001i called to order the november 23rd 2020 business meeting of the cincinnati board of education we welcome everyone and request everyone in the audience to please silence your cell phones and electronic devices mr lindy miss wagner please call roll mrs bates miss bolton president mrs bowers here mr lindy here mr messer president mr marowski here president jones here thank you i need a motion to approve a 48-hour waiver to revise this evening's agenda adding a resolution supporting ohio senate bill 358 extending relief to school districts in response to covet 19. second thank you all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed agenda is revised 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 meeting to
002speak you will need to send a request by clicking the chat button submit your name your affiliation to 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 meeting will not be recognized to speak during the meeting i need a motion to approve the minutes from the special public meeting november the special public meeting november 10 2020 the special meeting november 16 2020 in the business meeting november 16 2020. thank you all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed minutes are approved as presented thank you miss bolton
003chair of the budget finance and growth committee please present the revised audit committee report uh thank you you'll recall in a previous meeting we had a member of mr lindy present and we approved the previous minutes this is a revised with an additional attachment and re direct your attention to the attachment which further explains some of the other stipulations and requirements regarding the internal audit and also the additional information regarding the continuing work on the human resources department's efforts in their audit thank you okay do board members have questions or comments about the report okay i need a motion to approve the revised committee report president jones i do have one question yes uh member bolton was this because i missed something in my presentation of the minutes or was there some other cause for
004that your presentation was absolutely stellar that's why i was checking okay we have a motion um did we get a second second thanks okay all in favor signify by saying all right hi motion carry thank you okay so we have several presentations tonight and uh um we're gonna ask treasure wagner to present the first presentation on the five year forecast good evening good evening i am pleased to present to you the november five year forecast and and it's being submitted for approval through a resolution tonight so in front of you you have if you want to follow along on the slides that are on the screen and then we have a blown up version of the five-year forecast so that i can read it by over 50 eyes okay get started so i always introduce
005the forecast by stating the purpose and it's required by the ohio department of education for all 613 ish school districts and we have to file twice a year in november and in may and it's the purpose of the forecast is to monitor district solvency in a very financially transparent way it's a focus on the general fund only and it focuses on cash that helps us to make future financial decision making i'm so used to you doing this i keep forgetting okay um so factors that influence the forecast we have we will have three state biennium budgets in this five-year cycle all of which are broken um the state foundation foreign has been frozen from the last year's level and if you recall we were on the cap for two years before that so we were
006funded or we were frozen at a level that was already 10 million down because of our enrollment growth in addition to the state that the cut that they had us last year that foreign nation formula is all based on relative wealth across the state so if you remember you remember me saying there's an over reliance on property wealth and cincinnati is considered a wealthy district in fact our state shares the lowest among all the urbans it also includes uh pass-through funding if you remember it's all the tuition that we pay it gets deducted off of our formula but we pay for students to attend uh community or charter schools the ed choice vouchers and non-publics and the autism autism and peterson scholarship tuition we typically use a three to five percent inflation factor um as
007we look at the future years and then this year of course the biggest influence has been the pandemic closure in the state cuts also with the pandemic closure the consideration of the instructional models have different staffing level needs so the forecast is all about cash and i know the format that the that the state makes us use is a little confusing to the general public so i've done a restated executive summary here showing you that as we finish one year with cash on hand that becomes our beginning cash balance the next year and so because we cannot have a negative cash balance in a three-year cycle and because the board's guideline does not want to go back to taxpayers for new money we have to kind of back into how much cash we need to
008hold on hand in order to stay positive in future years so how much can we actually spend based on the revenues that are estimated to come in and that's how we're starting to set the budget targets so a pie chart on this year's revenue we estimated 616 million dollars you can see that the big blue piece is our property taxes so our local sources represent over 50 of our funding in the general fund the state proportion has actually been reduced each year last year was at 39 now it's down to 38.6 some of the other sources of revenue are transfers advances and prior period refunds we typically get refunds from e-rate and medicaid reimbursement and this year we got a really nice um kick from back from um the bureau workmen's comp it was it
009was a dividend that was issued the two green slices there the biggest one represents the state foundation formula for both unrestricted funds and restricted which are economically disadvantaged and career tech the light green pie chart is the state's reimbursement to property tax credits so the homestead credit that is up to 25 000 for senior citizens low-income cedar citizens and then the rollback is the 12 and a half percent tax credit that's on everybody's property tax bills but that only applies to levies that were passed before 2013. um and i just want to remind everybody that our property taxes so the 51 of our revenue does not fluctuate with enrollment so as we grow if that dollar gets spread thinner here's a five-year look or actually six years because i showed you last year too but
010on the bar chart so you can see that the line at the top fairly flat there we have no formula to follow so it's hard to determine what our revenues are going to look like from the state and so we tried to keep it as conservative and accurate as possible i do want to point out on the last two years on the right the dark blue blocks is the next levee that's coming up for renewal i know we just passed one we have a breather for a year and then the next time we'll be on the ballot again i'd like to start introducing the concept of creating a substitute levy and making it continuing this will be the third renewal it was first enacted in 2008 and it's been renewed twice already so something to
011consider as we move forward so focusing on the forecast from may on the revenue side of the forecast from the may forecast to november we actually increased our revenues by 24 million dollars some of which we've already presented to you as part of our budget presentations we did a revision a minor revision in september but also now that we've had property tax collections and the bureau workman's comp check came in or we were notified that was coming in we were able to increase it some more so we went from a 19.1 increase to revenue to 24 million in revenues so that helped us with our budget balancing efforts switching to the expense side of the house the pie chart you will see the two blue um chunks off to the right are personnel related that
012represents 25 percent of our total operating budget which is um odd because the big yellow chunk on the other side is a school-wide pool transfer so at a 213 million ninety percent of that salaries and benefits or we're more around fifty percent salaries and benefits compared to our total budget and compared to other districts who um don't outsource their transportation their salaries and benefits are typically around 80 or 75 80 so because we have a very large outsourcing effort in this district our personnel costs look lower the big green chunk at the bottom are the purchase services 197 million dollars in the forecast the biggest chunks of that are transportation services tuition about 114 million dollars of tuition our our technology leases about 18 million dollars and utilities the little red chip pie slice at
013the bottom are supplies those are representative textbook adoptions it's all the instructional software we use and fuel those are the three spenders out of that area i've started breaking up the transfers so that you can see the difference between the school-wide pool the debt transfer the facility building transfer just to be a little bit more transparent and educate the public a little bit more so once again here's a long-term picture of the expenditure side of the house you can see the first tier to the second year there's a little bit of a blip there that's because last year we underspent because we're closed so it looks like a bigger growth than it really is and everything else stays flat because we don't know what the formula looks like and we have to maintain ash get
014us through that third year we can't allow our expenses to grow so the only thing we forecasted in here were step increases which were in the collective bargaining agreement any new money any new spend has to come out of whatever something else is being spent on we cannot grow this budget and we're going to have to go back to the taxpayers for new money soon sooner than you want comparing may to november once again on the expenditure side of the house in total it looks like the expenses went up by 28 million dollars but if you'll notice in the may column there's a negative 11.9 million right in the middle there under other expenses that was our attempt to identify how we were going to spend the cares act money we only knew it was
015coming we didn't know what the rules were at the time or where we were going to use take what line items were going to take that out so we just threw it as a negative into the other expenses knowing that in november it would be reallocated so those are the biggest changes the supplies and materials the increase in there is representative of the math textbook adoption and the increases in capital outlay we're mostly building renovations on the two buildings we bought last year okay so back to cash again so the blue bar represents revenue and you can see that it's fairly flat grows very little over the next four years the red line represents expenses you can see it's almost flat and the yellow line represents our cash balance so as revenues go up our
016cash balance will increase if expenses go faster than our revenues then our cash balance is going to decrease and right now we're forecasted to cross over to that deficit in 2024 so we met the three year requirement and the fact that we're not projecting to go for new money so with that i will entertain questions okay thank you your board members have questions or comments mr lindy followed by mr marowski um thanks president gents and um president wagner on slide uh the one that says focusing on fy21 made november revenue i think at the back one oh maybe back further um we're 24 million better now than we thought we'd be is the way to read this correct and can you just the the big drivers of that the 3.6 the 5.4 the 6.2 can
017you just narrate those one more time sure so initially we anticipated you know last year we got cut seven million dollars for the state formula and we thought there was going to be a second cut this year so in the may forecast we anticipated that second cut so um with conversations with aaron rauch at ode um he indicated it would not be another cut this year unless there's something catastrophic happens but we decided to and none of the other treasures in the urban treasures you did a cut so i felt pretty comfortable putting it back in um the second change was our tif revenues are up um more than we've anticipated and if you remember at the end of last year right before we finished our agreement with the city they sent through 15 new
018tif districts and so that activity is growing faster than we thought that's a 5.4 that's it under other revenues the 5.4 that's the tif increase and medicaid came back a little bit higher than we anticipated the road called advances in the 6.2 million dollar increase is simply a function of the end of last year our advances to the other grants were higher than we anticipated because the state was slow on reimbursing us so typically we advance about three million dollars a year to each to the other funds and then it just reverses itself in july it's just a temporary movement of cash this year it was a nine million dollar advance so the increase is six million the the line i know i'm jumping all over the page but i was doing in an order
019in which i introduced it to you the top line the general property time we also in may if you remember we were in a major economic downturn people were being laid off all over the place and we anticipated an increase in delinquent taxes we're not seeing that we're actually getting a little bit higher than we'd anticipated mostly in the utilities the uh youtube the pub and then the very last increase uh the last line down there other financing sources is reflective of the bureau workman's comp dividend it was a 3.9 million dollar dividend and 3.3 will hit the general fund that's great thank you you're welcome mr moroski thank you treasurer wagner on that same slide is is the hamilton county school reimbursement program factored in at all or have we looked into doing that
020no i just had a conference call with the the woman you introduced me to um a week ago and they just yesterday released the application yeah it looks like we may get one 1.7 million it's 50 per student yeah and so uh i have sarah trimble oliver and susan bunty are actually looking at how we would apply the deadline to apply is december 3rd and it has to be spent out by december 31. great awesome thanks yes thank you any other questions or comments miss bolton just uh maybe for the public's sake you could explain uh the reference regarding hamilton county one more time so hamilton county got a karazhan grant just like we did and they were having trouble announcing my understanding they're having trouble spending it down by december 31 so they wanted
021to give it to the school districts to help us out all the school districts in hamilton county are being offered to apply for what they're calling a mini grant to help thank you you're welcome thank you any other questions or comments okay thank you treasurer wagner and looks like you have the second presentation yes and i'm thrilled to be here tonight to present the budget that we've long worked on um three key messages this was because finance committee teased me about holding the good news until the end so i actually decided to put it in the front slide first one we've been our budget target second one supports the health and safety of our staff and students third no additional reductions in force are necessary to meet this budget and four it allows for a
022return to classroom instruction face-to-face hopefully in the second semester and all this was done using the guiding following the guiding principles that were established in the summer when um covid happened and we were trying to determine how we were making decisions and like i said it follows health and safety of our staff and students we always use data to guide our decision making i try always to be fiscally responsible maximizing in-person classroom time and always with a lens of equity so here's a timeline i think you've seen this before um and it really i mean this has been like a really long road for us but it really began back in march when we closed we immediately started pivoting from how do we operate in a remote session to what's next you're going to look
023like and so we've been um back to the drawing board many times but in june the board adopted a 90-day appropriations resolution to give us time to figure it out and then in july we adopted the 2-3 model made some reductions in august we pivoted to distance learning the 1-2-2 model in september we did an appropriations amendment for the full year 625 million and then in october we returned to the 122 model and welcomed our students back and we began engaging the public again with the budget and now here we are today so here's a picture of the budget story because we were in the midst of building a new budget that was supporting this second year the strategic plan um and we'd heard that we were going to be losing revenues we kind of
024set that plan aside and started focusing on what are we spending our money on now and how's that going to change and what can we reduce so we started with the 665 million budget from last year we added to it um our planned enrollment growth and i have a slide that goes into a little bit more detail this you've seen this before but i just want to remind you our plan enrollment growth we had several schools that were adding grade levels our strategic plan investments you know light lighthouse mozart preschool expansion hovid was a surprise to us so the general fund actually has focused 21 million dollars budgeted 21 million dollars to support covet expenses and then if you recall last year at the very end of the mid year we realized they changed the
025ed choice voucher eligibility that increased our budget i'm sorry increase the spend by four million dollars that we didn't have budgeted so i'm carrying that over and then i'm putting an increase to five for this year because they're already talking about changing the eligibility again um so off to the right corner that's our budget target from may which was 625 million and that was a heavy heavy lift for us um as the initial request with last year and then these new things came out to 707 million we were actually looking at 83 billion reduction i'll never forget the look on laura's face when i told her that so the next slide shows you i won't go read all this because you've seen this before but just kind of highlight a couple things we had four
026schools that increased grade levels we added 12 ell teachers and we increased instructional supplies we had a collaborative project with cft to try to get more um classroom supplies in the hands of the teachers in standardized package so they all got flip charts and i can't think of other things right now but there was a whole package that every classroom was supposed to get so we increased the budget by 600 000 to support that on the strategic plan investments um i mentioned we bought mozart and lighthouse and then we had to kind of renovate clean them up a little bit not the major renovations but enough to get by we added 10 counselors and we had the textbook the math textbook adoption that was 5.8 million dollars in terms of covet expenses here's a list
027of the things we anticipate having to pay for covid we had we created the super subs actually we used an old idea that paul had done the prior year but instead of having daily subs bounced from building the building and possibly spreading virus each building has their own super sub based on the enrollment the teachers of the building now we've didn't fill all those because things kept changing on us we expanded the city digital academy i know they've been at least 36 teachers and possibly more added to support the increase in enrollment there we put nurses in every building even though we're using student wellness money to do that the student wellness money we don't know what's going to happen with that next year so that might be something has to return to the general
028fund and then of course we expanded our technology the um awesome technology team that we have so what do we do to close the gap i already i kind of walked you through these revenue um changes from the previous presentation um i didn't necessarily anticipate doing them on the same night so um they here they are again this is the initial revision of 19 million dollars the only thing that's not shown on that forecast that we just talked about was we ended the year last year with a little bit more cash than we'd anticipated so that helped too now and here's the increase from the september or the november forecast that we hadn't already claimed that's the uh increase of property tax collections and then the bureau of workman's comp dividend so what does that
029mean for our budget so we re-rose we revised the budget target that's the bluff on the left hand side the forecasted expenditures the 650 million dollars we subtract out the advances because that's a temporary movement of cash i don't have to budget for it so our budget target is 647 million on the right hand side the last file that we created was in october we had it down to 692 because of some of the summer adjustments and then we cut another 45 million dollars out to get to 647 and we have about two hundred thousand dollars to play with so that's my target we vent our budget target a little picture so this is how we got the expenses down so if you recall in july we reduced 179 positions and we cut this elementary
030schedule e budget by a million dollars and then since then we went through and looked at a historical average on our vacancies how much money do we save in towers because we always have a level of vacancies coming and going and so we had a three year average of the 6.7 million dollars and related benefits to 9 million the opt out line represents ask me when we went to a one two two model we switched them to four days a week and instead of having them lose a day of pay we offered them to work four nines almost and that they could help us with the bus monitor duties before and after school but we gave them a choice so if they chose not to do the four nines they only wanted to do four
031of their standard work hours they could do that and we we had several people choose i think it was 218 if i'm mistaken but that will save us a million dollars but it's only while we're in blended learning so when distance learning that plan doesn't apply we go back to paying them the regular standard work week we reduced the overload budget so in the collective bargaining agreement we have staffing formulas that say for example in a kindergarten classroom they for 18 kids to a teacher and then when you get the 19th student you put a paraprofessional in there um up to 25 and then at the 26th student you had another teacher take the pair away but the teachers can sometimes decide they don't want the pair they'd rather have cash and so there's a
032budget of 1.6 million dollars in the collective writing agreement but in speaking with the cft president we agreed that we probably wouldn't be spending that because we're only spending about 300 000 a quarter anyway so we cut that by half a million dollars the next line are the tax reductions the teacher allocation committee every year when we build a budget we build on student projections and you're going to hear about that in just a little bit from ms boyle in september right after labor day we typically right-size the staff based on who showed up where well that got delayed this year for a variety of reasons and it happened in november instead and so we were able to relieve the general fund of four and a half million dollars on enrollment reduction positions on all
033vacancies or repurposed so no rifts we also decided that because we weren't having to reduce a bunch of stuff we don't we really didn't need the tac budget that's 950 000 we'll set that aside the super sub line we originally had 8.8 million dollars in the budget we cut that in half so we're only filling half those positions but this dollar value only represents half of the year of the half that we cut so on january when we go back to face to face we need all those super suds that we have the money to do it okay so then the next couple of lines that show a negative those are things that we have to add back in the budget because of our experiences for example our unemployment bills are going up and you
034might ask why would that be we haven't laid anybody off well if a an employee has a second job somewhere and they lose that income say they were a waitress somewhere they lose that income the ohio unemployment department proportionalizes that income loss to both employees even though we didn't we're still paying them their full salary we have we bear part of that and so we're having um some challenges hr departments working hard to challenge some of those bills but we're trending a lot higher so we're gonna have to add two million dollars to that budget the long-term leave pool um we're just seeing a higher experience on people taking long-term leave right now because of covid sick leave conversion we had a lot more retirees than we anticipated and so we're having to increase that
035budget so they're converting their sick leave as a payout and then the dwm stands for district-wide ventures we needed to budget those stipends so as in that 31 million dollars 16 and a half happened with july before that october change and then another 14.8 came from personnel related items so the next slide shows you the non-personnel cuts so initially remember we cut eight million dollars in vendor contracts we either cut delayed reduced whatever the mate case may be it was eight million dollars to the general fund then when we pivoted to the one two two model we determined that we would have three point nine million dollars in transportation savings because we won't be transporting our children on mondays when walnut hills went distance learning we estimated a 630 000 annual savings and when we
036recently pivoted back to distance learning starting today today tomorrow um is another 688 000 in savings for transportation and fuel for that extended time over the winter the next line is actually a repurposing oh no i'm sorry so you recall when we first got our keras act allocation it was 23 million dollars and the non-publics took their share off and then they reduced our share and gave more money to the non-publics well that got reversed and so this 3.5 million dollars is the money coming back to us to use so we're gonna take the tech leases out of the general fund and put them in the cares act we've received approval today to do that the next line was we had anticipating having to hire a bunch of bus monitors to monitor that was redundant
037to um ensure social distancing on the buses and instead of doing that we got creative with the aspie staff and did the four nines and so we don't have to use that money in the karzak to do that um so we're actually going to use that money to help pay for those tech leases as well the next couple lines are things that just didn't get added into the budget um they we received an invoice from imagination library of sixty four thousand dollars um so i have to increase that budget to pay that bill they actually submitted next year's budget width that's a hundred thousand dollars um we mistakenly cut one of the contracts there was a little bit of confusion about which one was which and so we're having to correct that this is the
038cyc contract that supports the first to say grads we canceled almost 12 million dollars in pos so remember last year you kept saying how much are we saving because we're not operating well it doesn't really come to fruition until all the bills pay out on last year's pos and so last check friday last friday was our last check run of those i found out today there's 58 more invoices out there so there's another half a million dollars sitting out there to be paid but we can still claim the 12 million dollars in savings and then um there was some um duplication and budgets like the nurses contract got actually budgeted the student wellness fund and the general fund so we corrected that and we did something similar to that with the facilities projects the largest
039and what really helped us get to that balanced budget was the delay of vision 2020 on personnel so if there was a contract that was already done or employees that were hired to support their visit 20 training program we left those alone mostly the supplies um with the way we are in distance learning and then having half the students we figured it would be difficult to continue down that path so we're just going to delay that and help that support that next year so that came to a 38 million dollar reduction in non-personnel for a total of 70 million but because we'd already claimed the first 16 5 we're only showing um the 30 million the 45 million dollars to reduce that october number i just wanted to point out that we were able to
040through this work preserve 672 positions if you recall in july when we were um sharing all the different instructional models some of them required riffing of 700 positions or more and that was a big sticker shot for all of us and so we went back to the drawing board and came up with different models so in july when we adopted the 2-3 alternating weeks model and then switching to one two two after the first six weeks of the year we had to reduce 179 positions i'm happy to say that 173 have actually returned to the district into other vacancies that they were properly licensed for and in october we did a preview of the attack review and at the time our enrollment suggested that we could lose 269 positions and that would require a riff
041of 85 people but the staffing team of assistant soups and paul mcdowell came up with the staffing safety ratio we needed bodies in the buildings to help with temperature and social distancing and isolation rooms and whatnot so they're able to hold on to some people so in november when the teacher allocation committee actually went forward they reduced 158 because our enrollment had started to rebound again so when they right size to the actual enrollment was 159 positions that were being reduced 77 of those were repurposed into those safety roles and i'm very pleased to say that we don't need a reduction in force all the other positions were vacant and so the hr department does a fabulous job helping people from one building go to a different building in a different role so this is
042the dilemma because it was really complicated and we kept we went back and forth on this the challenge on staffing which represents a huge chunk of our spend is staffing for the current versus what we think the new normal is going to be and how can we be ready to return safely and so i gave you some examples on this table table to show you how difficult this is so when we're in remote only we don't necessarily need all those overload pair professionals or security or nap aids when we're in distance learning and blended we need some but not all and then in january when we return to the in classroom instruction either four or five days we're going to need our full complement of staff so if you lay them off in october you're
043not going to get them back in february or january when you really need them and so it was always a very difficult um exercise to make sure that we had the right amount of staff for the right period i'd like to end this by reading a thank you note i don't typically read word for word on my powerpoints but i think this is this is important it's very heartfelt thank you to our board of education for the time and encouragement to let us finish the process successfully thank you to our parents staff and taxpayers for their advocacy patience and support thank you to the superintendent and the performance leadership team for their unrelenting support creative capital collaboration and sacrificial giving thank you to our principals teachers and student support staff for their adaptability to our
044central staff for their very long hours and willingness to pivot to new directions and especially to our collective bargaining leadership teams for their collaboration flexibility and willingness to change roles to support the new needs of our cps students so with that i present the budget for you to approve thank you questions uh board members questions and comments mr lindy i mean are we allowed to give jen a standing ovation is that something we're allowed to do well it's them yeah i i say that not really kidding i don't have any questions jen i got a chance to see this in the finance committee meeting last week but i i i was one of the people who said i think you're burying the lead about what good news this is um and i just wanted to
045say thank you uh you're a very humble leader i think that's part of what makes you uh great but i want to thank you personally for your leadership on this um and say that i think this is a really quite a big deal um and i can't imagine a more complex i can because i know what the superintendent does but i i it's hard to imagine i think a more complex task than this um and and just want to say thank you thank you thank you other questions are coming i just mimic what being said this is very good jan and to all of the leadership leadership team and everybody you guys did a great job with this thank you would you make a good team thank you miss bolton yeah it's second and third
046that uh thank all that made this possible um just to re-emphasize the things that jen was telling us as well as kind of some additional context as we look at it you know we don't spend money just because we have it we have been practicing great fiscal responsibility for a number of years and we should be very proud of that unlike the federal government we we can't we have to have balanced budgets but i think jen's focus on the cash going forward uh is so critical since we're part of the promise that we made two years ago knowing that the five-year forecast had two as she said the renewals in it we can't go back to the public to ask for more money or new money uh and so that's been part of the effort
047and i think the the strategy to prevent that is within the cash forward is is crucial i think it's remarkable that superintendent and the treasurer and everybody maintain the personnel compliment so when people you know it isn't about saving jobs it's about preserving the compliment so we could do what the superintendent had said which was we are ready to do whatever model we have to do so i don't want anybody in the public ever think that we haven't been committed to in person or we haven't been committed to equitable remote we've we're paying for it financially and we made sure that we have the capacity to do it it's a remarkable effort i think the fact that we also have had the strategic plans first two years in the midst of all of this we
048made a commitment when we spent so much more on that first year the strategic plan we made a commitment to go back down and draw back down and to a certain extent we've been able almost to achieve that within our giant budget being as close as we were to that is really remarkable and especially in the in the name of in the midst of coven um i'd also uh you know i don't want to belabor this but this is or i think mr lindy is right this is really a remarkable achievement in the midst of this you know we have an inside joke about these bridges and trucks and cars but i would like to suggest even though i've said from the get-go i hate that analogy i'm going to use it too uh yes
049this is a bridge from fiscal year 19 and 20 21 and more importantly to the next one because it can only take a few weeks maybe not even that to rest to get to fiscal year 22. and the fact that you all went through all of this to get to tonight makes us better able to do the rigor and the hard decisions that we're going to have to make for 22. so it's been hard but it's been very beneficial but to the treasures and superintendents point we're trying to design and i think that op-ed captured it uh for all of us we're trying to design a new cps the way you do that is with a new budget and a new budget process and you have gotten us so much closer to even thinking about
050doing that so this is a huge huge effort on everybody's part so i appreciate it and keep the context because we may not be able to restore what we've cut we may not be able to have all the contracts we had we may not be able to do some of the stuff we may want to do but what we're going to do is actually been kind of the field has been sowed if you will for the next big step so i appreciate this work yes other questions or comments well we'll end treasure wagner's presentation much appreciated thank you so much for the hard work and uh you know it being the person who manages the purse strings probably catches more hell you know about this but but i do think that people i i get
051the sense that our community understands and and that our teachers and our staff understand how how and why we've had to pivot and that changes the numbers and all of that so this was a great presentation by the way and you know even i can understand it so thank you again thank you it's both an honor and a privilege yeah thank you uh let me just say okay never mind he went off i'm gonna ask mr messer if he had any questions or comments okay so we're gonna continue with the presentation superintendent yes so the treasures 2 presentations were a wonderful segue and bridge to our conversation tonight so i'm going to invite christa boyle to the stage to the microphone to be able to present the projections for the upcoming school year recognizing that
052these projections will lead us to the budget for next school year as well as the staffing to support it thank you thank you superintendent first slide please so this is just a quick snapshot of our enrollment history it shows um from october 2020 in october of 2020 our actual was 35 261 this is down due due to the pandemic about 1100 off of 36 366 last year and it's down 1600 from excuse me from our pre-pandemic projection of 36 862. next slide this is just a snapshot of trending over time and really the takeaway is that the pandemic has interrupted our growth trajectory next slide um these are changes year over year and it shows that cps and non-public are both down dps is again down about 1100 and on public down just under 400
053charter schools are up slightly next slide this is k-12 market share which has stayed roughly flat for cps again non-public is down slightly and charters up slightly next slide these are demographic comparisons the largest changes in our hispanic and english learner subgroups hispanic is up 1.2 points to 7.9 percent english learners are up 1.5 points uh to 7.8 percent next slide and now we'll get into a couple of directions that we can go so the first one would be a return to our 2019 actual enrollment uh the pre-pandemic number of 36 366. this would be an increase of eleven hundred and five and just to give you just to dig into the numbers a little bit uh pre-k through kindergarten was down about a thousand grades one through eight enrollment was down 490 and high
054school enrollment was actually up just under 400. uh just for context the average yearly increase over the last five years i just as a reference point is 598 and our goal would be to stabilize and return to a growth path there are several assumptions that go into this so in the next slide it assumes that we return to a five day a week in person classes in fall of 2021 it assumes that high school maintain their enrollment and that pre-k um three to eight so elementary recoups about half of their losses so just about 700 students it also assumes that the 1200 additional students who enrolled in cda remain there or returned to their original cps school in 2122 um so why do these assumptions matter because the reduction is in the younger grades especially
055pre-k through k we've heard from families that they either chose a five-day week in person option due to child care needs or on the other end of the spectrum decided to delay in-person learning so we have demand in pre-k through kindergarten but the cdc guidelines um reduce our capacity so the second option on the next slide our goal would be to maintain of 35 261 again this is just a refresher that elementary is down high school is slightly up and this would assume that we continue in the current pandemic environment including this six feet of social distance and other cdc guidelines um for in either scenario and we'll cover this on the next slide you can go ahead and switch uh it would include a recruiting campaign so what's next in december principals will review
056school by school numbers um and then this gets into the recruiting three kind of level or prong recruiting campaign that will launch in december and last through summer and it will include outreach to individual families focus on pre-k in kindergarten as well as under-enrolled school communities or neighborhoods especially elementary and then macro level messaging like billboard social website in january we'll survey uh cda families about their intent to return to their original school this dovetails with their magnet capacity planning in january and february and in march we will review projections with the additional data that we'll have at that time around the effectiveness of school safety measures as well as community health any questions or comments miss bowers yes thank you chris this is very good and informative the direction one direction two are these
057options or these parallel happen at the same time um thank you they are options so at some point for budget planning purposes we'll need to choose a direction okay thank you mm-hmm yeah just a little bit okay i got you thank you thanks president jones and thanks krista i think um one thing i found really very helpful and encouraging in this was the fact that you can basically explain 90 of the decline by parents who didn't add pre-k or kindergartners um i don't think i realized that before this presentation and that that feels like an important piece of news and i think good news unless i'm misreading it because it's not the case that there are uh lots of kids that we expected to have in the upper grades um not even upgrades i mean
058third fourth fifth grade um uh so i think my first question is am i am i making something up or is that accurate uh and then i think my second question was i feel like i remember in an earlier presentation our enrollment being around 34 000 not 35 000 because i remember the delta between what we expected and what we had to be around 2000 kids i feel like when we had our work session that's about where the number was um but so i was trying to understand if if that's right what explains that why are we now higher than that so this would be from data from mid-october so it's it's probable that that work session happened before this data and these are just comparative year-to-year points so it fluctuates a little bit which
059is why we pick a kind of that mid october comparison point and um would you comment a little bit on am i right that this is good news um i mean i think it depends on your perspective so obviously it's taken us off of our growth path i do think when you dig into the data you're correct being able to see that high school is actually up a little bit signifies that that piece kind of continues as planned so that focus on the pre-k kindergarten and either getting those folks be comfortable enough to enroll next year um or or come back depending on what decision they made will be a definite focus area and and i think that makes great sense it's the last piece i just the the reason i said i thought it
060might be good news is i know over the summer and early parts of the fall i was really worried that there were kids we weren't reaching uh who had been a part of cps and for whom the the pandemic and learning remotely just approved for whatever reason to be an enormous challenge for families and this seems to prevent evidence that's not actually happening um which which i think would be would be a good thing okay then unless i'm wrong about anything okay uh in which case no okay thank you mr messer yeah thank you for that update i just want to make sure you can hear me okay yes good um yeah and you know i think as it relates mr lindy's question i think it's a good one as it relates to students we
061weren't able to connect with earlier that delta was much larger than what we're seeing here um and so my guess is af as we've gone on throughout the year and i think as we've heard in the past it does sometimes take a while to connect um with some of our families this year it was just a lot harder i think there was some talk in the community that people were dishonest and that things were being hid all we knew was the attendance that was taken and that was then brought to the board there was no smoke and mirrors and and things happening there but i think that's my first question though the the delta that we saw at the beginning that i think um obviously this presentation goes hand in hand with the last one
062enrollment is a big part of our revenues um thinking that we were thousands behind back then i'm assuming this means then we have found x number of those students but we've gotten down to a a number here that has specifically moved on so is that correct we've closed that gap significantly so i think it's fair to say we pulled it significantly i don't have the numbers off top of my head and i don't unfortunately remember exactly what we presented the last time we presented attendance so is that something that we could follow up with kind of the specific numbers yeah because the the numbers at the beginning if you remember that was widely talked about we were in the thousands of students who we were not connecting with and i think you know it was
063like let's say it was six or seven because we talked about well we've we've gotten to 2000 of them with our program and getting access to internet etc but anyway this is a much different gap than what we had presented back at the early part of the school year and then you know i i think this number as i understand it is just the difference between last year's number and this year's number it's not taking the growth because we've had a lot of students i mean i know quite a few students just in our neighborhood that are new to cps this year so those are in so we've maybe lost more than just the delta shows correct or did you already back out all new registrations for this year yep so this would be the
064net so if you look grade by grade there are no bigger discrep or bigger differences um so this 1100 is the net and it would assume that we retain all of the growth we saw in high school that almost 400 number and then about half of the pre-k kindergarten kind of elementary level yeah and so that i think is you know i'd love to get my hands on that specific number because yeah we might be down 1100 well we might be down i don't know what the new number let's say it's 500 then we're really down 1600 students and 500 new ones came in um so you know in our effort to get back to growth obviously we want to find out where all those students are and again by school um in addition to
065grade and then you know i think that it may be worth giving the the dollar attached to that volume of students um to engage with some of those families sooner versus later some market research or have have you done that testing these assumptions that if this is off offered will do you plan to return to cps or if they've engaged with one of these private options do we think that they are going to maintain that that path forward for an extended amount of time um so let me take the second piece and then come back to the numbers um so that would be pete a part of that individual follow-up would be starting really with the survey to those families just to understand where they are and what their interests would be and what the
066drivers were for them to choose a different option and then okay so this is off the top of my head which makes me a little nervous but i went through and added up all the schools over the weekend and it was in the three to four hundred range in terms of overall increases it's hard to do it by school because of the number of kids that move to cda which is why i've been more focused on and we will survey those families as well um but it's why i've been more focused on the grade because that's a cleaner it's a cleaner data pool that makes sense so if i could ask assistant superintendent susan bunty to come forward to talk about all the efforts that were put in place since we gave you that original
067number to be able to make sure that we could account for our students including withdrawing kids who actually wish we couldn't account for within the district while assistant superintendent bunty is coming forward i do want to add just a little bit of context because a lot of work has gone into making sure that we could account for our young people in an authentic real way since the board made the decision a couple weeks ago week before last to go to distance learning an additional 200 families have come forward to take us up on the wi-fi and so you can see that we've been actually families have been reaching out to us and we've been reaching out to them to really gain a true number of how many kids are in our district so susan please
068thank you good evening i just want to say thank you to all of our staff including our administrators and our teachers and our social workers and paraprofessionals who have been relentless in their search for our students so they have been conducting home visits and phone calls and really just making sure that students are accounted for and not only accounted for but engaging so there are many many stories of social workers going into homes and helping families connect with the tech help line so that they can get their internet connected they're trying to resolve problems when we were in in-person learning around transportation making sure that folks had access to uniforms so that they were removing barriers so that our students could attend school thank you miss bates ms spoyle kind of alluded to this and
069maybe i can make the question a little more specific are we seeing uh pockets where we're losing children like is it east side or west side or magnet or neighborhood are there trends that were you know are they close to new charter schools that look bright and shiny or whatever so i think until we survey the cda kids and understand who moved from where it'll be a little bit hard to understand the reductions the number from that i was saying i looked at over the weekend it was 338 increase of 338 across nine schools i do believe that we can pull that information to see which schools kids have enrolled in outside of cps thank you miss bolton thank you um overall i think it's positive because i really had anticipated like a lot of
070urban districts even in ohio that our overall loss would be about uh 10 and it is not that so that's i think a good at least the way i do the math anyway but i do think mr messer's point that he's mentioned he's done it before that net as to who we lost and who we've gained or our numbers newer or or people that stayed um from some context i think there's only two of the seven board members that remember when we celebrated when the decline finally stopped in enrollment and where we then plateaued for two years and then the rise so i'm predisposed to always go with the higher number because i always thought you know if we build it as we did with the facilities master plan they will come up beyond that
071um two or three things the preschool campaign can almost be separate and very much more aggressive and individualized as we found and i think that that is a real important target to try to accelerate for these kids that have now lost part of a year or more so i mean you can have a preschool campaign you have a regular campaign i think it's remarkable that the high school numbers are high because those kids really wouldn't need to graduate no matter what the condition or or an instructional model or whatever versus the little people that perhaps can be you know need to be at home and what have you so i think that's important um if it's possible i would advise that every urban district that that i know of is having the same disappearance of
072children and many i know president jones saw it last night i think yeah this 60 minutes a segment out of tampa and i'm so encouraged that listen superintendent bunty has talked about the home visits and reaching out to families because that's what they're having to do everywhere where tampa has lost at least 7 000 kids that they've had to go try to find because of economic conditions because of cobit because they're helping their families get through this by taking on jobs fascinating so i think we're with other folks in doing a pretty good job and i would encourage that that we do even more of that if we could i still want to know and be able to tell the public when all this started reference again to the op-ed about when we had the
073crisis in the spring how many of our children did not have access wi-fi access versus how many do not have it now and how we've been aggressive about pursuing that so i think you know one of the original numbers was like 11 000 which represented a third of our student population that may have been high or it might have been low i don't know but i do think it'd be great if we do know an estimate now as to how far we've come because you've referenced it in the op-ed and i think it it allows us to even be conscientious about remote and about distance whereas in the beginning of this we could not do it in the name of equity we could not do it fairly so i don't know if we have those
074kind of numbers to share but i think that would be part of it but i say go for the big numbers yeah it is north of 6 000. is that right jeremy who have gotten wi-fi as part of the connector students program six thousand that have received wi-fi jeremy's okay just to add to that story a little bit from east point and a little leniency because i don't have the exact numbers off the top of my head so estimates we did start with around 11 000 which was a very rough estimate that we started with based on that census data that as we surveyed families we were able to reduce that down to around 8 000 and i think that might be the number that ryan was actually referencing where we thought we had approached
075around 2000 we had 6 000 left and now as we've actually been able to give out the wi-fi and really engage with our students during the return through all of our outreach efforts we've refined that number even lower to where it looked like instead of 30 percent where we started we were really around 18 is what looked like didn't have so we were around 7 000 students that truly did not have access that we needed to cover so we're up to around sixty four sixty four hundred sixty four eighty three thank you 64.83 but who's counting right as of today um so we're pretty confident that we have a good grasp on those numbers now that we're around 500 a little bit lower as to what's left that we're still engaging with on a constant
076basis to get wi-fi too yeah if i could say that's just a remarkable story um and and i i think we need to be able to tell that as as much as we can everywhere that's that is remarkable yeah and and uh actually miss bolton um addressed my question which had to do with the number of kids where um and i'm very pleased that we're able to connect with that many kids but there's probably still pockets in our community where wi-fi is not accessible just based on the wiring or whatever and are there efforts you know are we working with folks around that and how's that going sorry yes um so in addition to the connect our students the wired program that we offer through cincinnati bell and with the community effort we have also
077taken a second layer approach so any student or family who can't get access due to wiring or they can't get access to a high enough speed to support the number of students living in that household we have enough hot spots that we've been able to procure that we're offering those as an additional layer so either as the primary connectivity if the family can't get connected or as a secondary if you the slower speed is all that's available and you have multiple students we can add a hotspot to give additional speed okay great thank you wonderful any other questions or comments president jones is for the benefit again of the public and me we're not just talking about distributing the instruments right we are talking about wi-fi after decades of certain uh entities deciding not even
078to cover certain neighborhoods because it was not a sustainable business practice so i mean this is i don't i'm not sure this is happening anywhere else to this level yep thank you any other questions or comments thank you miss boyle great great presentation yes superintendent yes our last presentation this evening will be our usual safety planning update and so our chief strategy officer sarah chumble oliver will provide to you the community data as well as the cincinnati public schools data good evening so tonight we will continue our ongoing updates of the covet health data we are going to start with the ohio department of health covet school dashboard which counts the cova cases in schools in the state of ohio so we pulled out hamilton county schools last week there were 176 new student cases
07993 new staff cases in hamilton county public schools and that is out of about 114 000 students enrolled that is up from the prior week which we've added a graph on the right side of the slide to help um put those numbers in context from week to week so you can see that that is an increase from the prior week in both student and staff cases we also are showing the um counts of cases for charter schools and public private schools in hamilton county next slide is our city daily new cases um epidemiological curve our seven-day average continues to increase uh the seven day average is now at 191 new cases per day which was up from this time last week when i stood before you when it was 176. the 14-day trend we do
080have uh four data points for this update that are green in the decreasing seven-day moving average uh but the seven day moving average does equate to 62 per 100 000 for the city so 62 daily new cases per 100 000 which was up from last monday which was 58. and on the next slide unfortunately the positivity rate has also increased from our report last week the city of cincinnati at 7.8 percent in the hamilton county outside of the city at 11.8 percent the average length for test results remains about the same at about two days and then finally for our cps cova case count we have since we started blended learning 120 confirmed student cases out of about 35 000 students and 164 confirmed staff cases out of about 6 000 staff and so even
081though we did begin distance learning this week we are continuing to ask our families and our staff to continue reporting positive cases staff would report that to the covet hotline and families will report student positive cases to the school nurse who is continuing to provide services during distance learning and we are also asking our cincinnati community to help us get our kids back in in person school by diligently wearing masks social distancing and washing hands and that concludes the community health update thank you board members have questions or comments none thank you must been a thorough report i don't know about you guys but i feel like a popsicle okay all right i guess we could tolerate it okay um if we're ready uh to continue with the hearing of the public you already or
082did we with something okay we are now at the item on the 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 models standard practice if we were meeting in person in the ed center treasurer wagner will be our timekeeper once the request has been granted you will be invited to enter please click on the camera icon
083to 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 they only speak once when the timer goes off your two minutes are up please refrain from discussing any personnel items we ask that your public commentary be respectful of all those listening in thank you how many speakers we have eleven our first speaker tonight is jason munzell followed by liam o'shaughnessy hi hope you can hear me my name is jason manziel and i'm a member of the cincinnati community thanks for taking time to listen to my comment i want to show support for the demands of the young activist coalition i want the complete withdrawal of police from all cincinnati public schools as well as
084transformative and restorative justice in schools this is extremely important to me because police presence disproportionately harms black students black students make up 63 of the total population in cps but 85 percent of police referrals children in schools should not be criminalized and the police presence does this and it needs to be removed i want cpd out of cbs and transformative justice in schools thank you liam o'shaughnessy you're next followed by christopher muldrow yes thank you can everyone hear me yes go ahead okay thank you my name is liam o'shaughnessy i go to wyoming high school and i come here tonight as a student who cares about the well-being of other students and tonight i'm once again calling on you to support the young activist coalition's demands to cut ties with the cpd and establish transformative
085and restorative justice as said by the previous speaker 63 percent of students enrolled in cpd are black but of policy referrals are given to black students now you don't have to be a statistician to know that this is a significant difference that does not show a good relationship between students and the police and is directly due to the police and the policy even a perfectly proportionate system of suspensions or police referrals would not create justice it would still criminalize students that's why i'm calling on you to support the young activist coalition's demands to get the cpd out of cps and implement transformative and report and restorative justice that your children's future depend on it thank you next we have christopher voldro followed by alice flanders mr muldrow are you with us yes um i just
086want to thank you guys for uh making some changes at western hills i hope those changes were reflective at any cincinnati public schools that were running that model um we didn't get the schedule i'm ready to interrupt could you please click your camera icon i did click my camera icon when i started and when i click okay thank you go ahead did it um so now um so thank you guys for making those changes hopefully those changes were not just effective at western hills but also affected any um cincinnati public school that was running the educational model so we did the time go from 12 hours now two hours which is closer to the other schools like evanston and walnut hills which we're doing about a little bit over 20 as well so thank you
087for that um the thing i wanted to bring to your attention is that um you might see a dip in students midterm grades and i would not want this board to accredit the dip in student med because you went in person actually students are getting docked on midterm because they weren't provided work and since they weren't provided work their grades were done or if you happen to go to school on tuesday and art is on thursday then you got your art grade doc so when you do see and i think this will be something that will be reflective across the district so when you do see a dip in students midterm grades please do not associate that with the failure of in-person learning thank you thank you alice flanders you're next followed by taylor jackie
088hi my name is alice flanders and i'm an alum of the cps system and i'm here today to stand with the young activist coalition and the students uh that talked before demanding that cincinnati public break their ties with cpd and get cops out of school thank you so much thank you taylor jackie you're up next followed by faith gingrich getz hello can you hear me yes my name is taylor jackie and i'm calling and supporting young excuse me can you please click on the camera icon oh yeah it wasn't working for a second um my name is taylor jackie and i'm calling in support of young activist coalitions demands for cincinnati public schools to completely tuck cut ties with cincinnati police department and remove student resource officers from the schools as well as implement well-funded
089well-planned systems of transformative justice in the schools thank you thank you faith gingrich you're up next and owen de rico you're after faith hi my name is faith gingrich i am a previous cps oh it's doing my video back and forth i'm sorry there we go can you please click the camera icon there you go i did it was just so sorry about that uh again my name is freakingrt i'm a previous cps student and a current community member and i am also calling in support of young activist coalitions demands for cps through school resource officers from our schools and cut ties with cbd and implement well-funded welfare systems of transformative and restorative justice within our schools as previous features have stated but what i feel should be you know re-emphasize is that black students
090make up 63 of the total student populations but are 85 percent of police referrals however even if these referrals were proportionate and not seemingly racially motivated the issue still stands that research for example from the u.s department of justice office of community oriented policing services shows does not show that student resource officers school resource officers or police in schools increase safety instead this research actually shows the opposite and shows that uh it reinforces the school to prison pipeline reinforces the criminalization of students of color and the goal is still to criminalize adolescent behavior the sergeant shriver national center on poverty law recently stated in their report that research shows that the mere presence of police officers in school increases the likelihood that a student will be referred to law enforcement for adolescent behavior based on
091students of color put students in direct contact with the justice system for policing within schools therefore puts students on the fast track to the schools and personal pipeline i just once again asked that cps implement well-funded well well-planned systems of transformative and restorative justice within our schools thank you so much thank you owen dirico you're up next followed by megan grayler all right am i visible yes thank you all right hello my name is owen dorico i'm a sophomore at walnut hills high school and i am here today with the young activists coalition board members over the past weeks and months when we as an organization and as a student in district community have come to you asking that you commit yourselves to shifting our schools away from punitive justice to creating a safe environment
092for our students our students to learn and grow up in and to beginning to end the school-to-prison pipeline all too present in your district by severing cps's relationship with the cincinnati police department and removing police presence in our schools you told us that you needed to listen to the position of the community before you would make that kind of a decision well i hope you're listening because the community is here parents students and teachers have shown up time and time again to tell you in no uncertain terms what they want in what our schools need when they speak as they have already done tonight and will continue to do it is your responsibility to listen and more importantly to respond with real decisive action and we won't go away until you start acting you have
093the power to fix our schools it's a question of whether or not you're willing megan grayler you're up next followed by eliza o'keefe hi can you see me yes okay i am also here i'm to speak on behalf of the young activist coalition um i please should not be in our schools i mean as as children you know it's not we shouldn't be criminalized and black students are unproportionally affected by arrests made by police in our schools which shows that you know there's not a healthy relationship there and that police arrests are higher in schools with police which shows that you know it's not it's not about the actions that the police are taking or that the students are taking it's about micro not like hyper fixation and looking for problems and students should not
094be criminalized there are much safer and better ways to have justice for our students and for our schools than with police officers thank you are you eliza o'keefe you're up next um yousif if you would accept the invitation you would be after okay am invisible no you're not yet i'm not okay where where do i go the camera your camera oh here it is i guess it's just not working okay well i'll say my um what sorry go ahead okay um hi my name is eliza o'keefe and i'm calling as a student at walnut hills high school in support of young activist coalitions demands for cps to completely cut ties with cpd and remove school resource officers from our schools as well as implement well-funded well-planned systems of transformative and restorative justice within our schools
095so i read your anti-racism plan and i was like okay okay it sounds nice but nowhere does it address the issue of police presence in our schools and i understand that might have some support among you know the people who elect you because at a distance it looks like a comforting idea but instances of mass violence like school shootings are exceedingly rare so what the presence of these officers is actually doing is criminalizing the students they're supposed to protect particularly and this is statistically speaking black students which is a definition of the school-to-prison pipeline so i um myself and young activists coalition are demanding that cps began to correct this injustice by terminating their relationship with the cpd and implementing transformative justice in our schools including redirecting funds into mental health resources for students thank
096you thank you yousef meniere you're up you're our last speaker for the evening hello my name is yusuf meniere can you guys hear me yes i'm a senior at walnut hills high school and i have been a cps student for the past six years and i'm calling today because i'm the president of young activists coalition and we demand the that cps completely cut ties with cpd and completely remove sros from our schools as well as implement well-funded well-planned systems of transformative and restorative justice according to the aclu the data shows that schools of police have 3.5 times as many arrests at schools without police and that's not any different for cps schools the other students before me told you the data they told you that black students are disproportionately criminalized but again to emphasize the
097main point even if the referrals to the police were completely proportionate it is an absolute disgrace to the people and students and kids that you serve that students are criminalized at all that students behavior that the behavior of just regular kids could result in their entire futures being robbed from them we are here demanding that cps completely cut ties with cpd and remove sros from all cps schools and that you implement funded well uh planned out transformative and restorative justice we understand and we know what this takes we hope that you do as well and for all of the parents and students watching this we want you to know that if you go to our instagram or facebook at young activist coalition we have the opportunity for any student to get involved and we are
098always looking for more people everyone this fight requires all of us and especially if the board members continues to be as obstinate as they have been remember board members we elected you you serve us you don't serve the police department you serve us thank you thank you president jones yes okay is there one more speaker okay if i could just speak then i wanted to make sure there wasn't another speaker before i made my comments so um i've listened for several weeks and i've taken copious notes regarding what our students have said and understand their point of view i will say that starting back in june we began conversations with our african-american students about what they wanted to see within our schools multiple african-american students from a variety of high schools and this has been
099an ongoing basis and what the african-american students told me and our assistant superintendent shauna murphy is that they're not asking for the police to be removed they put their demands and writing to us and their demands were centered around building a collaborative relationship with the police the african-american students said in many instances they know the resource officers who are in their schools they enjoy working with them they're not there may not be everyone's experience but i'm telling you from the point of the african-american students who have consistently come forward to speak on this issue on their own behalf our assistant superintendent murphy has had ongoing conversations and meetings with them i will provide to you the exact document that they produced where they outline what they're asking for they ask for relationship building they ask
100for transparency with the police department and they also asked for training with the police officers they asked us to meet with the police which we have on multiple occasions and to hold listening sessions which have already begun with the african-american community so assistant superintendent shawna murphy i'm hosted the first session with is it with parents with parents this past friday and then our student session is tomorrow so i just want to make sure that we have the voice of the african-american students at the table while we are talking about them and around them thank you thank you superintendent i think that clarification um an update um was timely and we appreciate all the work that's being done and it's not to discount what students are saying we want them to know that we do hear
101their concerns but just to clarify we are you are meeting with um african-american students that represent a cross-section of our high schools is that correct okay if i also may ask that there are many instances in which i've observed over a long career of very well-detentioned people making decisions for other groups without actually involving them in the decision-making process and so again i felt compelled to say what our african-american students have articulated to myself as well as to our assistant superintendent thank you thank you great so let's move on does anyone have any kudos mr powers yes thank you president jones i i have school those four um assistant superintendent shonda murphy and her team regarding the ccdp information session that i listened to last week i kind of got mixed up with my lsdmc
102dates and times but i was listening to that but i just thought it was a very informative collaboration with uc cincinnati state shetfield college um lots of information and and understanding of the differences with with ap courses ccp courses and i was just it was a lot of information and it was very well attended and i just want to congratulate you and your team on that facebook live i believe it was on facebook live thank you mr lindy uh i just wanted to do two kudos quickly one i think again to jen and her team um uh around the uh heroic work on the budget um but then also just i wanted to uh thank the superintendent for her response to engaging young people of color and african-american young people around the police issue and
103your response to our speakers tonight i want to say thank you thank you any other kudos all right mistakes do we have any retirements we do not no retirements okay all righty so uh miss marowski we're at the item on the agenda for board matters yes i do thank you president jones um as promised last week i would put the uh i said i would put the um anti-racism policy on the agenda for this week in case there were still more comments so it's really for y'all if anybody has anything if not we're fine i will just call out one thing um two things next friday we will um see another draft of this in policy committee is noted um ideally that draft would get passed out of policy and then put before this body
104with one of the three board meetings that are left in the school year um for all i'm sorry calendar year for ultimate passage so we can go into 2021 with this policy at our back particularly as we head into the spring and look to adopt a new anti-racism curriculum i think that's timely but that's just kind of a repeat level set sort of thing on the other thing that i am inclined to add um board member bolton um uh last time i think everybody saw pieces of their suggestions in here um uh one thing that did not make it in that i would suggest adding and i can do it formally in an assignment as well is um board member bolton had brought up including some wording or at least allusion to the fact that
105the state board had passed a resolution condemning all forms of racism systemic racism and white supremacy culture etc so on the the second page um or your stuff may print differently than mine it's the section um titled purpose the suggestion i would make um a revision suggestion i would make based on board member bolton's suggestion is at the end of that first paragraph which is really just a sentence um the purpose of this policy is to create processes that identify form of racism etc and then work to counter its effects that we would include almost verbatim this as the state board of education has stated in their resolution to condemn racism and advance equity and opportunity for black students indigenous students and students of color we also condemn and then this would be quote in
106the strongest possible terms white supremacy culture hate speech hate crimes and violence in the service of hatred so that would be that and i think it would be best fit too in that purpose piece so that's the only thing i would add and then open it up if anybody has anything yes um if i could add i think i committed and i didn't follow up on it but i promise to get it to you tomorrow an additional statement or two very short nothing major but some similarity or parallel to wording in the equity policy so please allow me until tomorrow for sure absolutely yeah okay anything else then good deal awesome almost yeah great thanks y'all okay wonderful okay so we're ready for our resolutions miss bolton please present the following resolution thank you very
107much i present this resolution hope for passage a resolution approving the five-year forecast is there a second any discussion ms wagner please palm roll mrs bates aye miss bolton aye this is bowers yes mr lindy aye mr messer hi mr moroski yes president jones yes mr lindsey please present the next resolution thank you president jones i present a resolution for the amended appropriation resolution for fiscal year 2020 2021 thank you second second any discussion ms wagner mrs bates aye ms bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr master yes mr morosky yes president jones yes ms bates please present the next resolution yes i have a resolution approving the fiscal year 2021 general operating general fund operating budget i uh present this resolution as printed for adoption thank you is there a second second
108thanks any discussion ms wagner mrs bates aye ms bolton hi mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer yes mr morosky yes president jones yes miss bolton yes thank you i have a resolution reappointing audit committee members you'll recall that this appeared in the finance minutes uh at least twice before we are now prepared upon the approval of both the audit committee members and finance to present uh to present four uh members who are continuing and extending their terms and jennifer kusser christine fisher carol mitchell lawrence and clarice warner we appreciate their interest and support of our uh efforts here financially i submit thank you is there a second second any discussion ms wagner please call the roll mrs bates aye ms bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer yes mr morosky
109yes president jones yes and then the last one um ms dowers my apology hold on mr marowski was assigned okay so lincoln pull it up i have it right here i just need to pull it up i did not realize i was assigned the last one um oh hi it's senate bill yep yep i have a resolution supporting ohio senate bill 358 extending relief to school districts in response to covid 19. um i would present this resolution as written for adoption is there a second second any discussion miss wagner mrs bates aye ms bolton aye this is bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer all right mr marowski yes president jones yes superintendent mitchell do you have a report i do i have a very short report and we're going to pull up a couple
110of powerpoint slides to highlight next slide please the free store food bank and their partnership with hartwell school they have opened a food pantry there so we're very excited about that mccormick and company and the three store food banks sponsored this uh pantry for our families as well as our kids families can get food as well as hygiene products from this location and they gave out many many dinners for thanksgiving and so we're very appreciative of heart well welcoming them into our schools but also we're very appreciative of the food store free bank their willingness to open a another pantry within the cps footprint next slide and i like to be able to highlight i try not to highlight scpa too too much i don't want to give them any favoritism however tonight i'd like
111to highlight on november the 6th uh seven seniors from the school for the creative and performing arts won awards this is a part of a 34-year tradition within our district and within scpa this was the 34th annual corbett mariston award um this has been happening since the 1980s and it is a strong part of the foundation of scpa so we have visual artists uh kimura butler and alex tanveer drama amir shackleford dance drazen wilmers and egypt hunt musical theater sarah williams and technical theater julian hopper hooper sorry hooper reynolds oh sorry sarah reynolds my apologies and technical theater um julian uber uber and that concludes my report thank you do i have a motion to approve the recommendations of the superintendent moved second thank you any discussion i just have a comment yes i have
112no problems with acknowledging the hard work of the students of scpa as my daughter was a finalist one in her 17 year of corporate medicine so always give her accolades the hard work that those students put in is extremely fundamental it's fabulous so always they recognize that yes superintendent um did you want to say make a statement or anything about the yeah i am so sorry yes i i apologize um so at this point i want to make a well-known for our students as well as our community and our parents that we are going to continue to move forward with athletics at this time and we'll revisit it next week during our board meeting we are going to add some additional safety measures um in place for the games that are be that will be
113happening between now and our next board meeting so um just to give you some indication um during the time that players are seated on the bench and are are not playing they will be required to wear their mask in addition to we will stream the basketball games as we did with our football games and because this is an indoor sport we will not have spectators in the stands um watching the games we will allow the preston as well as recruiters from colleges and universities more to come next week but for now we are continuing to move forward thank you thank you okay miss wagner please call the roll mrs bates aye ms bolton aye mrs bowers aye mr linde yes mr messer yes mr moroski yes president jones yes do i have a motion to
114approve the report of the treasurer so moved second thank you discussion ms wagner mrs bates aye ms bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer yes mr morosky yes president jones yes thank you inquiries and updates miss bolton yes thank you um very happy to report uh some of the results of the district-wide lsdmc you have before you a quick memo of uh notes from both the conversation as well as the chat that took place as well and you'll see that there were a number of topics on the agenda we learned more about the rfps now required regarding lead agencies for lsdmcs largely because it's federally impart federally funded uh we have some event we're introduced to a program axo which is a competition regarding performing in uh arts uh that the our
115own local uh naacp is interested in in having cps participate in and then mostly the largest longest part of the conversation the chat dealt with asking questions and making suggestions to board members i've tried to list the ones that are there all of them require perhaps some discussion but you'll notice that some of these are issues that are old and have been with us for a while and some of them are new suggestions and ideas and the most particular one that came up for for the longest period of conversation was perhaps the need for additional uh community and slash parent family engagement uh and participation and that also really was a conversation about ptos and ptas which is as you know is a part of our strategic plan and it'll be asking to make an
116assignment later but there were some really good suggestions about lead agencies good suggestions about do we use a zoom account instead of google because some of our community members don't have the account that they need for google there's somebody has a blessing box outside of of their building the idea of more they thought that technology was increasing participation and engagement and that they liked the idea that maybe that gets more people there because they've all witnessed and i suggested to them as did the president we've seen a rise in participation too having gone remote also they were concerned about some of the services for project connect kids they complemented paraprofessionals they wanted us a little bit more as we've said tonight earlier stability or at least a longer understanding as to when something might be
117happening but these were really great suggestions as you read on the back of this particular memo they wanted to keep clubs in sports they wanted to know how to get more people to be able to be advisors they complemented a couple of west side community groups especially westwood works we had as mentioned about to hide about folks there and as to my calculation at least 45 of our schools were represented in this district-wide effort and that's a low number just because i couldn't necessarily identify some of the community members or some of the parents they really also wanted to see more commitment to in person if possible but understood remote and they were interested in streaming the board meetings continuing to do that remote testifying is not imagined but um i i was really thrilled
118too that part of the conversation was about student voice and student representation and indeed the students are serving and in some schools voting uh depends upon the school as we had decided last year the another issue on the back page that i think was important was that they were interested in whether or not the medical services and food distribution services would be able to be continued they also were particularly interested as what's going to be happening with covid testing and with the school speed test sites and i think there was a prevail a quick reference to vaccination sites perhaps and then they all decided to that they'd do a better job of inviting the community and parents and students to ls dmc meetings but again very interested in ptos or ptas as a way to
119build the parent and family leadership in the buildings so i hope this will capture some interest and as we look at that new cps and we look or review our own strategic plan tremendous amount of great dialogue i think ms jones you might want to talk a little bit about your reaction to the evening well um you summer you captured a lot most of the conversation and and i don't have anything to add to that but i thought it was an interesting format um you know uh they they really liked dialoguing directly with the board it was we had about what but i can't remember how much time it was about 10 minutes at the end for a q a and uh it evoked just a lot of dialogue and i think that was helpful
120in terms of us building a relationship with our community folks so they had a chance to ask some very different questions and so in talking with um assistant superintendent murphy um about the possibility of doing that periodically and maybe rotating board to come and do just a short q a at the end of their meeting we're not really a part of their meeting but we're there to listen and learn and hear from them and then maybe have that 10 minutes to have a q a dialogue with them thank you miss bolton okay any assignments yes um miss fates first yes uh we did not have a november health and safety committee meeting and mr lindy brought several topics uh to my attention and to miss mitchell's attention as well that uh would be appropriate for
121uh consideration in health and safety so i would like to bring that to the board so that we could assign it to the administration for for review and research and then uh bring that back to health and safety at the december meeting and the first is uh to follow up uh on dr khan from uh children's hospital he mentioned that there might be a way to do a study to evaluate when it would be safe to bring students back at closer than 60 so that's something that uh would be that we would want the administration to review and make a recommendation on if this is a study that would be helpful to the district and possible for the district uh to conduct with cincinnati children's also uh distributing ppe to families if it's funded outside
122of the district because we all we all saw the budget today there's not a lot of slack but if we can work with the medical community to uh distribute ppe to families uh much like we do with the you know with nutrition so that's another uh issue and uh student safety on buses we would like some data on uh on uh incidents on buses that you know we we hear of isolated incidences but is there a trend so the health and safety committee would like to provide oversight uh on that uh and also uh emergency communication um and mr lindy provided a one-pager on that miss mitchell you have this an email form but i wanted to let the board know uh of the interest and that health and safety this would be an appropriate
123place for the administration to bring back recommendations on these topics for our december meeting when is your december meeting dead okay just i just might suggest maybe it's you know you all can decide that but that's like next week that doesn't give them a lot of time to do the work now what is it two weeks three weeks right okay and they don't have to bring us conclusions or a study but i mean every committee has an agenda that's fine i just was thinking off the top of my head you want them to have time to complete the assignment especially if they're asking for data but i'm good with that and we don't have to yeah we want to start the conversation and that's fine and review these issues okay next assignment just to formalize
124my informal assignment to assistant general counsel stephanie scott to add that piece into the anti-racism policy i will also follow this assignment up with an email that spells it out exactly how it should look to miss scott mr hoing and phyllis davis thank you ms bolton did you have fun yes uh in reference to the lsdmc meetings it would i'd like to see if it's possible for the administration to put together the information school by school as to which schools have a clc in which schools have a pto or a pta and if there's there's also kind of a liaison position i don't know if that still exists but at least just that information so that we could see perhaps where we need to continue to work on ptos and ptas and and perhaps with
125the clcs i know it's they've done this before where you also list the lead agency for each of the uh each of the clcs just information and then the other thing is a just from a information and public relations piece i think it was well done on the op-ed and referencing all that we've done regarding wi-fi and technology distribution but it really seems that there's a larger story there uh whether it's for the national media or whether it's for our local media whether it's a human interest whatever or community partnership i just think that it's a huge huge story so i mean that's i say it to you all you figure it out okay thank you any other assignments any other assignments okay having no other business i'd declare the meeting adjourn