CPS Board of Education — August 12, 2020

001good evening i called to order the august 12 2020 business meeting of the cincinnati board of education we welcome everyone and request everyone in the audience to silence your cell phones and electronic devices ms bolton thank you madam president uh i would like everyone to join us in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice thank you thank you miss bolton miss wagner please call the roll mrs bates is bolton present mrs bowers mr lindy mr messer president mr morrowski president jones here thank you members of the public who wish to be heard during the board meeting must raise their hand and to speak during the first you

002must raise your hand during the first 10 minutes after the start of this meeting so please do so now if you desire to speak hearing of the public will directly follow the superintendent's presentation individuals who raise their hands after the first 10 minutes of the meeting will not be recognized during this meeting okay we don't have any general minutes to approve today so we'll go ahead um miss bowers is in transition she's on the the broadcast but not able to present the minute so i'm going to ask either mr marowski or mr messer whichever one wants to do it if you would present the student achievement committee report i guess it's up to you ryan whatever you prefer ryan what do you want to do it you want me to do it cool um well

003thank you um on behalf of chair bowers um i it's my honor to give a report out from the student achievement committee which met on friday august 7th at 2 p.m via blue jeans video conference um initially we got an act update for the 2021 school year the administration will do an update on graduation and graduation numbers at october 2nd 2020. um uh i believe mr messer had asked for that and so we will hear more about that in october when we have firmer data mr justin leeds testing director for the district updated our committee on a summary of the spring 2020 state act results um average composite score is five years of testing um and we looked at the percentage of students meeting a three or four uh the committee expressed concerns about the

004the gap between black and white students um there were some large disparities um in the composite score um deputy ahmad reported due to the beefing up of the curriculum the district uh discontinued test prepping last year and we saw a gain in our scores so i think that um it warren's putting a pin in so while there was a disparity between white and black which there always is because every system is plagued with racism in our country um the numbers were better for both groups black students were performing higher generally so were white students and so we inquired as to if they had any initial hunches as to why and miss bolton will be happy to know that the answer was board approved curricula um we out of student achievement the past few years this

005board will recall there was a number of new curricula sort of standardized across district and misa mod also noted that that new curricula plus uh you know doing away with just like explicit test prep but actual teaching and learning imagine that um the scores went up so that is good news there um let's see uh act act testing updates um more and more and more the state of ohio funds an act administration for each high school student during their high school career cps administers the act state-funded 10th in february march each year some efforts to reduce gaps for english language learners or ell in students with disabilities was discussed assistant superintendent susan bunty updated our committee on district data where gaps are occurring and strategies put in place to address literacy gaps presentation also included

006information about early literacy work with university of cincinnati post-secondary transition for students with disabilities lots and lots of other focus areas intense focus on lifting and speaking and use of consistent progress monitoring tools across the district that full report is available in the board office and upon request the committee advised the administration um this was an action item that the rest of the board should know about we advise the administration um to just talk with our lobbyists about delaying state testing next year due to a gap that is occurring in education of course uh the state testing was waived this year i was our thinking that while the state hasn't given any real hint as to where they're leaning it would be prudent to begin having those conversations and socializing the idea in columbus of

007potentially looking at delaying again because as we know there is offensively going to be a gap in learning um this school year there certainly has already been because of the loss of last year moving to the end here credit recovery curriculum adoption the administration reported the following information about credit recovery curriculum a request for proposal um a curriculum has been submitted requests for proposals have been submitted rather the credit recovery platform providing ready-built courses aligned to ohio and district standards and guidelines um the platform needs to be aligned to the district's content area the platform needs to provide opportunities for students to recover missing or lost credits um tier one instructions serving a diverse array of learners and there needs to be stakeholder involvement the credit recovery implementation plan august 12 notification to principals regarding

008change in credit recovery platform uh august 17th to 20th go live for virtual um cda and training for virtual september 1st through 4th training and launch district-wide teachers taught the new platform students enrolled in courses a full presentation is available in the board office upon request and lastly naming of a school the superintendent reported that she spoke with ellen gilligan about the naming of one of our buildings after former governor jack gilligan most everybody on this board has been around for that conversation in some way shape or form um it keeps coming back up and uh miss mitchell let ms gilligan know that there were three options cincinnati digital academy or cda mozart property in westwood or the newly acquired lighthouse school in madisonville miss mitchell also noted there were um few schools named after

009people of color um which we had found i believe in our audit of those schools miss bolton's leadership uh asked for that in stack a couple years ago or last year and one thing we also noted that i've noted in our meeting miss bolton was that you brought up the serious lack of buildings named for just women in fact i believe we found there's one two um for sure i mean that's it um of course um you know hayes porter is man and woman but just woman there's only two so we discussed that and we discussed naming another facility after a white male um and you know what that means and how we need to be attentive to that the committee and the superintendent discussed the recommendations ms mitchell recommended naming the digital academy after

010mr gilligan uh we agreed with her recommendation and will recommend that location to the gilligan family family after we recommend it to the full board right now uh committee member messer brought up an amazing uh point uh in that you know there's a real possibility of families wanting buildings named after their members to provide funding to make the buildings resourceful and as great as possible we also talked about how while cda wasn't top of the list perhaps for the family that this is a real opportunity this our stint digital academy all eyes are on it right now maybe it's an opportunity to also garner some additional support and resources as we beef up our digital options i present the uh minutes as written and hoped for passage thank you mr morosky or members have questions

011or comments miss bolton yes i would request of board staff if they can to send me the act report i think overall it sounds like an improvement but yet a lot of work yet to be done particularly interested in breaking it down by gender because that often is part of the issue as well i'm strongly in support of the digital academy not only being named for the governor who has and i'm certainly not predisposed to name anything for another male since i raised the issue about females and i i think that's has to be addressed and certainly those folks that of minority status and those folks of color that have been such an important part of pps i think we do need to review some of the names that are on our buildings to make

012sure that they do represent the values but that's for another day to worry about that but i i'm very supportive of using this opportunity for the governor who was a not only a lifelong educator but also a world war ii veteran and someone that spent his life in political life in cincinnati city council and also became governor and made believe it or not the income tax possible which is keeping us alive here some 30 some 40 years later and then thought that being on the school board was important enough for a retired governor so i i'd be supportive of that and also i applaud what you all are doing about ex maybe expanding the role of the digital uh academy i mean this should be become a state school frankly something that's attracting statewide and

013i really applaud finding all the different ways that we can actually make distance learning positive and inclusive so and i think if it gets bigger and bigger and a bigger platform and whatever i think it i i do believe that the governor's name needs to be on it if possible thank you great job um any other questions or comments about the report okay i'll just add also i i thought this surprising not surprisingly but i was very amazed that the uh that these minutes were very needy you all got a lot accomplished at this meeting um i agree wholeheartedly with the um uh what ms bolton is saying about renaming and i need to diversify and all that and i like mr messer's uh recommendation um i agree and i just wanted to to add

014that that in the 21st century that's where we need to focus on on digital learning and building that capacity and i know we've done some work in on that already and i just and adding my opinion that i think we have a lot of potential to really uh be a model for that so i'm very appreciative so you all that was great and and i also would suggest miss bolton asked for the report on the act um on the um act scores um i please we we need our staff to make sure that each or that all board members get it when they send it out okay so uh and i know that uh they're listening in so well i'm sure they'll hear okay all right so if we move on um mr marowski you

015also get the policy report all right um and just uh uh just to make sure that superintendent has the direction she needs we are then when we pass these these minutes then we're fine with um letting miss gilligan know that we'd like to i didn't hear any opposition is that fair to say that we'll let her know that cda could be the gilligan yeah digital academy okay awesome um the only caveat is you know i think taking a moment in between you know the communication to really think big and imagine and serve it up to say we really want this to be a world class i mean of course a year ago maybe it wasn't talked about i have heard more people as i said at our meeting talk about digital academy that i've heard

016any of our schools in the past two months and so you know a it is the future for a variety of reasons um and so if we imagine what what would it take to make this a world-class and kind of put a framework of a budget then we're going to say hey and we'd like to have your partnership this is a very connected family politically uh throughout the country and then federal and local levels how could we engage with them to really make something that that family be proud and say can you help us raise 1.5 million or whatever that amount is that would really make this something that of course they would be proud of but that will take our district to the next level and as ms bolton said be a leader statewide

017nationwide in how you do digital learning thank you okay i believe miss bates i saw your hand did you want to have a comment i totally agree with uh mr messer and not that our schools are for sale but this certainly is an opportunity to uh solicit some funding for uh the cda in uh governor gilligan's name uh we can reach out through some fundraising efforts possibly through abc i know that i contacted the executive director there and he's more than willing to help us set up a uh you know a fundraising campaign in governor gilligan's name but i think we need to grab this opportunity to honor the governor not just with naming a building that is kind of a static thing but to uh use this opportunity to raise funds so that this

018uh school can be state of the art with uh with the additional funding so i don't know if this would be an assignment at the end of the meeting but i feel very firmly that we do need to move forward with fundraising and governor gilligan's name okay thank you um miss bolton last comment we're going to move on past the minute i hear you last last comment we we don't want to forget that governor gilligan's daughter uh indeed was in the obama cabinet uh and is the architect if you will of of the affordable care act so there's a there's a nationwide network in respect to her and her father and of course the evil of a obama legacy okay thank you so it sounds like miss bates is suggesting maybe an assignment we might

019have a more formal assignment so we'll move on uh mr moroski policy committee thank you president jones policy committee met also met on friday august 7th at 3 30 p.m via blue jeans video conference we began by continuing our discussion with new policy 5321 which would be the requirement to wear masks to prevent the spread of covet 19. um there was a lot of feedback in our last meeting all of which we passed along in committee to general counsel and assistant uh general counsel stephanie scott um specifically uh that there needed to be language uh in the policy determined when if and how often students would get with breaks with wearing the mask a few other items i know miss bolton i remember uh being outdoors or uh you know sporting events we also brought

020up in committee um adding language regarding just any sort of event where people in cps would be congregating so you'll see reflected in the minutes um some added language i won't insult your intelligence and read it all to you but for the edification of the public masks will be required in any field trip or off-campus experience of course this is hoping that those will be able to happen at some point um students and staff required while riding any cps provided transportation inclusive of metro required for visitors and spectators sporting events for six foot distancing cannot be maintained the district shall also make reasonable efforts to accommodate younger students students with sensory sensitivities and students with disabilities the committee agreed that with the recommended changes and later on in the agenda we will ask for adoption

021of this policy um continued discussion about new policy identification of students at risk of not qualifying for high school diploma you'll recall that we had this resolution the last meeting miss bowers still had concerns with some of the wording particularly regarding mental health services so we shelved it kicked it back to committee and um combed through it again uh miss bowers was pleased with where we got and as an action we were going to recommend the changes via resolution again today later on in the agenda just to highlight some of ms bauer's concerns and as a reminder there was language regarding the superintendent developing and implementing procedures to identify students who are at risk not qualifying for a high school diploma being able to provide mental health services she further expressed concern about who would

022have access to the data and student records if it and if it would be a barrier for students mr hoing reported that the district partners would provide the mental health services and the superintendent or designee will just identify and implement additional instructional support services so he amended the language which you will see in the policy and again we'll ask for approval later in the meeting uh we also discussed a resolution allowing students to graduate from their home high school if they use digital academy there's digital academy again uh for 2021 school year i thought this was really cool i will be presenting a resolution later for this so this is only for seniors who for what one reason or another enrolled in cincinnati digital for this senior year and just again for the public the

023reason that it's significant is cincinnati digital academy um is its own school so people go there for the tenure of their their high school career and they get a diploma from the cincinnati digital academy so this year we might have students from hughes taft walnut wherever that are doing their final year at cda but we they we would like them to be able to get a diploma from hughes daft walnut or whatever so um general counsel hoing um drafted up a resolution that would say the board is supportive of this i asked um dan hoy in her meeting if we are asking for forgiveness instead of permission and he said yes and his professional opinion and uh because the the ode hasn't said anything about this yet but in his professional opinion not to speak

024for dan of course i don't have any legal expertise but that this would be a show of support from the board and really help our case he also didn't express any real concerns that ode would really bulk at this um so we'll present that later um it's in your minutes uh you can i'm sure you all saw the resolution so if you have questions we can answer them and then we brought up the anti-racism policy again it will be on our agenda until it is finished i was a great discussion um just a couple of the high level things i passed along everybody's concern from our full board meeting and namely shorten it to focus on anti-racism and widen the definition of systemic racism and have it be more inclusive of adult to adult um

025peer-to-peer administrative teacher teacher teacher not just the young people and so assistant general counsel scott reported she will do a presentation on october 2nd with all of those updates the committee also addressed an action item from our julen july 10th meeting about the working group that mr messer had brought up so at this meeting we decided we formalized that and we tasked assistant general counsel scott um to convene um this group this working group that there would be use of a facilitator consists of 21 members it was a number that we determined was big but not too big and not too small include parents students staff various community groups naacp urban league greater cincinnati foundation suggested those were just suggested groups and that it needed to be community driven we then suggested that this group

026uh it would be ideal that this group meet before our september 4th 2020 policy committee in order for the group to present at that meeting or to give us findings um assistant uh general counsel scott and uh communications director krista boyle are sort of managing this process of getting the group together um so if there are questions about that um and how it's moving along hopefully one of them is on the call and could address it but that's where we left it we tasked them with getting the group together and uh with meeting before our next policy committee and that is it so um i present the minutes as written and hope for passive okay any questions or comments short short responses please miss bolton claire i need some clarification about the working group um

027how is is it to be a an extension of the policy committee an extension of the board will it be a public committee that requires notice much as the step committee did uh just so we're playing it right i hate to also have a list that we create as to who gets to be on it right from the get go that starts to be weird instead of with the step committee it basically was whoever signed up and it of course had to be noticed and a lot of these working groups just like the property tax went out of cincinnati city council end up if they're a creation of the public entity like us and dan and and whoever may know better than that but it seems to me that um you know only the board

028can write and adopt policy but if we if we need community input i still don't understand why there needs to necessarily be a working group but i'll defer to you all but i need clarification as to whether or not it needs to be noticed and whether it should ever be so exclusive that we created instead of it happens more organically so those would be my comments yeah those are good comments and i'm gonna address uh a couple of them that it's all right um with committee member messer kick it to him because i know he's he's been adamant about it and i i agree with him i think we should have a working group and yes i think it should be noticed um and i don't think we should be picking anybody to be on

029it which is why i was assigned to miss boyle and miss scott to sort of manage that um and the use of a facilitator for it so i think i idea being very similar to the step committee and again i think ryan's better for this and i am anyway because he was also part of that um and headed that up uh so as a way to get that feedback directly from the public but if it's all right uh vice president messer i'll kick it to you um to talk a little bit more about it yeah i think you know this this is uh i think as we talked about it originally we just talked about how important this is but also this could be something that becomes a benchmark for lots of other districts to

030follow that maybe some people think it's the right thing to do and they're thinking about it i think having us have a well-baked policy and i think part of that is including voices that represent all the various stakeholder groups that are part of cps whether you're a staff member whether you're a parent whether you're a student this has to be meaningful for them so that anything that um we can do through this policy to bring equity for every stakeholder group uh i think it's you know really the best thing out of this so that that was just the idea of making sure that you know we talked framework of these are the stakeholder groups that we want it to be um uh you know related to and and accountable to um but then to kind

031of trust the process in that individuals would be identified or that group uh from those very stakeholder groups and kind of run a process versus you know trying to get in the weeds of who is doing what okay um other questions or comments um i i just want to add just real short comment i think i'll i'll also defer to the committee on that particular aspect of it but also just for consideration one of the things that i found especially as we did with the fc process um community forums are also a good way of gathering engaging a wider spectrum of opinions and so if i would urge you all just to you know consider that put that on your plate i mean um our step process and strategic planning worked out real well but

032i but i also think the the addition of having a wider spread of community input is is also worthy of that the committee is somewhat limiting because even though you try to get the most diverse perspective it's still rather limiting but anyway that's just my thought okay but that i think it's good work overall and i i saw a lot of improvement from the first draft so happy with that okay anything else then okay all right i need a motion to approve the committee reports still moved thanks second second all right um all in favor signify by saying aye aye aye any opposed okay minutes are approved as presented thank you all righty superintendent mitchell please introduce this presentation could we do kudos for a second uh kudos is gonna follow we're gonna do a

033presentation first with the hearing of the public and then we'll do kudos and retirements if that's okay follow your lead all right thank you president jones so this evening i'm going to provide an update to our um reopening plan for the upcoming school year and then following my presentation will be an employee engagement presentation to really highlight the work that's being done to support and engage our employees as we move into the opening of the beginning of the school year so for those of you who may have received our postcard you can see that we had a beautiful postcard that was sent out to our families as well as our staff members backpacks on laptops open and futures bright and so we're excited about the upcoming school year so over the course of two weeks

034we have been holding town halls for employees parents and athletes we wanted to be able to really hear from the community in addition to the hearing of the public and then have some uh targeted very specific town halls for different groups and so we've held six employee uh town hall meetings and those are all our meetings a piece principal central office all employees at every school has been invited to participate and you can see that for our employees we had over 3 000 people participate then for our parents three different parents groups in terms of town halls and we heard from over 2 000 parents and also we had an athletic town hall and you can see that we had 200 over 200 people respond to that and so the format for the town hall

035uh many of the board members did drop in and check it out but we provide a very short presentation an update to the reopening of our school year and then offered the majority of the time left for parents employees and students to be able to ask us questions and also to be able to give us ideas so it was a great listening and answering session and we were able to get some really wonderful ideas to inform our work moving forward so i do want to provide an update regarding the student orientations as we think about welcoming our young people back to school and so i think it's really important that we highlight the fact that school will be in session cincinnati public schools we are open and we are operating um for this upcoming school

036year we had planned to have face-to-face orientations and and based upon let me go back and say the why we felt that it is important for teachers to be able to meet their students and in many cases especially at the elementary level if the student doesn't or had not been rotating to different teachers then that student wouldn't know their upcoming teacher and at the high school level it's possible that the student would have some of the same teachers but for those transitional grades from eighth grade to ninth grade maybe you wouldn't know your teachers and so we thought it was a really good idea to be able to connect our kids to their teachers and also really take some time to go over what are the expectations and then also what are the practices that

037we will use in distance learning and so that was what our plan was and based upon feedback from parents from staff members teachers and principals we just moved to a virtual orientation and so there are actually there are two components to this and so the virtual orientations will begin the week of august the 24th so there are two components the first component is a pickup of materials at schools and so this is a drive-through situation similar to our graduation and so schools will have teachers send out information to their home room identifying the time of their drive-through pickup and so teachers will be out front being able to at least wave to their incoming class of students and then students will receive materials so the type of materials they'll receive are textbooks art supplies school

038supplies so we're going to send home a lot of supplies with our young people so they really have the tools and the materials that they need to do well or this academic year so that's one component the second component is the virtual parent and student orientations and so schools are working to schedule those with specific teachers as well as with grade level or teams of teachers who teach together to provide the parents and the teachers in orientation to the upcoming school year in terms of curriculum um books that are used platforms that are used and and the expectations around submission of work as well as attendance and so we're moving to a student orientation and parent orientation that will be virtual and so that communication has gone out to our principles and our principles are

039communicating that to our teachers and as well to the parents through a standard template that the district provided there's also a letter that will be sending that will be sending out that will come from me to the parents specifically about this virtual orientation so i thought it might be interesting to give the board some idea in terms of other schools in this area and so i was able to source this information from hamilton county education service center so this organization they work with superintendents and school districts um within this region and so it was reported last week on a call with hamilton education center that a third of the schools are going back with a blended model similar to our a b grouping a third will be in person and a third will start off

040fully remote and so i just wanted the board to be able to see this information and to see where cps lands in terms of the schools within this region as we prepare for the opening of the school year although we're starting in a a remote or distance learning model we want to make sure that our buildings are safe and that they are ready to be able to receive our staff and so our schools have been working on the development of their safety plan if you recall we provided template for the safety plans in terms of what has to be in that safety plan the safety plans were then reviewed by central office the principals came in and they met with central office leaders to go over their plan and then during this week as well

041as last week there were audits or walk-throughs that were conducted to be able to look to see if the components of the safety plan that were on paper are actually in existence within our schools and so that work is being um completed and we'll be finished in terms of the walkthroughs will all be finished by august the 13th which is tomorrow in addition what we're going to do is starting next week we will have operational huddles that will be centered around the safety plan implementation in each school tomorrow all staff members will see receive a letter that will outline the things that they should expect to see as it relates to safety when they return to work next week so our teachers return to work in terms of in our buildings next monday on the

04217th and then our civil service return over the span of that week starting on the 19th and so we have a set of expectations that we want to make sure they're in place to ensure our staff that we are following protocols and and we are being safe in addition um to those protocols and the letter there will also be the phone number for the employee hotline so we want employees to feel comfortable and safe to report practices that are in violation of the protocols that we have put into place the last piece of information i want to be able to share with you is this is the epidemiology curve and this is the report that i received from the city of cincinnati health department today and there were a series of questions that were asked

043by a board member to for us to be able to address and so i'll read what those questions are and then be able to respond to them so one question that was raised is how are we defining defining a downward trend and so as you look at this epidemiology curve report what we're looking at is from the day that we look at it so from today's date or the last data point that we have we count back 14 days and we look to see if there is a downward trend in terms of decline for over that 14-day period or if there's a flattening of the data over that 14-day period and if you look it's a little hard to tell but i i went through and i counted today and i counted back 15 days

044from the last report and the last report was on august the 11th and we're about at the exact same place today as we were 15 days ago what's important though to really pay attention to and to look at is the dotted line and the dotted line represents seven days of a moving average and so you can see that over a um that dotted line is actually going down and starting to flatten now you will see a bit of a a spike um around the august the 7th and quite honestly we can't tell what that is we don't know if that was a special cause or it's just variation in the system um but we're looking to see over a 14-day period are we seeing a decline or a flattening of the data in terms of

045identified cases so in this respect we would say that the data is moving in the right direction another question that was asked was how often do we get the positivity rate and so the positivity rate which takes into account um cases that are identified through private providers as well as through the health department we get that on a weekly basis and it comes specifically from the health commissioner dr moore so we get that on a weekly basis and so if we look at the positivity rate we're we're still at seven percent and we want to be in the five to six percent range but are we close we're close but close is relative in comparison to what and so as we look at the positivity rate we also have to consider how good or how

046bad is the testing system to be able to turn around the test results in a pretty rapid period and so another data point that we're looking at and it isn't in addition to the positivity rate or the number of days that it takes for us to get test results and we're currently it can take range from three days up to 14 days our health care physicians have indicated to us that results that take over three days really aren't very applicable in terms of being helpful to identify whether or not it's it's safe for us to go back within a 14-day period if it takes a person that long to get their results they could be walking around for 14 days asymptomatic infecting other people and so obviously we want a much tighter time frame as

047it relates to um getting the turnaround test results the fourth piece of data that we looked at and that is the the levels the levels one through four that go along with the color coding system out of the governor's office and so we had been level three which is red we are now excited to be able to say that we have dropped down to level two and so we're in the orange um however we were advised by healthcare professionals do not get distracted by that level um system and so we explained but that's what the public sees they see red they see orange and so that's what people see and are concerned when they see red when they see orange and when they see purple and so the example that was given to us that

048is that there was a county in ohio in which the county worked very hard to reduce the percent of confirmed cases in a nursing home so that that dropped dramatically but then it made the data for the non-nursing home areas neighborhoods communities look much higher which kept them enough and a rating up level three which was red and so we were advised not to [Music] really place a ton of weight in terms of looking at that color coding system but again we still recognize that that is what our public sees and values that information so the question the last question that i believe or two more questions are we close or far away from where we want to be and then the last question are we trending in the right direction so we are trending

049in the right direction as it relates to the governor's color coding system going from red to orange going from level three to level two we're trending in the right direction we are trending in the right direction as it relates to the epidemiology curve you can see that that dotted line is flattening and again we cannot tell whether that little spike was a special cause something specific that happened or if it was just variation in the system so we are moving in the right direction as it relates to our epidemiology um curve in terms of our positivity rate we haven't seen a movement in that since we started to look at it and since i started receiving the data in the last two weeks we are still at seven percent and so that seems to be

050pretty stable and again we want to be at five to six percent and we are not where we want to be in terms of the turnaround time for um results for testing so in thinking about next steps in our work moving forward last friday i had the opportunity to have a conversation with the city manager regarding some very specific demands that we have within cincinnati public schools as it relates to support that we need from the city so number one is more testing and ongoing testing for cps staff members we want testing that's more frequently than the one uh shop testing or the one time that took place at our pop-up location so we want frequent testing considering the number of employees that we have and the number of students that we impact and families

051and communities that we impact we believe that we are a special situation or a special case and so we believe that we need more ongoing testing in addition we need faster turnaround time in terms of test results from the health department they are inundated right now and they are really at the mercy of the labs uh to be able to provide the the results because they do not provide they don't have labs that provide their own test results and so we need a faster turnaround time that as it relates to testing we also need assistance with tracking and tracing in terms of in our buildings contact tracing and tracking for suspected as well as confirmed cases we would also like to have notices that will come from the city to alert us when businesses have

052um an influx of people who are infected um with covet 19 because those places may be places where our families work and so we want to be aware so that we can make sure that we have precautions in place to be able to handle our classrooms and our schools in a very safe manner and then the last request that we have at this point in time from the city is uh to help lead a campaign to get our kids back in school faster which means that we need an all-out campaign surrounding everyone wearing a mask six feet of social distancing staying home when you feel sick quarantining if you come back from one of those hot spots that has been identified by the governor and we believe that this is critically important especially as we

053approach labor day we anticipate that people will be out and about during labor day and that might create the opportunity to spread covet 19 throughout our community and so that's an area that we really want to focus on in terms of a campaign we also believe that one of our next steps would be for cincinnati public to hold a meeting with the city manager the city health commissioner as well as children's hospital to work together in a concerted effort to help reduce the spread of covet and to be able to allow our students to get back into school quicker so that concludes my report and i believe that i've answered all the questions that were posed to us during our last board meeting as well as emailed to myself so thank you you superintendent um

054okay uh board members do you have questions or comments about the superintendent's report okay uh i can't see hands okay go ahead mr messer yes but first i think this i think it goes for all of us um i don't care what organization you're in these are not easy times to lead and i just want to thank you because i know that you and the team are putting in countless hours i mean just doing all the town halls the multiple parent town halls all the employee town halls there are literally thousands of people out there with questions that are going to be nuances and i just want to thank you for everything you're doing so i'll just start there the second part is you know i think one thing we probably get a lot if

055i pulled up my facebook messenger a lot of the questions there or other places speak to hey any idea how things are trending um any idea when we might actually be able to go back any information you have blah blah blah and i know i talked about it at least at one of the meetings but thinking through what a a simple graphic that could show here are our measurements that we're looking at and a dashboard to say we're on target or not and it can be something very easy visually and to say this will be of course a feed in addition you know this dashboard in addition to input from healthcare professionals etc um and and something that a once a week quick video that could be updated just to say hey i'm going to

056get my lunch time with laura update on where we are at the schools and i think it would and any time we got those requests we could send them to that hey the most recent update is now on the website and it just will keep everyone because i think what i've heard is i don't necessarily i'm not as bothered that we have these changes i just need an update along the way um and uh i actually get that a little bit from my spouse hey what what's the next step and i think just being able to say or how how are things going with the numbers um i just put that out there to see if that had been considered uh as a way to keep the community at large and our families and our

057staff all up to date but like it speaks i think that's a fabulous idea and i am going to ask sarah and jeremy to pipe in regarding the dashboard that we are building i do believe that it would be helpful um to have um a healthcare professional be a part of those weekly updates with me to be able to really help break down the data and also to give credibility to the work um so obviously this is not my area of expertise i spend a lot of times at night and on phone calls trying to make sure that i understand the information so i can answer all the questions that come my way but it's not our core business and so just um in terms of credibility and also people who can actually go out

058and have the time to do some research and dig to um to come up with the very best answers as our physicians who are working with us that's what they do so i pose questions to them today and this is okay let me go research this and find this out for you and so i think it's a fabulous idea so we'll definitely explore and i'll ask jeremy and sarah if you talk about the dashboard that we are creating okay jeremy i'll jump in but you can also jump in if you want um so jeremy's team is um working with a developer to develop a coven 19 dashboard that will help track our confirmed or suspected cases within our buildings and that's for staff and for students it also has an address matching algorithm um to

059determine if there are other family members in living in the same building as a confirmed case um and it also has some mapping features we expect to be able to use that with our school nurses as well as our environmental health and safety staff and i do also want to speak to mr messer's idea so krista boyle and i have been working on a way to give a public update of the three main data points that we're watching and we want to be able to update that on a weekly basis excellent thank you okay uh miss bowers followed by miss bolton followed by mr lindy i thank you superintendent mitchell that was some a lot of good information a lot of questions that were answered out particularly like the virtual orientation it sounds like that

060that was um a pressing issue that in the decision to change to that um was a good idea the question i do have is regarding the pickup of materials um in orientation i think of um open house i think a back-to-school kind of event not all families show up for that so what happens if a family has not or does not show up to get their materials is that a building level decision to figure out how to get that to the family um and um the virtual parent orientation on how to do uh schoology or google or what have you and i know the building um administrations are going to be coordinating that but just to make sure that people are getting in contact um i'm thinking that there's like a alternate plan if that

061doesn't occur also the one third one third and one third that puts a lot of things into perspective for me about how other districts are doing around us um and i love when you said you had a conversation with the city manager as to how the city can help us get our kids back to school quickly that number five um regarding the commercial or whatever you're saying that needs to go out soon i think that's that's very powerful and i and i do like that um because they're because they are everybody wants us to go back to school so that would be very helpful for us but i do like that number five i like all of them but that was key for me to saying hey this is a collaboration we need your help

062um so what regarding the or virtual orientations or pickups yes so we will work to make sure that our kids get the materials if that means that we have to go to their homes and drop them off on the porch so we are committed to doing that one thing this is a little bit of a kudos majestic to show you um how committed we are i was recently found out um that one of our staff members did something that i thought was extraordinary and it should be in the kudos and i should have sent it but i forgot um every year at the end of the year we hold a reception with food and music and we give an acknowledgement to our retirees and we give them a clock that has cps on it and

063engraved o'clock and because we did not have the face-to-face event we could not we did not give out the clocks and one of our staff members and the employee engagement employees department with susan bunty drove around to 85 home wow deliver those clocks and she did that for people who were leaving the district so you can see the commitment that we have and so we will make sure that we get the information out to our kids and we will do whatever it takes to deliver those materials each school is developing and setting the schedule for their orientation but that orientation development plan has to be um reviewed with their direct uh their director uh as well as our deputy superintendent has provided a um like a orientation checklist of the things that need to be

064covered in the orientations so that they are standard but also customized according to the schools and tiana if you'd like to join in to speak to that i would appreciate it yes we've um have been in communication with our principals and our teachers returned um next week so we have an educator's guide with all the information that will be emailed to our teachers um also we're going to take advantage of our mill hubs we have no hubs i'm at every site open every wednesday so we will allow families to also pick up any instructional materials um any um academic materials art materials to help them at home we have staff handbooks student handbooks and parent handbooks available as well so we can distribute all those resources at our mill hubs and if i can just

065add um please is there any way to get this information out to your partners because partners have been an extensive relationship with the students in different ways over the summer even so if partners i'm sure will they have connections they can get parents there they can get materials to parents but if there's some information they can get out to the partners about the day the meal hubs it's a reminder or maybe the days of the orientation to pick up so that they can coordinate that with their families they can get the families there or get the material for the families that's a great idea thank you yeah so we'll make sure that shawna follows up on that because partners are under her as well as resource coordinators so that's great the other thing is to

066keep in mind that our schools will be open five days a week so if a parent misses their specific time to to drive through and meet their teachers then they can come up to the school but we're going to be materials out by a certain time because we don't want parents to come after labor day asking for their materials school will have already started so we'll be out there getting them out okay thank you okay so i that we have i'm going to give an order miss bolton mr lindy mr moroski and miss bates thank you um one of the uh one of the suggestions i've heard in the community is for one of these fantastic parent um town halls to be done for our spanish speaking families uh it it's come to me three

067or four times from four or five different directions i know that's really something incredible incredibly difficult perhaps to do but with all the partners that we have and the people that care about it i think they could really rev up an appropriate audience and i think that would be very very important so i'd like you to be thinking about that in the in the parent town halls there was one sentence that needs to be everywhere and it was a sentence spoken by sarah trimble oliver in all three parent um engagement uh town halls and that was that we are living by every one of the cdc requirements and that they're not requirements but that we're living by it um virtually you can't hear a thud or a a sigh or something but that is a

068message that is still not getting out there and we are one of the few groups that is able to say that so i really hope we find a way to message that um is there any way that with this testing piece since we have these wonderful school nurses at each of our 60 or so schools is there some kind of certification they need to be able to deliver to do the test probably not but i mean just as a thought as a medical practitioner i mean as a person that did it at a pop-up center i'm not altogether sure that everybody that was giving me my tests it was you know had a you know full medical whatever i mean and that would be of value um and i don't mean to make light of

069it but i think having a nurse at every building has been making an impression at least on some of the folks that uh i've been hearing from uh is there does everybody understand that falsification of testing since we're now saying that you may or may not have full documentation but that you have to is it true that some of our employees can just testify that they have been tested or do they have to produce written can we answer the first question and that is susan can you speak to the health department uh the nurses administering the test and then paul if you could speak to the verification of the uh confirming the test that's why you're superintendent thank you for your question the nurses are actually in training this week and they are being reinforced

070and all things covered and about our policies and practices that we have in place so they are doing that this week yes yes that's great and there's a follow-up yes it's a follow-up to the second question uh as superintendent mitchell mentioned earlier uh there has been lag time and test results and different types of results coming back in what we create is is a form that our employee has to assign a testing to taking the test that can be turned back in and then tracked into our system and if i could follow up falsifying that would be the same or the equivalent of falsifying another document that would mean something bad would happen obviously uh last couple i promise um is it is there a way to communicate to our other 9 or 11 municipalities

071or townships our situation or where we are i'm thinking of amberly i'm thinking of cheviot i'm thinking of delhi a lot of our outlying areas i know we're in touch with the county people but i think a personal uh effort to those nine or 11 municipalities or townships as to where cps is would would not only help them with their residents but also as other elected officials that could be of great importance for the other outlying areas and and finally throughout the parent town halls which i think were great uh is it possible that we find a way to have that parent academy for tech and everything else be housed in one place and i think you probably do but not necessarily depend on each school to provide those sorts of insights i mean maybe

072that's another way to use digital or what have you but um i i i the more i know about what's happening nationwide the more i'm impressed with with what you all and we all have been doing so i will say that there are some um standard videos that we have created for parent orientations related to schoology and our school so that the parents experience isn't different from building to building um the other thing that i will say and kristen maybe we can consider inviting some of those townships to our the next community meeting which will give some information on friday i will say that we've done a lot of engagement with a lot of different groups just week before last i did a an engagement with um the refugee population where there were over 40

073organizations represented there and so they gave me an hour block of time there and we are making our rounds at every possible venue every radio show lincoln where um all of them uh nathan ivey um the woke so i mean like just all over the place um and so i will actually provide to you all a list of all the public engagement that we've been doing over the last several weeks that that's great but do consider the spanish-speaking town hall if possible yeah thank you miss uh bolton um mr lindy uh thanks president jones um i have uh one thank you and two questions um my thank you for superintendent uh i think that the responses on the data questions were just great they were very very helpful they were very very clarifying i think

074they answered everything i was looking for last time um i think specifically the idea that the downward trend is that seven day moving average and is it lower after 14 days than it was beforehand um i think it's just very clear and very helpful um and uh it's good to know that we get the positivity rate only once a week um and i feel very clear on whether we're close or not and in what direction we're trending um and i just think that that's really very very very helpful and i wanted to say thank you um i think the uh uh two questions um one was um and i think uh superintendent on both of these if there's a better point later in the meeting to get into them happy to defer but i thought

075this might be the right time so i'll just raise them um one was i really enjoyed tiana's presentation last time um and and felt excited about what feel to me like three really clear must wins for the first two weeks of school um the first one that 95 percent of kids are accessing the content online uh the second that there's some real-time culture building like i love the morning meeting she had on the schedule i thought was great um and that they're these regular one-on-one touch points with kids or families so that we can help knock down barriers to virtual learning as they're coming up um it was great to talk about that last time and it was really great to hear that um you know the team's plans collect to collect data on how

076those things are going i think all that sounds great my one question was do you have a sense of when we could look at some of that data together as a board to see how that's going obviously we can't do that until school starts um but i was curious um when when would be a good time to look at that together well thank you board member lindy um we plan to collect data benchmark um baseline data for the first four weeks of school so i would say probably the last week of september we'll be able to share um that baseline uh it that's helpful to hear um johnny i'm a little worried that if we wait four weeks to well let me let me say that differently are you all gonna look at it more

077rego like like uh will the first time you and your team look at that the four weeks after school started now we will look at that data daily um it's in powerschool but to report out to you i think we need to collect a few data points um and have that information to share out we don't want to just do it unless you want it the first week to see i think i think it all um you know i think that the the one really important thing is that you all have access to it faster than that um i think that's great so you could literally and i'm not i'm i'm new to powerschool but the idea is like you all could know after a couple days what percent of kids are logging on and

078what percent of kids are accessing the content we see that daily that's great yes that's great um that's great uh i'm excited to to hear about it when you want to talk about it with the board um i think my superintendent yeah yeah can i just respond to that as well and so um what we're going to do is um have one master big dashboard um that will that will be the view that i have each plt member will have a subset of that big dashboard that they're looking at on a weekly basis that that's related to the areas of work that's under their purview so for example susan bunty will be looking at engagement as it relates to social and emotional learning as well as physical and mental health services tiana will be looking

079at the engagement in terms of kids getting into schoology their google meet sessions and so we're going to have dashboards um that will be separate dashboards that can be all combined that i will have that view and so it isn't just that we're going to go in and look at the information like look at into power school every day it's going to be pulled together in a dashboard so it's in a meaningful way for us to be able to interpret the data and to be able to move very quickly in addition to having operational huddles to see how are we doing operationally on our procedures confirmed cases suspected cases we will also have instructional huddles around engagement and whether our students are logging in and how they're doing and their grades uploaded within a certain

080amount of time so there will be operational as well as instructional huddles and we will be analyzing that data on a daily basis through a dashboard that we're going to create for each uh each plt member i think that sounds great superintendent and just to be totally transparent about what's behind my question like the assumption i have from the spring is that less than 95 percent of kids were logging on every day to do virtual learning um and the goal that i hope we can hit in the fall is that at least 95 percent of kids every day are accessing the online learning and so that makes me think it's going to be a lot of work to get from where we were to where we want to be but what i'm hearing from you

081all is you've got a plan we're aligned on the same outcome you got good data and reporting systems uh and i think we should go get it was it was any of that not right i i i i believe what you said is accurate i will say that i think it's important to keep in mind that um not an excuse but last winter and spring was a state of crisis so on thursday of one week the the governor announced that we were going to be closing and monday was going to be the last day so in a spirit of transparency did we have an adequate sufficient um robust distance learning plan we did not we have had a lot of time and a lot of months to work on this and so four weeks into

082the close down in early april we started our future schools work to start planning for the upcoming school year and what we were saying to parents is that the experience you had last year will not be the experience moving forward i think that sounds great and you know i know um president jones wants me to be quick this is my last one um it's related it's about the connectivity um last time um there was it looked like there was a meaningful gap between the take-up rate we wanted from the summer pilots with the cincinnati dell project and where and where we wound up um can can you update us on like as of today what percent of kids in cps do we know have access to internet and the device okay so if i can't

083i'll jump in there and be happy to give an update so if you recall last week um when we talked about the rollout of the connectivity piece for all the schools we were going to document that slightly you know like 10 schools per day so some of that preliminary data is still being compiled that we really need for perspective you know the quantifying piece since we literally just finished on friday with the last set of schools what we do have i think that paints a little bit better picture what you're looking for is the the raw counts on the service data right so uh what we talked about the seven percent from the pilot was the number of students who had service activated out of the out of the population we were targeting about 30

084so over last week anecdotally i can tell you we we overran the call center which was a good sign to start with so the number of sign ups is increased but what we have for a raw count on the actual service is we're increased to around 9.1 percent out of the 30 target which we're also as we continue to develop the data we can revise the 30 percent it is dropping as we find out more students and families have internet access thanks jeremy i really appreciate that so it sounds like there's been movement but if we're at 9.1 and we want to be at 30 there's still a long way to go is that fair i would say that it is fair but we definitely are trending significantly higher uh rates than what we were

085so i think we're going to pick up speed if that's fair to say is there are there ways the board could be helpful for you all the number one thing i would recognize would just be continuing the messaging make sure that we're consistent that you know that the service is available the offering is available that we need families that are not traditionally being contact you know seeing the information in traditional ways get that message that they need to call and get their connectivity set up you know as soon as possible thank you very much all right thank you um so uh i think we have three more board members who want to speak and and and i'm sorry i have to apologize to my colleagues it is my job to be the time keeper and

086this is all good stuff i'm not trying to deny our public the transparency but i do think it's important that we have to keep the movement the meeting going so please just uh keep that in mind okay so moving on uh james michael morosky do you have something to say james michael has a lot to say you just can't say it all yet um and i will be i will be brief um i know um superintendent the district has been very cognizant of child care issues and things like that and i was wondering you know with the asking the teachers to be in person um what uh considerations there have been um if any regarding folks being able to bring kids into the into the school that had been discussed at all for parents maybe

087who are going to be in the classroom teaching and have young young kids and i had one other question after that so i do have a response for you um regarding that it's a personnel issue if i could address it at a later time i have a response for you okay um and then uh i think that is probably it from me then for now okay thank you oh go ahead superintendent i will say that we did do some benchmarking against other districts and so i spoke with the superintendent dr lolly in dayton and their teachers will be on site and they are not going to provide child care on site due to liability issues there is another smaller district in virginia that they're going to allow it on their campus and so there are

088a variety of things that people or school districts are doing to address this but i do have some thoughts on this issue that's instructive for me i appreciate that feedback thank you in addition yay is going to come out very soon with the big announcement around their child care program thank you miss dave yes uh i mean the data is very detailed and the superintendent has advisors and it makes a lot of sense but yesterday we saw the governor uh if i can be so blunt to say parade out three pediatric medical experts one of which advises us who who's saying that you know number one they would send their kids to school number two they would put them on the buses and number three three feet is sufficient if they're wearing masks so how

089do we you know reconcile i mean we even canceled our in-person small group orientations yet we have you know state experts be lying what we're doing so how do we reconcile that with our community are you asking uh are you asking the question or are you rhetorical okay all right okay you're breaking up so so um thank you i think that um i i would be very interested to see if the governor comes out and makes a hard stance in any direction i think that the message has been giving in conversations that i've been in with him is that he's at this point he's really leaving it up to local jurisdiction and it's very contextual in terms of the community and so i think that um each community just has to look at the data

090for their area intent and then to make decisions that they feel are in the best interest of their families and their kids okay thank you um so i do have one closing comment um which and quite a few of my questions have been answered but um i just wanted to say and this is in support of mr messer's idea about communication and messaging and i just wanted to comment superintendent that um and and we talked about this before about the importance of the district being in front of uh the messaging because i think what i've found in in all of this as you've gone out and done town halls and and the radio shows or whatever is that the the our community really appreciates seeing you out in front and and then having the opportunity

091to talk to you directly and you know uh we're all on you know people are on facebook social media and we're in contact with our constituent groups but there's nothing better in my opinion than our superintendent being in front of the message in a very formal way through direction and guidance from the board so a lot of the comments that i have been getting is we need to see more of her now i know your time is limited and but i think for future reference just keeping those in mind that that is so critical to our community especially our communities of color i i need to say that especially our communities of color so um and so that's all i have to say and uh if if it's okay we can go on to the

092uh move on to the next presentation superintendent yes thank you so i'd like to introduce assistant superintendent susan bunty and you know in order to make all of this work happen we have to have employee engagement and have a positive employee experience and so that is the crux of um susan's work in addition to positive school culture and students with disabilities and ell and gifted but we do really recognize how important our our employees are in the engagement so susan thank you good evening board members i am deeply appreciative of the opportunity to be here so if we think about why this work is so important we recognize that without supporting our employees that our students won't be supported in the best way possible so by supporting folks who are within our schools it it

093helps all we're going to talk about three main messages tonight first is that employee engagement is absolutely critical always but no more so than during this time period and that i it's important also for folks to realize that the strategy is built upon not only data that we've gathered internally but also upon national trends we've looked at it in three main focus areas that are connected to care how we provide clarity for our employees around responsibilities and role and around creating opportunities to be heard on the next slide we are going to take a look at some national data so again this this data isn't specific to cincinnati public schools but it mirrors probably what our employees might say this was done by gallup and you can see the differences between the middle of may

094and the middle of june and what a significant change there was so our what we know from national trends is that employees are seeking clear plans of action making sure that they have adequate resources to be um able to enact those plans they want to have information in real time and to also know that their employer really cares about their well-being next slide please so we had the national look but we've also taken a look at what our cincinnati public school employees are saying that they would like to see so based on data from the may gallup administration from our june thought exchange and our may future of school survey the data broke out into three main categories of need one is that our employees want to be cared for and cared about and so

095thus the prioritization of health and safety that we spent so much time on over these last months but also to be able to have trauma-informed supports for themselves and for them to be able to better serve students they want that clear line of sight that focus so what is the clarity around priority priorities and responsibilities and where are we moving as an organization and finally folks want to be heard the town halls arenas like that where people can express their opinions and then be able to see what action are taken next slide please so if we take the employee needs and then think about how those translate into strategies on our next slide we know that if we really focus on that first area of about caring that it's incumbent upon us as a district

096to create opportunities for adults to connect and to heal from some of the things that have happened over these last few months and to build their capacity to support students we also know that our employees want to be heard so how can we create opportunities for not only listening but also for responding and finally how do we help employees the third strategy is around clarification to and specifically around supporting our leaders to be able to implement and model trauma-informed practices next slide please so in that first arena of how we care for employees we do that in four main way or in four different ways one is asynchronous opportunities so we are providing support for teachers affected by trauma self-paced training modules this year there is also a cps self-care app and we have mindfulness

097tools that have been made or will be made available to our employees synchronous opportunities also are available so beach acres provided a self-care and resiliency course during our spring closure it was incredibly popular and so that will be offered again in addition to self-care workshops and a new teacher induction session that paul will talk more about in a little bit around caring for self and others we also know peer connections are important so lunch and learns and new groups that have been established on linkedin and mind piece is partnering with us again to provide support groups for our employees that will launch this in august 24th and finally traditional types of things that have existed in the past including our employee assistance program our weekly support emails that have lots of tools and resources in

098them and then the employee covet guide around next slide please so in our second area of hear me we know that we need to create times to listen and so if we really think through not only the listening but then based on that listening how do we assess employee needs we gather all those trends and themes and then how do we share those out with other leaders in the organization so that those those pieces that people shared with us can become actionable and then and then that becomes communicated back to them so they know not only did we hear but we acted upon concern next slide please and finally in our third area we know that leaders play an important role of supporting their folks and so if we look at that in three main

099areas of training resources and support we are today started with our directors talking about how we during difficult times and provided tools and strategies on how to be able to do that you also can see some of the other areas there will be support provided around peer coaching and around mentoring and a leadership bulletin specifically aligned to our functional leaders our leader leaders leaders of others next slide please so now i'm going to transition to our director of human resources paul mcdole who's going to share with you the very exciting this is involving our newest teachers thank you susan uh good evening board members and good evening to our public on this call with us tonight very glad to be here to kind of continue the story that susan's been telling and if this slide

100uh could say anything i think it would be saying to us wow how do things change so quickly in one year uh you can see to one side our new higher deduction for our 19 are from 2019 to 20 uh and then we can then see uh from the new hire induction and how things drastically have changed in that year period of time next slide please but as our superintendent and our leadership team has said we have to be agile and when we have to adjust that's exactly what we did so we were able to hold our new higher induction via google meet on august 5th 6th and 7th 8 30 to 3 30. we had over 150 new hire teachers participate daily and we have the in different areas of general ed teachers 3k

101to 12 counselors school psychologists and intervention specialists next slide please again knowing this was held remotely we felt it very very important that we collaborate amongst the various departments within the organization uh to make sure that we were sharing information that was used useful from so many different aspects so you can see some of the teams that were involved from human resources talent management team peer assistance in review partnership with citizens a federation of teacher environmental health and safety critically important that we have the opportunity to share with our new teaching staff the procedures that we have put in place for the safety of our staff and our students also the department of student services curriculum and instruction positive school culture team and also itm and then also our communications department next slide please so

102as we think through um what a day a virtual uh uh welcoming to our new hire staff would look like obviously we had a welcome from both our superintendent laura mitchell and from our board president carolyn jones we shared information that is very pertinent to our employees including payroll and benefits information safety protocols um for covid19 power management and lodgehead the opportunity that our staff will have have professional development in those different areas positive behavior interventions and support professional learning focus building relationships in a virtual environment critically critically important to us at this point in time blended and permanent personalized learning differential and mastery increase student interaction engagement again another critical piece that our teachers will be faced with and lastly and most importantly social immediate do do and don't we spent some time sharing

103with our employees what is the proper communication as as flat staff and what would be improper communication so again very happy to share with you last slide please a very successful three days of virtual overview for our new hire teachers that will be the newest teachers coming into our building uh thank you for the opportunity to share this information and any questions that susan and i can ask we'd be glad to okay thank you looks like we have a couple of uh questions miss bowers first mr messer followed by miss bolton yes thank you um assistant superintendent bonte and mr mcdole i just want to comment on how i'm excited about all of this social emotional support and especially the synchronous opportunities uh for teachers to have uh conversations around self-care um the mind piece

104um collaboration of our peer support but most importantly the learning and responding being able to close that circle is so important um foundation for our staff especially with this transition and where we are right now i mean it's important all along but i think that that's that's key in building that trust um paul and i just want to say that i thought that that was a nice um orientation um presentation i went to a couple of uh orientations last year in person um that were that was at aiken i want to say it was in august of last year but i think this one was a lot more in detail than even the in-person one that i attended so uh kudos to you for that thank you it was definitely a team effort but thank

105you the team appreciates that good thank you mr messer yeah um so i don't think i have to restate how much i uh love the work that we're doing on employee engagement and i will just continue to push us to make sure that we're getting that to the level where we are measuring that by building and really looking at um where engagement can be a focus to make sure that we are creating the best work environment where people can do what they do best at all the 12 questions and you know i think that would be one thing kind of in this bucket that i would love to see kind of as uh an update of when we think we're going to be able to get to the to the buildings um and then again

106i'll just reiterate uh my colleague who talked about the uh the social emotional piece um you know i had been reached out to by the director of uc center of integrative health and wellness who actually she sean cotton who happens to be a cps mother but she's very interested in engaging with us with our staff and i would say kind of what she had tossed around his ideas is what i'm seeing in my workplace that there's work and then there's work during a pandemic and then i think you know she said and i totally agree what our staff and it's not just the teachers i think it's our paris and everybody else and and i'm looking at our superintendent and our assistants all of them are working around the clock try and and all this

107entire staff and whatever we can do to invest in their health during these times a very customized approach is going to pay huge dividends um in our employee engagement making people be able to thrive but that will transition to even more success with our students and the family and everything else so i challenge us to make sure that uh we're moving heaven and earth to do really specific all the stuff around mindfulness meditation personal care everything that's kind of in that bucket of integrative medicine that they're doing specific to pandemic workplaces i think uh is well worth our time so i just want to comment that we are moving gallup into 20 schools this fall um and we will be launching in september of the q12 for not having our office employees but our 20

108schools as well and we have been in conversation with sean so sarah brody our talent development director is with the holy spirit yes just well thank you thank you miss bolton yeah um i'm going to be careful how i say some of this because it doesn't sound like happy talk we cannot be in this particular century with previously designed contracts previously designed processes previously designed policies that coveted has actually taught us a lot of lessons i know in finance committee we're looking at lessons learned and how do you change processes the idea that we can do this remotely and have two thousand people participate in some way shape or form instead of thirteen of the same darn people uh we have to embrace these new opportunities that the new world is presenting us and nothing

109is more important than the fact that some months ago now superintendent introduced us to paying folks 438 people staff people for 15 hours of work to figure out how to do whatever we decided make it happen at each school site that's that's the democratization that is helpful and good and specific uh and i just i just want us just like with as a couple members mentioned about the digital academy and seizing this moment there are positive opportunities and new ways of doing business that we can seize and i'm thrilled with our investment and our employees i'm thrilled with the engagement but i'm also i don't want to engage them to figure out how the old world worked it's how to engage them in the new world because we are in a new world and everybody

110that's living in the previous one is going to be left behind it's as simple as that and i'm an old person i get to say that but get with it embrace it get on the train because it's leaving the station thank you okay thank you for your work thank you thank you thank you um if there are not any more comments we'll just close out and say these were two great presentations and uh lots of good dialogue and lots of good information shared with our public and we're very appreciative of that so moving on uh we are now at the item on our agenda for hearing the public um mr moroski did you have a question okay oh we were doing kudez i'm good no we're doing kudos after this work with me we are

111now at the item on our gender for hearing the public consistent with the state's direction to minimize public gatherings we are convening this video conference call to include opportunity for public comment here are the specific instructions for participation and hearing of the public to speak during hearing of the public your request must have been received during the first 10 minutes of the meeting by clicking on the hand icon on your screen treasurer wagner will be out will be the timekeeper and will make every effort to call each speaker in the order received once your once the request has been uh granted by treasurer wagner you will receive a notice on your screen plea uh click yes to go interactive if you do not want your video active please disable the video camera icon after speaking

112you will briefly see the welcome screen again as you transition back to the live stream meeting each speaker will have two minutes to speak when the buzzer goes off your two minutes are up please refrain from discussing any personnel items um we ask that your public commentary be respectful of all those listening in okay treasure wagner actually i was just going to say dan's going to be doing it tonight too um so that whenever if i ever have to be absolutely somebody else knows how to do it okay great so board president we have uh 12 speakers this evening uh the first uh speaker is sonia lackey and christine flaherty and sean kelly go ahead miss lackey thank you as you said my name is sonja lackey and i am a teacher at midway elementary

113and i am a proud teacher of cps um with that being said i feel that i'm honestly speaking for a lot of teachers when i say that unfortunately the town halls weren't exactly what people were expecting we left there with more questions with questions more than we got answers um the presentation basically seemed to be the same presentation that has been made to the board um the last several meetings and um and as far as listening to us less than probably i have to excuse me less than a dozen people were actually allowed to speak and so um they were we were basically told to write things in the chat box and that you know answers are forthcoming um i personally am speak it's ironic that i'm following social emotional um not that anybody wants

114to know my business but i'm gonna put it out there i suffer from depression and anxiety and um it's taken me years to learn and i'm still learning how to manage my emotions but for people like myself not having these answers really really really is tearing us apart um we truthfully don't feel that we've been heard and the question that we are still waiting for and an answer is are we going to be teaching remotely from our house or are we going to be going into the classroom and i really again want to stress that with social emotional the first part of the definition is the process through which children and adults understand and manage emotions it's hard to manage your emotions when you can't get answers thank you for your time thank you okay

115board president jones we have christine flaherty followed by sean kelly go ahead christine cps administration teachers and staff i'm a full-time working mother of three children two of which are cps students and i feel that cps has completely abandoned me and my family during this unprecedented time of need i understand and appreciate that you've prioritized the physical well-being and safety however i believe you've completely overlooked emotional mental and financial health of your students and student families upwards of 70 of millennial women work outside the home and as a result the vast majority of your student families are wrestling with the real pressure of sorting through child care options that enable their children to maintain an education in a virtual environment while simultaneously enabling families to work in order to maintain livelihood the uncertainty associated with

116child care is creating enormous job pressures as families attempt to negotiate novel schedules with their employers financial pressures some families are compelled to cut back on work hours or take on take on unexpected child care expenses and marital pressures the spouses and partners negotiate unprecedented and unexpected levels of responsibilities with fewer resources than ever before the true reality is that most of the families will have no choice but to find outside of the home child care options to facilitate their ability to maintain employment options could include creating a neighborhood pod for learning environments joining forces with other families enrolling relatives returning to organizations that are offering new child care solutions with pod solutions children are entering multiple homes per week that have uncertain and varied sanitization standards not the standardized cleaning protocols and professional grade

117products that schools could provide with grandparents we're enrolling the highest risk populations to take care of our children and with professional child care solutions they're simply outside of the financial grasp for most families for perspective among the child care options i've identified and researched which include the nanny the cincinnati sports club jewish community center and daycare the average monthly cost ranges from two thousand three hundred dollars three thousand eight hundred dollars for my two children that's fifty to eighty percent of the median monthly household income for residents of hamilton county clearly these solutions are not reality this clarity yes ma'am your two minutes are up i'm so sorry okay thank you okay our next speaker uh is sean kelly followed by lavon slayer go ahead sean you're unmuted go ahead shawn okay we'll come back

118to sean uh our next speaker is lavon slayer actually it's levon seiler but that's okay no big deal um you can hear me dan yes yes go ahead excellent cool hey uh so you know i appreciate everything you all have done i really appreciate especially the superintendent talking about all the outreach she's been doing i really respect your time and energy there um and i kind of want to follow up with what ms bowers was saying um about um device distribution um but i already had my question written before i got on here so i'll just read that um so what i'm what the question i have is will cps be relying primarily on resource coordinators who are non-cps staff to handle community collaboration regarding food and supply support for kids as well as devices

119uh doing so in the spring got some mixed results despite the goodwill and best efforts the resource coordinators and will cps prioritize community collaboration by having cps staff both salaried and hourly um cft apps me personnel working to maximize the community-based collaboration and make sure all students are being reached and supported and in addition to that i just want to point out that obviously we know that there are some hard to reach communities and part of those hard to reach communities as i believe it was ms bolton was referring to was asking for a spanish language town hall and i think that would actually be very vital it's going to be really difficult to reach a lot of immigrant communities because we've seen crackdowns from ice actually occur at schools so working with community groups

120i think is important and having volunteers help with device distribution but i think that it makes the most sense for liability concerns and just to expedite that process that it should be cps employees that do that whether that be you know teachers volunteering to do that or more importantly like actual food service workers you know people that are in within the unions that do that that's all i got to say thank you so much for your time y'all thank you our next speaker is jessica followed by mike go ahead jessica hello can you hear me yes okay thank you for the opportunity to speak today and thank you all for your hard work during this unprecedented time i am very concerned with the recent decisions to push our kids to 100 virtual interaction many of

121our neighboring districts and states are returning to in-person instruction this fall our cps kids will fall far farther and farther behind the longer we keep them out of our schools in a district where many who have the option are already choosing private schools over cps i agree that the health and safety of staff and students need to remain at the forefront but you have already acknowledged that there is a safe way to have face-to-face interaction in your endorsement of crc ymca and other child care options mentioned during the town halls this week you've praised these organizations for implementing safe protocols yet you will not allow students to return to their own schools in smaller groups than they'll be in at these other child care providers there's been zero justification or explanation for this double standard

122i understand that plans need to be set in advance so at this point the decision to go virtual until the end of september is set let's move forward together with these five weeks let's make them great but we need our teachers we need them doing what they do best which is teaching in the classroom our cps teachers are essential employees i urge you to evaluate your mindset in early september when you plan for the remainder of the school year i believe that the emotional emotional well-being and academic success of our kids and the future of cps depend on it thank you thank you okay our next speaker is mike followed by lauren go ahead mike hello thank you very much everybody can hear me i assume yes yes perfect thank you everybody on this call

123all board members all the work you're doing these crazy difficult times we certainly appreciate it uh i'm the parent of a soon-to-be fifth and second grader at high park school i'm also a very active parent volunteer the athletic director for three years and i've coached across multiple teams multiple divisions multiple sports i say that only to illustrate that i feel that i'm that i'm well connected with the parent population at least specifically within the high park area and today i think a lot of people are upset about the reversal of the decision have an on-site and in-person orientation you know the fact of the matter is that we're already dealing with so much these kids have so much thrust upon them that it's insane and as crazy as it may sound that orientation that on-site

124and in-person orientation an opportunity to see a teacher for a second and maybe a classroom or a former friend passing down the hall that provided hope as small as it may be it was hoped and and that hope is a very powerful thing and today that got ripped away from the vast majority of people now i think people that i talk to in my network are upset for two different reasons uh number one we feel that there's a lot of people who want to go back to school right they want to play sports they want to meet their teacher and we've lost control we don't have the opportunity to have a say in that still coming to grips with the fact that we don't have to say and and through all that regardless of our

125of our ability emotional and social impact is gonna be far more damaging than anything else that we're gonna have to deal with and the second reason that people are upset is that the reasoning we're being given for a lot of these decisions about feedback and people speaking up and coming forward in fact today's decision about the orientation was quoted to say a great deal of feedback that's not my experience my experience my social network has been the complete opposite and regardless even if there was feedback to the contrary to say we don't want on-site orientation what does it matter for those people if we're not going to be going back to school on site for a month or longer those people who are providing that feedback don't have to attend an on-site orientation i think

126the people excuse me your two minutes are up i apologize hey our next speaker is lauren followed by ashley go ahead lauren okay uh hello thank you for letting me speak i'm very you're unmuted now lauren so go ahead okay thank you can you hear me now yeah okay thank you for letting me speak i'm very upset and frustrated that the orientations have been changed to completely virtual i have a kindergartner and a second grader and especially for these young kids not being able to meet their teacher in person is causing them to miss out on forming a connection with their teacher at the beginning of the year so this is going to make virtual learning even harder my kids and i can certainly learn the technology piece of the orientation virtually but please allow

127them to meet their teacher in person what i heard on this call was that my kids can wave to their teacher from the car when we pick up supplies what i want to know is why can't the supply pickup be set up like the device pickup where we are outside of the car we go we stand in line kids can wait their turn and then they get a short five-minute meet and greet with their teacher i feel like i'm willing to compromise on the orientation piece with the technology but please allow them to have a few moments to meet their teacher obviously the scenario was deemed safe by cps for the device pickup so i wonder why this can't be an option for the supply pickup where they can also meet their teacher thank you

128okay our next speaker is ashley followed by sean go ahead ashley you're unmuted can you hear me now okay hi i'm a parent of a sixth grader and a fourth grader two very upset students that won't be um able to go to school this year it's very sad we very much hope that after september 28th we'll be able to go as planned um right now i would like to talk about the orientation being cancelled um you say that it was based on feedback however there was never any ask to provide feedback i feel that if you did ask to provide feedback you would probably hear the actual amount of positivity towards this um just you pointed out in your email the importance of starting school off strong i read that i had to reread it

129i thought that i was dreaming at this point even a tiny piece of school is really like a dream come true for the kids um this is so important for them to start this year off strong it's gonna be so hard for them everything that they've known and loved about school is being taken away at least give them this time to meet their teachers see their classroom see their school know that it's it's still there school is waiting for you your teachers are here they'll be here waiting for you your classmates are here everything's gonna be okay we're all gonna do this together thank you thank you okay our next speaker is sean go ahead sean thank you for the time um in the in the uh mode of hope for the best but plan

130for the worst i just want to encourage the board the administration and everyone involved make sure that throughout the first semester normally there would be thousands of cincinnati public students taking the psat the sat the act and other tests that have a huge impact on their future i just want to make sure that they have the ability regardless of whether school is in person or not to still take those tests this fall it's very important to their futures and i think if the board and the administration empowers courts the counselors the principals the test coordinators to be creative to think outside of what would normally be acceptable to make sure that our students have that opportunity parents have been a lot of constants have been taken away which no fault of any of yours obviously

131throughout our country but i think one thing is if students could count on knowing that those tests that are so important to them could still happen in a safe way but we have a lot of property in cps we could do it for the juniors and seniors who are in high school i just want you to be creative and think through that thank you very much thank you okay we have a few more speakers uh next will be helena followed by ac i also wanted to remind we have two uh speakers who need to accept the invitation um to interact live that's lauren sample and emily robertson if you could accept that in uh invitation we will uh get you on the board to speak to but next is helena go ahead helena hi um

132thank you for letting me speak um i spoke at the last board meeting and i thanked um superintendent mitchell for going virtual i'm a teacher a high school teacher and i thanked her for going virtual since i am high risk and pregnant um and i uh got very upset this morning when i opened my email and realized that we are still requested to show up to work for at least the first two weeks of school i frankly don't understand this one bit since all of the pd that we have the first week is virtual and since students will be participating in orientations the following week along with their parents that are also virtual i don't understand why i am required to be in the school building alone in my classroom breathing in the same air

133that's being um breathed in and coughed into by all of the other teachers in the building when i could work from my house just as all of you are right now um i happen to have a private home office at my house i have a white board a chalkboard i have everything i need to teach and because of that i think that we should be at least given the option of working from home or going into school people who teachers who would like to teach from school should have the ability to do that but we shouldn't be forced especially those of us who are high risk i frankly don't feel like i'm being protected by my school i don't feel like i'm being cared for by my employer and i don't feel like i'm being

134heard since my emails are being largely unanswered um and i just wanted to say that as i know many teachers feel exactly the same way as i do thank you thank you okay our next speaker is ac followed by emily go ahead ac hi um i first wanted to say that i appreciate your hard work in dealing with this challenging situation and i do appreciate you choosing to go remote until it is safe to be in buildings i wanted to echo um what helena just said um cbs news just reported that kovit can spread through the air up to 16 feet and um an environmental engineering professor at virginia tech um study who studies how viruses travel through the air um says that this is the this is new information is considered to be the

135smoking gun everyone has been asking for and so i think we need to prioritize ventilation in our buildings at this point i'm not sure if we have gotten new filters i haven't received any information about that but i know that at my son's daycare um they added hospital grade hepa hepa filters and that gave me comfort i hope we can do the same in our buildings and i would like to get air quality reports for our buildings i think that should be public information um and as far as going back to school um the next couple of weeks i'm fearful about doing that as well um i don't mind going in you know for a few hours or whatnot every once in a while when needed but i am really concerned about having to share

136the same restroom with others um i think that's where we get into some really sticky situations um being by myself in my classroom all day is fine but i'm worried about the common spaces like the restroom um and i hope that we can address this thank you okay our next speaker is emily robertson go ahead ms robertson hi i'm a cps math teacher as well as the parent of two young cps students like many parents i have a working spouse mine is a firefighter and paramedic working on the front lines of the kovid 19 pandemic starting next week it is my understanding that cps teachers are required to report to their buildings for two weeks of professional development and orientations even though it will be provided digitally at the same time in-person orientations have been

137canceled for students and parents due to safety concerns the school board has opted for remote meetings and at least so far cbs hasn't shared any child care options for cps staff i hope that you will consider accommodating the safety concerns and child care needs of staff by making the upcoming two weeks of professional development and orientations remote thank you very much for providing this platform for comments and for all of your hard work preparing for this unprecedented return to school thank you for president our last speaker is cft president julie sellers but julie you need to accept the invitation to interact live i don't i don't think julie's accepted the invitation that is all of our speakers okay all right thank you so we are going to um move on at this point and so

138the long-awaited kudos so does anyone have any kudos mr lindy followed by mr mariah um thank you president jones um i had just a really wonderful conversation with uh cbs employee dave traubert last week um who leads the social studies curriculum department um and i was connected with him through our very nice system for logging community questions and so i wanted to thank the the board office staff for for um from maintaining that documents very helpful um and the reason i wanted to offer a kudos to dave uh was just he he's really worked hard to make sure the social studies materials that are available to staff really do engage kids in what's been happening around this the country this summer with regards to protests for racial justice uh in particular he's designed some units

139that help teach basic social studies skills to kids in the first unit of the year i remember teaching units like that when i was a social studies teacher but the choice of topics really do focus on social justice and also the life and impact of the recently deceased john lewis so i just thought this was great uh and was one example of the ways in which i think cps can um can encourage teachers and educators to lead with their kids uh in this moment of history that we're in uh and i wanted to say thank you okay gotcha mr morosky this is a really uh cool kudos um i don't know how many of you are aware that we have a cps employee a teacher at scpa who is also an ultra runner um his

140name is harvey lewis he runs to school every day runs home every day and ultra running uh i have discovered is crazy long distances um and he just harvey lewis cps teacher harvey lewis just beat the bad water record which is the 146 mile race from the lowest point in death valley all the way to the highest point um he beat it by almost 30 minutes which is like days um it took him 33 hours to do the race and the record has been held um for like 29-ish years i just i think this is worth um fine yeah it was held for 29 years um and in addition to that uh took harvey 33 hours um 39 minutes um and he also raised money for city gospel mission while he did it and his

141goal was 2500 bucks um in the last i saw harvey put on facebook he was up to nine thousand dollars so um i think that's worthy of an enormous kudos 146 mile race and set the national record um and he's one of our teachers at scpa so kudos to mr lewis and all the folks that i know helped him get there um he's always really adamant about saying it's not about not just him though kudos thank you um i do have one does anybody else have one have any go ahead miss bolton uh yes i i certainly don't want to be outdone by mr lindy regarding celebrating uh the social studies curriculum director um robert but so i will contribute this as well he has also been extremely involved with the development of cps outside

142which is that growing network of folks that will be presented to us some some weeks ago and also will be i think a part of the future of the efforts that we will be making virtually and in class outside uh joining all the networks of green folks and uh you know environmental education and adventure crew the whole group so he has really been representing the new cps i as part of that i want to thank kudos and i appreciate mr marowski and former uh member mr davis i want to thank kudos to emily campbell of the curriculum department um curriculum is the secret weapon and it is great that we are doing these sorts of things that allow our children to be competitive with the other school districts kids that are getting the kind of

143curriculum background and of course in this pandemic experience uh it's it's been in a crisis mode but uh congrats to our curriculum people because they've been working as hard as anybody else so but uh that's off thank you and then i'll close out with my kudo um we we talk about how important student voice is and more frequently we hear from our older students but i i happen to attend and listen in on two of the town hall meetings and there was one student a 10 year old who called in and her basic message was i want to come back to school she didn't get involved in the politics she didn't get involved in the civil liberties versus civic duty she didn't get into that she wants to come back to school but let me

144tell you why i'm gonna give her kudos and i don't know her name but i'm gonna give her kudos because she was the most respectful person talking to people who are three and four and five times her age and and she expressed herself well and i would just want to say it was a job well done for her and then she hung up and said i have to hang up because my phone is about to die so it matters if that is a typical kid where they probably use all their battery life but anyway i say kudos to that student we're proud of you and president jones just to interject she had excellent manners you talked about her manners were excellent excellent yes thank you all right so we're going to move on miss bates

145are you prepared to do the retirements or yes i am okay have several retirements to commend uh or teachers and staff to commend on their retirement and three are teachers jocelyn e mccosker lisa r kelly guertin mary e strowmeyer wence and our civil service staff person teresa nelson hill who is a paraprofessional so we thank these professionals for their service to our children and wish them well thank you miss bates okay so moving on this evening's board matters presentation is really an update um miss bolton this is the property tax war group and you all should have received their handouts for that yes thank you president jones uh it should not take too much time but as many of you know for the last year and a half of vice mayor spiderman and also co-chair

146carol gibbs have been convening a group of stakeholders of a noticed public committee to look into some of these issues regarding property tax and how property taxes uh going up too much has indeed destabilized some neighborhoods and i think i uh you've all had an opportunity to read the several pages of the report you know i've been reporting periodically to the board and then also we've now have finished motions that have now been presented to the city council uh economic development and zoning committee and they will be worked on in september uh i was so thrilled to to represent the board largely because i was at that time chair of finance and also i've been very involved with a number of levy campaigns and what have you so i was pleased to be invited and

147throughout that i represented our need to maintain at least our current if not better and improved and greater amount of revenue gained from property taxes and our fair share as we used to say in the fcc negotiations and also in our most recent negotiations with the city the committee uh paralleled a timeline those two different negotiations i was very gratified over time to see that the many many stakeholders that are listed on the motions were very supportive and often defended cps more in a more articulate way than i did about our need for the revenue not to decrease our treasurer as you know presented kind of a 101 issue and not only about school financing but more particularly about our need for revenue and how we were being squeezed on every level regarding revenue uh

148and i i want to say thankfully those stakeholders from various different experiences and organizations actually paid fair fair trade if you will uh to cps and i thought that was a testament to the leadership of the superintendent in our efforts the one area where as i mentioned last time we met where i kind of deviated from trying to protect the revenue piece was an interesting initiative presented by the committee particularly led by the co-chairs was the possibility that for the many many hundreds and probably thousands of four families that exist throughout our district that there was an interest in finding a way that even if it meant and our great treasurer is looking into and doesn't necessarily have the the dollars right now or the numbers right now uh but we'll be able to present

149that to city council and to the board what this might mean uh there was an initiative to say let's figure out how to find a way to have developers small and large but mostly smaller developers help us redevelop our four families around this around the city of cincinnati as you know west side to east side you can't go on very many streets and not seen not see a tremendous number of four families many of which are in disarray many of which are empty and the co-chairs kind of reaching out to me and in the committee itself and also beating back a little bit of the bigger developers wanting to take it to eight or ten or larger of a number of families maybe you know 18 family 16 family units i i won't i won't

150i can't i can't describe it any other way but i've kind of succumbed if you will knowing what i know especially about the west side it made sense to me especially in our housing conditions in this city and also our interest in the increase in enrollment uh during our growth plan that it might not make bad sense it might make good sense for the board to have a discussion about whether or not even if this means or could mean a reduction in revenue to not at lea to at least not oppose the initiative of the development of four families in our town both for our our families our new enrollment our our smaller developers that are probably rcps families folks and entrepreneurs as well so i've presented a number of pages as well as the

151motions have been presented uh to the economic development zoning committee with the leadership of the vice vice mayor there's also been a court some court action filed not as a result of these motions but trying to address some of the other issues regarding development and real estate neighborhood by neighborhood but i i thought it would be good to kind of fess up that in this way in this particular issue i kind of went out on a limb i'm happy to be there by myself but i but i know that the board needs to discuss it and it's possible by september october or thereabouts we might be asked about how we actually feel about me voting kind of in favor of that that new initiative so somewhere along the line tonight tomorrow or whenever we might

152need to have a discussion about it but it made sense after 18 months and i know that the vice mayor has been very helpful in us with the negotiations with the city but as a native westsider these four families that are not being developed uh i think do present a great challenge and great opportunity so i'd love board discussion about it and whether or not the board might take a position on it is what this is about today okay um i see mr marowski first followed by miss bowers um so miss bolton as somebody who cut his teeth on community work doing affordable housing work for 13 years of an over-the-rhine as it got gentrified and knowing full well the lack of housing stock we have i fully support what you did and i'll go

153out on that limb with you as well um i would probably even get a little more radical with it but i'll stop there i don't know uh yeah i mean i don't know that we need to be out there waving a banner or anything like that but i mean to your point for whatever it's worth for the you know edification of my colleagues i i wouldn't fight it and i think it makes sense and i also think you taking it a couple levels deeper um is is i would i would go out on that limb too and say i think is probably accurate i.e smaller entrepreneurs being our families looking at our growth um and we're not going to be able to grow if we don't have places for people to live so that would

154be my two cents i appreciate you updating all your work on that committee it's an important committee for us to be represented on okay uh miss bowers followed by mr messer yes uh board member bolton uh being a novice in this area that you're speaking about can you explain uh what you've just said about the and and mike you already have worked in this area but explain the uh benefit um of what you're recommending and like layman's term yeah i can i can uh say that first the committee was convened in part to protect the fact that a number of our citizens in a number of our neighborhoods are literally being forced out because of the cost of their property taxes first and foremost particularly our uh long-term residents and owners that are elderly and

155also those people living with particular disabilities uh on fixed incomes and so that was sort of the the the genesis if you will of this initial committee effort and there are two committees subcommittees that dealt in those two areas the area that i was put on of the subcommittee not necessarily willingly uh but was the whole idea of the tiffs and the initiatives regarding incentives for developers to make more money through those incentives and sensitive incentives uh what this came down to was that the large developers have it are large enough to destabilize neighborhoods uh as gentrification and and mike knows more about this and so does ryan a number of you know a lot more about this than me and so that was the focus and one of the many many answers was first

156and foremost it shouldn't always be large developers that are able to get the benefits of incentives that it is time to find ways for other projects smaller in nature that could be for our smaller entrepreneurs and one of the target areas for housing in cincinnati is to bring families back it's no longer just trying to bring our new um young professionals which was sort of the initial target very frankly for good reason but now it is to try to bring families back and families mean the if you look at the existing housing stock uh which is phenomenal this city has great housing stock it's a very diverse housing stock great opportunities one of the target areas that i think is the the interest of the vice mayor particularly is the four family because there are

157hundreds and thousands of them i believe and in fairness to our treasurer she's doing great research on this to figure out what the cost might be but this is a way to incentivize development of the four families that are now vacant or underdeveloped that we can benefit the smaller entrepreneurs bring families back east to west in this town i mean i when i was sat there on the long line a new prospect to get the covet test i counted i counted uh i think it was 17 four families just on one street we should have gone together okay all right okay so that's it okay thank you for connecting with us okay good thank you mr messer we can't hear you uh-oh your traffic control your mute ryan ryan okay there you go yeah i

158had a couple of visitors in my office i had to mute myself um so uh you know i think this would be a great way to engage our audit committee um it's just you know to help that let them pressure test kind of what this means into the broader um the broader picture of the environment that we're in financially um and you know i'm all for for family development um as long as the price is affordable and i think that's where we fall flat i don't care if somebody develops a four family or a huge uh apartment building what they charge is what will allow our families to live there or not so i'm less concerned about the four family versus the greater i know tons of friends who are smaller developers who want more

159access to city hall to get incentives like these other uh developers and i think people have lots of opinions on that um and and i hope this working group has enough clout with the people in um community development to actually make some of the changes in what they're doing um but i would much rather see rather than spending you know i mean maybe the fourth make great get these four families back online or whatever but with the caveat that they're affordable to the families who are being priced out of our city so the cost is key okay so any other questions or comments about that um i miss miss bolton i'm gonna ask you again to if you could kind of recapture very briefly what what is it that you're hoping for tonight i i

160what i'm hearing is a is is that people are certainly interested want to move forward whatever are you asking us to agree to something tonight or what not tonight because i know we want to hear from our treasurer because she'll have a better understanding and a better way to tell us what this cost might be i think mr uh uh i think mr messer suggested to move it to audit committee after the treasurer has had an opportunity to put the money together or the numbers together if you will and and what have you so right now i don't think we need to take a stand but wait for what the treasurer says what the audit what the audit committee says but i i when i represent the board i don't like to go out and

161try to do something that is counter to what the charge was but in this area it seemed to fit in the growth piece as well okay so i i would say let's uh let's uh thank you for the presentation about it and the discussion so let what we can do is make sure that at the appropriate time when the treasure is ready and after you've talked about it we can put it back on the agenda i think that would be helpful and we can have a more robust and at that time maybe uh more definitive about what actions we need to take thank you mr president that's for you i'll look for you to let us know when it comes back on the agenda all right thank you all righty um okay so we're at

162the item for resolution so mr marowski please present the first resolution we can't hear you tap on mute all right i had to mute you there uh james getting a little fussy periodically so all right here we go thank you president jones uh i would like to present a resolution allowing students to graduate from their home high school if they choose to attend digital academy for the 2020 2021 school year this is the resolution i referenced earlier that would allow students seniors only seniors attending cda for their senior year to get a diploma at the end of the year from their home high school i present the resolution as written thank you is there a second second thanks any discussion miss wagner please call ro mrs bates i is bolton hi this is bowers i

163yes president jones yes thank you mr master please present the next resolution um i do not have that in front of me okay it is regarding the new the adopting the board policy for requirements to wear masks um if you don't have that in front of you maybe mr marowski um can you do that one is no that's a is that that's uh that's policy yeah policy mr okay mr marowski are you able to i need a member of policy to present the resolution i can't hear you i know i got it i got it okay the resolution adopting new board policy 5321 the requirement to wear masks to prevent the spread of covet 19 with all of the new language as was included in your packets i present the resolution as written thanks is

164there a second second okay any discussion okay miss wagner please call row mrs bates miss bates hi miss bolton hi mrs bowers hi mr lindy hi mr messer aye yes president jones yes and then our final resolution mrs bowers please present the resolution um i have the resolution adopting new board policy that i'm presenting tonight in 5466 which is the identification of students at risk of not qualifying for a high school diploma i present this resolution as written thank you is there a second second discussion miss bolton i'm going to asked and i it's not the same thing but the word the students at risk i am i am channeling eileen cooper reed and uh susan cranley and melanie bates and whoever else uh that it's a term we don't like and it doesn't really

165refer to this particular thing but again if there was another word we could use in the title it would it would um it would make me happier but it's certainly it's not going to keep me from voting for it i just hate the phrase students at risk students uh unable students uh i i don't know what else to to to suggest i just that's whatever struggling mr marowski looks like you want to respond to that offer i try offer a friendly a friendly amendment to you know students who may not be on track for graduating okay exactly president i like it yeah oh okay hold on okay so your suggestion is the wording um students who may not be on track for graduation miss bowers um uh similar words are at risk is danger in

166jeopardy of um or in danger of but i which is what mike said but in jeopardy of i guess is also an out option okay so what i am hearing is that there there is i think we can move forward with the resolution we need to revise so or men the resolution so the question is what is the language do you want change that here on the floor or do you want to approve the uh resolution amended resolution and ask policy to give us some user-friendly language mr question because the language be identification of students in jeopardy of not qualifying for a high school diploma can we can we do that on the floor if that's if that's agreeable to everybody i actually i personally like the first one better whatever yeah i mean we're

167not on track students yes that i would prefer that but i think we'll go with whatever the board uh wants yes when i think i'm on track i think of our virtual students credit wise but that kind of throws me off a little bit because that's why they're in virtual because they're not on track or meeting the credit requirements whatever whatever i think whatever the the group decides i'm okay with but it needs to be so you all tell me what the amendment is i can introduce the amended version so um students who what did you say again this our students who are in jeopardy are you all okay with that i'm fine yeah okay yes shake hands or something yes okay let's go with that so we have uh it's been motion and secondly

168that we um amend the resolution to reflect change in language uh identification of students who are in jeopardy of not qualifying for a high school diploma any discussion okay miss wang miss bates hi miss bolton hi mrs bowers hi lindy hi mr messer hi mr morosky yes president jones yes thank you okay superintendent mitchell your report thank you so someone will be pulling up a powerpoint i'll be doing a very quick update for the board on a couple of items just a little bit of a delay so tonight i will be providing an update as it relates to a couple of things but the forefront of the presentation i'm going to talk about the work that we're doing centered around racial equity so krista do you have the powerpoint i do it said i was

169sharing but let me try one more time if you guys aren't seeing it okay thank you yeah yeah i see that it says you're sharing it but i don't see anything krista i see it on mine anybody else i saw i saw the powerpoint oh it just went off though looked very nice i turned it off because i it was andy i took it back down let me put it back up thank you yep there we go there do you all see it yes yes yes we see it okay so it's not on my screen so i'm flying blind the good news is i have it printed in front of me so uh krista i'll just give you a question when you change the slides please hopefully you're on the slide that says racial equity

170and they're right pictures okay yeah so i'm going to do update as it relates to racial equity when i think about the passion statement around this work thank you susan brought me here just [Music] all right anyway um so of course our board started the work on racial equity or equity which is with the um equity policy many years ago and then the insistence of making racial equity a part of and specifically addressing disparities in our strategic plan and so this is the issue that we feel very strongly about three key messages are sent around empowering our students access to high quality education and also servicing our community i think it would be a real miss for us not to include the service to our community and so i'll explain that a little bit later

171in terms of racial justice here are some of our initial work we have put together a student council a parent council which will be adding additional people to a community council and a staff council and we thought that for the first year of the work we would focus very specifically as it relates to policies obviously making some suggestions or considerations to the board and also very carefully looking at practices and we wanted to narrow that focus in terms of looking at gaps as it relates to disparity in academics and then practices related to discipline in addition we're going to focus on curriculum and i'll talk about that in just a couple of moments and business contracts as well as police relations so krista i am now on the slide that says speak up speak out

172so we felt it was really important to start this work with our students and so we hosted four sessions in the months of june and july for our students high school students to be able to speak up and speak out regarding the civil unrest in our country as well as what they're experiencing right here in cincinnati and their relationships with the cincinnati police department and so you can see some of the featured guests who were able to speak um chief isaac was there was able to speak um in terms of the police department as well as and she's not listed but jan michelle lemon kearney councilwoman was at a very first session to be able to hear the voice of our kids okay now i'm on the slide that says student voice so i asked

173the students to give us a list of demands and they gave us a list of demands and so i recently received these uh demands and the demands are really centered around having high school peer groups at every school focused on african-american students perspective in school another area is that they want to have student-led public rallies a third area is they want black history to be taught in the curriculum and they want to see themselves in the curriculum the fourth area is they want to engage civically as a organized group of students the fifth area is that they want to build a stronger relationship with the police department a sixth area is and that's not listed but it's in the the document that they sent me is that they want to see more diversity in their

174teaching complement they want to see teachers who look like them they also were very clear to make a demand that they want to meet with me regarding their demands by august 31st and so we are working to get that meeting scheduled what's been very refreshing is that these are um a very it's a very vocal uh smart group of young people who feel very passionately about how they believe african americans have been treated in this country but they do it with a level of dignity and respect that um that is a very mature thing to see from our young people so i've been very impressed that they are looking for productive solutions they aren't what people may think of as typical angry adolescents they are angry but they want to be productive they want to

175be positive and they want to find a way forward which is very refreshing one of the things that and i'll bring this to you all in another presentation but one of the questions today i attended the first two sessions and they asked me to come back to the last session and they sent me a list of questions before the session to be prepared and the first question on their list was why do you say that you want to address racial equity in cincinnati but yet we continue to see contracts go through the treasurer's report without the representation of african-american businesses that was their first question to me i thought i thought wow um they're like really calling us on the carpet in terms of how we spend our money and so one of the the

176um presentations i want to bring back to you and i will say that um relatively soon i will not be making these presentations as it relates to racial equity i want our young people to set the table and to come and talk with you and present to you their collective voice but one thing that i do want to bring back to you very soon is the fact that that was an area you know there are some times that you just start something you just go when there's the energy around it and so we just decided to go with this contracting piece and so we reached out to the african-american chamber and got a list of all of the businesses that are part of that chamber and then we sent the african-american chamber a list of

177all the services and products that we purchase and we ask them to match it up with um businesses in their organization who might be able to provide these services and so i'm very excited and i'll be able to bring more information back on monday august the 17th we're going to have a cps african-american chamber um pitch session so it will start off with the opening provided by myself along with the african-american chamber president and ceo eric kearney and then we will do an introduction and then our directors who are the purchasers of those services and products will then go into different virtual rooms aligned with the companies who provide those services and they will the companies will be able to be able to pitch their services to cps so we'll be collecting the data on

178this so then i found out well you know what the african-american chamber isn't the only group that everyone is associated with that so the urban league we're doing the same thing with businesses are associated with the urban league then there's a younger group with mortar so we're doing the same thing with mortar and we're pulling all these businesses in these different sessions together to be able to explore how they might have an opportunity to have their businesses within our district we're also very much interested in and thought of the idea of um as we look at a lot of our large contractors that we have a requirement of our large contractors that they sub contract with small minority businesses and that was would be another way to get more minority businesses within our district because

179so many times what we will say is that we have such a big need and the company the minority business isn't large enough to fill our need but surely many of the vendors we work with are big enough and could subcontract with them and we can make that a condition of our contract so more to come on that issue all right next slide i'm on the student voice superintendent council so we have started to form and i didn't choose these young people um the council we have most of our schools filled out we have a couple more schools we need to fill in gamble and withdraw are still we're looking for students to serve on this and so the idea is that this council will come together with me this is not about a sit

180and talk about stuff it is it's about exploring the landscape in cincinnati public how our students see it grounding that in some research and then identifying what they want to do and developing project plans around their um five or six demands that they made to me and so it will really be about action next slides krista we're also working on adding more people to a parent advisory i think it's really important that we hear the voice of the parents that we hear the voice in terms of what do you want to see for your young people in cincinnati public schools as it relates to race racial justice and so there will be a parent organization and that group already started but there are additional people we will be adding to that compliment as well now

181chris i'm on the community council page so i'm going to put together a community group to be able to advise us in terms of what they are seeing as it relates to the community and this goes back to um we should be providing a service to our community which we do but a very specific lens in terms of racial equity and so um we're engaging the african-american champion number naacp black lives matter the urban league all in from the greater cincinnati foundation ywca faith-based organization a mass action for black liberation to be a part of this community group to be advising us as to what they want to see happen within our communities as it relates to our children and cincinnati public then there's a staff council and um this council i'm very excited about

182because i did not initiate this council so our deputy superintendent tiana ahmad and some teachers and principals and central office administrators came together and said we want to do something we want to get started and we had our first session they have really great ideas about curriculum and staffing and resource allocation and so there's a staff council because there's a perspective that african americans have within cps as it relates to employment so that closes out the councils that we're putting together and all this will be really centered around project plans and deliverables and a scorecard so we want to be we want to collect data to inform the work and to say here's where we started and here's where we are now and here's how we're benchmarking ourselves now i want to turn to the

183cincinnati police department for just a moment which is a part of that work but also was a question that came up by one of our board members regarding um how can we build a better relationship with our police department and so i'm on the slide now uh christopher says cpscpd update so i wanted to know that we didn't wait until this presentation or the question was asked a second time about this we actually started the work right after it was brought up at a board meeting and so on june the 17th i met with um chief isaacs and we talked about the speak up speak out session and um he had a chance to engage with our young people then um eddie hawkins who was one of our sros had a chance to meet with

184um shawna murphy on june the 26th and uh and i apologize i actually met with um chief isaac's on july the 8th after the speak up speak out and so he advised that i should meet with lieutenant henry would be the person the person to connect with regarding the relationship between our youth and the police department and so we have a tentative date scheduled with lieutenant henney other updates that i have that aren't related to the um racial justice or necessarily um the police department is our distribution of devices so that has been going very well in terms of distribution of devices which is different than the connectivity piece and so this is just a picture of our distribution we have over thousands of devices that have been picked up today and we're continuing to

185do that work um i'm on the cincinnati bell connect our students page we're still moving very forward very much forward with um connecting our students and obviously wanting to work very hard to get more and more of our kids and our families connected to that service i want to do a special shout out to josh hardin josh when this whole pandemic started came and said i really want to do something around volunteerism and so he organized a lot of volunteer efforts that have taken place during the pandemic whether it was actually collecting ppe cleaning supplies hygiene supplies and being able to give them out at our food hubs and has been able to raise over 50 000 in donations um actually when i say donation in terms of money not in terms of services and

186kind services or actual or actual products so a big thank you for josh hardin for all the work that he's done and that concludes my report in addition to um the recommendations that i have i do have one thing that i want to point everyone to and the superintendent's recommendations you will hopefully note that there are eight teachers who were originally a part of the rift thing who are reduction in force i'm sorry who have been reinstated and so we're excited about that so two math teachers resigned and so we were able to bring two teachers back into those positions and then we had uh six of our um teachers who were a reduction in force agreed to apply for a license to um service their students with disabilities so that is very exciting to

187be able to bring more people back because um as i said before pains us all very much to have to reduce our force and so that now concludes my superintendent's report thank you okay do board members have questions or comments mr morosky miss bolton followed by misspoke i just have um a brief comment to the superintendent that was an awesome update and all of the work that's been going on this summer additionally covet stuff regarding the racial justice is just really really great and i i i hope that there's a way that that news can be pushed out into the community because as folks are looking to do things and people are looking to rally behind something i really feel like this is we are a hallmark of our district and something we've led on

188for years well before i got here but really turning it up and i just want to say kudos and i appreciate all the updates um i believe i was likely the unnamed board member for a couple of the the points and i really i wanted to give you you know as much time as possible and so thank you uh so much for the update for what you're doing and i know it goes without saying however we can support you we have your back most importantly of the kids backs i too have been really impressed with their demands and the way they're making themselves heard um they're doing a much better job than i did when i was their age and so i want to be a part of it so thanks superintendent thank you okay

189miss bolton yeah very quickly i appreciate the update um uh my the history teacher in me though is also saying let's not think that anything started today the children and students have a tendency rightfully so that the day and the history began when they raised the issue there has been extensive work in minority employment minority contracting extensive efforts done in curriculum that indeed is reflective largely because students approached you a few years ago about we want to see ourselves in the curriculum that's the one caution i'd like us to start where we are we have a far way to go but i also don't want ever our students to think that that the the history began when they raised the issue a lot of people have worked long and hard on on all of this

190i think it's great i'm worried about a public rally before we have the kinds of meetings that we need to have uh so that's of of interest to me and concern also one of the things i i think they probably and we all need to know is that within the finance committee or audit committee i know we've been monitoring but not as successfully as we used to the minority contracting and that needs to be done and i will also even though there's this is not what the national mood is about i am going to say again you have to also look at female owned contracting facilities and and and organizations and what have you because that whole minority hiring goes well beyond not only our school district boundaries but it also goes well beyond with

191within the african-american community i love that you are meeting with the african-american chamber i think that's a tremendous partnership uh and and i think too rebuilding or re evaluating the relationship between cincinnati police department and cps is very useful i am i'm a huge supporter of of what we do already and i know that can be improved up so hats off to the kids i spent 36 years running and listening to teenagers and they're actually smarter than most of us so i'm anxious to hear that student voice but again history didn't begin when they started to worry about it there's there's a history and that'll teach them and it'll teach us as to how we've been successful but also how we've failed and have not been as as excellent as we need to be okay

192thank you mr messer yeah i i was gonna actually say something similar in that the good news is we agree with these students if the first thing they were asking is about our contracts because my one of my last meetings on my last term on the finance committee was reviewing every single contract and i believe we did we i think we were pushing to say how can we make our spend reflect the diversity of our students i remember that being a comment and then i also stated that our the people who are doing business with us should reflect the diversity and inclusion practices uh in our values as depicted in our equity statement so i think you know so i think we have to keep that work going forward but i think this is where

193we are fully aligned kind of comment um and uh you know i think it's really exciting though i love this cross community cross stakeholder group i i mean nothing's going to make me happier than seeing our students come in and present this is how they become world influencers uh that our superintendent so eloquently talks about thank you thank you miss bowers thank you superintendent that was very uh informative um and i know in our current um state and status of our country and our nation uh regarding racial equity i do not want to omit the presence and the voice of our latino families um nor the um reach out to our um latino coalition to be a part of that that big group when you were identifying those groups that you were meeting with um

194just because i i do know that this is a kick this is eve i said this working started way before now and i know that the climate has kind of intensified it uh recently but i just want to make sure that that is diversified for all of our students that are representative especially are african-americans but in addition to uh our latino families okay mr lindy um thanks president jones i think um superintendent i just want to first say thank you uh i thought it was incredibly informative and incredibly helpful um i also wanted to say i can only imagine how challenging it is to try to manage two crises at the same time um both of which i mean i i think coven is larger than anything i could have possibly imagined when i was

195running for school board and then on top of that the summer of reckoning around racial justice we've had at the same time i want to say i appreciate your leadership um i wanted to offer a couple of specific really positive things i thought were great um i love the student council on the parent council so that those voices are informing our direction i think that's great i love the different system levers that you and your team are looking at from the diversity of our contracts to how do we use data and accountability and scorecards across the system i thought those things were just great um i had one possible point of clarification on the sro issue it may be the case that multiple board members were asking about this to the extent that you were

196referencing me i just wanted to share i don't think there's an obvious answer for what we do here or an obvious diagnosis of whether we actually have a problem at all or not i think one of the things that was so complicated was there was such a mix of feedback from some people saying we got to get police out to other people saying i think we have a really really good sro program you know and so i think just i appreciate the research i think it's really important i just wanted to say that from my perspective i think it's it's also like important to look at um you know are we actually just really happy with this current situation and the answer might be we looked at it and and yes um and then i

197think the last one is one idea um i think that teachers and principals are going to be trying to figure out how do they engage their students in the first couple weeks and months of school around what's been going on in the country this summer and i think there are going to be all kinds of inspiring examples that come out of what those teachers and principals are doing and i think i think it could be exciting and important to highlight a couple of them again if you don't think that's the best use of time i would defer to you on that but i was trying to think of like how can we lift up leaders within cps who are really doing inspiring work here with children um and it seemed like uh possibly highlighting that

198in some upcoming board meetings could be anything um but chiefly i wanted to say thank you yeah absolutely i'd be happy to i will say that in terms of the conversation and relationship with the police the young people indicated that they want them in the schools they just want a positive relationship with them and so i'm going to get the sros and the students in the same room together so that we can talk about it i will say in terms of um how teachers talk about this with their young people what i don't want to do is script this so much i want to hear the voice of our young people so what i want to do is ask them how do you want to talk about this and how do you want your teacher

199to support you and have that counsel and that group help steer the work so that um it's authentic and it's real and it meets what our kids want and not just what adults think that they want for what they need okay let me let me just say we are three hours and i'm sorry but i i really feel like we need to move the agenda so please keep your comments please miss bolson very quickly i do not want our teachers to the point that the superintendent just mentioned i do not want our teachers to use our children to forward their agendas either because we have witnessed that in the past i want to hear from the kids i want to hear from our students so i think we have to be very leery of of

200people using our kids because they have the pure of mind and thought and and that's that's i don't want them to be used by other people thank you mr lindy final comment mr lindy i'm good president gents thanks okay all right so um we're gonna uh move on um do i i need a motion to approve the recommendations of the superintendent don't moved second is there a second okay any any other any further discussion okay miss wagner please call wrong mrs faith i miss bolton hi this is bowers aye mr lindy aye mr messer aye mr morrowski yes president jones yes okay i need a motion to approve the report of the treasurer is there a second second thanks any discussion miss bolton followed by his ballast only one only one question i have a

201question of the treasures uh regarding i think it's in uh maybe roman numeral oh gosh two it's about um uh uh pleasant hill academy's resource coordinator or whatever the gaskins and associates thirty five thousand five hundred dollars i i looked up gaskins and associates and i could only find somebody from like georgia and the 32 5 seems lower than uh resource coordinators are paid i just needed some clarification we've invested a lot of time and effort in that campus it's an environmental science campus and i'm i just need to know who gaskins is so gaskins has been in the district and and maybe if miss mercy is on the line she can talk about that company the reason that the value is so low is because it's only 90 days remember we're working under a

20290 day appropriation right now there's an rfp out on the street and so um because it was time to rfp the services again and so that will come up soon um i think mr is ready to talk about gaskins great thank you yes um the gaskins foundation is led by whitney gaskins who is a stem professor at the university of cincinnati this is her foundation they've been working with pleasant hill for the past year and are looking to expand into new additional schools in our district so the uh environmental science fits with their stem focus are are they also the ones that are at uh mount all um mount auburn or chaff half school no they are looking to expand to hugh stem and to evanston is in stem okay all right so that explains

203the 32-5 and they're looking for two other schools is the reality also that we're actually paying they're not necessarily contributing any money that's correct okay so that's the reality they are providing additional services okay there's laboratives and uh backgrounds thank you miss bowers uh yes i just have a question um for uh for jim miss wagner on page uh nine i think roman numeral five it and and on page 10 roman numeral d they look to like duplicates can you verify that it looks like another duplicate for uh roman numeral 5b and uh roman numeral 5f and they just look like they're repetitive um things and maybe i'm reading this wrong um no so it is confusing and um though you're talking about letter a mr harner services the four thousand dollar then and now

204no on page nine roman numeral five cincinnati children's hospital 5835 and then on page 10 roman numeral five number d they look like the same it is it it is a duplicate my apologies and the similarly on um page 10 roman numeral b uh i'm sorry roman numeral 5 b and then page 11 roman numeral 5 f looked the same it's very likely we're still doing these manually because of the 90-day appropriations so um so i my apologies okay so so the question is not really that we're pa the question is we're it's just a duplicate okay any other questions comment okay so um did i have a motion already yes motion okay second thank you we're at boat miss wagner mrs bates aye ms bolton it's bolton we lose you and the dogs are

205barking so i had to mute um they're looking at a groundhog uh i powers aye mr lindy aye mr messer aye mr morrowski yes president yes thank you okay any inquiries and updates i have a couple of very short ones if um any inquiries and updates okay just a reminder that we're if you haven't already given uh checked on your calendars uh fill us in a doodle out to find out when we could schedule the uh joint meeting with cincinnati preschool promise and i'm asking board members to do that like tonight or tomorrow so we will know just to let you know it looks like or or if you want to pull your calendars it looks like the 23rd of september and the 28th is when most people can be there in the evening um

206and and if that's the case i'm gonna i want to offer those two dates to preschool promise and uh and we'll finalize one of those days september 23rd and september 28th is that correct yeah yeah what time uh um in the evening you don't know what's going on okay okay uh yes i think there's a district-wide uh lsdmc meeting on the 23rd we have we aren't there are we september 23rd you're talking about lsdnc yeah but i mean why would that interfere with us because some board members go to that but but i mean i'm just saying if it okay well here here's my concern i really would like to offer inside preschool promise today so we we have to go with either the we have to go it looks like that most people are

207available on the 23rd and the 28th if it should happen to be the 28th that's fine but i gotta give them two because they also have okay all right okay and uh okay so that's that and then also miss bolton you had um stated that the finance committee was uh gonna go back to its schedules and so um that was a that was a good email it was timely but thank you because i think all the other committees might want to consider their schedules um going back to their normal schedules and um making sure that you make the connections and then you all have to the committees have to decide whether to be virtual or in-house so all right we talked about and then work with staff around that that'd be great yes it's our

208hope that we can reestablish the previous uh calendar uh at the third thursday 1 30. is similar to what sac and policy are doing which is two committees on the same day as we had arranged and it would be 11 30 and 1 30. but yeah we and and then we have to figure out if we're doing virtual or we're doing in person okay right thank you all right any uh assignment and uh i see you mr moroski go ahead you can go ahead with yours let me just say melanie melanie faded out her her she lost connection so she sent me her assignment but go ahead mr marowski thank you president jones i meant to bring this up in the presentation my minutes is very small i apologize but for phyllis under the continued

209discussion new policy 2255 anti-racism it references a quote first draft of this documented august 7th 2020 meeting twice that date should be july 10th 2020. that's it so again august 7th 2020 reference under continued discussion anti-racism should read july 2020. okay thank you all right and uh miss bates miss faith's assignment i'm just going to read it to you it is to administration to engage partners to have a fundraising campaign around the renaming of cda to honor jack gilligan to build the capacity of cda to make it a state-of-the-art school over and above the ability of cps to fund this okay all right any other assignments miss bolton yeah i would only like to amend melanie's to say a state of the art and statewide uh uh for uh jack gilligan uh the digital academy

210and for a new assignment uh i have received a request from the cincinnatis folks they have a panel on education as you know and they would like if it's possible uh to the west to uh treasurer wagner uh could we send to that panel some information uh regarding the uh preschool uh levy that is scheduled uh updates because they're going to be doing they're going to be having their panel discussion in august so i can give you the the uh where to send it and who's on the panel yep any other assignments okay um i need a motion to recess into executive session for a consideration of preparations for conducting or reviewing negotiations security matters purchase of property sale of property employment of a public official and pending or imminent court action gracious okay is

211there something second okay uh is that a roll call miss wagner yeah but i missed who made the original motion mr moroski thank you okay um and mrs bates is not with us okay right miss bolton hi mrs bowers hi mr lindy aye mr messer aye mr morrowski yes president jones yes we'll take a five minute uh our business meeting is adjourned we can close out we'll take a five-minute break thanks