001he did [Music] foreign [Music] so [Music] so do [Music] do so [Music] i want to welcome everyone here to the february remember which month it board meeting i'm glad you're all here and we're excited to have another great evening so alex if you would come forward and so we can say the pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all how are you doing i'm doing good how are you good alex if you just want to tell us a little bit about yourself and about your time in freedom yeah so um my journey through springdale schools started at harper elementary and then from there i went to jail kelly middle school then
002george junior high and now i'm at springdale high school and some of the things i'm involved in in springdale high school is um i'm a part of the engineering academy i've been a member for three years now and um so um one of the things that the engineering academy um does is your senior year you get to participate in the capstone class and so the idea is that um you take all these classes um in engineering and so your senior year you get to incorporate what you learn in all of them into one project and last year or i mean this year i my project was um a prosthetic arm and i mean something that i'm still working on but um i kind of want to do like a twist on it um i mean
003it's just gonna be a 3d printed prosthetic arm but i want to try to make it mind controlled i mean i don't know how that's going to go yet but um there's these headsets that can detect brainwaves so whenever you like concentrate um your brain emits these um deep waves and the headset can actually detect them it can't detect what you're thinking it just knows that you're that you're thinking so um i potentially you can um connect this headset to um control it to close like the the prosthetic arm um whenever you concentrate so um i'm gonna see how that goes but um i think i it's definitely doable but right now just with the time constraint um i'll see where it goes and then um i'm also the president of moo alpha theta which
004is a mathematics honor society um i played basketball up until all the way through my um 11th grade year i mean obviously senior i just had to shift my priorities what else some of some accomplishments i've earned is i've been named a leader scholar which i'll talk about more in a minute and i've been named a presidential scholar candidate and also um a few weeks ago um right before we went on christmas break i found out that was accepted into stanford [Applause] so i mean i i really couldn't i never expected to be in this position um as a matter of fact my junior year um i was pretty dead set on going to the u of a i wasn't even considering any other options i wasn't going to apply to any other schools but
005as i said i was named elita scholar my junior year and what lita is it's it's this program that begins your junior year and they select 100 students from all over the country and i guess their main goal is um to get students from underrepresented backgrounds into the nation's top universities because a lot of the nation's leaders come from those schools so in getting students from underrepresented backgrounds into top schools they're trying to diversify america's leadership oh and i forgot to mention um leta stands for leadership enterprise for a diverse america and in the non-coveted year right after your junior year you go to princeton university for seven weeks and there um you take college guidance classes you um you take writing classes and i mean it's not like um like an english class it's
006more of writing classes preparing you for college and for um the essays that you're about to write um and then that something that new new that they added fairly recently um is an aspect of leadership class so i mean you just read um you read about leaders from the past so that you get an idea of what type of leader that you want to be and i mean i was i was accepted under um early action which is a non-binding um decision so i have until may to decide and um i decided i'm gonna wait it out and just look at all my other options so yeah do you know what you want to study um i'm gonna go into bioengineering um i don't know if i'm gonna stick with it i'm just really interested
007in like the intersection of engineering medicine technology so i know that i'll definitely stay like within that but i don't know if i'll stick with bioengineering i had to get a lesson on frugal science yeah that is but hey it sounds good and so there's a video out there with this guy you mentioned yeah so that's pretty cool yeah so um manu prakash is a professor of bioengineering at stanford and um he he was really one of the main reasons that um i the stanford was my top choice school so his idea is that if you make like a medical innovation expensive you potentially cut millions of people from using it so like whenever you're trying to come up with solutions to to healthcare problems you really have to um to focus on cost because
008limit um keeping up keeping an invention um low cost will make it more accessible to other people and he's really known for inventing the fold scope which is a foldable microscope um and it kind of works like it's like this origami thing and there's an instruction and there's like a little a little um bulb that you put in and it teaches you how to make a microscope um and then the paper fuse was which is a centrifuge made from like paper and string and those two devices um are are facilitating the diagnosis of malaria in third world countries and they both they have a cost of 68 cents that's crazy so i just thought i thought it was really cool that um like such inexpensive adventures because i have a huge impact and i guess
009that's why it interested me and you didn't mention your act score um yeah i have a 35 on the ect [Applause] and it was even closer because um that last time i took it it was one question away from the 36. yeah but it wasn't worth it for me to take it again i i don't care i i was done with that test that's awesome yeah and i also hold um a ct tutoring every morning before school so yeah like for just anyone any if anyone comes in but um i should does that scholarship that you mentioned earlier does it only apply to stanford or would it go to other you know it wasn't i mean i was just accepted to scholar to stanford and um they they give you a generous financial aid package
010okay so yeah yeah you need a generous package so you can go start away frugal science yeah it took me twice to get 36 but it was cold you add them together add them together are there any teachers or any anyone in the sprinkle schools that really impacted you in this journey um yeah so i mean i guess the first teacher that comes to mind is my um my calculus teacher andrea edmondson i've had her for three years now my entire high school career because she's an engineering academy teacher um i'm i just really like the way that she teaches i feel like she she really cares about like each student um she really wants each student to um to learn and um just to like prove to themselves that they're smarter than what they
011think they are and i mean everyone in that class has been in the same class for the entire three years so i guess that's what makes it funny too would you like to introduce your parents oh yes uh my parents are back there they are daniel and maria soto [Applause] well we are incredibly proud of you and cannot wait to see what you do and where you end up and i sure hope that you'll come back um after college and let us know what you're doing yeah definitely what you've invented yeah yeah thank you for having me thank you good luck thank you [Applause] wow that's a great look at that a great way to start a meeting ward you've had the agenda for a couple of days are there any changes or you know
012i make a motion to accept the agenda as presented i have a motion by mrs creek second a second by mr hutchinson to accept the agenda as presented all those in favor all right opposed motion passes awards you've also had the consent agenda any questions make a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented i have a motion by mr hutchinson a second by mr bell to accept the consent agenda as presented all those in favor opposed motion passes [Music] well it's my pleasure to introduce mr hutchinson who uh you know for those of you who don't know mr hutchinson doesn't just serve on the springdale school board he's he volunteers to spend time his own personal time on another board which is the arkansas school board association board and he may be president in
013the near future in fact we believe he's allowed to do that but a lot of things have happened statewide and nationally with the nsba and now asba and mr hudson and i discussed the opportunity for him to kind of give a report not only to the board as a whole but also to the public is that all right with you mr hutchinson yeah yeah that's going to be short and sweet i mean the gist of it is arkansas school boards association did pull out of the national school boards association we were at the time i think the 16th or 17th state association that has that had done that i'm not sure what the numbers are right now but uh we are now in um full swing trying to figure out how we're going to replace
014nsba and and do it the right way with without all the stuff that comes with a humongous national association and we have we've come up with a new uh organization called the consortium of state school board associations and i know that we are one of i believe 13 let's see here one two three four five six seven eight nine ten seven five actually one of 17 uh founding state associations and uh those 17 states are going to be getting together on a regular basis putting together this new consortium and we're going to be moving forward with that and we're going to cut out all the stuff that doesn't need to be there it's going to be there for the purposes that it should be there for and we're working on a uh a new uh
015conference i know the annual conference is always a big deal uh for school board members uh it gives you a chance to get together and talk about stuff and and uh get your uh training and things like that uh there's not gonna be one this year the only trip that we're gonna have this year is the new orleans uh trip uh for the regional uh meeting but sometime next spring uh march april of they're working toward having a a big conference like we did with nsba we don't know where yet don't know exactly when yet uh the only time that was available this year was mother's day and easter and we're not gonna do it over those weeks obviously so there's just no way to do it this year so anyway there's still a lot
016to come arkansas has got a seat on the front row of making this new organization get off the ground and work so that's that's pretty cool to be a part of that dr prothero who runs the arkansas school boards association uh will be kind of our point person on that along with our uh president-elect um william shoot i forgot his last name uh who serves on the asba board he'll be president next year year before i become president so he'll be serving on that committee with dr pro throw and i'll get regular updates and i'll i'll bring them forward as i get them so that's basically it i'll answer any questions if anybody i'll try to answer any questions if anybody has it okay thanks sir next i want to introduce miss clay miss clay
017we're going to talk a little bit about covetly and the experience that we've gone through with this on chrome variant how it's impacted quarantines and our staff good evening board um although it's separate on the agenda it makes sense for me to update you on our coveted numbers as we talk about the covet leave policy so if it's okay i'll do that and then we'll talk about the the covet leave policy it's been a wild month as you look at these numbers that we've presented historically over the last couple of years you'll see that this last month since your last meeting we had 589 staff members and 2338 students test positive for cobin this taxed our system of reporting contact tracing calling families but i am so so proud of the work that the nursing
018team did that our principals did and we called in social workers to help make phone calls um and really got through them as fast as we possibly could now it wasn't as fast as we would have liked but this with this sort of number um that's that was our reality um sometime during this process we stopped really uh tracking the probable close contacts and which of those probable close contacts ended up positive because with this omicron variant it was just everybody and there wasn't a way to say this person gave it to this person because it was everybody everybody was basically exposed so that's why you don't see those numbers there for february you will see our test to stay participants for february february were 951 and with 121 of those testing positive you know
019when we started test to stay we didn't really know the significance that it would have but um thinking about those 800 something students and staff that were allowed to stay in school um because they were exposed and not positive really made a difference for us i think over the last month or so we are seeing our numbers start to not start to decline they dropped off the snow days helped a lot um and so hopefully we're on the downward trend these um numbers are the impact survey numbers and you'll notice this last week you don't see any numbers reported for staff and students in quarantine and so many of you may know that last tuesday during his press conference the governor made the announcement that school districts no longer were required to identify probable close
020contacts or quarantine those contacts so what that means is that now if you test positive student or staff test positive for covid they do have to go home for the five days and and they're asked to wear a mask for the five days after that but if you are exposed to someone with covid inside school outside school wherever you do not have to quarantine unless you're symptomatic so we're getting to the point that i feel like a lot of people have been waiting for of stay home when you're sick come to school if you're not um we pushed these new guidelines out it was tuesday afternoon and then the snow day started on wednesday so we're just now getting to these actually being in effect i can tell you i got a lot a lot
021of very happy and thankful emails from principals and nursing staff really the contact tracing process was monopolizing their time and so we are very thankful that we're moving in the direction of where these guidelines are taking us so all that to say on your agenda and you see a proposal for an updated covet leave policy um one of the things we've realized over the last um month to six weeks or so is that many people were needing to take more coveted leave than was originally allotted you all allotted 10 days for this school year what we've seen is employees who have gotten covered multiple times have had children quarantined multiple times and so there are a handful of employees that have met their 10 days and even gone over that and had to use their
022sick days so the proposed policy change would give employees five additional days that could cover the absences for the reasons that were already in place we don't anticipate a lot of employees needing this but there are some that have gone over their days for legitimate coveted related reasons and that this would benefit so um i'll be happy to answer any questions otherwise i do need a motion and a vote on the amended covet leave policy so the covet leave if a teacher has used their days and they had to go into sick days they will get their sick days back yes um once if you all approve this we will have to have the entire staff vote on it because it will be a change to personnel policies in the middle of the school year
023after that we'll send out instructions on how to get reimbursed for those days that um they may have gone over so how to convert the sick days back to copen day so yes they will get reimbursed and can you explain where the reimbursement yes um any leave that is taken for one of the qualifying reasons in the policy we are allowed to use our esser funds for that and code that specifically so it takes it away from the other dollars that we would use to pay for leave on a normal sick day or personal day is this policy for just this year is it in perpetuity it is for just this year it expires at the end of this school year yes already 10 in place it would be adding an additional five it's tonight's
024privilege my my questions were about funding but you already answered that word any more discussion or do i have a motion how many staff do you think this impacts like right now um about 60 of our staff have taken some coveted leave um about 430 i believe was the number have taken um at least five days and 120 or so have taken their maximum of 10. so out of the 120 like some number of those have probably gone over yes yes so what happens if when they do go over their regular signal so if they've used all of their cova days and then they've used all of their sick days if they're a certified employee they go into what we call sub doc days so they're still paid their salary their daily rate of pay
025minus the cost of a sub so they would still get some um pay for those days and there's 15 sub doc days for classified staff once they use all of their sick days they do go into doc status or vacation days if they have vacation days too they could use those but i do see it as because the final decision on this one is not with us correct it is with a step i mean the entire staff has to vote on it where you're giving them an opportunity to vote on it so that is a thought it's still an opportunity can you tell me just a little bit about like the process like of coming up with this like what group was involved in coming up with us like sure so um the original covet
026leave let's go back to um march and even august of 2020. originally coveted leave was mandated by both the federal government and the state government i believe those provisions expired in december of 2020 um but many districts then came around and said hey this leave is expiring but we're still experiencing covet leave um so they came up with their own policies um that largely mirrored the federal and state policies and so the language of the policy stems from what we had originally that was required and we tweaked it a little bit because we've learned a lot over the last two years and some of the language didn't make a lot of sense um our policy specifically um has been shared with ppc um and just um among colleagues and peers and other districts have we've
027shared language language of policies to kind of all have similar they're not all exactly the same but similar language and provisions i meant specifically adding the five days like what group like was it brought from the building level yeah we um dr cleveland and i um and and others begin getting questions um specifically in the last month of hey you know i've already used x number of days or i've already used this many days what happens if i get um covet is there gonna be additional leave um and so dr cleveland brought it forward and asked that we put it before the ppc personnel policy committee and personal policy committee had asked about are there going to be additional days so that is how we landed on the um expanding it five additional is days
028the omicron search started way up and there was fear about oh my goodness what happens if and so the thought process was this take care of our employees and having these s for dollars that is a designated approved way to track it and if we use those ester dollars for the people who have had coveted or who have been quarantined even though that's off now there's still people who may be positive and could impact their families but it won't be a whole lot so right now she's right 104 employees have used 10 days 413 have used five or more between five and ten so that's not a huge amount the interesting part about that is we do pay out of esther and that saves our local dollars so it's a win for the district 2
029that way and it also protects our employees so we were thinking in that regard one thing to mention too although the quarantines have been pulled back for public schools and many child care facilities are still doing that um it's kind of unclear on the requirements for the daycare um facilities and i mean i can just say from personal experience i've used seven coveted leave days and no one in my family has had covet but because of quarantine and child care issues which is what i think we saw a lot with the employees who were reaching out having gone over their days so last year and we had a pretty extensive approval process and that everyone came to me with documentation and i've looked at it and approved it and what we found is that it
030was really difficult and there was a lot of back and forth of you know this doesn't have your date your name this doesn't have the date and this year what we did is we have the employee and sign an affirmation form it's a google form online they're saying that they affirm that their reason for leave is one of the reasons listed in the policy and that they'll provide documentation if asked you didn't want to do 3 000 confirmations in a month it was overwhelming um one of what really spawned that was and the home test coming about right towards the end of the last school year when the home test came on the scene you could get a picture of a positive test online and we don't know if it's i mean it just became
031the approval process became obsolete basically because we weren't really approving anything mr hayes do you mind to come to the microphone [Laughter] you know just like everyone we were watching our omicron numbers and they were just we were having a lot of employees uh have another surge of absences due to kovid and so that was part of our thinking and then the governor now has come out and relaxed the quarantining which wasn't in place at the time so between missing for omicron or having to quarantine we knew some of our employees would need more than 10 days potentially just as kendra has stated she's already used seven but nobody's gotten sick in our house yet um we think that because of these we we think that we think that with the quarantine changes and with
032the omicron going down we don't think it'll be used very much we just hated to penalize those through no fault of their own they had to miss work because of quarantining and uh so i just can't cut to the chase can we manage it and keep keep keep an eye on it and not let it get abused you bad you you bet i i think we can even through the surge it doesn't appear through the data that we've collected that our employees are abusing yeah i'm not saying we are when you manage people sure that's just that's part of it well i think not you know our limited sub capacity and we're just trying to i mean there's a lot of things and we do allow substitutes to use it and that's a question that
033we've gotten quite a bit um so it's an encouragement for subs to continue to come knowing that if they do have to go home because they've been exposed that there's some paid leave involved for them i'm okay with it if it's going into it yes do i have a mission i'll move it okay then we'll get three people okay take forever to get one debbie started okay i make a motion that we approve the covet leave amendment um as to its update dated february 8 2022. i have a motion by miss creek a second by mr ramos to approve the coveted policy as presented all those in favor all right opposed notion thank you for explaining everything to us we appreciate it i appreciate y'all um approving that i know many teachers in my building
034none of them have had covered two or three times but a lot of our teachers especially young teachers have kids in daycare and that daycare teacher got coveted they sent their little three and four and five-year-olds that haven't been vaccinated home and they had to stay home with them so i know that's come up in ppc numerous times i'm running out what are we gonna do i don't have the sick days because i had maternity and so we thoroughly appreciate you allowing us to do that and i will get a vote form sent out um and the next day to the staff and be ready for the staff for mr hayes to sit down so um so our calendar vote this year we had three calendar choices um option b is the one that i
035had the most vote calendar b had 48.9 of the vote calendar a had 25 the vote and calendar c had 26.2 of the vote i knew we would have a full over 50 with having three options this year it's just not gonna get a um the main difference this year we had a little bit of a difference on christmas break by i think a day or two and then our placement of our flex days for next year but with the new state law saying we cannot meet start school until august the 22nd really had to adjust um i had some people saying why are we having to split christmas break i like having two full weeks it was having to get 40 days in each nine weeks so by starting a week later in august
036yes that pushes a week later in june so we will be coming back after memorial day this next year and i know nobody likes it um dr smith and i worked a lot we looked at the alternative option of using hours and minutes but when some more information came on those saying that we could not use ami days if we did the alternative calendar using minutes we didn't want to lose that option of having that ability to use ami days i mean look we've already had to use them for covid we've had to use them for sick days or for snow days so we just did not want to take that as an option out of our district so this is the calendar that we um most of the staff we had um almost 1550
037votes so not everybody votes but quite a few do and um this is the calendar our district has our st teachers have um voted on so we wanted to present do y'all have any questions on the calendar not for you i'd like to have some questions for little rock but yes um thank you for all the work on it i know calendars are complicated and when we throw in votes from the state legislature both for us parents athletics all of the above it makes it very complicated and we appreciate the time that has been put into this you i try to make it where i try to listen to teachers and people and and sometimes i'm like this it some things are just it is what it is um the start date or the one
038we have it should say option b at the top under springdale school district it should say option b that's the one that um is the one that was voted on does not happen it said it on the tab oh it's on the tab probably yes it's the one where christmas is the 21st yes ma'am and we come kids will come back on thursday the 5th teachers will come back on wednesday the 4th um we have a flex day on october the 14th and a flex day of pd on february the 20th most teachers picked this calendar i think because they had the flex day one in the fall and one in the spring um i put the 14th because that's war eagle we always had an issue trying to find subs on craft weekend so
039i always make sure to put the pd flex day on that day um and then a lot of times we normally do two pd's in october i moved the other pd to a monday so we didn't interrupt football on friday nights or pep rallies or anything with sports on the football so i tried to do the flex day on that friday and then the other one on a monday so it didn't interfere with football because that's it before i need to brag on miss miss just a minute she may be the most knowledgeable about how to build an academic calendar in this country and i don't mean in the state in the country she's uh been excellent she's a great partner and a great leader at gpc so thank you for have you want to
040say that publicly thank you jim thank you very much i appreciate it the thing that she gets credit for this year too is there's a flex day i believe the monday after the super bowl yes mr scott loves me for it yeah this year well and i don't know if the football is the same weekend every single time because i thought well maybe that's a good idea because we coached aspect and i spoke to today we wish the super bowl started a little earlier so people don't have to stay up so late um but i don't know if the football is always it doesn't seem like the super bowl's always the exact same weekend every year but it did fall this year not only valentine's day but super bowl weekend so yes i have several
041that love me for that [Laughter] you're welcome how long have you done this i have been on ppc for about 21 years i think now and i've been the leader for about 18 19 of those um i've been in the district for 25 years so i started um pretty quick into it i guess yes just out of high school i've been the district for 25 years i taught three years in rogers i was meaningful school yeah with school from seventh grade to 12th grade at springdale schools southwest junior high and springdale high school board any other questions i'm assuming we just have to say yes you'll have a motion make a motion to approve the 2022-2023 academic calendar option a second by mr owenb to approve the calendar is presented all those in favor aye
042aye opposed motion while he's on his way mr steckline has really done a great job with the education foundation he's partnered with some others from other school districts i think he's got some information for you and i think he's going to present you with some new information good evening board i have with me tonight uh molly willroth is molly is the uh media specialist at helen tyson she's one of our most recent grantees she's going to talk a little bit about the the grant that she's going to implement and then i'm going to give you a little bit of information about our most recent grant cycle and then talk a little bit about um the sheet that you just passed around so molly it's all yours good evening i'm molly woolroth and i am like
043mr zeklon said the library media specialist at helen tyson and i'm a very grateful recipient of an sps ef grant this year with our grant at helen tyson we are going to be able to bring an author to helen tyson to speak to our students um this year we're going to get um new york times best-selling author gordon corman um he's written almost 100 books for middle school and teens um his first book he actually wrote as a seventh grader it was his seventh grade writing project when he was in seventh grade back in the 70s so i'm sure the kids will get to hear about that and that's really cool for me um to be able to share that with them um his books are always some of our most popular books we have
044countless in our library and they are usually humor is his genre that he's most famous for um also includes though he spans across several genres mystery adventure even historical fiction one of his latest books is unplugged and um it's actually set in arkansas and so that's a draw also for him to promote him we are going to be able to um purchase one of these books for all of our kids so all of our students will get one of the one of his books um he's going to do two presentations a sixth grade full presentation a seventh grade full presentation to all of our students and then he's going to meet with um a smaller group in the library and they'll have a meet and greet and where they'll get to and work with him
045as well um we have leading up to this we have been promoting him since the beginning of the year with just lots of book talks and sharing his website um we've got book challenges and book passport activities going on we've had lots of displays we've purchased actually got booked copies of books for our advisory teachers to do read-alouds just to get everyone ready so we've been pumping up all the kids best we can to get ready for this and we're just super excited he's our we've had author visits in the past and we've always had wonderful ones but this is definitely our biggest name all the kids know who he is so we're very excited and very grateful to you though grant foundation any questions for molly and her in her project can you tell
046us when it is march 2nd and that was something i put i didn't flip my note paper over because i was going to invite all of you're all very welcome to come to helen tyson on march 2nd and i can send out invitations to you as well um because it hopefully will be a very exciting day so we're very we're very excited about it i am but i'm i'm an author fan but um the kids are really looking forward to it as well so yes i will send that out to you as well thank you it's always fun to see the result you know michelle it really is fun and the hardest thing about um when we get our grant requests in so the foundation now has moved to two grant cycles a year we
047fund in december and then we fund again in may so the next grant cycle will open on march 1st it will close on may 1st we'll convene our grant committee vet those grants we'll make those awards right before the last day of school the money will be available for teachers to procure all the items they need for their project projects programs over the summer and be ready to implement in the fall the december cycle works very similarly um we just in our december grant cycle um we funded 22 grants the total was 29 380 so one of our largest single grant cycles we've had in quite a while if you'll look at the uh the sheet that went around to you um there's a couple there's a couple items in there that we're really pleased
048with um the the first of which is at the very top because we you know you want your big numbers at the top um this grant cycle surpassed we we tipped over the two million dollar mark of total funds given back to the district in the form of grants and scholarships you can go down and see where that's broken up at a million four hundred twenty eight thousand dollars in grants and six hundred and eighty six thousand dollars in scholarships that's twenty that's 528 individual scholarships paid now we'll tell you that's not 528 kids because about half of the scholarship funds that we hold are in four year renewable scholarships so one of those counts for four awards if the if if a child receives that throughout their college career um that does come up
049to over 250 total classroom grants awarded the number i'm really most pleased about is in the lower right hand corner the 2021 grants the the red bar is the number of grant requests we received throughout the year and the orange bar is um the number that we were fund that we were able to fund and you can see that there were only five that we received throughout the year that we were not that we did not fund 38 represents the largest number of grants we've ever funded in a single year so um i think that speaks a lot to um we're getting better at vetting the grants but we're getting better at communicating the types of grants that we want to fund and district employees are getting better at asking for specific things that they
050know are fundable the other number that i'm real pleased about um is the scholarship number we were down a little bit down to 69 kids cope had a huge impact in that um but we're we're on track to fund between 95 and 100 000 a year in student scholarships and uh if you'll look up and do the math it took from our first year 2011 all the way to 2000 through 2014 before we were awarded 100 000 ever cumulative and so now we're at about a hundred thousand a year [Applause] you know what i think would be neat to know at the end or grant cycle is to know the number of students impacted by the grants that were given in that so on average we hit about a fourth of all the kids in
051the district in every grant cycle so in rough numbers we hit around five to six seven thousand kids a year a year in our grants that we fund um we're currently working on a project to disaggregate all of our scholarship numbers to get a better feel for what our recipients look like and have looked like over the years and so i'll be glad to come back at a later date and report that back out to you but we're learning a lot more about our grants and our grantees we're trying to find better ways to communicate that we're trying to trent has been a huge asset and pushing out i think you guys have seen the results of all of our stuff as being pushed out we're getting a lot more response with that and so
052um we you know that that has worked very very well and we're very grateful for that partnership so i'm open any questions any thoughts comments outstanding well thank you all for your support and if you ever need anything we're just right across the way come see us thank you very much i just found out right before the board meeting that there is a musical that is happening tonight and some of our counselors who are here yes thank you for letting us know though let's just we can skip to that section real quick too if you want you guys want to come home we can just kind of go in reverse yeah come on up here and just line up on either side spit my water out if you want several of you want to come
053okay um tonight i have the distinct honor of recognizing our school counselors uh governor asa hutchinson proclaimed this week february 7th through the 27th through the 11th as national school council week in arkansas to focus public attention on the unique contribution of school counselors within the u.s school system and how students are different as a result of what they do national school counseling week highlights the tremendous impact school counselors can have in helping students meet their college and career aspirations and the governor encourages our citizens to recognize school counselors employed in public schools throughout arkansas for their significant contributions to their children's futures and i got to tell you i get to work with these individuals weekly and they are amazing folks i mean from anzaga at sonora middle school to heather baron who let
054me just tell you who's taught me everything i know about scheduling i mean she she i called i had her on speed dial when i was administrator uh to erica fuentes at georgia elementary to um corlene flanagan and she's at george elementary's if i missed something tell me george elementary sonora middle school dtsy and shs and virtual that's right and then katie jenkins who's at shaw who's just over the top and then anik downing who the list would not be complete without any so i just tell you i get to work with these guys every day and we meet once a month for the last what two years and i'll just say i'm honored to be a part of their team and to work with them and they do amazing things for not only students
055but for families and staff as well each and every day that are just amazing things i'd like the board if you have any questions for these amazing individuals just to ask away or if you guys have anything you'd like to share yeah i do have a question what makes you want to be a school counselor i mean did you know it was going to be as crazy and as hard and as i mean especially during a cove with you [Laughter] i all go ahead and speak i i feel like as a professor i get to address the needs of the whole child and so i'm not limited to not that any teacher is limited by the needs that they address but i think we find the most success when we can support families find community
056resources that help and and encourage those kids to see their full potential so i feel like i get to do that every day for the whole school and then that's great i taught for 12 years and coached and so there when i left coaching after having children there was that void and the school counseling torch really helped me fulfill that and continue to coach our kids through just bigger things and more diverse things than just the sports that i was involved with i've been a teacher too and a building administrator so i had a very unique perspective on the kind of support that teachers need in the building to be the best that they can be so counseling became a passion for me because not only could i make a difference in the individual child's
057life but you also do become support for families you become support for teachers and that makes the whole system work better so that's why it was attractive to me i moved here from jonesboro my husband novelis and dr jeff flanagan from square george junior high so i was an administrator for seven years and came here to springdale from jonesboro and came back into the school johnson role so for me it's been really eye-opening um leaving the world administration and coming back into counseling and hoping that i appreciated the school councils that i had in my building when i was there in hillsboro and so it's been an honor to be here and just working with all the school counselors here in springdale and working with the system and mr darnell has just been amazing so
058thank you so do you like northwest arkansas i do i really do it's been great but we're definitely glad you're here i love connecting with the students forming relationships with them their parents their families the teachers all of our staff members i they just being able to address the whole child and to provide that additional support for them socially and emotionally and adjust you know resource-wise connecting with social workers admin other counselors other colleagues staff members it's just i love it that's the only way i can put it i love this work i love our kids i love this district and that's that's what i'm here with i think it's a truly all of us here represent a whole lot of education a whole lot of years of toil and trouble and and solving problems
059because lots of times that's what we spend a lot of our day doing is helping it might just be one student or it might be a group of students but we are the the problem solvers of our building i think more than anything else and so this is a very unique job and um not just anybody can do this job but um but i do think it's got a lot of blessings and a lot of you know some days you go home and you're just like you know i'm so happy and some days you go home and you're just like oh my gosh i can't have another day but i will say this more than anything in the last five years girl and really not even five they haven't been here very long but the
060the addition of social workers for us has been the best and most impactful addition to our district and i will continue to educate please please please when it comes back around where we're going to talk about adding more social workers we want more because i mine is awesome alina anima is mine and and she has helped me more than anything to release me from doing so much for the family i can call her and she can she hooks up my families with whatever resources they need and that frees me up to do a lot of other things and so i i would highly recommend how many whenever we can hire more social workers [Applause] um they're amazing and the teamwork is incredible but i'm just so thankful to be in a district that i feel
061like supports us as counselors and values social emotional learning and values our staff and our students so highly that i feel like i have the freedom to do my job the best that i know how to do it um because i've never been anything that's supported here so the social worker idea is from these two people right here exactly and a couple three four years ago what do you think about this idea what's the worst that could happen if it didn't work and look and i wanna i'm gonna emphasize that word team these folks work with our social workers as a team group it is it's amazing the work that you can do as a team member one maybe not so much but when you get a team together you can make you can make
062a difference in a family's life we are incredibly thankful for all of you and all of the rest of our counselors throughout the district and i hope that throughout this week and this month you see what an incredible blessing you are to your students your families and your schools thank you thank you thank you guys [Applause] tonight i'd like to recognize some more of our community partners that have uh moved forward with some donations from mayborn usa incorporated they donated two pallets of supplies to our students and families uh nemita labs um also donated supplies and samaritan community center i want to make sure i'm being real clear about this one 31 345 snack packs since the beginning of the school year 31 000 that's amazing and also just some more others natural state pest
063control if you don't know trent rager i highly encourage you to pick up the phone and call him he is amazing for our school district anytime a family needs any kind of service he steps up and does it absolutely no questions asked amazing individual in our community community clinic judge simmings judd simmingson he's also amazing they donated a lot of supplies to us just in the last month or so and then harps foods employees and debbie creek uh donating another thousand dollars to the tree house pantry to support students and families in the school district and we keep that that harps food shelf full of food and as our social workers nurses and counselors come in they can gather that up and take that to families which has been a really blessing for us another
064big blessing for us has been on the walmart foundation grant that i can now make official that we were just awarded 329 thousand nine hundred dollars for to the treehouse pantry for the walmart foundation grant and that will allow us to purchase fresh produce and meats and whole grains a refrigerated box truck with the treehouse that treehouse logo that you see there will be on the side of that on that box truck and then also a van with the logo wrap on it as well so those will be two fantastic additions to our uh school district so now our social workers counselors and nurses won't have to travel to the treehouse pantry we'll also be able to fund two cultural food warehouse liaisons and i know that's a big mouthful but we're just calling them
065cfwls right now and i know i know another another acronym we are acronym crazy in education i know that for sure um we are really excited about this because we'll be able to have a delivery schedule much like walmart delivery so we'll deliver out to schools and uh that'll be phase three of the treehouse pantry of of getting to phase five and so we're super excited about that we're also super excited about next week on the 16th a drive-thru food giveaway event for 400 families on that date i think we're about 260 signed up right now so um any ones that we really shoot for 10 families per school and then any extras that we have we'll open that up with mr trent jones has always been a great partner with us to open that
066up and allow any of our staff that would like to sign up for that as well just some really great things going on in the district and i want to thank dr cleveland for his vision for this i remember he probably doesn't remember this but we all went over to that treehouse pantry building and he's like here it is and i remember walking in there and i was like yeah i'm not so sure about this but i'm going to tell you his vision was critical for this to happen and it is there and it's happening and making a difference in in students lives so thank you all for everything that you do and if you have any questions i'd be happy to answer any of those so the cdfo's have to have cdl i knew
067you were gonna ask something like that uh yes that would be a good thing i hadn't thought about it but yes i would say yes anything else if they have to have cdls now they'll be they'll be cfwls with a cdl [Laughter] thank you guys oh sure no problem okay board the first item that i have for this evening is the january financial report as i stated to you on more than one occasion um at this time of year our revenues are ahead of expenditures but by the end of the year we'll be all caught back up but our revenues are looking good about it uh in line with where they have been traditionally uh our expenditures are right there as well so i'm feeling really good about this year so far but if you
068have any specific questions i'll be happy to answer them i could bore you with some specific facts but i mean we're looking good forward any questions do you have a mission to approve the financials as presented i have a motion by mr bell in a second by mr hutchinson to approve the january 2022 financials all those in favor opposed question passes thank you this wasn't on the agenda but i just found out this number today so i wanted to share it with you um our second quarter we we've just had to report adm stands for average daily membership that's how we're funded and so it's kind of you can think of it as enrollment that's that's as close as it can be so in 1920 you can see our quarter one enrollment was 22-131 for
069grades k through 12. and that's our high point um and then the quarter two went down about 40 students in 1920 which is typical we tip we tend to lose students uh as the year progresses um in 2020 21 which was covid the first year of covet you can see that our first quarter dropped around 300 students over the previous year the second quarter dropped an additional 40 which was typical now we move into 2122 i was we were all hoping that we would rebound and head back to where we were pre-pandemic that did not happen in many other districts that did happen just so you know so we're a little unusual in that we were down another 150 students in the first quarter compared to last year first quarter however quarter two has increased
070you can see it's up 62 students over quarter 1 which is different from the previous two years and it's outside the norm a little for us i just found out this number today so i can't in fact i haven't even shared with dr cleveland um so i don't have specifics as to well why are we up i'm just thankful we're up and i'll take it so hopefully we're headed back toward pre-pandemic numbers that's my hope are those numbers spread across them that's just it i i just called um jacob talking about the quarter two with quarter or even with quarter one did were we seeing numbers across the board or was there a specific grade that was yeah i i'm sorry i'm not prepared to answer that i can tell you that our kindergarten class
071is larger than last year last year we were around 1475 which is the lowest it's been since i've been here um and this year i haven't looked recently but i know it's around 1575 to 1600. so i was hoping for a even more than that but once again it's headed in the right direction so it'll be interesting to watch what happens over the next year they'll come back to school where they don't right right anyway i wanted to share that it's good news we're headed back in the right direction so i'm i'm excited about that so um can we go to the next slide there dean the next item that i have for you i'm just sharing with you you know um the voters approved for us to uh refinance our debt and we did
072that with a series a back in july and so uh series b will be the remainder of our debt to be refinanced um and keep in mind that at the end of this at the end of both of these series it will have generated 90 million dollars that we are using to uh for the projects uh springdale high school um southwest junior high central junior high and then george elementary media center those were the four projects that we were going to be able to use this 90 million in order to take advantage of the 35 i'm round numbers 35 million of state partnership funding in order for us to have those four projects so this is the timeline we're projected to have the second sale on february 23rd the board would sign the documents uh
073at the next meeting and then the closing date would be on march 30th we talked a little about uh is now the right time should we try to delay you know what's what's the best time but they we are seeing a slight increase or creep up in rates and so we felt like we needed this was the original timeline and we decided it was best just to stay with that any questions on on that all right um so be looking forward to hearing about that next month we'll be able to share with you the rates that we received as well as get some documents signed so next is mr white hello board dr cleveland um we're far enough along on the uh construction that we feel comfortable to give a um extended um report tonight
074so if you guys have questions you can just just ask me and i should be able to answer i have baldwin and shell and flint co here so if there's answers i don't have they they will have so first of all is central junior high so this is just a rendering of of the exterior of the building um so we did pass large scale last week at the city of springdale so we have that approval the architects are are processing and finalizing the plans and we're going to send those to the state facilities division state fire marshal health department on february 9th for their approval this normally takes about two weeks to get their approval back you know it could take longer but but we're planning on two weeks we're working with the architects and
075the in the baldwin shell um and the building admin to resolve a few issues that that we're going to have after demolition starts so at central those issues are going to be parking athletics the kitchen and then a few classroom spaces so what we've done we we've already put in a 40-foot storage container for agri to use for the equipment that they don't need every day so they'll switch that equipment in and out baldwin a shell is going to be adding a temporary parking area on the west side of the school because we will lose some parking once a demolition starts so that that will help gain some parking i've i've talked with dr lofton about a weight weight room area for the kids to use for the next year um we've i've talked to
076to dr lofton about um making classroom spaces in the building for the three teachers that are going to be relocated uh we don't think that's going to be a problem i talked with baldwin and shell today it looks like we're going to keep the gym to be able to use that for practices throughout the year we're going to try to get in there this summer remodel it and have it ready for when school starts so we'll never use we'll won't use lose the use of the gym at central um i've been in talks with wayne there's a possibility we'll have to play the games out at harbor because of the lack of parking at central so we'll we'll have more talks on that once the schedules get verified um i have been working with gina
077smith on creating a new kitchen area at central so we don't lose any food service options for the kids you guys have anything else um any questions for central this is showing uh just the layout of central when it's finalized so that last one faces huntsville that last picture um if you that that faces guten song so so yeah if you're on guten song you'll be looking right at the main office is where the sea is so can i and so far of course mr kenny's here they've done some really good work value engineering the building at the same time keeping the building standard very high and is it appropriate to say that we're a little under budget disease which that's new that's a new thing so we we're really proud of that and we
078appreciate ball and shell's partnership yes he's doing an outstanding job yes but that's your problem [Laughter] now we have overnighting and he's hedging yeah so once we get the approval from the state um it'll take about a month to for the bids to go out and everything to get back for us to get bids sure okay because i want to so the main gym you can see where it's at it's actually going to be the closest to huntsville other than the cafeteria you know so the building's moving south it's like we flipped the h legs to the other side and it is two-story but we're starting everything this way first we're starting south of the main gym so june 1st if if we get all the approvals on time we will actually demo demo the
079kitchen the auxiliary gym uh the agra room and then two classrooms to the west those will get demoed this summer when nobody's there and then we'll put up construction walls seal the building and then we'll build everything south of there so is this is this the original building right here that's the original yep also board the building will be asbestos free which that's a good thing okay okay nothing else okay this that facility is still a miracle that it's even happening in my opinion yeah yeah and that one's going to be the the toughest because it's it's just landlocked we're the only piece of the property that we're not going to disturb is the practice i'm field the coach appreciates that yeah yeah that pulled in and out of huntsville that's terrible yeah that that's
080gonna be gone let's okay so this is uh southwest um it's the same we've made it through large-scale development with city of springdale the architects are finalizing the plans and we're planning on sending those down to the state on february 17th um we're working with the architects and the and the cms and the building staff to resolve a few issues there also their issues are going to be athletics band choir and then a few classrooms so we have met with the mayor and his staff about using the youth center for practices for for southwest junior high and that looks very promising um like central we've been working with wayne um the possibility of playing all the games at harbor we've met with a building we will be meeting with the building principal this week to
081look at a solution for bannon choir possibly an area in the existing building we're trying to secure some portable classrooms for that facility and then we have already put two 20-foot storage containers there for them to start putting unused equipment in so we can get it out of the construction zone so where in the original building is there big enough space to sing and demand well we're gonna look we're gonna look at several options uh possibly uh putting in some movable walls um possibly library i don't we're just gonna have to look there's other options we have you know we want to keep it as close as we can just so it's convenient for the classes it's hard to do band choir and portable so we thought it would be best to have them in
082building so since the building's being removed later anyway if there are non-load-bearing walls we could take some walls out and create larger spaces under the current roof that's kind of what we were thinking yeah i can like detect the panels that's in the existing we can remove and reinstall temporarily into an area if that's what makes the most sense we want to make sure that the arts programs are not negatively impacted at all right they're they're a huge priority for us and southwest we will be tearing we'll be demoing the south campus everything but the main gym um but we will be at putting back a uh the the athletic building we'll be getting it put back in um before school starts i mean like the field house yep rebuilding that down by the football
083football yeah it gets relocated so that will help with some of the issues they call it lake southwest or whatever that's yeah yeah there's some drainage issues you can go to the next slide so so this this layout it's it's a longer building because we have to keep the original north building in use and keep the kids safe and then we have the property line on the south that that butts up to the church so that's the reason this building is is the shape it is is because we're having to work around property lines and existing buildings so you can see the main jam the main gems on the left and then that those are new locker rooms to the west of it so that's the reason that gym won't be accessible it's because we
084wouldn't have a safe path for students to get in and out of it we'll be doing constructions on the east and the west side of it and when we tear that building down we're going to have issues having utilities to run that that existing space the office the the office um it's right in right yes yeah to the left of that the purple okay that's your main entrance yeah oh we're leaving it there okay so this building it will also come back to the south and it'll go over to the east more than the the existing building so the new the new uh locker rooms football locker rooms and athletic lockers will be to the east of this building so the the press box and the track and everything's east east of this building so
085that's what's being built over the summer yes ma'am and we just had a long process on this one and we're just under budget which is also new [Laughter] it's just so rare i mean it is a complicated process but it is an amazing for those of us that went to these schools as stone age yep i mean seriously they're gonna to just think about i mean it it it makes me so excited to see that hadn't been touched in forever they're gonna be very nice once it's done it's it's going to be a challenge for a couple years but it'll be well worth it when it's done you will see progress quickly yeah yeah once we get the approvals i mean we're planning on on moving dirt as soon as possible even before school gets
086out because there's a lot of areas that we can get to and work on but while class is going so southwest has a lot more area you know for us to to move and do and do work in and not disturb the school synthetic yep it really it's if we can get that final approval then we can get going no demolition until after not on the buildings we're not doing any we're not going to disturb any of the the teachers and the athletics yeah we've got all the testing blocked out so if we do construction those days will be no work during testing yeah so what are the completion dates on those projects summer of 2024. we want to we want to be able to have a little time for us to get the furniture
087and everything in place before school starts what's this do what is and we've got all those deadlines down that's like 30 percent so we've got the deadlines that we have to meet for for the state and then they will come up the fall of 2024 and inspect everything that we've built to make sure we built what we said was going to build okay okay so this is uh springdale high school um dusty's gave us a few new renderings this actually has elevation change from the existing parking lot to get into the to the gym and and the classroom wing so this one is also it's went through large scale with the city they're going to be submitting it to little rock on february 18th and then our main concerns here are athletics pe space and
088then classroom space so we have four portable uh classrooms on site that we're working on to have those ready by august um so the uh so you're in the you would be in the east parking lot looking back to the north um yeah so yeah the the section that there to the right that has the balconies that's looking directly onto the football field so so by keeping that existing parking lot that's where we get the 30 inches of elevation change that's why there's stairs and ramps to get up to the lobby we expect over time to the parking lot yeah so and we're working with the shs administrators to try to find a place for the uh athletics to practice and have pe space throughout the year and like i said we already have trailers
089on site and we're getting ready for staff so archer is basically on campus well that's you can go to the next one so there's the interior of it all the academic wings two story yeah on the bottom of the screen that's your academic wing it's got an upstairs and a down and then you've got locker rooms and concession that wrap around the uh the and then there there is a two-story part of the main gym even in our last meeting meeting with uh co and mr graham with core architecture there's a second story viewing balcony that you can see the football field and we've come up with the idea for dusty to take that second story viewing area and reach out to the student section to look into the gym as well so it's new
090i don't think you see it there but the rendering he shot me as a text the other day amazing so i look forward to see how they finish that out so if you hold the state tournament it's also hospitality opportunity and dusty's bringing a lot of the auxiliary gym into this gym as well yeah some some of the wood some of the stone that's on the front will will be in this building so i think you met with dusty didn't you randy so he he's doing he's doing right in this project yep he is okay so this one this one's a little further behind schedule than the others we've been focusing on the three major ones this one's a smaller renovation edition so it's at george elementary so this would be coming right out of
091the front of the school and so we've been working with the core architects and then milestone on this and i've worked with the building staff at admin to to finalize the plans and get everything like they need it so this actually we've got the drawings done it's sent over to milestone so they can start the estimating process to see what kind of budget we're looking at like a um or a rock those are architectural metal panels and you go to the next rendering so there um there's about a 30 foot separation between the existing building and then this edition and this will be library media center and office space and the blue section above that is the existing library and what i talked with uh mr slope was making we can make that into two
092classrooms and so we can gain two classrooms there and then if we remodel the old counseling area that would become a third extra classroom so he would gain three classrooms and the new space and then we also looked at adding a freezer cooler at george elementary because those are undersized so while we're in there working we can do that work too and like i said this is it's pretty early stages of of design but it's going to be a pretty easy project to get going and finish up fairly quickly especially compared to the other three yeah yeah okay okay now in those experiences depending on what school district you're in that's a that's a major project that is a major project it's about 8 700 square feet it just feels small compared to other ones
093we probably have the most aggressive i would say the most aggressive building program currently in a compact period of time the rock's doing some really great things trying to reconfigure doing some other things but as far as last time was when we did the three all at the same time harbor hell stern and hunt i remember yeah so as long as we've addressed you know central and southwest as long as we regress making sure that we keep the arts in place keep the athletics in place and feed them and feed them yes i think we're going to be okay yeah so we've we've been working on all of that coming up with the best solution we can and i think they're all doable and making sure we communicate with all the interested parties yeah the
094coaches and the band directors and all that good stuff yeah a lot of this we've been waiting to get um like definite schedules because everything you know is there's a lot of unknowns on material and i mean even at the state what we're worried about all the districts have to report their master plan on february 1st and then that's when we're asking for approval so we're afraid they may be behind down there to to get our approvals so it could it could push everything out um so that's a lot of the uh the reason we haven't done a a big update on these is just because of the unknowns but we're so close now to the approvals i feel pretty comfortable updating if you have any questions for these gentlemen that are here lincoln baldwin
095they're great and i have to brag on them too because they have done really great work to try to get us what we believe is an accurate budget because you know us saying it's under budget that's based on john's skill and patrick's skill protect really creating creating an understanding for us to have a legitimate budget and we want to be very transparent and exactly what it cost exactly how much it out we're going to outfit where those funds come from and present it to you for you to to review patients all right thanks good evening board whoa not quite tall enough um first of all i just want to take a second to complement jeremy i know there's an entire enormous team of people working on this but for me being over secondary curriculum and
096instruction all of these construction projects impact everything that i do and it's nice to have jeremy to work alongside him every day and to work in conjunction with our building administrators to be so forward-thinking and problem-solving and you know for jeremy to come in and say hey we'll figure out what walls we need to blow out or what temporary walls we need to put up to be able for our kids to still have fine arts and athletics and the things that make them want to come to school and obviously food but i think um just to have the focus that dr cleveland and the whole team and jeremy and everyone has on meeting the needs of our kids even in the midst of something like this nothing goes to the side and that's what makes
097springdale special so i feel blessed to be here so i wanted to say that um also as promised i have a quick clifton strengths highlight for you guys tonight and i thought it was appropriate to pick jeremy's number one strength um tonight since he was given such a comprehensive report and so um we'll be talking about the arranger tonight and so jeremy white is not only not the only one whose number one strength is a ranger melissa fink also has that as her number one and then mr hutchinson mr ramos and trent jones also have a ranger in their top five okay an arranger you are a conductor when faced with a complex situation involving many factors you enjoy managing all of the variables aligning and realigning them until you are sure you have arranged
098them in the most productive configuration possible in your mind there is nothing special about what you are doing you are simply trying to figure out the best way to get things done but others lacking this theme will be in awe of your ability how can you keep so many things in your head at once they will ask how can you stay so flexible so willing to show of well-laid plans in favor of some brand new configuration that has just occurred to you but you cannot imagine behaving in any other way you are a shining example of effective flexibility whether you are changing travel schedules at the last minute because a better fare has popped up or mulling over just the right combination of people and resources to accomplish a new project from the mundane to
099the complex you are always looking for the perfect configuration of course you are at your best in dynamic situations confronted with the unexpected some complain that plans devised with such care cannot be changed while others take refuge in the existing rules or procedures you don't do either of those instead you jump into the confusion devising new options hunting for new paths of lease resistance and figuring out new partnerships because after all there might just be a better way and so for all the all of our arrangers i hope that spoke to you um and so next on our agenda is a very exciting career and technical education update and i'm so happy to have our director of cte kelly williamson to be able to come before you this evening and i'm just gonna yes applause
100for kelly i cannot tell you like you're about to see the breadth and complexity of all the programs that kelly helps us lead and facilitate this lady is amazing i learn from her every single day and i just i appreciate you so much kelly thanks for being here thanks i appreciate it um i love what i do and it's um a pleasure to be here the next slide because yeah i'm having to talk and do that at the same time um yeah so this is february right and this is um been a new proclamation by our governor that this is cte month that is celebrated in a lot of different ways so we there are five different areas and agriculture family consumer sciences business stem and trade and industry which can include anything from our
101industrial maintenance programs to our welding to nursing and um education well what else am i thinking of lots of different things aviation is a new one um so we're just honored that governor hutchinson would recognize that and we are celebrating it in lots of different ways um on the next slide the first document is all of those underlined are links and um the first one tells a little bit about the programs that we offer in springdale and then out to the side it will have what school offers them because we don't duplicate all of our cte programs so if you wanted to open that you could see what we have then individually i have listed through school of innovation harbor and springdale what they offer in a little different way so if does that link
102open on the first one the sbs cte pathways i hope it does i did access to anyone so do you all have access to that on the slides do you all have abilities to look at what that i have to click okay so we do have 125 cte teachers in our district and if you were to take 75 students which a lot of our teachers have more than that and multiply that out you get over 9 000 students that are in cte programs so you can see agriculture we have five different programs business we have five different ones family consumer sciences lots i think there's six there um the one that we're probably the newest that we're most excited about is this pre-educator program we want to grow our own in springdale we have a
103very diverse population and we want these students to come back and teach we want them to get their paraprofessional we want them to come back while they're in college whether that be at in whack and there will be opportunities for them to get concurrent credit while they are at each of our three high school locations so we're really excited about growing our own and this is something that the state is doing that's new we are going to have opportunity for them to get what's called certified teaching assistants so they could come in and sub they could come in and maybe do lots of different things for us so we're working um trent jones i want to thank you for making me do this because you are the one that's always bragging about what we're doing
104you're like kelly what are you doing and i'm like i'm doing a lot of stuff trent and he's like well you need to show it and i was like okay so i appreciate trent making me um summarize all of that and look at it it's really kind of overwhelming to think about all the great things that are being done the young man that spoke to you at the beginning of today was actually part of the stem engineering program so we're really excited about what that has done for him and there's even more through the trade and industry the uh yeah i should have said trent av um taking film and our tv productions he is leading the state and there are other states that are sitting up and paying attention to what's being done and
105that is directly related to trent jones he is helping write curriculum for a new course in media communications for the state and he's just he's just amazing and i really appreciate it's like the trent show today everybody's saying trent this and that but he really is the one that puts all of it together and showcases what we're doing so i just really appreciate him um the next yes you can exit out of that the next one if you just want to it doesn't matter which one they're all formatted the same it is a little bit different look at the bottom there's a tab for each of the five program areas that we offer and you can see the course codes there is a link to what the student will actually learn the frameworks or now
106we're calling them standards and so a student could look at that their parents could look at it you can see what grade they can take it in and so it's really um really cool all the opportunities our kids have computer science is a big topic and we're actually meeting with all of our computer science teachers from the junior highs to the high schools to talk about best practices to make sure that when we have students as we will do move from one school to another high school that they are able to communicate with one another and pick up and say you know what where's the student okay we're going to plug them in because we're doing exactly the same thing at harvard that we're doing at springdale so we're really having some good conversations we
107have some excellent excellent teachers and i just think now we're going to get some opportunities to bring in more business and industry and hopefully covid will allow us to have some internships so that we can get some students working we really that was our a number one thing that we had with it was internships but because of covet it's really kind of um halted that but it's coming back around and all of the frameworks the last option for a student we would like for them as seniors to be able to have at least an hour of career practicum where they have taken a um three classes within a program of study and then that senior year they go out and work and get some job experience so and some certifications along the way so that's
108all i've got should i go over my five minutes trent he's watching the ball game we're up by 10. [Laughter] but um does anyone have any questions great you're yes amazing thank you okay just scared hello i'm good it's good to see all of you i'm madeline lomax the president of springdale education association and so i'm here to do a report on some things that we've done within sca recently i was able to meet with dr cleveland for just a little bit before school and gain a bigger perspective on what's going on within the district and something that dr cleveland does every time i see him he's like madeline why are you here what are you doing and i really it puts me on the spot sometimes but it also it also always brings me
109back to my purpose and so i wanted just to highlight that right here that our purpose to be here is the power of connection i saw a quote recently that said every child is one caring adult away from becoming a success story and that's why we're all here to turn our kids lives into success stories and to help them so i'm here because education is a gift that no one can take away and public education is a priority so that each and every young person in our community has an opportunity to learn because of that we really want our kids to be in school and sca is here to advocate because we love our students and our students need their educators we were very thankful with some of the things that were brought up at
110ppc early to mid-january we had a big scare with omicron a lot of people were out a lot of subs missing teachers missing students missing i heard of elementary classes with only six kids in their classroom and as a teacher you're like mama hin to those kids so it breaks your heart to know that they're homesick and that they're they can't be with you there to learn so we found that teachers can ask their principals for their masks and that the district is willing to provide masks to teachers and kids that need them or want them that it was proposed to add five additional covid leave days that if that's approved we would really appreciate it i think that would be huge for our teachers who have been sick especially the ones who have been
111sick multiple times and had or had to take off because of family members with illness and then just continued support with subs and bus driver shortages we know that the effects of worker shortages are something that it's prevalent in our society and it's affecting the students their families the teachers the admin at our buildings and admin all the way up so we're continuing to try to be considerate of that aea at the state level has been working down in little rock to protect teachers health insurance and we're asking for support that the loss of the wellness benefit doesn't hurt the certified or classified salaries that we could figure out a way for the district to continue covering health insurance so that it's not put back on our employees and then i just have a little
112word of encouragement so while i don't know everything that y'all have on your plates right now i do know that too often our brains fixate on the negative there's a lot of negativity going around it's easy to fall into a cycle of criticism and complaining we always like to look for the ways that we are dropping the ball so instead just want to take a second to clap for you and for everyone in the district from student to educator to admin to classified staff i see your hard work and notice all the ways that you are doing your best humaning right now through everything that's going on we aren't supposed to do it perfectly but whatever you look for you'll find i hope that you focus on the good because what you focus on you
113create more of so let's look for the good let's look for a focus on the growth that's resulted from the challenge because that's really what we all deserve so let's just clap for everybody in the district for just a minute it has been hard but i know that the only way we grow and learn is through challenge so thank you thank you for persevering through it all i think that's it yeah thank you did miss ferguson leave or she she did leave okay okay so can i have a couple of minutes of patreon thank you uh i've watched you guys over the last couple months and it's been an experience a lot of good things have happened the one thing that i spoke to dr cleveland that i see is the board the staff a
114lot of people care about the kids they want the kids to be educated they want them to learn they want them to have a normal life so thank you for pushing that and getting kids back into schools um you started by getting back into schools early then you started by by trying to get rid of the garbage out of this out of the covered world that made things harder it made it real difficult for kids to learn um there's a lot of things we one of the things i mentioned dr cleveland is um speech therapists know people who are a speech therapist there's going to be problems coming up you're hiring more the question is how do we get more normalcy back into life and i'm asking the board and the administration to start looking
115at what's in the way how can you remove those barriers to get those kids back to normal life every day you know in people's faces talking having fun because that's the normal life you mentioned academics you mentioned uh fine arts those are important things for kids and i just i see outside forces and maybe some inside forces getting in the way making it harder for you and i want to say us as a group to see normalcy in kids so thank you for your pushing i know you're good people and you're doing good work and there's a lot of you out there um continue to fight it's a great thing thank you thank you so uh so dr clayton shared with all of us maybe a month or so ago about some of the tragedy
116that's occurring in public education right now just really really disturbing information about absenteeism we've got over a million kids not in school um crime fights gun fights at school and then all the all the political pressure of the of the environment of the nation right now has bled into public education and you know public education is one at one time and i still believe it is especially in springdale arkansas one of the finest institutions ever ever created in our united states of america and so that gentleman that came tonight to lead this to start the school war meeting off tonight was the exact example of public education that you could just even you couldn't have script what he told us it's not any better right so i just want to tell you how much i
117appreciate being in springdale with a team like this and and let's call our all ourselves team members instead of employees because we're all on the same team and how fortunate we are to be in springdale to be in arkansas to be in the south and not experiencing what's happening nationally in some of these big urban areas and it's and it's really a travesty for the kids because adults are in charge of what's happening to the kids and i think we never lost sight about the importance of taking care of the whole kid and the whole family in springdale so i think that's why we have been successful for the last two years now our learning might be off which it is we all understand that that's part of us learning through the situation that we
118had so i just felt compelled to say that and how blessed we are in springdale and our team we have here and the board we have here the resource officers we have here and the community partnerships we have here you know even even the medias are on our side here because they know the good things that we do and they know we're true for honest and we have integrity so that's my patron and board comments for the night so i appreciate it it's been tough but i try not to say the word code but they maybe did i don't want to say it again so i just i really appreciate it thanks for saying that thank you dr cleveland anything else just thank you for a good night go ready fast well with that the
119meeting is adjourned and go hogs we're up by 12. you