CPS Board of Education — November 16, 2020

001i called to order the november 16 2020 business meeting of the cincinnati board of education we welcome everyone and request everyone in the audience to please silence their cell phones and electronic devices mr lindy please lead us in the pledge thank you i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all miss wagner please call the roll mrs bates present this is bowers present mr lindy here mr messer here mr moroski here president jones here i need a motion to revise the agenda with the following change um for the following change under uh the item for presentations the number one item five year forecast that is being changed and it will be called the

002financial updates and timelines report there a second second miss wagner please call the roll mrs bates aye ms bolton hi mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer mr marowski yes president jones yes okay 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 speak you will need to send a request by clicking the chat button submit your name your affiliation to the district your school community and your contact information if you want a direct response to any questions you might have in keeping with the board standard practice for hearing the public you must click the visibility icon when you are recognized to speak individuals who request to be heard after the first 10 minutes of

003the meeting will not be recognized to speak during this hearing okay i need a motion to approve the minutes from the special meeting october 28 2020 the business meeting october 28 2020 special meeting november 4th 2020 in the business meeting november 4th 2020. thank you all in favor signify by saying aye aye any opposed minutes are approved as presented ms spowers please present the november 6 2020 student achievement district and instructional performance committee meeting report thank you president jones um on november 6 dr rudnick presented to our committee about the fine arts curriculum he's the fine arts curriculum manager he focused on measure 1b and 1c of the strategic plan of under student-centered decision-making he provided information about the cps jazz academy which he explained it was an extension of participants this year which we

004were very pleased about um and the ongoing continuing art experiences that our students are are having this year um he talked some about the cross culture curricular which is math infused at ethel taylor which i thought was very interesting and inquired about how ethel taylor was identified to participate in this experience and he noted that research shows the collaboration between art and um helping improve math scores and i just thought that was impressive that that was happening he did report that due to budget constraints that after school arts programming that was offered at the 11 elementary schools was not being offered this year board member or committee member messer um identified and noted the prioritizing that this should be something that we established um through foundation fundraising trying to keep the part going through the

005district in both committee moronski and i agreed we talked some in other business about i noticed that the marquee and chevy at school was not i did not have the school name and it's been for years that they haven't had a name out and i just recently just inquired about why they don't um assistant superintendent on my report that she will work with facilities about the marquee in addition uh we talked about across the district branding getting back um to that we also talked about a letter or email and most of us received it uh from uh miss community member kelly rozelle regarding her her father ulysses um roselle and having the request was for um the field at starjet stadium to be named after her father and what the committee agreed upon was to

006bring this to the board uh for further discussion about this request um with the hopes that we there that the um miss roselle will get a letter from the president from president jones regarding what the decision or the conclusion is of of that discussion um these are the manners and i present uh these to you as written are there any uh do board members have questions or comments i i do have a comment okay regarding the um request to name the field i believe the full board uh had we went through a process where we student achievement recommended criteria by which we would review that and there was a decision made that the superintendent would do would be the person to communicate with the family um or with the person making the request um so

007i am asking that and it's i don't think it's something that you know based on the criteria that we gave and it was pretty solid criteria for how we renamed a school or or a facility so i am going to ask that the superintendent's office um take charge of that process since that's what the board had decided unless people remember differently okay great miss bolton yeah that's what i remember too and the most recent communication i think to the gilligan family uh i was interested in talking to your mic i can't we can't hear you i was interested to know um uh mr messer's uh suggestion about a foundation you know from the arts and what have you i think i don't want us to lose track i think it's a great idea but i

008don't want us to lose track of what we've been talking about for a couple of years now which is an actual cps foundation itself with just all the other things that have come up but many many of the other school districts in hamilton county uh have one and i think that would be great so i'm glad that you resurfaced that to a certain extent mr messer yes yeah and that that's the tie i was trying to make that i thought that would be an ideal thought that if we were able to move forward the cps foundation um personal opinion just given the city that we live in and the dedication to the arts that i thought that would be a very easy spot for that person to begin raising funds okay thank you any other

009questions or comments about that report okay mr marowski please present policy and equity committee report excellent thank you president jones uh the policy and equity committee met on sixth uh 3 30 p.m and um we did began by discussing the anti-racism policy and the task force that had been convened um just as a reminder that task force had three students two parents three staff two at large community members two alum african-american chamber reps all in cincinnati reps center for closing the health gap children's hospital preschool promise urban league with the ym and ywca representatives uh neil mia balcke of cohere was there you'll remember cohere when they were called bridgeable and they have helped us on a number of things from our anti-bullying initiatives um to the fc cincinnati community input and they helped convene

010the task force and garner feedback all of which you have seen so we went through that and the new suggestions from my colleagues sitting up here um on the stage so i relayed president jones mr lindy and miss bolton's comments in their entirety in the committee meeting and the health and wellness committee minutes as well all of that feedback was taken by miss stephanie scott assistant general counsel and put into the current revised draft that was sitting at your tables this evening that we'll talk about later so i won't go into that um a few notable things came up in that conversation though that i would like to highlight one was in addition to relaying everybody's feedback a committee member messer recommended an office of anti-racism and or inclusion in the district he also asked

011how the policy would get implemented and who would manage the document um in a world where that office exists obviously it would be housed there um action items i i i agreed and so did ms bowers with mr messer's recommendation and so we passed that along is what would that look like in a world where we are create we are creating new offices such as diversity and inclusion anti-racism etc today we'll discuss the new draft and i'll pause there one last action item which i had said at the last meeting that we would love to be able to vote on a final draft of this in december which would be six months from the date of its creation which we feel is a good amount of time for the discussion and input we've had so

012excited to talk tonight about the new draft with y'all's input um otez 2.0 i will not belabor this point that was supposed to be passed in early september and um that is um i'll just own it my fault for not getting that on the agenda sooner i would like to thank eve bolton who you will see recognized in the minutes um who was really an expert on this issue and instructive to to me and our committee and what otez 2.0 look like that's uh the evaluation system for teachers and guidance counselors um this has the support of miss kendra phelps from cft who was sitting in on meetings long ago is last year about all of this i believe right miss bolton um so you'll see that new policy um and then we did our

013regular rotating policies you'll see there at the end there are resolutions to amend those policies um i've gotten some quick early feedback there's some just sort of wording things that we may want to talk about but we can leave that for those resolutions and if we have to shelve them then we shove them and move them out of policy committee in december i present the committee minutes is written thank you do board members have questions or comments miss bolton uh regarding that possible office being established i mean first and foremost i know we've talked before when we first established the equity policy and how we would kind of go about doing something similar but i would just say put it on believe it or not we're still talking about fy21 budget but put that or

014keep that as a part of the list for fy22 as a possibility great suggestion good place that um for our um work session maybe to have a discussion about that for fy 22. i think that's right okay any other questions or comments all right i need a motion to approve the committee reports their second second all in favor signify by saying aye aye opposed okay board minutes are approved all right okay we have two presentations i'm going to ask the miss wagner um the first presentation on financial updates and timelines good evening um so as at the last board meeting we discussed a pivot of instructional models dependent on the community safety measures and as a result sometimes our staffing will have to be modified which then drives the budget and because of those things

015we needed more time to revise the budget again and then having that impact on the five-year forecast so um i was asked to present a new timeline which is shown up here on the screen so thursday at finance committee we will be talking about the draft forecast and its assumptions as well as given a budget update hoping that we can get an approval on the budget and the forecast on the 23rd i'm required to file the five-year forecast by november 30th so the 23rd is my last option to get that finalized um the and the budget feeds into the forecast and the forecast feeds into the next budget so then we'll when that's over we'll start kicking off the next budget cycle but i've shown on the timeline there's three budgets in december i'm sorry

016three board meetings in december that if we have to do some tweaking to the budget we can do that then the other news i wanted to give you an update with things are starting to move rather quickly is the new state funding formula so if you remember the ohio state formula has been ruled unconstitutional four times in the durov case and so representative cup and patterson got together created a new formula they've spent at least three years developing this formula and it really goes towards a very it's very similar to the way we do student-based budgeting so what it attempts to do is to fund the base costs of a typical student and on in your handout the very last page of giving you the formulas so it shows you all the classroom ratios and

017and how many supplemental staff members have to go into school so they'll they drop our enrollment in there they come up run it through the formula once they determine the base cost they then add the categorical funding so it's awaited for students with special needs gifted english language learners and they have a poverty or economic disadvantaged measure that is then added on to the base cost of a typical student the good news is the economically disadvantaged per pupil rate is being increased from 272 dollars per student to 422 dollars per student and it will not be phased in it will be in year one the rest of the formula is going to be a six year phase in which is a little disconcerting another good news for the district is our state share is no

018longer dependent on relative wealth so in the current formula or the old formula none of our economics could have changed and something could have happened in another district on the north side of the state and it could have changed our state share now it's only dependent on our economic measures and it's much more simplified so it looks at property values and our residential median income [Music] also good news there will be no more pass-through funding so all the students that are funded through charter school community school tuition ed choice vouchers autism peterson scholarship and open enrollment will not pass through us anymore that's a positive thing okay they've also added some transportation reimbursements so that they recognize that we can't be as economical when we transport students in non-public and community schools so the community

019school students will carry a 1.5 multiplier and non-public will be a 2.0 multiplier that'll that'll increase our transportation reimbursement go ahead a word of caution if you will if adopted the way it is right now it's a six year phase in we don't yet understand the scope and the speed of that phase in two um this formula is going to cost the state of ohio 1.9 billion dollars more than their funding k-12 education we don't know how they're going to cover that we don't know if they're going to add it to the budget or they're going to start tweaking the formula down to make it cost less um and we also don't know student wellness has not been factored into this formula at all they don't know if they're going to keep it on as

020an add-on or if they're going to try to phase it into this formula so as those things come to play well i'll certainly um keep you informed um but as it stands today the formula the way it is as it would be in the sixth year of implementation comparatively speaking are per student funding from the state will increase 1700 per child per year that's an impact of the pass-through funding no longer there and the increase in transportation and just the recognition that the base cost of a child and education is more than the residual funding factor that they were using in the past so you have a resolution tonight we are asking board support to support this resolution we're hoping they'll adopt it in lame duck and then they'll have six months to get it

021out to us and so that it can impact our next year's budget any questions thank you questions or comments mr marowski followed by mr lindy thanks ms wagner this is uh great news been following with great interest i just have one question um and it doesn't necessarily pertain um directly to us but i fear that it could so with your words of caution i think they're extremely valid well thought out words of caution with no pass through money which is great my brain goes i think maybe cynical or dark quickly i apologize but i'm i worry about like a parallel funding stream that's not based on the same sort of metrics as ours like where will that money come from for those schools and will it have a similar robust sort of structure you see

022what i'm saying and where is that money going to come from well that's part of that 1.9 billion dollar increase and so we don't know the answer to that yet that gives me and again i'm not i'm all about the resolution i'm not advocating for the pastor but i do my brain does go kind of cynical quick of like what is this pot of money and is it going to i don't know i just reservations and you saying that gives me more reservations but i still i really like the cup patterson like where it's headed yeah i i strongly advocate for this formula it's not perfect by any means but it is a huge step in the right direction for us it will become will it'll become less reliant this district will become less reliant

023on local property taxes there will not be a cap either so if you remember over the last couple years we've lost five million dollars a year because we're growing faster than the formula would allow us to do so there is no cap at the end of this we can grow as fast as and then it will help support that financially okay mr lindy yeah thank you president jones um i was just curious if this came up on the call at all uh treasurer wagner that the 1.9 billion just seems like a huge dollar figure uh in in are they uh it strikes me that this is also in the middle of the pandemic when i imagine state tax revenues will be down rather than up um did they talk at all about like the political

024likelihood that this thing goes through um no they recognize that it's going to be a heavy lift that's why they have a six year phase-in so it's really exciting but when you think about six years it's it's it's going to be incrementally good in small ways great just to echo mr moroski i also think the resolution is great i think the bill seems fantastic and i hope it passes i'm just trying to manage my own expectations okay thank you any other questions or comments mr messick yeah thank you um yeah i agree this is like wonderful news and uh having been on finance committee for a couple of years this is something that was always talked about because you know we're trying to plan for long term and uh assure the future uh financial uh

025foundation for cps the you know to the dollar amount first of all they've cut plenty so if we just go back and figure out what what's been cut i think that'd be a good thing to put into the the letters and everything that you've cut all of this we're actually just a portion of it goes back in um and i understand it's a large amount of money is that the only reason for the six year phase in um or did they give any other background that's what the one thing i was so excited until i heard that and i thought maybe you'd give some perspective tonight if if they shared it of why so long because the need is today right um no i'd go as in the in the webinars i've been on two

026webinars and that wasn't addressed they keep they're still pretty high level i still haven't seen them all the data behind the values that they're giving us on the simulation they just tell us this is what you have now versus this is what you're going to have in the sixth year but they don't show me the math behind it i was also surprised that our state share went from 70 47.9 to 46.1 so i was shot surprised to see it drop um and but all the urbans dropped a little bit so um but i want to get behind the math to see all that but now they didn't go into the whys of this why six years three biennium budgets so a lot can change right bolton yes thank you um i think the urgency tonight

027regarding the passage is that another proposal of course has been proposed uh in i won't say in opposition but uh is somewhat contrary to to this so it's important for us to take the advantage as best we can even though everybody's been working hard on this for years especially our treasurer i share some of the worry and some of the cynicism of spreading it over three biennial budgets and that would be you know this governor and perhaps another governor and whatever but it does represent two or three of the most important parts of what's unfair about our current revenue so it does appear that people have been listening and i appreciate all the work that the district has done for a long time to try to make this case so let's hope for the best

028and work for the best and it would be probably very useful for at least our um hamilton county state representatives and state senators to hear from us specifically about the need to pass this so maybe we can make that an assignment i know testimony has been given and we've been working on that but maybe redoubling that effort would be a good idea right and so i did want to say so we have some um standardized lasers though as both put out there for all of us to start sending to our legislators and i also signed up to testify if they need me so um i'll let you know if that happens okay thank you any other questions or comments thank you thank you ms wagner um superintendent mitchell hey good evening good evening so tonight

029we're going to provide an update to covet 19 not only the health perspective but also academics next slide please so i'm going to go over what we're going to talk about this evening the community health data will be provided by our chief strategy officer the data that we will provide is the exact same data that was provided by dr amin and dr khan last week this data comes straight from the health department if you're interested in viewing this data yourself you can go to the health department's website in addition we also have our own cps dashboard that will talk about the number of student confirmed cases as well as staff confirmed cases so please visit our cps website to be able to see our dashboard and it is updated on a daily basis the second

030thing we're going to cover is to provide an update as it relates to distance learning and academics and that will be provided by our deputy superintendent i believe that at our last meeting i talked about the need for consistency and the ability to be able to stabilize our system which is what is needed right now not only for our students but also for our staff as we consider how fast covet 19 is spreading across the city of cincinnati as well as the county so in terms of staffing as you recall the consideration last week was to move to distance learning based upon the number of staff members who have coveted 19 and are in isolation and the number of staff members who are in quarantine because of a close contact and i kind of compared

031this to popcorn that kernels were popping up all over the place throughout the district we would get a team back in a school and then three days later another set of people who would be out just um as an example and this is all because of the spread that's taking place within our community in a particular school over the weekend eight staff members were identified as being covet positive and there were 20 close contacts within a school so you can see the the impact that this has on our staffing in terms of spread in a department here at central office as a result of one situation one confirmed case we now have four out of five people who are at home as of today so you can see that it's popping up all over the

032place those are just a few examples the big picture and this part is really sometimes challenging and difficult to understand because each one of us we internalize this situation covet 19 the spread of it schools being in distance learning schools being in blended learning we all internalize it from a very personal perspective in terms of what does it mean for me personally we understand and recognize there's the voice of our students and what i've seen well who's speaking for our students we also understand there's the voice of our staff and sometimes it's very difficult to separate those two voices and i say that because if we want our students to receive the best quality instruction then our staff have to feel as if they are well taken care of and so those voices actually merge

033together our desire from the very beginning of the school year the board's desire was to have our students in in person learning that is our desire but based upon the health data for the community that is not the safest place at this moment as it relates to people being in school based upon the number of staff members who are absent and our ability to execute on the safety protocols just as an example previous to friday in the city of cincinnati we were averaging about a hundred new cases a day friday it was 500 new cases so this has an impact on cincinnati public schools like other districts all across the nation as well as health facilities who are running out of staff to be able to care for sick people as a matter of fact

034i received an email today from the governor asking me to participate in a conference call with him tomorrow along with the mayor and the health commissioner for the city of cincinnati to talk about covert 19 in cincinnati so it's a very serious situation as everyone knows so there's this big picture of an entire district and the perspective of the entire district not just how it relates to us as individuals which is really important but thinking about the large district the last week an assignment was given to the administration to explore the possibility of bringing certain classrooms in session and face-to-face for example specialized classrooms as well as our little students in terms of preschool possibly up through third grade as we talk about the third grade reading guarantee so just let me give you just

035one perspective as it relates to the specialized classrooms in having a conversation with a teacher who teaches in a specialized classroom she conveyed that it's really hard to even have succeed of social distance businesses in our specialized classrooms because the staff members are not only teaching but they're also changing diapers they're wiping saliva from our students mouths and these are all things that they want to do and have been doing for years very dedicated and special people but in a health crisis like this you can see why this could cause some concerns for our staff members to be able to keep them safe sometimes the students who are in our specialized unit cannot wear a face shield or face mask and so that also poses another concern for our staff members and the other students

036within the school recognizing that these students have rights and we we validate them we understand them but i'm just giving you the realities sometimes students are spitters which makes it challenging to be able to have the safety protocols in place and sometimes they are yellers which means that sometimes saliva will come from their mouth again i'm not saying anything negative about these students i'm just giving the facts as to what happens and we have very very special dedicated people who care for them every day and so we don't believe that we would be able to bring back our students in our specialized units and in person while the rest of the district is in distance learning in many instances we've had to close down specialized classrooms because of close contact and again i've expressed that

037close contact is hard with many of these students and we want to be close to them was also asked about our little students pre-k through third grade as we thought about in the team we looked at a cohesive system to stabilize that system and then just the logistics of being able to monitor who's in and who's out on any given day transportation would possibly have some rerouting to do as it relates to a specialized group coming in in addition to there would be an extra added complexity to technology and so i say that because you would have your students who are in distance learning let's say you're 4th through 12th graders who are all in distance learning then you would have your students who are in person whether that's your primary students in your specialized

038classrooms and possibly your esl students or ell students in addition to the students at the primary level who don't want to come back to in person who want streaming we're talking about three models running all at the same time on the same bridge staffing we still do believe would be a concern as we're continuing to see an increase of our um staff members with clove at 19 and yes we would have more subs to be able to cover them but the challenge is is that now typically when a teacher would have a sub maybe it's a week usually at most unless it's for an extended period of time now with covert 19 it's at least 10 days 14 days and so to be able to provide that coverage for all of those popcorn situations we

039think would logistically be very hard to do and would create a system that is not stable and may take our attention away from really providing high quality distance learning so that is the perspective um that we've looked at as it relates to the big picture and the follow-up um assignment that was given by the board at this point in time i'd like for our chief strategy officer to come forward and she's going to talk about our community health data followed by our deputy superintendent who will talk about distance learning thank you good evening so we will start our review of the community health measures today with the number of positive covet cases in hamilton county schools um the number of new student coveted cases um in this data came out last thursday november 12th was

040108 new student cases and 85 new staff cases those numbers um increased from the week prior the week prior was 82 student cases and 37 staff cases the cumulative number of student cases in public schools is over 300 and cumulative staff cases is over 300 and that is since this system began tracking these cases on september 7th you can also see the data for the charter schools and the private schools on the next slide you will see our city daily new cases you can see that um this weekend we reached a new peak in the city of 247 new cases on sunday our seven-day average as shown on this chart has also reached a new maximum at for the seven day average this is double where it was 14 days ago on november third on

041the next slide you'll see the 14 day trend in city seven day average and you can see that only one day in the last 14 days was a decreasing average this most recent seven day average of 176 cases translates to 58 daily new cases per 100 000. the positivity rate has also increased this is a new data we just received this morning the city of cincinnati is at 7.2 percent and hamilton county outside of the city is at 10.9 percent and finally the average length uh to get test results uh remained unchanged at about two days and to continue the presentation on an update for distance learning is tiana evening i'm here to just give you a brief update on distance learning and how we're making that transition first i want to remind the community

042we are moving to distance learning on monday november 23rd through january 4th this is a five day a week distance learning model we will continue to monitor our health data and this decision was made due to the staffing challenges we heard you loud and clear and really being strategic and intentional in our communication so here's a timeline last tuesday a district email and robocall went out to all staff and families there was also a media advisory thursday there was discussion with union leadership there was a meeting with principals and all directors and then principals were given a draft email and a robocall script to share with families on friday it was expected that principals and directors meet with their staff or departments to allow to let them know of the details going into distance learning

043today hr is sending out communication to all staff regarding rule roles and responsibilities and then tomorrow we will be sending out another communication uh from our communication office to all families so what does this look like for our students we've been here and we've grown in distance learning we want to remind students of the transition and the awesome job that they did starting in august and one it's being prepared so group a which uh their last day in person will be on wednesday and group b will be on friday so we want to make sure that they have all the tools they need to be successful so making sure that they have all the technology textbooks and just communication schedules office hours so that they're ready to transition back to distance learning we did have

044students who are gaining their um access through schoology we want to remind those families that we are now going to the five day a week of teacher directed instruction so they can participate in that as well and that cda students can return if they choose to and they can do that by calling three six three zero one two three it is important that our public our staff our students are aware that we are open school is open learning continues so school office hours will be held two days a week wednesday and thursday 7 30 to 2 we did it early for our families who want to go into the office during before going to work or at lunch wednesdays we will have our mill hubs so making it convenient for our families while they're on

045site if they need to take care of any business that they can come into our schools and central office will remain open monday through friday so the last part of this presentation is in two parts one talking about principles in schools and the message that we shared with our principals was the first to communicate these bullet points when we first did uh distance learning we prepared a parent guide so we wanted to make sure that our families refer back to that guy to send it out an email we did send home physical copies in multiple languages early in the fall our schools are rescinding distance learning schedules by the teachers with their office hours also how to contact the schools and our health offices they will remain open and anything else any other information that

046is needed we want to make sure we communicate with our family and that they have all the materials they need to be successful at home and again um we gave the timeline the communication timeline to our principals to communicate this information along with scripts from a robocall in an email for our teachers we wanted them to have flexibility so they can choose to work from the classrooms or home we will continue with pd professional development on mondays we're asking all of our teachers if you decide to work from home that you take your personal belongings um pets and plants and to reacquaint yourself we also had a educator's guide specifically on distance learning so our curriculum department has shared that information out for our parents who are a vital part of teaching and learning in

047our schools and their primary goal is to support students um in helping with making sure that they're logging on to their google needs and other social emotional needs so parents who need access to technology they can still come into the building and access devices and wi-fi principals will meet with paraprofessionals to be very clear and specific on roles and responsibilities for our security we will do um a brief a temporary reassignment to some of our security guards from high school to elementary to help maintain the safety procedure procedures and protocols at our schools and that will be coming from the district office our clerical staff will be in wednesdays and thursdays now due to the nature of some responsibilities people will report to the building from dining services facilities transportation custodial and trades now onto

048central office the minimum expectation is still to have people come in two days a week um although we're open monday through friday schedules will be worked on and needed to be submitted by november 20th so we can ensure all work is done effectively efficiently and everyone's on the same page some general expectation is to be very clear we are open and works and work needs to be completed regardless of working from home or in the building hr will be sending out roles and responsibilities and everyone will fill out their weekly log we've done this in the past and then the supervisor will continue to monitor work hours and work with their team members i also want to remind our public of some of the fantastic services that our district office offers that we will continue

049to offer wednesdays will be our mill hubs where we would distribute meals all health centers will remain open along with the dental services men mental health services otnpt will be offered via telehealth nurses will be on site and appoint by appointment only so if you need to access a nurse you can do that with cincinnati public schools and we will continue with our partnership with our local universities with student teaching and they can maintain and help with learning um through their learning remotely and lastly just wanted to give a quick update on uh covet testing we will continue with cobit testing for our staff this week and then pause when we go to distance learning and then for our students and staff as far as reporting reporting is still very important so staff should report

050any colby cases to our hotline and in our students to our nurses that concludes the distance learning portion thank you gianni and sarah and that concludes our presentation and update as it relates to covet 19 operationally as well as academically thank you thank you superintendent questions board members uh mr messer just a couple comments um i just want to say uh thank you for the flexibility for the staff i think that's a really uh gracious uh acknowledgement of the diverse situations that our staff are in personally and professionally so i think that's a wonderful addition to this plan um as a parent i just want to say i think the communication has just been flawless because got the robocall principle was communicated teachers have communicated and then we've gotten other additional um so i really

051feel like the communications is really uh clicking so thank you for that and then you know i have so many friends that uh or family frankly that are finding out that next week they're going virtual and they're finding out like today and tomorrow the the announcements are coming and and everybody's nervous and i i think that it was really uh wise of you to recommend that with a little extra notice because it is giving our families an opportunity to plan as well as our staff and to prepare the children and i think that change management for them is important so thank you for your leadership there thank you other questions and comments um miss bolton yes thank you for the reports appreciate it um one thing to emphasize is the availability of the services instructionally

052and the health services and the food services i really appreciated that being shared with the community today and the other thing is that i i as we as we may sometime during the year have a vaccine and we would not necessarily be among the first because uh it's not necessarily where schools are are you know the big spread engines but it would be it's great that we continue to have the infrastructure so that when vaccinations begin to be used in schools we are ready and we have a decade or more of that kind of infrastructure so that it would be a natural um uh place to begin if if need be and if we're kind of in the running but really appreciate all the additional services available i think that's very important to our families

053and our students thank you mr lindy uh first of all i want to say thank you again for the enormous amount of work that's gone into the last couple of weeks and for the great information that we're getting on the board uh and in the meetings um i think one of the things you shared superintendent and i want to apologize because i just was distracted for a moment but i think you shared that we when it comes to special education classrooms when it comes to younger kids we would not be able to bring some of those groups back at this point would you mind just saying the why behind that one more time and again um just i apologize i was distracted earlier okay so i'm gonna ask my tech team to bring up the

054big picture slide because that's where i outline those items so my apologies for not being clear um so we did explore would you like me to go through the the entire explanation no no and it might have been quite clear just the specific part about um younger kids in special education yes so i talked about in our specialized classrooms that it's very hard to in some instances not have close contact that our kids and our staff members are far closer than six feet apart um i talked about in many of those instances our staff members are feeding and come in contact with saliva they also change diapers and so they're coming in contact with bodily fluid and there obviously are proper ways to do it but you're not obviously six feet apart or even three

055feet apart i also explained the fact that in some of our specialized classrooms our students have a very difficult time and have a medical waiver to not wear a mask or a face shield so you can understand how that might translate to saliva or droplets from the nose actually coming in contact with our staff members in terms of thinking about our small kids i highlighted that if i think about the system as a whole just creating that cohesive consistent stabilized system that will help us be able to focus a little bit stronger on the the distance learning which is what we're most concerned about beyond safety that transportation there would possibly be some rerouting that would have to take place as it relates to transportation that technology there would be three models that would be

056operating at the same time one would be your distance learning for let's say your fourth through twelfth grade students and then you have your kids who would be in person whether that's your specialized classrooms your english language learners and your pre-k through third grade students that's a second system and then the third system would be streaming for any of the pre-k through third grade kids who don't want to come back to in-person learning and so we believe that that weight on the bridge would cause the bridge to collapse in addition the last point that i brought up which is the real reason we've gone to distance learning is having enough staff still to be able to operate those classrooms when you have that popcorn effect of staff members being out for a period of time

057you know in many instances a staff member might be out for two days three days five days but with covet 19 you're out at a minimum of 10 days and so having the subs in place to be able to cover that we believe would be a challenge we really did look at this we really did try to come up with um a yes and so for those reasons we are not recommending to have in-person learning for any of our students at this particular time thank you okay i i just have a question superintendent and thank you for the report um i think i have the answer in there but i just wanted to clarify so one of the just looking thinking about some of our previous data that has been given to us there was

058some concern expressed in the numbers of kids who were not necessarily connecting on distance learning so if i'm to understand this is that one of the functions of the paras as directed by their school so the schools will monitor that and terrors may have that responsibility for connecting with them yes so it'll um be a triage approach and we have talked about and thought about this um because we looked at what are the barriers for distance learning working that was one of the major ones so it'll be a triage in terms of the classroom teacher the paraprofessional as well as the school social worker gotcha okay thank you any other questions or comments wonderful thank you for the two very strong and positive reports thanks all right so we are now at the item on

059our agenda for hearing the public the board takes pride the board prides itself on being as transparent and as 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 in hearing of the public members of the public who wish to speak during the board meeting must 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 and daniel hoyne will be our time keepers once the request has been granted you will be invited to enter please click on the visibility icon to go

060interactive after speaking you will briefly see the welcome screen again as you transition back to the live stream meeting each speaker will have two minutes to speak and may only speak once when the timer goes off 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 and i believe how many do we have treasure wagner i think it's 15 okay ready yes our first speaker is jason manziel followed by liam o'shaughnessy followed by alice flanders go ahead mr munzel hi my name is jason manzel i'm a member of the cincinnati community and a mcnic student my email is jc.munzeel hotmail.com i wanted to request the complete withdrawal of police from all cincinnati public schools it goes to be

061a comfortable place for all students and i believe that police presence does the opposite of this that is all thank you you our next speaker is liam o'shaughnessy followed by alice flanders followed by owen dorico go ahead thank you and uh good evening my name is liam o'shaughnessy i'm a student at wyoming high school cincinnati public schools needs to address the racism in their building and work with the youth activist coalition to address this problem according to the civil rights data collection there's a disproportionate amount of in-school suspensions given to black students in comparison to white students at cps in fact just one suspension doubles the chances of dropping out so cps needs to work to reduce this educational inequity in addition black students are two to three times more likely to be arrested than

062white student ohio so we need to stop criminalizing our students inside schools and get cops out of cps and finally we need to implement restorative justice instead of punitive justice because the facts show that restorative justice is more effective so i would ask that cincinnati public schools helps work with the youth activist coalition to create a more just educational future thank you our next speaker is alice flanders followed by owen dorico followed by catrice carpenter go ahead ms flanders hi there my name is alice landers and i'm an alumna of cincinnati public i'm speaking today to back the voices of the students asking you to divest from the to divest from the cincinnati police department and to get police out of schools i understand and appreciate that you all some parents and some teachers and

063even some students may have positive relationships with individual officers however the school to prison pipeline is real and any discussion around anti-racism that does not include divesting from police is incomplete the talk we heard earlier sounds great please now back it up with action thank you thank you our next speaker is owen dorico followed by catrice carpenter go ahead up rodrigo all right hello can you hear me yes we can hear you we can't see you can you please click on your visibility icon uh i have enabled it oh okay okay yeah the connection might be bad um in fact because tonight i am outside of the cincinnati public schools education center along with a number of other youth youth activists uh who have been out here pretty much all evening and i would like

064to implore you implore you um to listen to your community members and students who are telling you the facts about police involvement within schools um i i think along with everybody else we appreciate the fact that you have expressed any interest at all in addressing racism but the plans you presented all seriously short in a number of ways not least of which your refusal to truly address police presence within cincinnati public schools it is going to be a fundamentally incomplete plan until you acknowledge the overall negative role that police officers play within our school communities and the fact that their presence and the ways we uh hand out justice within our schools ruin lives thank you [Music] speaker is catrice carpenter followed by carrie kinkel followed by jillian whitaker go ahead ms carpenter are you

065guys able to hear and see me yes all right well first of all um i want to give a kudos to the kids out there keep going hopefully we can get some resolution um and good job to you guys for um sticking with uh distance learning because it just is great all over and um hopefully i can get some emails back as we're speaking on the anti-racism situations it's just starting to become a very ridiculous just like the kids we're not gonna stop until it's dealt with thank you our next speaker is kerry kunkle followed by jillian whitaker go ahead ms kinkel sure so um well first i just want to say thanks for doing a much better job with your communications overall and also um miss mitchell for acknowledging and and um hearing your

066stuff and allowing them the options to choose to stay home and teach um because i know in past meetings you know a lot of those voices were raised and often felt very ignored so thanks for that but my question um really is with regard to going back in january um and as far as if choosing to not send um your our children back i mean ours and our community children mind specifically what is that going to look like as far as an option that isn't cda specific to the home school two of my children are at one of our montessori schools and um this has been posed before and was not directly answered and then i spoke with our principal um about two weeks ago so shortly before this decision was made which by the

067way i think is a wise one as far as um the lack of staff and us all going fully remote again but he was saying that there were not enough numbers of people who withheld you know during that sort of two-week trial period and that the district was going to allow for the individual schools to sort of come up with their own plans but that was about as far of a explanation that i received so with that i wanted to know how is that going to roll out what does that mean for teachers because are they then charged with doing that in addition to what will be then a blended model etc so if someone could speak to that at some point or if that could come through in an email or a robo call

068i know this is planning forward in january and we don't know where numbers will be then but it would be helpful to be able to know what i can expect for my students um one is a grade three and one is a grade five so if you're going to be doing that possibly going you know k to three all the way back um in in terms of that and i'm sure i'm not the only parent who is wondering this and has had me the superintendent your time is up but the superintendent would like to respond directly to your question at this time thank you fantastic so thank you for your question this is something that we just explored before we were going to go to distance learning so what we are in the process of

069doing is putting together a team that will explore this this team will be comprised of teachers parents principals and our i.t department led by our deputy superintendent that we can thoroughly understand the views of all parties and what is truly needed to to make this work and to see what the feasibility is so we will be doing that over the next several weeks and we'll be getting some information back to the board regarding the feasibility of distance learning at your home school thank you okay our next speaker is jillian whitaker followed by yusuf meniere followed by ruth de bono go ahead mrs whitaker and i just wanted to say thank you for listening to the parents who are really advocating uh for a pushback to remote looking at the way that the numbers are escalating

070right now i can't imagine how i would be feeling if you know i knew that there wasn't an end in sight for the kids and for the teachers um i do think though that we need to be mindful of the way that the district is portraying the teachers the film blasting even the presentation tonight kind of makes the teacher sound irresponsible and a lot of groups are kind of falling on that uh pointing fingers at the teachers saying this is their fault when really like if we're not testing asymptomatic kids we just can't be sure um the teachers don't live in a bubble they have husbands wives they have kids who go to school they have parents they take care of um and when we say oh you know it's whatever's happening in their social

071lives that's really detrimental to the relationship i think that everybody's trying to build so i think we could you know try to do a little bit better with that and additionally i would really like to advocate that the peres be issued technology to take home we trust them with their kids so we should be able to trust them with our devices um and finally i just want to support the kids who are out here before i've asked several times you know if the police presence was going to be in the schools during the pandemic and i couldn't get an answer it sounds like they are there so um i would also like to advocate for their removal we've gone over the list before you all know what it is thank you for your time thank

072you and again the superintendent would like to address your specific concern so thank you miss whitaker for uh your comments um i will say at no point in time am i aware of the board or the administration blaming the teachers or any of the staff members whatsoever for going to distance learning we have actually been supportive of our teachers and all of our staff members and the reason we decided to go to distance learning is because of the staffing concerns and it wasn't a blame issue it was reporting of the numbers of people who are absent because they are sick so we have worked really hard to empathize and to understand and in no way shape or form blame any of our staff members for being sick or being in quarantine we support them thank

073you excuse me our next speaker is yusuf meniere followed by ruth de bono followed by sierra harper go ahead mr munir hello can you all hear me hello i am back right outside of your building i'm here right now and i'm here for the same reason i was last week i'm here because well first i should introduce myself my name is youssef meniere i'm with the young activist coalition and we're here demanding that you break all ties with the cincinnati police department because they disproportionately criminalize your black and brown students in fact black students and cps make up 62.7 percent of the entire student population but they make up 85 percent of all police referrals and now i want to go through some school specific data because it only gets worse in fact in aitkin

074high school black students make up 88 but including all people of color they make up uh how many police referrals um they make up 100 of out of school suspensions and oh this does not happen anyway you disproportionately punish and criminalize your black and brown students you disproportionately criminalize them you are in responsible for the school-to-prison pipeline we want you to make a good decision we want you to implement transformative and restorative justice in our cps schools because your students deserve better and your students deserve justice not an anti-racism policy that doesn't even begin to mention the police and not only that it doesn't even have an implementation plan it's just words on paper just like every single other anti-racism plan you guys have ever had thank you do better speaker ruth de vernon followed

075by sarah harper followed by christopher muldrow uh hi can you hear me okay um hi i'm risa bono i'm i'm a student at walnut hills high school and um like others i appreciate that you are trying to make a anti-racism plan but i think an intimate an integral part of any anti-racism plan has to include taking police officers out of schools um due to the harmful effects that this has on students of color also it's also important to implement restorative justice because students of color are disproportionately expelled and suspended which leads to their criminalization and doesn't actually allow them to learn and grow in a good environment thank you our next speaker is sierra harper followed by christopher morrow hello can you hear me we can hear you can you click on the visibility icon

076please that's the camera yes hold on it's asking me to allow you to do it i'm sorry can you see me now no um so i'm a parent and i'm also a partner in one of our um schools and first because i didn't i just want to say this i don't believe that you should take the police officers out of the schools i just think you maybe you should change the police officers and do something different i'll say that part just because i kept hearing it over and over again but what i wanted to say real quickly was it would be super great if you guys when you come up with a plan that you stick to the plan and i don't mean like the going back and forth because of the numbers regardless of

077the numbers we can be completely honest and we know that when we come back january 4th everybody's been at home or wherever they've been with whoever they've been with let's just have a plan for january so that parents can make a plan teachers can make a plan uh community centers learning hubs everybody can have a plan and they already know what it is and not be waiting on pins and needles it's very stressful not to know if you're going to school not going to school and it just to me it just makes more sense and it would be easy on taxpayers maybe not on taxpayers but it'll be easier on parents and it should be easier on you and everybody else involved if there was a plan and we stuck to the plan um i

078appreciate everything that you all have done everything that you all have said um i 100 i am not a cps graduate i actually grew up outside of cincinnati wentwood's thank you forest park um but i really wanted my kids to be a part of it when we started living in the city and so i'm behind cps um and i just want i would really like the communication as you all have already started doing to be wonderful but every school i have three kids in three different schools and i can tell you right now everything doesn't go out across the board once it becomes individualized so thank you ma'am your your time is up but we thank you for your comment our next speaker is christopher muldrow followed by cft president julie sellers go ahead mr

079muldrow yes uh i've been making it a point not to talk about covet and i don't want to talk about covet i'm not saying it's important but on the cincinnati culture can you please click on your camera so we can see you all right i've been making a point not to talk about code it's not that it's not important but i didn't want to point out on the cbs contractor that's on your website it says um as of may there have only been 286 confirmed cases of code so it seems like that you're presenting tonight is uh what y'all on your website but uh i had the is to talk to dr dean glaze about the two different instructional models that are being ran in cps are that were being ran into cps prior um

080when we were using the at-home instruction and one is what we seen at walnut hills in evanston which was 24 hours of instruction and then the other one that we saw at western hills which was barely 12 hours of instruction um where students were receiving two hours or less in each subject area per week um it was brought to my attention that with the second instructional model that provided less than half of the instructional time it was due to maybe concerns with screen time i would ask that you do away with that instructional model and i will point to that what do the students do after they actually get off the screen when they're not with their teacher they're on the laptops they're using the digital resources they're using the electronic platforms that they've been

081told to do work on we've given all of our students laptops because we understand that a lot of them don't have access to electronics so it's not like a lot of our students have printers in their home and they're printing out their work when the teacher gets off the screen they're still forced to stay on the screen so i would ask that we do away with that second instructional model it has been brought to my attention that some changes are being made yet to be seen they have yet to release the new western halo schedule um but it seems like maybe we will be getting instruction on monday and we will be starting at eight so look forward to seeing that hopefully we do away with that old instructional model thank you our last speaker

082is cft president julie sullivan go ahead miss sellers hello everyone um i would just like to say that i am very glad that as a district and board you wrote the resolution um supporting the new funding formula from the state of ohio although it may not be perfect it is a great start to begin properly funding schools um i think that it will be a great um bonus to cps to not have the charter and voucher money taken as pass through dollars out of the cps budget because we backfill those by 40 percent and so it will leave more money within the budget for the cps students secondly i think that it's great that the board did make the decision and the superintendent made the decision that teachers have the option to either work from

083their classroom or from their home depending on their individual situations and this will then be able to provide the environment for the safety of the cps staff i do think that within the way the numbers are escalating this week and um one recent day we had 20 positive cases between students and students and staff um in one day um and these are numbers that are escalating weekly that i wish that this would have happened last week and that i just keep praying that no one within the cps staff or students or their families pass in the next few weeks as we are seeing these escalating cases that is what has been brought up in the news that it takes time for cases to escalate and then hospital cases and then that follows with more intense

084um outcomes so hopefully everybody has a safe holiday i just wish i could say to everyone in the public we must have everyone having covering their faces with masks and their noses with masks because everywhere i go i'm seeing people unmasked or with their noses hanging out of their mask which does no good because we do need to get back to school but we cannot get back to school until um in cincinnati and hamilton county our cases are in the green the yellow or the orange ranges um we know that the safety measures that are put in place work in those levels but they do not work if we are in red and purple um so we are more than double now of the number of cases of the number of cases per 100 000

085and i wish that this week we were no longer in school but have a great holiday weekend and let's make sure that we try to do as much as we can to prevent any further illnesses thank you okay that's our last uh person so we'll move on thank you to the public for your comments um does anyone have any kudos miss bolton yes i am very very pleased and proud and hope will be able to see these um maybe the superintendent will be able to work it into her one of her reports soon but i want to congratulate all the winners of the 34th annual corbett mayerson awards uh there is a really great small short video that has been produced uh by jeff siebert and it'd be great for everybody to have an opportunity

086to see it congratulations thank you any other kudos all righty miss bates are there any retirements no retirements no retirements wow somebody might win that bet about time tonight so we'll see okay uh board matters um concerns mr marowski you're up first thank you president jones of course not that we not that we make friendly bets about how long the meetings will be um so i'll dive right in uh this is not new to anybody um on this board or probably tuning in but uh on june 10th there was an assignment to create an anti-racism policy for the district that has been in the policy and equity committee since um the original draft and all the edits have been uh made by assistant general counsel stephanie scott who i think started like a week before

087the time it was made so kudos uh to miss scott um the first draft that we had as you'll recall was very long and uh had a number of procedural items in it the the policy was then revised in policy committee and then it went to health and safety where some awesome uh suggestions were made and then on november 6 policy committee meeting as addressed earlier on board member concerns and comments and questions were brought to administration and what resulted in all of that plus the community input that was discussed in the presentation of the minutes is the policy in front of you today i'm not going to go through it line by line and insult people's intelligence i would just like to call it a couple sort of highlights and to reiterate it would

088be great you know i think if we could have this in the bag and ready to go in december if for no other reason that we have a burgeoning curriculum as well on anti-racism curriculum and having the two support one another i think makes all this sense in the world um so again just to call it a few of the high level things and then um just to let you know like kind of where my head is just speaking is the chair of the policy committee um i fully intend to probably have this on board matters next week too pending this discussion miss scott is here tonight um so thank you for being here miss scott if there are any questions that she would need to answer and also to take the feedback that is

089heard tonight and incorporate it if need be policy committee of course meets the first friday in december where um if we have everybody's input and we feel good we could pass it out of committee at that time and bring back to the full board one last time so in going through this um new draft which is shorter um i want to call out first an appendices um that has a number of the procedural elements that gave folks myself included cause for pause um the beginning of that appendix it's two pages at your table at the beginning um is a community recommendation paragraph it's the only piece that's new that i would just draw your attention to um stating that understanding the board is tasked with giving authority to the district to implement the inside racism

090policy and therefore discretion in the methods and practices that will be used the below information includes procedural recommendations from the anti-racism working group identified during the review process etc so those items have been excised from the policy itself and placed in this two-page appendix back to the policy two two five five dot something of course the two two five five um references the equity policy that um president jones miss bolton and miss bates were instrumental in drafting it was recommended we take language and include language from the equity policy in this one which you will see we have done the redlined draft which is now a red line green line blue line gray line underline it's a little unwieldy at this point so i'm kind of working off of the new the new one that's

091cleaner but you have both in front of you we moved the definitions to the beginning which was a unanimous sort of recommendation under purpose you will see words like work instead of words like strive it was recommended by miss bolton and others that would be a little more uh direct in our language we added back in students with disabilities when you go down to anti-racism policy directives the next underlying piece on page two you will notice that we dropped institutional structural etc and just used systemic throughout and so it was getting kind of confusing somebody and a few people brought that up i'm trying to you know recognize everyone individually but a lot of these were shared and that was one that was shared under communication a whole lot of that got moved out and

092put in the appendices and a part that i thought was great that was added in you'll see a line that begins the district will identify key benchmarks that demonstrate growth in each area um that is a piece that again i just want to call out some significant changes i think that was one um moving on to page three under leadership and administration uh a number of things were moved on that were procedural miss bolton was much more direct in her suggestions in the original draft and we actually went uh pretty much included miss bolton's um suggestions basically verbatim um her suggestions as you'll see began the board shall direct the superintendent treasure et cetera so it's more the board directing as opposed to sort of amorphous kind of suggestions and each one statement will begin

093with a verb develop direct identify embed we liked that a great deal and included that language it's very different than the original one curriculum instructions some was moved out um it was suggested in one of the documents that we removed the curriculum instruction because it was addressed under leadership and administration i felt that some of that curriculum and instruction uh was good in there particularly if we're going to have a new curriculum so we can talk about anything of course that included training and professional development much of it was moved to the appendices you'll note hiring practices a little bit was moved the pieces that were more prescriptive in nature policy enforcement for a whole lot of probably obvious reasons just baked into that word enforcement a lot of that was moved to the appendix

094because it was pretty prescriptive um a new piece though that i'll call out and then i'm pretty much done with my part um to hide the highlighting part um something that is new that i think is strong are those last two pieces that begin when it is determined that a student teacher or staff member has committed a racist act the person will be provided the opportunity to learn about the impact of their actions through restorative practices mediation role play or other explicit policies training resources the district shall ensure there are various including anonymous means for students and staff to report racism and other forms of discrimination um mr messer brought up in our policy committee um if i may and he obviously speak to this more than me but he had brought up that some

095of these things like those pieces it census policy is so important and so overarching over everything that we're doing and all the different little systems in our big system that it would be important and instructive to not have procedural elements but more sort of direct elements in here like this piece so if we are to disrupt systems which i know this board is interested in doing for the betterment of all kids we thought that pieces like those last couple i just highlighted were important and i will pause this is the newest draft um and welcome any feedback questions that i could answer or other committee members ryan um miss bowers mr messer or even miss scott who's here tonight okay any board members have any comments questions mr messer yeah thank you mike or mr

096morrowski uh so you know tonight we heard again from some students who had some comments about the anti-racism and a perceived lack of um completion without mention of police uh i don't remember them um being on any of our committee agendas um i mean had they reached out as you know because speaking at public forum is one thing but understanding you know and i think you've done a fabulous job of bringing this up so many times and talking about the next step is back to committee people like to and i know we had our advisory group was that ever discussed in any of the groups and is it potentially worth running a filter through our um advisory committee um on this topic to get their pulse on whether it should uh be included so the

097the the first question no it didn't come up in any of the sessions with the task force um the second i mean i assume they're they're obviously going to be numerous opinions on that topic i don't know necessarily if sro program needs to be included in this i think this could be used on passage to maybe look at that program in and of itself um but that's just my opinion but no it didn't come up in any of the groups though not explicitly anyway miss bolton i think uh directly um the the the current draft and actually all of the drafts that i've seen from the community from the from the committee and and uh the board itself um speak very directly to the issue of disproportionality it's very clear that that is a focus

098and indeed the systemic racism is not only mentioned but it is throughout this policy so i think that from that standpoint it does start to deal with the with the problem at hand and that and what needs to be remedied i don't know if we can list any more ways to remedy these issues but if it would be it would be um it might be one more thing a phrase that i don't think is correct the school to prison pipeline is actually it's the dropout pipeline to prison that's the issue uh rather than school to to a pipe a school to prison pipeline but maybe that seemed to be part of their undercurrent rather than addressing the police issue because that's a another one maybe as a remedy or a reference to the pipeline might

099be there mistakes um i don't know if you're familiar with the uh book michelle alexander's the new jim crow and that explicitly uh explains what the school-to-prison pipeline is and it's not sros it's you know the the war on drugs so we just so we are clear that you know we've we've done our homework on that issue and we know what you know what that really is and i mean it's it's uh you know another one of those situations where the uh intentions were good and the implementation of the war on drugs had devastating effects on you know on on the african-american community and we're you know our leaders in those areas are attempting to undo that but to put the burden on the school system when someone who has spent years researching the school

100to prison pipeline did not come up with the those uh results i think is unfair and i would urge those individuals who are you know who are under that impression to read the new jim crow by michelle alexander and i think thank you sorry i appreciate that miss bates and that's an important book um and in addition you're much kinder than me and you say it had good intentions i ideally the war on drugs had good intentions i'm not i'm not so certain but um your point is well taken that and it's it's referenced in here in the sense that there's this history that's led to now while we current incarnation of folks up here may not have created this situation it's ours to deal with and so i think that word disruption that we

101use there at the end is a good one and if you know a policy can create a framework or guard rails for lack of a better analogy to disrupt that history i that's outlined in that book i think is is great so anyhow i just wanted to say i appreciated your comment mr lindy uh thanks president jones i i think um i primarily want to just share my uh gratitude and appreciation for mr moroski and the entire policy committee i think this issue is an incredibly important one i think our district had a history for hundreds of years of running a segregated school district and the fact that we don't run a segregated school district anymore just means that we can spend i think this proportion energy is trying to make our city and our

102country uh what we hope that it is and i think this could be an exciting step forward um i appreciate mike taking my feedback on a couple things i notice uh and i particularly like the idea of having um the like benchmarks to demonstrate growth over time i thought that was very helpful um i think on the just kind of questions or other feedback side i think one you you all may have looked at this already but this makes me wonder what other school districts have done you know like have we looked at other districts anti-racism policies we may have already but i'd be curious are there lessons for us to learn mistakes we could avoid making that other districts have made um and then i think i continue to have some ongoing concern about

103length i think at the end of the day i defer to the committee and i'm excited to support what you all recommend but i think that there's a there's a beauty and i think creating some room for the administration to lead and come up with their own ideas um which i think uh our administration would do very well so i'm gonna start at the end and back up um yes about the the brevity when i was teaching english i always encouraged my students to try to make their point with less amount of pages and that more pages did not equal better grades um i actually think four pages to deal with 400 years of system is pretty good uh because this was much longer um i hear you though and if we can still trim

104it down i know um we'd love to so we'll look at if there's still any fat left i know in miss scott and i looked at it after the policy committee looked at it and presented everyone's feedback this we've i feel pretty good about four pages but i we welcome anyone else's feedback as well and to your other point about um other districts and i welcome miss scott to come down she she um really deserves the kudos and um applause and everything uh for getting this to this point she has done an amazing job and i i really mean that and she can talk um about some of the districts she looked at to get started um if that's okay miss scott i know you gave up your evening to be with us um she

105looked at districts around the country i don't know that there's any peers in the state of ohio that we can say but she uh she looked at some best practices and there weren't a ton to go off of so this is would be pretty pretty big and groundbreaking seems melodramatic but policy so turn over to miss stephanie scott good evening everyone um i don't have those but specific notes but i will um kind of mimic what mike is saying when we actually initially started doing doing the research there actually wasn't much out in the country that a lot of people were doing there were a couple of policies in virginia which kind of was the basis for the policy that kind of which started our policy tonight so really when i think when we started

106this back in june that was something that we learned that we were could be on the cusp of actually being at the forefront of getting these policies out there at least at the high school or you know the school this public school level there really wasn't much most of it was at the collegiate level and it wasn't there were more so resolutions and things of that nature i don't know if there's any other specific questions but to kind of just say that this is actually we are still at the forefront so really what we're doing could actually be used as the models for other school districts across the country really thank you miss scott yeah that was um i and i can send anybody that what we looked at at the beginning but yeah it's

107exciting and definitely again i would say in ohio we're one of the only ones talking about i've gotten emails uh calls to the board office other districts want to talk to us and i just tell them all like ours isn't finished so when it's finished we can talk about it but not not before mistake yeah and i just want to make a a comment we our equity policy same thing we were one of the first in the country to have an equity policy and likewise we're we're doing this we uh i i like to say this another one am i okay i'm gonna know he's gonna say this again but really when you look at the urban districts across the country we're we're at a doable size we can do these things and lead and

108that's what we've been doing so um that happens very frequently that we're in a position to you know community learning centers equity policy you know you now distance learning you name it we're we're really pretty much out there leading the charge and helping other districts in the state in this country also okay and then i my comment i like the way it's kind of shaped out here and i i appreciate uh my comments being incorporated um i do think that and and when is your next for uh committee meeting december 4th at 4 30 p.m okay um i want to read it through there in my mind i think what's standing out for me is a question or comment and and i would rather just offer a suggestion around it so i want to read

109it first but you know our role as a board is to govern and provide oversight you know but i think there are things like our equity policy and anti-racism where we have to be participants and so what that means is when it comes to training and professional development we also must have that and so i think it would behoove us to write something that gives it teeth and we did that with the equity policy and it's i can't remember exactly what it said but i do want to go back but i think it's it's incumbent on us to make sure that we are also we can't dictate or not dictate but that's the wrong word but direct the policy that we especially a policy like this that we are not participants in so um i

110would offer that and i will maybe write a couple of statements and uh pass that on to you mr marowski go ahead would it be prudent um to include this excuse me on board matters for next monday for those comments okay okay miss bolton yeah to follow up on what you said uh we'll recall that the state board of education had a very very precise very direct uh statement about their training and and in here one of the areas is that we're going to be trained in the policy we need to be trained in anti-racism not just so but and i know that in health and safety i think that was one of the things that was lifted as well in that committee about the training that we have to uh be able to be

111knowledgeable and and uh experienced in that too so your point's well taken yep yes like we have talked about up here a couple of times where another thing we're lucky being in cincinnati uh to miss bates's point this doable district i like that i'm gonna steal it um so we have all the diversity in the different groups of a bigger district you learn when you go to these council great city school events but we can wrap our arms around the city not boston or philadelphia we also have an insane amount of folks who are nationally recognized and credentialed and accredited to do that kind of work too for us to kind of go through and we have these board retreats we've already talked we're already putting much stuff on the agenda for january but i

112mean you know that would be a great time to do that kind of thing and then i'll put this on the agenda for next week but i appreciate all y'all's input um it's been it's been great and thanks again to ms scott for all your guidance and help and work okay thank you we just blew our time thing but anyway it was worthwhile thank you mr marowski okay so uh the next item on the agenda is a discussion with ro tennis facility miss bolton i'm gonna make up that time right now i'm gonna take it from the marowski clock uh we all were introduced to this a couple of months ago via the finance committee having dealt with this and we said we would come back to the board again this is the plan from

113the cincinnati tennis foundation to create a cincinnati community tennis and education center on the campus available acreage campus of withrow to create a a tennis facility an education facility we've been assured by the administration that the area of the campus that the foundation is interested in is not scheduled for any other development for withrow and that there is no cost to us in the development of it except to see the property to the foundation and then indeed it would be seeded back to us and and it would be available to our students district wide so it's an interesting opportunity and partnership some of the issues are indeed to provide the growth of tennis and in the inner city and also to begin to continue to develop the programs that have kind of an embryonic stage

114if you will in many of our schools regarding tennis for younger people it would also be used for a community as well and as some of you know the whole withrow campus starts to be all part of the walking and bike path and that's running across if you will the city so it's a very exciting opportunity and again the administration at least in finance and i haven't heard anything different has said that this is a reasonable thing for us to do and would be a great benefit to us and the foundation is looking for a nods and doesn't really necessarily require a resolution but we could do that if we feel more comfortable but that they want to know that we're interested in doing that the board members have questions or comments miss bates and

115then mr lindy what didn't something similar occur at walnut hills the walnut hills foundation funded the renovation of the tennis courts there and if that's the case can we look at how that occurred if we have a pressure um because that was that was a successful uh way of adventure so general counsel is approaching general counsel is actually running showing the whole athletic experience [Laughter] thanks good evening uh at walnut hills there was the the courts were built by the uh wanted hills foundation and we've got kind of a model that we've uh used it's the same model we used as uh improvements to the western hills athletic facilities so that that is a model we'll suggest that this would be i mean in fairness this would be a substantially larger project than what happened

116at walnut hills or western hills right okay okay other questions or comments mr lindy um remember bolton can you just clarify it for me i i'm sorry the um is there like an ask or a next step on the table or just discussion the ask and i should have also said that mr lindy uh mentioned this when we first presented this too that mr lindy was very persistent at the finance committee making sure that this was something that fit into the grand plan if you will of withrow's instructional program and business center program so i appreciate that from from from member lindy this next ask is that they would like some official um agreement that we are willing to proceed with these the property give if you will under the stipulations that they mentioned at

117finance and we're in the minute so i think the next thing is whether that's an official resolution that we would like that or whether it's a letter from the superintendent or board president or if it's general counsel and also robin brandon somehow engaging in some sort of uh mou or whatever so i think it's it's any one of those paths and i would actually take the advice of general counsel as to what would be the best path so i i mean a letter of intent would be presumably the next kind of step but we can talk to them and see if that's uh sufficient and present it to you right well i i think um the other questions i had was just a member of the finance committee i had asked whether um we had

118any information about parents with our kids um and what they thought about this idea i haven't heard anything about that since then is there new information there i haven't seen the follow-up from them but i will re i guess in this coming finance meeting we'll make it an assignment and maybe the administration from uh whither will be able to report back that's great i mean i haven't been able to find anybody who doesn't like this idea and i'm certainly not going to just create a reason not to do it but but to me it feels important to know that the administration thinks it's a good idea and that the parents of the kids at whatever i think it's the idea and if all those folks say yes then i've got a yes from me thank

119you mr master um so actually you got one of my questions which was um kind of the school community and and what type of engagement have been there i mean i can't imagine but making them feel like uh they're a part of it if it's gonna be on the campus of the withrow um uh school so uh that was question one and the other question was um the only downside i could think about is let's say they go belly up with foundations you never know and let's say they lose all their money then what does it revert back to cps um do they own it outright ms bolton is often saying you know we need to make sure we don't we got to keep property we actually need more property going forward so presumably we

120would have some agreement with them that if they decided to pack up and leave what would happen so those are the contingencies that we take account for when when we reach that agreement and again same thing with uh i mean on a smaller scale but the same thing with the tennis courts that were built at walnut if if the foundation had gotten halfway through and then said we really don't want to finish or we haven't seen the fundraising i mean we we ensure the project is bonded we ensure that uh again that we've accounted for those concerns ahead of time okay so your suggestion mr hoing is that we develop a letter of intent as the next step yeah we can uh work with uh the proponents to put something together that's acceptable to them

121and then uh ensure that it's acceptable to you wonderful okay thank you all righty next item uh just stay up here mr hoyne miss bolton mr hoing on the columbia township cra yeah again this was shared a couple of weeks ago out of finance and uh mr hoyne's gonna report to us again what this is and uh indeed we're passing a resolution we hope uh later this evening so mr hoyne if it's okay madam president have him just once again present about the columbia township cra okay thank you yes very briefly we were approached by columbia township about a proposed tif district in the plainville business district which is kind of in the madison place neighborhood the proposal was to create a tif district there a lengthy proposal was presented at the last finance committee

122meeting kind of our approach on these has has not changed the district's approach has been uh that we're relatively agnostic in terms of uh whether or not it's a good idea or bad idea in terms of uh tax incentive or cra the community reinvestment act we rely i think heavily on our municipal partners like columbia township city cincinnati silverton cheviot to to make that determination of whether it's a wise uh idea or not our um review has been limited to are we made whole so that the school district's dollars are not used to incentivize that development uh that that's been our approach uh and so when we were presented with this uh the columbia township administrator melissa taylor did report to the finance committee on what's involved uh but our review was primarily whether or

123not the district was being made whole and i can say that uh the plan that's been presented to us would make us whole cons consistent with other uh arrangements that we've made with other municipal partners so we are recommending um that the board approve the resolution that's before you tonight and that resolution is on the table tonight yes ma'am okay any questions anything else okay thank you thank you all righty so we are ready to present our resolutions and uh i'm gonna go through as quickly as i need to mr lindy please present the first resolution uh thank you president jones i have a resolution to appoint a representative to the ohio school boards association board of trustees uh am i right that we're gonna make this pres our president jones um well when we

124open up for discussion we can do that okay okay um you're presenting the motion okay discussion i understand that president jones should be our nominee i i'm the current rep and uh usually we do this uh in january but we're always behind the eight ball so we're always late so we're doing it now i would have i would love to continue to participate as the district's representative okay miss wagner please call raw i don't hear any strongest it's actually been interesting it's been interesting so i'm i'm really good okay mrs bates aye ms bolton hi mrs bauer yes mr lindy yes mr messer aye mr morosky yes president jones yes okay um miss bolton can you present the resolution the next resolution okay a resolution authorizing school compensation agreement between the board of education of

125the city of cincinnati school district and the board of trustees of columbia township this is in reference to what we just had presented to us by general counsel again it's gone through finance it's gone through uh general counsel's office and uh present for passage thank you they're second okay discussion ms wagner mrs bates aye ms bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr morosky yes mr messer aye president jones yes okay thank you mr morosky please present the following resolution my pleasure i would like to present a resolution amending board policy three two two zero teacher evaluation this is the aforementioned otez 2.0 i present the resolution is written thank you very second session mrs bates aye ms bolton hi mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer mr marowski yes president jones yes

126thank you miss marowski the next one thank you president jones i would like to present a resolution amending board policy 3220.01 um school counselor evaluation again the aforementioned otez 2.0 i present the resolution as written is there a second discussion ms wagner mrs bates aye ms bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer aye mr morrowski yes president jones yes okay where are we um ms bowers please present the following resolution yes i am presenting a resolution amending board policy 7540.01 employee communication with district technology i present this resolution as written okay is there a second second all right any discussion i believe that this is the one um i i had some concerns about it that i'm okay with the content but on this one if you look on in the um

127revised one revised section the the language of if kate at the last paragraph it says the board doesn't designates the superintendent and the chief information officer in building principles that the administration's responsible for implementing but throughout the body it talks about the board utilizing software and the board implementing i think we need that's really not a function of the board so we probably need to change the language a little bit to reflect that it really is the superintendent and her designated staff just for consistency yeah i think that's right and so um the um it was 75 40.01 correct and that [Music] yeah that one um this is not the one that has that piece i believe the the one you're talking about [Music] is not the one miss jones oh one doesn't have the

128language that um was concerning to you okay it's o4 i don't even have this one i'm sorry yeah that was in our practice yeah i was okay and you keep the most substantive change in here um was regarding um any anything conducted via personal devices or personal accounts maybe consider public records felt it was important to call that out so that employees realize that because we realize it but they they may not and then the other piece communication on virtual platforms should be appropriate and professional in accordance with the district social media policy those were the substances okay okay so that we're good we can move on that ms bowers you're presenting that yes i now have resolution amending for policy 7540.03 on we got to vote first we need a second on that motion

129you seconded it okay thank you uh we're at we had discussion ms wagner mrs bates aye ms bolton aye is bowers yes mr lindy yes mr messer aye mr moroski yes president jones yes okay miss bolton next policy do you want me to do this i have another one miss powers yes i now have a resolution i'm presenting a resolution of minivore policy 7540.03 student network and internet acceptable use and safety i present this board policy as written second okay discussion miss bolton i have a question and i i don't know if it's just that i had reviewed the racism draft but i didn't know if in this one there should be some sort of talks about inappropriate i just wondered if there should be some sort of discussion uh discriminatory or racial language or

130talk or whatever um it's a little generic but you can see the things we've cared about over time about the bullying and whatever but i just didn't know if there was a place that we could begin to even though we haven't passed the racism uh policy and i'm not saying cite that but it's some sort of racial plural discriminatory whatever if it might fit somewhere i don't know yes mr uh marowski i'm wondering if there might be the possibility of alluding to of course we haven't passed the ontario citizen policy so i'm talking about the future but we have a number of policies that we could reference in here like you know websites that violate 2255 2255 dot and then yeah i we could me i i think i think actually it makes sense to

131be a little stronger with this this is a little yeah i agree can we revisit this one it's funny yeah no i it's fine with me and mr hoing is nodding and so we'll put it back committee on december 6th yeah okay also as you're taking it back to committee i had the same concerns that i expressed on the previous incorrect one this one is the same if you look at uh the second second and third pair paragraph in comparison it says the board will implement measures that's right yeah so i think the language has to be consistent and as a function of the district okay so this is going back to committee okay all righty mr messer please present the next resolution yes i present resolution amending board policy 7540.04 staff network and internet

132acceptable use and safety thank you is there a second second any discussion you that's me this is yours so it again throughout here just being consistent that the the function of implementation is with the district administration and so the language should reflect that and if gotcha yes sir and just a highlight for um on general counsel specifically there's there's language on page three um the third to last paragraph begins the board has implemented etcetera second to last paragraph the board utilizes software so again just that consistency piece of the board's not really doing that the district administration is that correct president jones just yes it's actually all through the document okay that makes sense excellent we'll shelve that one too okay put it on agenda for december we'll put that on hold thank you all

133righty mr messer i have you again for policies 7540 05 employee electronic mail yes 7540.05 employee electronic mail i present the resolution as written their second second any discussion wagner please call the roll mrs bates aye ms bolton [Music] aye mrs bowers aye mr linde yes mr messer aye mr morrowski yes president jones yes thank you all right then we have the final resolution in this bolton and that is the fair funding yep resolution thank you this is uh what we heard the presentation by the treasurer today and had some discussion previously today a resolution to endorse the fair school funding plan as introduced in the senate companion bill to substitute house bill 305 and to encourage the 133rd general assembly to expedite the passage of the bill i presented hope for passage thank you

134is there a second second any discussion miss wagner please call roll mrs bates aye ms bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy yes mr master aye mr morrowski yes president jones yes thank you all righty superintendent mitchell do you have a report the only report that i have is the superintendent's recommendations in writing wonderful okay do i have a motion to approve the recommendations of the superintendent so moved second thank you discussion ms wagner please call mrs bates aye ms bolton aye mrs bowers yes mr lindy mr investor aye mr marowski yes president jones yes okay um do i have a motion to approve the revised report thank you is there a second any discussion miss wagner please call roll mrs bates aye ms bolton aye mrs bauer yes mr lindy yes mr messer aye

135mr morrowski yes president jones yes any inquiries and updates all right hearing none all right any assignments miss bolton um i would like it to see if it would be possible for the superintendent to share that video from the uh uh mayerson um corbett awards it's already on the schedule for the 23rd during the superintendent's report i love it thank you great any other assignments uh president jones yes mrs just thank you anything else yes i missed an update assignment besides the finance committee meeting uh that is scheduled uh regularly at uh on thursday at 1 30 we will also be having the as the treasurer mentioned the um another finance meeting which includes the budget hearing so the public will be able to virtually uh participate and also want to remind people on the

136board that we have the um district-wide lsdmc uh meeting coming up this wednesday at six and i think there's enough people that i think it's being noticed enough of you to express my question are how many people are planning on attending i am is there three four so we do need to notice that meeting is that virtual yes okay thank you great any other assignments last call having no other business i declare the meeting adjourned