as ms mitchell mentioned uh health and safety was identified as one of our five main goals about a year and a half ago well in march 2020 when covet hit our strategies had to change drastically in order for us to keep meeting that goal so tonight we're going to review um the community coveted health

030data as well as the cps covet health data the same data that we have been reviewing on an ongoing basis so first we will look at the cova cases within hamilton county school districts this is for the week prior to november 26th there were 150 new student cases and 159 new staff cases in hamilton county public schools which you can see on the graph on the right that was actually fewer students than the prior week but more staff than the prior week and again that is 150 new student cases out of a total number of 114 000 students enrolled in public schools on the next slide is our city daily new case account and what is interesting about this update of the data is that we are seeing a flattening of the seven day average

031over the past week or two so our seven day average um now which is the gray the small gray dots is at 181 daily new cases um which is down from a week ago when i reported this which was 191. um and so again these this particular um city daily new cases has been flat over the past couple of weeks um on the next slide we have the last 14 days again uh relatively flat from the beginning of this 14 14 day period to now we actually have seven days uh which are in green which is a decrease in the seven day average from the prior day um which uh there were four green dots last week when we reviewed this data um so the seven day average um of 181 when you divide that

032by the population that equates to 59 new cases per 100 000 down slightly from last week which was at 62. the county is at um is is higher than the city right now it's at 68 new cases per 100 000. um the county is also seeing the same trend as the city which is um actually slightly down from 14 days ago to now um so a very small bit of positive news is that um we are not continuing to increase um at this latest review of the daily new cases but the bad news is that it's flattening out still at that very high rate um of daily new cases which of course we have seen that is a rate that makes it difficult for us to have enough staff in our school buildings to maintain

033our safety protocols due to staff being out with illness isolation and quarantines um one additional note of caution about this possible flattening is that this time period does include the thanksgiving holiday um and it could have impacted uh that number of cases due to people not going to get tested or or possibly even being out of town and unable to get tested um and so that is just one consideration um on the next slide uh the news about the positivity rate um is not good there is it is now at 10.3 for the city of cincinnati um and 15.5 for hamilton county outside of the city which is an increase from last week the average length to get test results does remain around two days and on the last slide is our cps covered data

034um one more slide um for our students um we have had 1451 students isolated for symptoms um 921 tested for covid um and of those 131 um have been confirmed positive cases um since october 13th and again that is out of 35 000 um confirmed cat staff cases since october 13th um is now up to 214. and uh now i will turn it over to uh miss shawna murphy to rep present some athletic athletic cover data thank you sarah i appreciate you uh yeah focusing in on our student athletes in particular i wanted to share with you a little bit of data uh from october the 23rd through uh yesterday december 1st as we started winter sports we've had a total of 17 positive student cases two of them from clark montessori six from mona

035hills high school six from western hills high school one hughes one taft and one riverview east among our coaches and our staff members we've had 10 positive cases one from aitkin park one gamble one use one schroeder one wanna hills three woodward high school two we have had 19 teams on pause since we started our winter sports program two of those programs have been put on pause due to interscholastic competition one was a taft versus wanted hill situation and the other was a wyoming versus taft uh gang we believe there is the potential that there is spread among one team in our school district and that was a varsity boys basketball team between the junior high uh jv rather the jv and the high school varsity basketball program at western hills one program in our

036district has been placed on paws two times and that is clark high school's varsity boys basketball team for a total of a 14-day pause of course we put our teams on pause immediately after a positive case is reported we do uh do close contact notification and proper communication to our families with the guidance of the cdc and cincinnati public schools i wanted to share with you the number of student athletes per team as it compares to the total number of students in schools and we do have this data for all of our high schools but i'll just take a moment to share maybe three aiken high school just because they're first on our list in the high school there are 92 winter sports student athletes out of 667 students in the building at uh hughes

037there are 109 student athletes in high school for winter sports as compared to 647 total high school students and let's say withrow has a total of 98 student athletes for the winner out of 966 students uh the breakdown of positive cases versus teams on pause for the fall there were 1 504 total high school student athletes as it compares to the winter a total of 685 student athletes again for the fall a total of 10 uh positive cases with students and athletes and then for the winter there's been a total of 27 to date program pauses for the fall there were five and then for the winter 19. and that's just a little bit of data on our student athletes in particular thank you thank you um donna murphy and sarah oliver tremble sarah oliver

038i'm sorry um so we wanted to provide this data for you um we are collecting data continuing to collect data during distance learning about the positivity of our students as well as our staff members i would like to just bring back to the public's attention and recollection that the reason we decided to go to distance learning was not because there were a huge number of cases within our schools we've actually had very little we can only account for one spread within a school and it was a very small number the reason that we went to distance learning um was due to the number of staff members who were out sick uh with covet and in isolation or staff members who were in quarantine because they have been a close contact or in quarantine taking care

039of a sick family member and so again our protocols that we've put in place with the help of children's hospital and the cincinnati health department those strategies have really worked not spread within our schools our schools are very safe we went to distance learning because of the number of staff members who are not able to come to work due to illness or being in quarantine and that concludes our presentation thank you um miss murphy and uh superintendent board members questions or comments miss powers please of you yes thank you uh superintendent assistant superintendent um i wanted to to inquire and and just ask your feedback and comfort level about how things are going with our athletes as far as um safety protocols and the feel for um how we're progressing with with the covet 19.

040i believe uh i would be accurate and my colleague susan bunty might be able to help me out uh my understanding on the daily huddles with children's hospital and other health care numbers uh they've been very complementary uh to the work being done by our athletic director josh harden all of our coaches and our our school staff in terms of quickly identifying and um wrapping our arms around potential cases and then even those who have been confirmed cases i believe that our processes and procedures are going really well thank you yes actually this morning on the huddle call with cincinnati health department and cincinnati children's athletics was highlighted as having very positive systems in place and being able to just have very smooth processes in terms of reporting good thank you bo other questions or

041comments okay i i think that um my recollection was that we would give an update we would give a public update this evening about athletics and that we will also provide some direction or guidance as to uh how we proceed and and so given what um miss bunty and miss murphy said uh are board members okay with proceeding uh or continuing with the um winter sports as is or are there any ideas comments about that miss fulton uh based upon that data uh and based upon knowing how important these programs are to our students uh i would be willing to continue to do what we're doing using the pause using the protocols but most particularly would want to know the rules regarding uh audience attendance and uh those other safety uh procedures i would hope

042that recruiters could at least watch i i but i would be very much interested in limiting and i think we are having attended one a very limited audience uh and and i was carded and not allowed in so that was great i was pleased about that uh i missed the i missed seeing my neighbors uh kid but uh the the reality is i'd like to know for sure that the audience is protected and that we don't have that kind of community spread but as a person that spent 36 years with teenagers i i want them to be able to do this if we can provide the protocols that are necessary and and them participating becomes a decision for their parents and i think that's where it belongs yep this miss murphy any comment to that

043yes ma'am thank you we are streaming all of our games and competition uh and we are not allowing um spectators other than uh the coaches the media and any college recruiters at this time right wonderful okay so i guess hearing if we're i'm not hearing any objections to proceeding as is with that if we're okay with that okay sounds good okay any other questions or comments i believe there probably is one more sort of outstanding question perhaps and that is um any up updates questions or concerns about how we move forward just in terms of school reopening the building sort of reopening i believe last time we spoke uh we said um anticipating uh january 5th and we heard the superintendent say that we would not need to know ahead of the game kind of

044where we stand in order to give people opportunity to plan so do board members have questions or comments regarding that particular guidance miss bolton followed by mr barack um my position is as everyone says to get to in person whatever we possibly can but knowing knowing the thanksgiving and the other winter holiday christmas um coming up and knowing there's always a delay of a week or two to get the surge i don't think it's reasonable for us to be able to open in person as early as uh the you know january 4th or 5th or whatever that date was and would want to delay it uh either till the end of january or at least the week after but still commit to trying to open uh and be in person and remote and i know

045people are working on how we can do that but uh i think we need to tell the families that i'm not hopeful about being able to be january 4th or 5th or whatever but i don't want to lose the whole year and at all okay thank you mr morrowski and thank you president jones um i have serious reservations about the fourth like miss bolton um i still maintain spring break is a good mark but i'm willing to obviously entertain uh other options i also don't want to put out there that i want to clarify against something when we talk about january 4th or now miss bolton saying you know beyond that mlk or february or spring break whenever the date we're talking about is are we talking about an aspirational date to go back or

046a date that we'll reevaluate because if we're saying day february 1st then the date to reevaluate would be two weeks earlier do you see what i'm saying so are we talking like a date that we're shooting to open or a date that we want to reevaluate the data can i can i respond to that and board members can tell me if i'm going around i i heard i i believe that we've talked about uh having a conversation about how we plan out what we're gonna do so these dates are sort of tentative around that so might we be able to use the january 16th date for example if there is a decision to push it back at least to the end of the month on january 16th does that give us ample time to kind

047of plan it out a little more comprehensively and completely um before for the rest of the year is that that is that what you're asking mr moroski yeah yeah pretty much okay so carefully i don't think january fourth i think january 4th is is is out right we here we hear that okay uh miss bowers and being mistakes yes thank you president jones i agree with what you just said and and an agreement with um understanding what board member morowsky is saying so identifying the 16th is maybe the date to look at data to determine if the first of february would be a return date i think that makes sense okay um miss uh bates and then mr lindy yes and from what i understand we are collecting data from our staff about positive uh

048tests and also their quarantines so if our data for our staff is better than the community data i mean in the first place the reason as superintendent mitchell stated earlier that we closed is because we can't staff the schools not because our schools aren't safe so even if the data is not where we want it to be in the community if our staff is is staying healthy and they're they're following proper protocols in the community and and are reporting uh their their positives and quarantines and that's lower than what the city and county is uh reporting i think that's a should factor very in a very big way in the decision to open not just relying on the community uh data okay thank you mr limby uh thank you president jones i wanted to just

049share my support for the dates that board member morosky and board member bowers shared that we look on the 16th to decide what to do after the first i just i think it's a great timeline um i wanted to bring up a topic that i raised last time because i want to keep bringing this up that as the administration considers just what options we have when when we look at the data around the 16th to look at if it doesn't look like we could bring everybody back could we prioritize bringing back younger kids and could we prioritize bringing back students with special needs i hope we can bring back everybody but if we do have to make hard choices i really would love like us to work really hard to see if we can be

050strategic in terms of bringing kids back where there's both the biggest opportunity for academic impact and where there's the least uh risk i think of code transmission um and then i was just reading something um online this week from uh the former secretary of education i think arne duncan um that uh just had a nice image of like maybe schools could be the places where we're ultimately uh giving out vaccines uh and maybe that could happen in the school year um and that's not an action step for anybody it's just a picture of something that has me feeling hopeful um for the first time in a while uh and uh you know as we head into the holiday season i hope that 2021 is a year where that's what could be going on in cbs

051and get ourselves back to a better situation and that's all i have thank you okay um miss bolton just to follow up on on what mr lindy said i think we talked last time about the fact that we have the infrastructure to a certain extent because of our 20-some school-based health centers and what have you but i really would encourage us and and the public that is listening to make sure that the governor understands that teachers are essential workers and should not be so far down the line to receive vaccinations we know that kids will be among the last to receive it we know that but it's it seems as i know other districts the problem is staffing and that's why the schools are not open so if there's a way to convince the governor

052to at least up the teachers as priority then then we know that they do want the schools reopened i i would i would reiterate that and i think we need to be active advocates for that meaning perhaps write a letter to the governor's office or phone call or something to the governor's office as a as a district so maybe that'll be an assignment okay so let me see if i can clarify for purposes of moving forward um we all agree that january the 16th at our work session we would have a discussion around sort of the long-term plan what is our vision and maybe put some things in place but if what i'm hearing folks say is accurate we're not anticipating coming back until perhaps at least at the earliest the end of january is

053that correct is that correct carolyn yeah okay um yes uh mr master mr master yeah and i i think um i mean this isn't our last meeting right we have uh um and so i think it'd be worthwhile to ask the superintendent to come back with a recommendation on how we appropriately manage um our return because you know i think sometimes we as a community all of us forget just how big we're not a district of a few hundred kids so 38 000 kids ish minus some uh whatever they're um and all these schools and the complexity of keeping workplace safe and everything else staffing i think might be good to have a recommendation come to us at our next meeting on that but i think what i'm doing is monday i don't know if

054that gives them enough time so how about the 16th just you know what well i'm trying to click clarify mr messer what you're asking you're asking the superintendent to offer her recommendations which i agree with yeah i i think maybe the takeaway for me i think the takeaway for me is it's it's probably not it's good for our public to know probably not gonna be a good thing to come back right after the christmas holiday slash annika holiday and everything else that that january 4th um but uh and just thinking about trying to move this ship after people have come back from a holiday break etc so that's probably not going to work so i think it probably it's start good to signal that likely won't be before the dates that you're talking about but

055uh you know let us kind of look at a formal recommendation okay maybe let me change my question are you looking for a formal recommendation prior to the january 16th meeting where we work through some of this and can the superintendent come with her recommendations at that are meeting asking for something earlier and i think something earlier to say here's how we're going to bridge the gap between now and then and just a recommendation to say based on this we think the earliest we would come back is this date whatever she comes back with and then here's the process we'll use to make the decision on when and then how we come back and then that will be on the 16th all right okay thank you any other questions or comments um i think miss

056bowers did you have your hand done before i go to the phone okay all right um no ryan did fine no that was okay okay miss bolton i i just got confused um which happens often but uh my understanding was that we would tell the the families and our folks that we are not going to be coming back on the the first of january and that i think it's too early to ask the superintendent for a recommendation next uh wednesday or next monday but the december 16th board meeting perhaps she could come back with the appropriate recommendation that i think ryan's right to ask because she'll know how to do that and then you know with that recommendation then we can also continue to talk about it on the january 6th or at the retreat

057or the work session but i i would like to close tonight with the people knowing we're not coming back january 4th or 5th and that the superintendent is going to come back with a recommendation maybe uh on december 16th and we can further map out what we need to based on her recommendation when we meet in the retreat i i think you heard it right i hope what i saw your hand and then superintendent yeah and i think you know all i'm trying to get at is you know we have a superintendent and a team that think about this all day every day and i would like it to say hey here's where you are superintendent says hey i don't because laura's already thought through this so we we sit and banter and batter and

058do all this discussion over here they've already spent talking and i think if we just said hey what do you think is ideal we would probably get that and i'm pretty sure we'd be 90 there and then say great and so probably not going to be right there after first the year and then on the 16th we can talk about what that reentry plan will look like the the measures and metrics etc and the process for doing that so um i'm just a yeah i think it's good to signal that uh we will not be returning to classes based on this conversation on the fourth but then what that process beyond that looks at i think the superintendent can bring us a recommendation on that thank you superintendent yes so um i'm happy to bring

059some information back to you on the 16th of december i would just like to have this caveat to say that it's a whole month before you all make the decision and a lot of data can change within that 30-day period and so just know that we will really work on a re-entry plan and the phase in and how all that can happen and be ready on the 16th but know that it could change based upon the data 30 days later yes and just one last comment to that i think what you're really gay about is process in your metrics and i think getting that out to our public to say you know here's what that will look like when the data hits these points i think that that will be very helpful okay thank you

060last comment miss bolton what one last thing of course as a superintendent can advise us and tell us what needs to happen uh totally 100 with that i do think that the community does need to know though that the superintendent has created a committee of knowledgeable people and expert people uh across the district that are you know looking into how we are going to provide remote and in person uh for the rest of the year so she's ryan's right she's got it already happening and figuring it out but i think the community needs to be reassured that that kind of conversation is happening that's very exciting and very kind of the new cps and i'm excited that she's done that thank you okay so i think we're in a good place with that we're all

061in agreement uh for how to move forward um sounds like a good plan okay anything else then regarding the safety planning update superintendent any any questions of us okay all right so we'll move on um we are now at the item on our agenda for hearing the public the board prides itself on being as transparent and open as possible consistent with the state's direction to minimize public gatherings we are convening this video conference call to include opportunity for public comment here again are the specific instructions for participation and hearing of the public members of the public who wish to speak during the board meeting must make requests through the chat feature including your full name affiliation to the district school community and contact information for response to questions this request model standard practice if we

062were meeting in person in the ed center um mr hoing will be uh our timekeeper once the request has been granted you will be invited to enter please click on the camera icon to go interactive after speaking you will briefly see the welcome screen again as you transition back to the live stream meeting each speaker will have two minutes to speak and may only speak once when the timer goes off we'll let you know that your two minutes are up please refrain from discussing any personnel items that we ask at your public commentary be respectful of all those listening thank you all righty how many speakers and are we ready to go uh yes ma'am we have about uh five or six speakers uh this evening as well as uh gft president julie sellers our

063first speaker is yousef meniere followed by alice flanders uh go ahead mr munir can you all see and hear me i think he said followed by julie sellers no oh may i begin go ahead my name is yusuf menier i am a cps student and i am the president of young activist coalition i'm here today because cincinnati public schools is actively criminalizing students to deny that would be to ignore the indisputable data and lived experiences of your students we are here today to demand the complete removal of police and punitive policies from cps schools an increase in psychologists social workers and counselors in on school campuses and the implementation of well-funded well-researched restorative and transformative justice practices i want to explain why ysc is dissatisfied with the current anti-racism at best policy is nothing more

064than words on papers that will be glossed over and change nothing because it does not focus on accountability for cps employees it does not have an implementation plan for restorative and transformative justice and it does it most certainly does not discuss the issue of police criminalizing children instead it focuses on interpersonal relation racism rather than the systemic racism i will not be covering the data in my statement today because i think others will do a good job of that and i've discussed it before instead i want to talk about my own lived experience on september 20th 2019 i was threatened with arrest by an sro i was 16 years old at the time and do you want to know what my dastardly crime was i tried to practice my first amendment right to go to

065a protest at city hall i was threatened to be taken to jail because i was skipping school while i was on school campus and you know what i'm one of the luckier i'm one of the ones that didn't end up being sent to court and there are plenty of cps students who aren't so lucky and the blame for that and the continuation of the school-to-prison pipeline is on you superintendent mitchell and all of the board members who refuse to listen to the indisputable data and to your students the children that you are responsible for thank you thank you okay our next speaker is alice flanders followed by seth go ahead miss flanders hi there my name is alice flanders and i'm a proud alum of cps schools i'm here today to reiterate points that have

066been made before me requested cps break ties with cincinnati police the sros in our schools no matter how pleasant the personal relationships may be are there to criminalize children our children deserve transformative and restorative justice not penalization please break ties with cpd thank you so much thank you please i'm neil mr hoy we can't hear you hello hi go ahead can you hear me okay i'm uh seth webber and i live in clifton heights and i just want to express my support for the young activist coalitions demands for dps to cut ties with uh cincinnati police department and uh remove officers from school and uh because i i think uh you know students in our district deserve a more creative and constructive method of dealing with the problems that come up in our schools i

067don't think kids belong in jails or prisons that i don't think kids need to be criminalized and i don't think that they exist to be exploited by the prison industrial complex uh these the police the jails prisons exist to punish people and i don't think kids need punishment so much as they need uh patient guidance and in my experience police officers are not very patient people and and our kids need patient people in our schools um and our our prison industrial complex it doesn't exist uh to rehabilitate uh quite the contrary uh jails and prisons are a great way to harden uh our children into in into criminals basically you know we're criminalizing our children um i question the wisdom of a school board which allows a demonstrably racist institution to exist in our schools

068the numbers bear this out uh black cps students are disproportionately targeted and affected by police presidents in our school and finally i'd just like to recall an incident two years ago in which an officer pays an 11 year old girl at a kroger uh put her in handcuffs and said to her this is why there are no grocery stores in the black community and uh the fraternal order of police president uh that he supported this use of force uh you know it shows that that police would sooner brutalize a young world our next speaker is oz davis followed by cft president julie sellers go ahead mr davis can you hear me carolyn we can hear you boy i'm sorry dan uh how's everybody doing today i want to thank you all for your service um

069i am very much appreciative of of each and every one of you i've got a couple points i want to make one i think guys should um extend the time of executive session or change the times of the meetings about a half hour since we've gone virtual there has been less of regard to uh the audience that's waiting so we're consistently late starting board meetings and it's starting to get burdensome on my end because i'm looking at the phone for you know 26 minutes tonight so i think we should even and since i don't know what's going on in executive session but i've been in one before i think you may need to look at lengthening the time of the executive session so that the board meeting will start on time uh to honor the

070pop i really appreciate that my second point was um i wanted to commend you all on allowing sport winter sports to continue but i wanted to request that the board have enough faith and confidence in administration to let the administration really assess if parents should be allowed to the game so as the sports i've been to three different leagues already i went to mount healthy i went to moeller and i've been to aiken and i've had a chance to assess others protocols is cps's protocols by far are are greater and more reliable than any of the others i think uh josh and chyna will do a very good job and their staffs around steady mr good evening everyone can you hear me we can yes okay great thank you before you start i'm sorry to

071interrupt but we we have one other speaker uh mr uh taylor who if he accepts the invitation uh can speak uh following you hear me okay um number one i would like to just say that um i am so excited that we were able to receive a national aft grant that is going to provide a um safety hotline and of support for parents conference yesterday there were a few of the school board members who participated there was a great article on channel 12 explaining how this is going to work and actually i just want to report and let everyone know we did receive some calls today through the google doc and they were really um there were easy questions for us to answer we were able to help them already and i think it's going

072to be a very positive um initiative for the parents of cps students so um i will be giving you an upload on this but i feel very positive about the outcomes of this initiative secondly i would like to talk about and ask some comments and questions about the employee engagement presentation when they were looking at the team level i would like to know what constitutes a team if you're talking about teacher teams i find it a little bit ironic that you understand the importance of team input and tracking progress yet so many decisions have been made at central office with very strong top-down dictates teachers know what they need in order to be successful but many of the teachers in this district are feeling like they're being left out of many discussions and that they

073are not able to verbalize or report what it is that they need to be um successful um and that was one of the things where pam brought on about the onboarding content with the new hires i know for sure that this year we've been getting hundreds of calls from teachers who are newly hired on support and feeling like they didn't have exactly what they needed but yet through our budget process we cut every single one of our district-wide mentors which provided supports for new hires and we at cft strongly believe that those cuts to the district-wide mentors was a disservice to our new teachers this year and i hope that with all of this discussion about employee experiences that we have that support for those new hires that we are able to go in and

074give them a strong induction program because if we want to keep teachers within our district we have to be able to provide the supports for them to be successful my third point is in the treasurer's report amendments to the agreements there was a an agreement that was doubled in the amount of money from um 72 thousand dollars was added to the double the total and as we are working strongly to streamline our budget for this school year i was disturbed to see that the district made under this agreement that we have hope because we have opened an entire new department with large financial investments with in the talent development department my question and concern is that with doubling an outside contract for professional development why are we um increasing contracts and doubling contracts wow we

075have an entire department for um employee development and talent development to me i think that is just outrageous that we would be spending money that way and then the last one is about the covet update i know that i've been getting a lot of text people are relieved that the decision to reopen schools january the 4th that everybody understands that at this point it's way too dangerous for us to reopen people should be sheltering in place wearing their masks i understand cps is has great protocols in place to be safe but i also understand those safety protocols are when we have less than five percent positivity rate per 100 000 it is when we do not have the spread that we have currently those things are are great if we are at a lower level

076but now that we are high red going to purple it is way too dangerous for us to open schools as safe as they are we need to wait and so i think that it was good that the board is making the decision to wait and make a determination in mid-january after we find out what's happening with the spread of thanksgiving and the holidays thank you thank you miss sellers we have one more speaker who uh if with your permission uh brian brian taylor is next to speak thank you okay um can people see me hear me okay um well i want to talk about the very real racial dynamic that exists between police and and black people which does not dissolve once they enter a school building all the stereotypes persist they're more likely to

077be deemed guilty more perceived to be violent stronger older this is how this is what happens in our communities um i've had wonderful teachers but the statist the statistics show that police are much more likely to be called on black and brown students as well as those who are differently able um sros are new development in american history and i don't think they're needed a real community hired trained force composed of people from working class backgrounds could have a much keener eye and softer touch this is also one of the ways that new jobs could be created livable wage jobs of value so this isn't about whether an individual sro is a cool person or a mean person it's about an institution whose attitude towards non-white people does not miraculously change on campus and let

078me just add that you don't have to be a black or brown person yourself to be confronted with a situation with police they escalate as an institution they escalate and we don't have the luxury of hoping that we get one that acts like they have some sense um especially young people so please take seriously and heed the requests and demands of the young activist coalition who are expressing the sentiments of a much larger swath of students and adults than they're being credited with one can argue that many black people day to day don't run into problems with police until they do cincinnati had a policy where there was a people thought that there were no problems with police here then sam dubose happened then a whole other series of these killings and brutalizations happen what

079changed my argument is nothing the recipe for these things bad things to happen so i just hope you consider this thank you thank you mr taylor okay any other speakers no mr jones thank you okay thank you so much moving on any kudos carolyn i have one yes go ahead mr benson yes um i don't know for sure that we've shared this one publicly but uh of course we all know the community has come out throughout the district to support our children and our district during the pandemic one of those uh individuals is matt woods of woods hardware and i know that uh there was quite a substantial donation to the district of uh 30 000 masks 36 000 3-ply mass 24 boxes of n95 mass 180 gallons of hand sanitizer so uh i just

080want to give kudos to matt woods of woods hardware for um thinking about our district during these times and delivering those supplies thank you any other kudos all right um i believe i don't think we have any retirements this evening um so we'll move on guess what mr moroski it is now your turn for the uh update on the anti-racism policy all right thanks president jones this will be quick um as promised i'm leaving it on board matters until we're ready to have a formal recommendation from policy committee for passage which ideally could be as early as next week we're meeting this friday um after the last meeting there were only a couple more comments they've been included in a recent draft and the two were the one from miss bolton regarding the the state

081language which has been added in the blue line copy that you all hopefully have but i'll just read it to you as a reminder under purpose the first paragraph ends with quote as the state board of ed has stated in their set resolution to condemn racism etc we also we also condemn and then we quote directly from the state resolution in the strongest possible terms white supremacy culture hate speech hate crimes and violence in the service of hatred and then secondly and finally and then if there are any further comments uh that's what this obviously is on the agenda for um but finally um president jones had um repeatedly brought up the importance of uh having language that mirrored the equity policy and she sent suggestions uh which round out that section uh on purpose

082the last two sentences uh lifted directly from uh equity policy that the board holds itself in all district and school site decision makers faculty etc accountable for a district-wide culture that respects diversity equity inclusion which is free of racism that end the board is committed to annual self-evaluation ongoing training and professional development those kind of the two outstanding things that have now been included the draft will be poured over friday in policy and uh we'll see what happens after that ideally again a recommendation of the full board or it'll go back to committee pending everyone's uh thoughts so there it is today no other changes thank you um any conversation discussion questions for mr marowski um i believe mr morosky if there are none then you will uh follow up with the committee to present

083it for approval is that correct yeah it's on the agenda for friday and miss scott will go through and like you know she's been doing and sort of call out each one and how it's gotten added and then yeah if there are no additional things today and if the committee is is fine with it on friday then we would you know put it on an agenda um probably not monday but the meeting after that okay sounds good all righty so the next item on the agenda regarding board development and planning um i just wanted to uh inform the board members that as you know uh uh january i don't know exactly what date is it uh our organizational meeting is scheduled for january the 11th we actually have uh one business meeting prior to that

084but our organizational meeting is january the 11th so you will in fact probably over the next two to three days be receiving all the information regarding the organizational chart and the committee structure so please give that consideration and it will have time frames for getting it back to our staff so that we can be prepared for that um we also have scheduled on the 11th a tax budget hearing um that's just a reminder um in additional to that i wanted to make sure that folks referenced their calendar for the for 2021 um one of the things that should be noted is uh typically we have meetings that are scheduled at four o'clock we have them at off site like at our schools um but we understand the situation that we're in and that may not

085be possible but i would uh urge us to um just at a time more appropriate like next year that we might consider if it's safe that we may be able to do that at some point and we can always decide that at a later date so i just wanted to make sure that and then finally with the board work session um very much interested in getting an early jump on uh planning that agenda and um mr messer i'd like uh you and i work on that if you have time um work on kind of pulling together an agenda and um uh prioritizing that agenda because it's going to be pretty hefty i can tell you so if you're willing to work with me around that i love it okay and then um also for the

086work session i would like to propose and see what board members think about that that we actually uh work that we actually um get a facilitator for this meeting um and i believe there are some options available to us to do that um so just kind of want to put it out there and put the feelers out on where people are with that um and what we can work from whatever ideas and suggestions you might have any thoughts on that carolyn yes mr matthews yeah and i know you and i talked about this before um osba at least at the last conference that i attended um there was somebody there that said they have staff members that um can either do that work or they have other people that can help support that but i

087think having a facilitator so everybody can be engaged in the conversation is always good in groups so i would i would fully support that yes so in addition to osba we also have internal resource that um uh you know we've um through mayerson i believe that we have the ability to uh solicit or access a facilitator through that contract um so that's an option that we are interested in hearing other options if uh or suggestions and ryan and i will be more than happy to follow up on them and identify someone who can meet our needs so if you have um other suggestions about facilitators if you could please forward that to us and we'll be happy to pursue it so are there any other questions there mr lindy oh i just wanted to say

088i think this is a great idea uh and i appreciate you raising it president jones um i really like what ryan said about somebody from osba um a couple other people do come to mind i'd be happy to write something up and send it over um but but i think um you know probably pros and cons to all of these different options all right but i do like the idea of a third party okay sounds good miss bolton yes uh thank you i think the facilitator is a good idea um i i do want us to make sure that we have these really as you said hefty issues to to deal with whether it's the new cps uh that kind of visioning or whether it is the review of the strategic plan i would hope

089that we'd be using a facilitator for that kind of discussion and not have such yeah and not have a that you know 10 items on the agenda but have really the the this huge wonderful focus uh on on what lies ahead so that's just like 10 bits you you are absolutely right and i would say in response to that that the board really determines the agenda so if you all give me if you all give us 15 items then it's ryan and i to prioritize that and we'll we will do that and i promise you i mean there are some we do have some priorities and so we want to make sure that we uh allocate enough time for us to have um a good discussion and planning around those but it does mean too

090that we really may not be able to get to every single issue that folks or every single subject that everybody gives us so we will we will prioritize that so thank you for that yep any other thoughts about the uh board work session wonderful so we'll move on uh miss bolton you actually have uh presenting both resolutions so if you want to present the first resolution uh i'll present the first one and i'm very supportive of the second one but i can't find my copy of the second one so if somebody else will present that i i'm i just i have no idea what happened to it i think my puppies stole it okay first resolution uh cincinnati public schools a resolution requesting authority from the hamilton county budget commission to file a modified tax

091budget for the 2020 to 2021 fiscal year this is a resolution that needs to be passed it's required by law uh and it needs to that kind of passage and i've asked the treasurer to explain what this means so that our public is aware wonderful be the second uh i've so moved and then i guess the second and then she can just she can talk about okay is there a second mr morocco great second okay i got any discussion um miss wagner did you have anything i yes i can share there are two different formats that you can choose to file your tax budget the tax budget is to um ensure that we are collecting enough revenues to support our debt payments that's the main purpose of the tax budget and so um they give

092you two forms to do we've been using the modified form for at least eight or ten years i can't remember what the last one looks the other one looks like we haven't used it and so um it is a simplified matter we do a presentation we're required by law to advertise and inquire that the tax budget is available for review 10 days prior to board action it might be 15 days but um and then the tax hearing is prior to the first board meeting um and then we'll ask you to pass it and then we'll submit it to the hamilton county okay thank you any other thank you for the clarification um any uh other discussion great miss wagner please call the role mrs bates oh hey miss bolton hi mrs bowers yes mr lindy

093yes mr messer yes mr morosky yes president jones yes okay does anybody have their resolution in front of them the next resolution would you please present that next resolution i have a resolution completing the evaluation of superintendent catherine laura mitchell that i will present as written for passage thank you is there a second second second thank you any discussion okay miss wagner please call roll mrs bates hi this is bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer yes mr moroski yes president jones yes thank you and um so we'll we'll move on um to the next item superintendent do you have a report this evening i do i have a very short report i'm going to ask our chief communication officer to see up a powerpoint um krista boyle is going to present

094an update to the questions that were asked last week regarding projections related to students thank you thank you superintendent if we could go to the first slide please this is just a reminder of what we shared at the last meeting prior to that discussion we did give an enrollment snapshot in october and that number that was shared was roughly the same about 300 under at 4 000 973 um separate from enrollment we also discussed attendance at that meeting so i just wanted to give a quick update on that and just share that we are currently working with students and families on about a thousand attendance intervention buddy next slide please and so these are two charts that we've shared before but i thought it would be helpful just to kind of ground us in some

095of the withdrawal and enrollment data so the the chart on the left shows that we're at about 3 700 withdrawals to date in october when we also shared the chart the number was at about 2 900. we've had about 3 600 enrollments during roughly that same time period since july 1st i just thought this would be helpful context for the next slide please which is the big question which is where did our withdrawn students go so the biggest bucket which i think we probably would not be surprised about was charter and other public schools in ohio that's 57 percent out of ohio fourteen percent non-public also fourteen percent um home school since there's been some discussion about this i just thought that would be interesting to share as well that's two percent and then thirteen

096percent is the other category which could include folks who moved out of the us or moved and did not share a school or we didn't have a school reach out for record and then the last slide is just withdrawal percent by multiple demographics and this roughly tracks with our district district demographics but thought it would also be helpful to share and so that is the last slide thank you are there any additional questions that board members may have about the present the presentation of the information yes mr lindy um just want to say thank you both to the superintendent and decrista i just wanted to hear what you thought about the numbers do those look good not good what's your what's your opinion about uh what that means for us um are never happy to

097lose students um and so i know that um our communications department is working on a recruitment plan uh and it's actually at least a two-prong approach and one is really actually three one is really centered around um preschool students we have a lot of good data that if we can get kids into the district in preschool and keep them in second or kindergarten then they're more likely to you know stay with cps or enter into cps the second prong is the transition from um preschool to a cps kindergarten and so we're working on that from our perspective in terms of our preschool classrooms but also we work with preschool promise and so they promote within the priest their preschool sites um kindergarten transition into cps so that's the second prong and the third prong is

098to really recruit those students who left cps we believe that um students left cps um due to the fact that um maybe they sought other in-person options five days a week we have been seeing a decline in charter school enrollment in the cincinnati area over the last several years and so we believe that we can get the students back and have them within our school district first i'm not sure if you had any additional thoughts no that was great you covered it thanks for hitting the recruiting piece because i think that's really critically important as we think about the next couple months president can i just follow up on one piece go ahead i got from this power i'll be quick i wanted i wanted to make sure i had this the um the big

099picture story right because i think last meeting um it seemed like the the the delta between where we are and what we expected was really coming from families who didn't enroll preschool in kindergarten and that was a really good piece of news i think that's still true uh i just wanted to check that and then then i think what we heard about the about the the enrollment and the um transfers it seems like those are basically cancelling each other out like we did have about about 700 or 37 i'm going to get the number wrong but like a number of families leave cps and the number of families transfer in um musically offsetting and is this the right story so uh let me take them in two pieces so the first piece is correct so

100we are we mostly lost kids in the younger grades and actually saw an increase at the high school level um in terms of if we could fill this slide back up with the two tables i think it's slide two so the um the withdrawals do not include thank you the withdrawals do not include students who oh next one sorry the withdrawals do not include students who transferred to other cps schools that on the enrollment side that number of 3600 does include kids who transfer to virtual which is about 1600 so if you pull that number mr lindy you'll you would get close to that thousand number which was the delta so i'm glad you brought that up does that help i i think i'm good yeah thank you okay great thank you okay thanks miss

101bowers yes and the in honor of transparency and i don't know if we if you all do this but like with most employers um they do exit interviews when someone's transitioning from one place to another have we ever thought about it we may already capture this information of finding out what um i guess when we get requests for a child's records do we ever follow with that family as to why they're transferring on why they're leaving the district that is a great question and i so we have just started so we have started some outreach to families who are leaving to learn more about that historically i'm not sure if it's something that we've done in his normal practice i know a lot of times it's the schools that we actually hear from so families

102themselves don't call us the schools do but there's definitely i think an opportunity to follow up with those families directly on a as part of a regular process right okay so i do know board member bowers that we have done that type of surveying in the past i can remember even having the data to understand why parents left cps very specifically so i can't say that we've done it uh that we did it last year but i know that we have done that type of surveying in the past and that's how we found out that a good portion of our families um at the at this time left due to the feeling that they felt when they walked into a school building so sometimes decisions nothing with academic achievement it was the how they were

103welcomed or not welcomed within a school right because thank you with yeah and it's really some learned information for us like you said i remember that initiative about uh friendly schools or it was it was an initiative i remember it but that would just give us information about some things that maybe we need to look at even if it's not academics that's just as important um so i was just wondering thank you okay thank you any other questions or comments all right um do i have a motion to approve the revised recommendations of the superintendent second miss wagner please call roll what discussion first oh i thought we did that or maybe i got it wrong did we do discussion all right miss bolton yes could we review what was revived okay uh so did

104you not get the rebound you everyone said that i printed all my stuff out a little too early i think okay go ahead superintendent yes i would be happy to so under both sections both for certificated personnel as well as civil service there was a line authorizing the treasurer to compensate pay out for any rollover annual leave from last year that employees were not able to take and so just for everyone's benefit um at the time that covet happened everyone started working so hard on crisis management all throughout the summer and opening school that many people were not able to take vacation time and so this allows of those people to extend those vacation days until june or be paid out those dollars um in exchange for the time as opposed to losing those um

105vacation hours because they couldn't use them because of cobit yes i remember that jeff that's great thank you great any other discussion sorry about that okay miss wagner please call rome mrs bates and hear you hi it's bolton hi this is bowers yes mr lindy mr master yes mr morosky yes president jones yes thank you i do i have a motion to approve the revised report of the treasurer [Music] their second second thank you any discussion and and treasure wagner given that yeah give me uh some folks may not have seen the latest update i'm sorry i wanted the updates but i didn't know if that was what you were going to do you may have another comment or something um actually i just have two comments um to make first being um you may

106or may not be aware that hamilton county was given a very large cares act grant and they decided that they wouldn't be able to spend it out by the end of december as a requirement so they've offered little mini grants to each of the hamilton county school districts um based at 50 per student so our our portion of that would be 1.7 million something the deadline is december 3rd and so we are at the final stages of putting our grant together i've signed it we're going to ship it off but i just want to let you know that that was about about the restrictions um it's not as open as you might think it is and it can only be reimbursing us for things that we've spent on covid that has not been part of

107another cares grant and so um made it a little bit harder to identify those things that we've already spent the money on and not something that is a year-long contract right so we're working on it um the second item um that i wanted to share is that i got the first draft of a next year's budget development process put together that focuses on the equitable distribution of resource financial resources as called out in the strategic plan and um so i've been sharing it with a couple people and going going to be sharing with leadership team next week finance committee on december 17th and then hopefully at the board workshop as we're talking about the scope of next year's initiatives we can roll that all in and adopt it at their next board meeting after that

108very exciting so um is there any can i answer any questions about the treasurer's report and specifically miss bolton uh again i i don't have the revive the revisions okay um so there were a few there we had to make some revisions to pick up um some things from the legal counsel so we decided just to grab any new thing that came in um to make it easier to pay the bills there's a um an authorization to enter to lease agreement with gable montessori um to develop the greenhouse but it's a grant that's paid for by the agriculture department the second one from legal counsel is um a modification of the cft contract um adding a stipend for teachers who are getting they're increasing their caseload because of the online enrollment so it helps teachers

109with that um on page five non-public audio services there's a award or purchase order it's just pass-through money they're buying some chromebooks for their kids um page six we added a couple then and now's um so that we can get these bills paid out their last year's pos um one was el education for college hill fundamental academy or professional development at a national conference that's online one is for lopez studio group who um it's an invoice to help with rearranging some stuff in the basement for it um we had a late request for athletics and extracurriculars for first student you know the activity buses how you did the 90 day appropriation this is the rest of the year um and then an agreement for mayorson academy to help with the thriving classroom project so those

110are the changes more than usual thank you and i'm i'm sorry to use the board's time on that i i missed the revisions i do i do have a question uh for the treasurer uh regarding the um roman numeral one a regarding um the teach for america contract i think would be good to have that explained um actually if the superintendent or mr mcbull mcdole would like to address that right sure thank you yes i'm on and miss bolton i'm glad to address that um during the summer as we were working through all of our work on trying to reduce contracts uh that we put in to reduce the ta tfa contract by uh that amount listed there uh inadvertently that left off some of our second year uh individuals uh so i do apologize

111for that uh so what we're asking is to go back to what we originally had asked for uh no more no less but we want to make sure we're honoring those second year um employees and stipends thank you so it's not doubling it as much as it is restoring it that is correct okay thank you great any other questions or comments discussion miss wagner please call roll mrs bates hi miss bolton hi this is bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer mr mess are you with us i'm you yeah there we go i can't bend again sorry yes uh mr morrowski yes president jones yes thank you any inquiries or updates yes mr lindy uh thanks president jones i guess other folks may have heard the same story on npr this week but there was

112a nice nice piece on the map results nationwide uh and looking at where students were and whether there's evidence nationally of learning loss i was really interested to hear the piece because it spoke to some of what i think we saw in the report that we got from the administration that there actually looks like there's been less erosion of learning or less missed learning than we thought there might be the one thing that the news story flagged was that it did look in some cases that participation was low or lower than we would have expected um i think there was about 25 percent lower and the they were somewhat concerned that that could be particularly concentrated in low-income students um that part of the reason why we're not seeing the missed learning uh is because

113we're not getting test results from the kids where that loss of learning would be most likely to have occurred and i i wanted to learn more about whether that's something we were seeing in our data or not um uh i i'm gonna president jones i don't know if this is an assignment or this is an inquiry um but i i wanted to i went i tried to go back through the report that we got and i did see some um breakdown by different racial groups by iep status by lep status but i just wanted to hear um what what the opinion of the administration was or whether they were concerned about um missing uh particularly low-income students in the test results or whether we're not worried about that okay i i see um yes you

114have a response mr lindy i do um as far as the participation we did really well in our elementary schools we had lower participation at our high schools um as far as comparing our subgroup data from postcard um coverage it's about the same but you are correct in making the determination in regards to there is less loss in um academic achievement um that most of us thought we would see in a remote learning environment so that's the good news um the better news is that our team our curriculum team along with um principals and also a newly formed committee um it's looking at what can we do to close those gaps that we are very much aware of and using that map data to specifically look at content areas based on accelerated learning and the

115state helps with this as well but based on accelerated learning we are looking at power standards we know we cannot get a full year of instruction in um the way we work so it's something that's called power standards that we're looking at the essential standards and really honing in on those standards to help close those gaps so i don't know if that answers your your question um but i'm available to discuss further if you like i think i just had one follow-up tiana and i do really appreciate that and i think the power standards idea sounds just great um the report that i looked was looking at from you all said that about 81 of kids took the map this year and i thought i heard you say a second ago that that's in line

116with past years i would have thought we'd be close to 100 percent no the high school administration map this is only their second year taking the map the map was administered for a couple of years now for um our elementary schools but it's new for our high schools so with that we had to um support our teachers in the ministering map and also it was very different for them for this year because they took that test remotely it wasn't face to face got it and so and so i'm going to make the connection because i don't i want to make sure that you understand because it was remote at home i think that's why we saw less participation in the high schools yep yeah and i think that the thing i was trying to tell

117to listen for it it sounds like this is not something that you all are concerned about is that um the fact that it's low even if it's just in high schools that that explain why we're not seeing learning loss they're like if we like the kids where the learning losses happen just didn't take the test like i would also say we're looking at that map data closely and we're also looking at grades so looking at the grade so we want to use multiple data points and not just the map um so some area that we're looking at so looking at our grades we've increased um some of the um f's this year it was about five percent so looking at that targeting which kids um need more support along with the map data um we're

118really trying to customize our support for students i really appreciate it thank you thank you for feeling my question thank you any other inquiries and updates okay assignments miss bolton and on you uh yes and perhaps you want to give this assignment but just to remind you about the letter to the governor regarding essential employees and i i very frankly i'd be more than willing for us to have a resolution even as early as next week uh too i think this is critical yes um i was going to assign it but um it's okay but uh the assignment could perhaps be to um mr hoing to draft a resolution for us to be ready for approval at monday's board meeting great okay got it okay any other assignment last call alrighty so thank you all

119and uh hearing no other business i declare the meeting adjourned have a good evening