001Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this meeting of the Kansas City Schools Board of Education for Monday, March 10th here in the heart of downtown Canton. If you're in the audience, I ask everyone to please silence your electronic devices, and would you please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance? To our families, friends, and staff, we thank you for being the best in Stark County. We're very proud of you, and we are very proud of our rich tradition here in Kansas City Schools. If you're here tonight, we welcome you. If you are online, thank you for taking the time to navigate our webpage to join us. Mr. Gruber, would you call the roll? Mr. Inaldi? Here. Mr. Kaminsky? Here. Mrs. Brown? Here. Mr. Russ? Here. Ms. Watkins is excused due to an illness. Moving right along, I'll
002make the motion to approve the agenda as written. Second. Any changes or corrections? There are several corrections this evening, Mr. President. We'll start on page 10. We need to remove the names Laura Swager and Yazvinder Young from the agenda, and the last change this evening is at the top of page 12. Under the first recommendation, we need to insert the word high after Ohio, so it reads Ohio High School Athletic Association. That's it. Thank you, Treasurer Gruber. Mr. President? Mr. Kaminsky? I would like to give a legislative report in my role as legislative liaison, and does that need to be inserted under new business? Under Section F, new business, Mr. Kaminsky will be doing his presentation. Thank you. Any other changes or corrections? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Inaldi? Aye. Mr. Kaminsky? Aye. Mrs.
003Brown? Aye. Mr. Russ? Aye. I'll make the motion to approve the minutes, February 10th, 2025, regular meeting. Any changes or corrections? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Inaldi? Aye. Mr. Kaminsky? Aye. Mrs. Brown? Aye. Mr. Russ? Aye. Moving right along, hearing of the public. Do we have anyone signed up? Yes, we do this evening. Before I call the first speaker, we ask that the speakers speak their name and address and whether they are resident of the district for the record. I'd like to remind the speakers this evening that the board allows three minutes for each individual to address the board, and finally the president may rule out of order any person using disrespect, obscenities, or arguing a point. With that being said, the first speaker this evening is Lakin Medlock. Good evening. My name is
004Lakin Medlock, aka Miner. I am the parent and guardian of Sinaya, Nataya, and Javiana Miner. They all attend Canton City Schools, and we live on 1512 Frederick Avenue Southwest in Canton. So, do I just? Go ahead, yeah. Okay, I was warned by my mother not to send my kids to STEAM. I was excited though because the great programs they do offer, but that excitement was short-lived. I'm a parent of three girls, my twins attend STEAM, and my youngest goes to Belden. I want to express that this is the worst year ever, never seen so much dysfunction at one time. My kids have went to McGregor, Cedar, and Belden, and we've never had the type of issues we are having at STEAM. My kids have experienced a teacher say the N-word several times in a class
005full of colored students. I made the school aware, but not sure if anything ever happened. I'm disgusted with the lack of accountability in situations. I'm almost certain there's no such thing as consequences when it comes to staff or administrators. Integrity is everything, and instead of doing what's right, you stick together and protect each other, and nobody stands up for the kids. My kids are forced to call you coach and threatened with consequences if they say miss, misses, or mister. Where I'm from, coaches are well respected and teach us how to reach our full potential. My point is proven regularly about my kids being mistreated. Back in November, I started calling the school, the superintendent office, and student services about one particular teacher that was targeting my kids, and no one would ever return my calls.
006Other than the conversation I had with Coach Thompson where he said things were handled, I have been making calls every week leading up to the incident that happened in mid-December involving Coach Pugh throwing my daughter's art project on the floor and telling her to pick it up, while embarrassing her in front of her peers. I filed complaints with Columbus, the board of education, another incident involving my other daughter, I caught her language arts teacher in a lie, I have the screenshots to prove it, when confronted with the proof that she lied, she didn't have anything else to say about it. I've been back and forth with student services to get my kids into early college, and finally they're going to allow them to start there in eighth grade. I was told by Gary Candle that
007even if my kids did go to another school or school district, they would still have problems because they're insubordinate. Now I'm nervous for them to start eighth grade because I know in my heart that they have a target on their back. I was also a student once, and I've experienced things firsthand where my mom has caught a principal in a lie. This is a message from my twins, they feel like Coach Burt would rather see them outside of school failing and doesn't act urgently in situations until he's left with no choice to suspend someone. I do teach my kids never to start a fight, but if someone puts their hands on you, to protect yourself. My only question to the board is what can we do for the students because from what I've experienced firsthand,
008the teachers have more rights than them. Thank you. Thank you. The second and final speaker this evening is Shannon Jones. My name is Shannon Jones. I reside at 810 Arlington Avenue, Northwest, Canton, Ohio, 44708. And my question is for the superintendent. I forget his name. My daughter has called your office so many times, it's unbelievable how many times she's called and gotten zero callbacks from you. And I'm just wondering what exactly it is that you are supposed to be doing. That's my question. I would like to know what it is he's supposed to be doing. We don't respond to questions here tonight. Because amongst everything that's happened with my daughter and I both being back and forth to the school multiple times, I would just think between her phone calls and our trips to the
009school, he would have at least made one phone call to her to return one of those calls and say, hey, I'm ready to sit down and see exactly what the issue is and how we can resolve all this. But we've never gotten that from him at all. So that's my question. We don't respond to questions tonight, ma'am. We will respond to you though. Thank you very much. Anyone else signed up? Okay, moving right along. Treasurer's report. Yes, Mr. President, I'd like to recommend to the board this evening that they approve items one through four under the treasurer's report. Item number one being a lengthy list of donations, which we greatly appreciate. Items number two and three are student teaching stipends, one of them coming from Western Reserve Governor's University and the other one from the
010University of Akron. And the final item this evening is a list of resolutions relating to Board of Revision filings under Ohio Revised Code Section 5715.19. So moved. Any questions or comments from the board? Mr. President. Mr. Kaminsky. I probably should have been paying attention to this in the past, but I'm curious about who monitors the real estate transactions for us. Do we do it in-house or do we have a service for that? We have a third party. It's an actual law firm recommended to us by the Stark County ESC that monitors all the activity. Thank you, sir. Any other questions? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Superintendent Talbert, you've got the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. First of all, tonight, I recommended the Board
011of Education approve Section A, Human Resources, which includes certified staff, retirements, resignations, leaves of absences, appointments, and adjustments. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Mr. President, I recommend the Board of Education approve Section B, Human Resources, classified staff, which tonight includes retirements and resignations, leaves of absences, appointments, and adjustments for our classified staff. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mr. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Mr. President, I recommend the Board of Education approve Section C, Education Services Report, which tonight includes overnight field trip. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr.
012Rinaldi. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. We have three items tonight, three resolutions. I'm going to ask how you take them individually. First is our annual resolution given us the authority to be a part of the Ohio High School Athletic Association. So I recommend that the board approve this resolution for the 25-26 school year. So moved. Second. Any comments or questions from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Our second resolution tonight is authorizing us to change the name of the school that was located current where that we're building that will be located where Sowers was to Lincoln Elementary. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Mr. President. Mr. Rinaldi. Thank you, sir. It's no secret
013that I am not a fan about taking names off of buildings. I know my 20 years on the board almost and 40 years around here, I've never been a big fan of that as I feel that the folks that these schools were named after and what they meant at that time I think is important. I know two blocks down the street there's a building with my grandfather and my uncle's name on it and who to say 40 years from now somebody's going to come in and say those guys weren't important. So I want people to know that that's important to me and I know that in the past they've made promises oh we'll put a plaque that on this site such and such this that the other and I just had a lot of emotions
014thinking about a lot of this today and I just want to say I've had some long thoughts about what's the greater good here do I disagree with the process yeah because I just don't think it's right to take names off no matter if you like the person or not but are we going to honor the history of what was on these sites because those are the things that I'm hearing from folks so as much as I was a hard no about noon today I'll support this because it's for the greater good and it's it's for the city it's for the community but just just want some reassurances that the stuff that we've taken name is off of that there's going to be some history there so kids 40 years from now can go in and
015say you know John Lathrop was one of the founding members of the areas down that way that area was called the Lathrop Madison area so people that have names on these buildings were important at that time and who are we to wipe that clean without having something in the walls something that's going to be there as a benchmark for years to come that honors that so that's my only request I'll support these like I said I've been dealing with this for months it's no surprise but that's where I'm at sorry to be long-winded but the four high schools that were built here reflect the strength of Canton Ohio Lincoln's been here for how long look at what layman is Oxford place now the folks that fixed that just put another 50 to 75 years in
016that school and this school here no matter what you read or or Facebook tells you we're not tearing anything down Steve Coon has paved the way for historic tax credits look at what he's done to all these great buildings and these great buildings that I speak of they're going to be eligible one day for those historic tax credits and we can lobby Columbus so they can preserve the four anchors of Canton Ohio Lincoln layman Timken and McKinley thanks thank you Mr. Rodali any other comments from the board I just want to recognize some of the members of the Lincoln alumni that are here present today thank you for coming yep thank you Mrs. Brown any other comments from the board Mr. President Mr. Kaminsky I spent one year in the sports department at the Canton
017repository and had the privilege of covering all city night for the last season and they were wonderful basketball games and I just I'm touched by this and obviously will support it thank you sir as a lifelong southwestern and I see a few of them sitting in the stands today I'd still live in the southwest so yeah I know how much this means to everyone so with that uh Mr. Gruber call the roll Mr. Nolte Mr. Kaminsky aye Mrs. Brown aye Mr. Russ aye on to our third resolution under our operation support and this one we I am recommending that the board of education approve renaming the building to be built at the site of Jason H. Mason elementary school to Timken elementary school so move second any comments from the board or questions hearing none
018roll call vote Mr. Nolte aye Mr. Kaminsky aye Mrs. Brown aye Mr. Russ aye and before I move on to the next section I'd like to the follow up on the remarks of Mr. Nolte it is also important to us as administration that we make sure that we pay homage to the history of these sites and we have already started discussing ways to do that inside the buildings and in the not too distant future we will bring some approvals to you on some ways that we could do that as well it you're right by by changing these names we are impacting some history we want to make sure that the students who walk in the halls staff that are working in those buildings and folks who are coming back to visit our community have a
019place where they can walk in and say hey I went here this used to be a middle school so we will look into that and we will bring you something for your approval some things that could be in these buildings moving forward okay moving on to superintendent's report first thing we have tonight is back here first thing we have tonight I would like to do a presentation for open enrollment and then we will get to items that will have you vote on there was a tall person here before me good evening as superintendent Talbert said I'm here to talk about open enrollment and just as I usually do I like to start with Ohio revised code so open enrollment is covered in Ohio revised code 33 13.98 that code tells us that boards of education
020shall adopt a resolution for the district for one of the following policies and this is something that happens annually you can either adopt a policy that entirely prohibits the enrollment of students from adjacent or other districts unless it is a tuition situation you can adopt a policy that permits enrollment of students from all adjacent districts or you can adopt a policy that permits enrollment of students from all other districts and we call that statewide open enrollment so this open enrollment policy whether it's an adjacent district or statewide policy has to include the following so application procedures including deadlines procedures for admitting students free of any tuition the establishment of district capacity limits by grade level by school and by program a requirement that current open enrollment students perceive receive preference over first-time applicants and procedures
021to ensure that racial balance is maintained in schools so if you adopt a policy allowing open enrollment you have to make sure that you have all of these pieces in place your policy cannot include any of the following so any requirement of academic ability or athletic skill or artistic skill or any other skill limitations on admitting applicants because of a disability unless the district does not provide the services that are required in that student's IEP a requirement that the student be proficient in the English language and you are able to reject students because of you aren't able to reject students because of disciplinary action unless the student has been suspended or expelled by their district for 10 consecutive days or more in the term in which they're seeking enrollment or the preceding term funding for
022open enrollment is based on our emiss data submission so state dollars follow the student and that is based on what we report to emiss students generate the funding at the district that is educating them for their base cost and for categorical funding resident districts are still responsible for the cost of educating students with disabilities so the educating or the resident district is still responsible so the educating district can bill a resident district for these costs we do that through what's called excess cost procedures there is a orc that talks about transportation for open enrollment students so the district is obligated to transport students if certain conditions exist so number one the parent requests it number two the district transports students at those same grade levels their their resident students are already receiving transportation at those
023grade levels and thirdly the pick up and drop off is at a bus stop location that's designated already per the district transportation policy so if a parent requests it we can transport open enrollment students from an already existing board approved bus stop that's in the district now parents and guardians are responsible for transporting their student to that designated spot they can be reimbursed in an amount equal to the reasonable cost of transportation from their district from their home to that district designated spot if they are in the low income below the federal poverty line there are several faqs available on the ohio department of education and workforce website so i pulled out just some of the most common ones that you might be thinking about so the first one is a student guaranteed participation in
024open enrollment in future years once they've been accepted so students have to apply on an annual basis if a student is already enrolled in the district through open enrollment they receive preference uh priority over new open enrollment applications but that's assuming the district's going to continue open enrollment because like i said in the first in the beginning you decide every year whether you're going to prohibit it or allow it so if you're going to continue and the students already enrolled through open enrollment they get priority may an open enrollment district require that the students stay for a full year no the student at any time is legally entitled to return to their resident district this next question is about kindergarten so may a newly entering kindergarten student open enroll into a new educating district when
025the student does not meet the age eligibility requirements of the resident district and that answer is no the student must first be eligible to attend school in their resident district before they can apply for kindergarten open enrollment who verifies the district of residency that would be the educating district so we would verify and ask people to provide proof of their residency for any students applying for open enrollment and that is something that we do would do annually are preschool children eligible for open enrollment so a typically developing preschool student may not open enroll but preschool special ed children are eligible for open enrollment and then that leads to a transportation question so transportation um from outside of the district is the responsibility of the parent but if the IEP of a student with special needs
026includes transportation as a related service then we would be obligated to provide that transportation but this could be done through a cooperative transportation agreement between the two districts and we do that right now with a lot of students so a lot of times the the resident district will agree to transport the student to one of our bus stops and then we would transport from there what is the application procedure so districts are responsible for creating their own application procedures and timeline again those procedures and timelines should be board adopted and included in board policy and procedure documents I included some additional information so um all of the urban eight districts other than the Canton City School District allow open enrollment so Cincinnati allows adjacent district open enrollment only the rest of them allow open enrollment
027from any district in the state on the flip side of that we have a lot of students that are residents of the Canton City School District that attend other districts through open enrollment so we have currently 310 students that attend other districts through open enrollment and you can see the numbers there with Perry being the highest and then some onesies twosies down toward the bottom so as far as next steps again if this is something that you approve we would move forward with creating the application the procedures the timeline that we would bring back to you for adoption and I think Superintendent Talbert had some comments before you had any questions yeah so as we started to look at our open enrollment policies and we always start with why and you make this checklist of
028what are the benefits um what what are the negatives of doing it and the when I look at open enrollment that when you open your borders whether it's to neighboring districts or it's to the entire state of Ohio it you're not allowed to pick and choose who comes to your district via open enrollment and and so right now if someone doesn't live outside of our district and they want to come there's a very few ways for them to come one they could pay tuition or or or two we could do what's called a superintendent's agreement the superintendent's agreement means that the two superintendents the the superintendent in their resident district and myself agree that it is in the best interest for the student to attend another school district usually that is because there's some type
029of issue going on in the school that is impacting that student's ability to learn and and that happens not very often but it does happen another time that that happens is a student moves mid-year or at the end of maybe our middle of their senior year and where that gets in the best interest of the students that they stay the the once you say hey we're going to have open enrollment no matter the academic performance no matter what their involvement they have in if that if you have open seats at that particular grade level or that building according to your policies you have to say yes and and so that is something that we have to think about going forward we can again we're going to say that hey at this grade level we in
030this building we have this many open seats and we can set that but once you reach that and you say no it's that's no so the next person comes in and you're saying you can't say well this person has really good grades this person's really good students that's not how it works first come first serve based on your policy so that's the one thing we have to think about the the other piece that i think we need to look at is you saw the number of students who leave us and so i think there's 300 kids who are 310 kids who are opening rolling out of our districts and neighboring districts that have open enrollment on top of that we have about 3 000 other kids who are going either to non-pubs or charters so
031inside the canton city school boundaries there's over 10 000 students and we have about 7 000 choosing our school there's so there's multiple ways for parents inside our district to choose to go elsewhere but there's no way for anyone who's living outside of our district who wants their children to come to canton city schools to come here unless they pay tuition or unless they can are able and they have a situation to get open enroll i mean to get a superintendent's agreement and so i think that that's something we need to consider especially with the number of students we're losing especially with some some laws or some policies i think that are sitting um in in queue to be approved for this next budget cycle that especially being the um the underutilized building and and
032and and i think we need to think about that we have some pretty good programs that we offer in the canton city school district that i frequently get calls about and and again there's no way other than paying tuition or getting a superintendent's agreement and a superintendent's agreement is not something because there's that person is coming to canton city schools living in a place where they don't pay taxes to canton city school and they're not paying tuition to come here so when i sign a superintendent's agreement to me it is definitely something we don't it's important it's definitely meeting the need of a student it's not something i do just to do it and so but this gives us an opportunity um i don't again looking at our building enrollments and our program enrollments i
033don't see there being a lot of students being able to get here i don't believe there will be numbers of kids that we would say this building we can take 200 300 kids i don't believe that's going to happen but we can get a few and if you look at the numbers again i think there was one district that takes 122 kids that's a lot um again we have 20 plus we have 20 buildings so um we might get to that number across the entire district but i don't see it being much higher than that so um i put i'm putting the recommendation on for you today uh looking at it and this is just me speaking i was probably you know when we started doing this i think i've talked to some of you
034guys about this before um i was like i'm not bringing it because but i believe looking at all of it you know looking at the all other ohio ace and what they're doing we just took a visit to toledo and what toledo has going the difference between us and them is they have a mechanism for students who want to take advantage of some some quality program and they have they have an ability for students to come in from outside the district and when we were in toledo last week they have students from outside the state who have come and are living with family members to come to programs in their school and what the number of students we're seeing leave us again 3000 students are leaving us each year going other places without a mechanism
035for someone somewhere to choose scant city school so that being said i'm putting it on the board agenda with my recommendation and so with that i'm asking if there are any questions from you guys that we can clear up to see mr president mr kaminsky i don't doubt that we have attractive programs that people would want but based on my experience in past working situations that were were always involved in education i know that there was a there was kind of an informal agreement between canton city and plain local that they would not accept open enrollment because there was a concern that we would lose students in the northern part of our district to plain local i i know that when larry morgan was the superintendent of the esc he he imposed his will on
036school districts all the time but one of those impositions was to never do this with plain local in canton city for the sake of protecting canton city and and it was it was for that reason to protect canton city so i would like to know whether that's a mitigating circumstance for you or how you think how you how you think we can risk or whether that risk exists anymore i would think that that that risk was a true risk back when those conversations were have were being held and and i think that there were some things put in place to to address that and with approval of this resolution we will have to work through that there were some compacts put in place that were put in place to keep districts from doing it and
037since then multiple districts have done it and have moved out and and so when i say star county was a place where there wasn't any open enrollment for a long time because of those agreements and those fears and and i've had you know larry morgan was a mentor of mine and i've had that conversation and he was a true fan of our district even though he was a superintendent of plain local he says a strong canton right is important for a strong star county and and and and i truly truly truly truly believe that and but i think times have changed when when that compact was made we were losing kids to a few non-public schools and and we wanted to make sure that open enrollment didn't happen so kids could go to choose another
038public school other than ours well there are multiple publicly funded schools inside of the city of canton again who are are taking our students um it's so that number that he was afraid of happening that that fact happened right it's happened but it's not plain local it's other state funded charter schools that they're running to and and now you take the the the non-pubs that are now also being funded at this by the state that that number continues to increase and so the fear was that we would lose a large number of our families to outside schools well those families are still choosing to not come to us and so when we look if you remember when we did our our redesign i had a map of our school of our families in our school
039district and then you can see where people were choosing to go to school and there definitely certain neighborhoods that aren't choosing our school and they're already doing that and so whether it's they're picking another district to go to open enrollment they're picking another non-pub or charter to go to they're choosing to go if a neighboring district decides that hey canton has done this then we're going to do it will we lose some kids probably so will we lose some additional kids probably so um i but i don't think it's the the same number that we would have been looking at before there were multiple charter schools within our district and before there were non-pub vouchers allowing students to to take a scholarship if you want to call it that to go to a non-pub i
040i i think right now for us the the issue is this gives us the opportunity for students who would like to be a part of our our programming that we have to take advantage of it um and again we would have to go through and set policies and limits because we don't want this to be something where we've got outside students coming in taking away opportunities from canton city school students that's not the purpose of it but but there are situations where there are seats and some of our programs that can be filled by people from the outside and we will take a look um look at our historic enrollment look at our current enrollment and then come back to say a board of education here's what we want to do and here's the amount
041of open enrollment seats we'll have these buildings here are the limits here's the dates and times that we will open this here's when it will close but i think that it's it's something for us to look at also in studying this um if you look at all of our ohio eight partners the majority of them have gone open enrollment but the districts around them have not decided to do the same i have my ideas why that happens but um that's just my personal opinion that's not what we're here to discuss today but i i do think that that for the most part um it i can't speak 100 certainly that no one will open their borders but i really think if that were to happen we've already seen the flight it's not going to be
042something that is drastically going to impact mr president i follow up with another question we have wonderful programs we have wonderful choices that parents can make for their students we have a we have an early college high school that that is astounding um and all and the people living in our school district have every reason to understand what those choices are and make those choices it would seem to me that in order to make this successful for us we would have to be able to market those choices to people who are not currently in our communication base who aren't currently understanding the choices that we have available and the programs we have available and um i've worked in organizations where people are too busy to tell everybody how good they are how can how can
043we be assured that we can get that word out if that would be the key to making this successful well i again i think one i don't want to get into and i had conversations um with some of my counterpart superintendents one we're the largest school district in star county and this is going to be something that is going to be reported and we're televising this board meeting so i didn't want them to get calls from their constituents saying can you believe can't say you did that without knowing about it so i've had conversations with them and and i assured them like i'm not we're not it is i don't think we should be in the business of going out to with other public schools and putting advertising to their kids we do a really
044good job and we've done a better job of marketing our programs inside the folks that without marketing to other people's students folks word of mouth people have called me asking about our programs we have families who've come who've lived in canton city their entire lives who for one reason or another had to move outside of the the community but still want their kids to come to canton city and so when we think about this that's what i'm thinking about is going to happen i don't think we should run radio ads or run things like that and but i think our programs sell themselves and we are already getting calls and so there won't be i'll use our early college program our early cause program has a waiting list inside i can't see it getting to
045the point to where it's going to be a place where people are going to be able to come in from the outside maybe as it gets older and kids start to go back and forth and you look we have seats open in the 10th grade in 11th grade in 12th grade but it's not a lot it's one two three four five seats but usually those spots are left open because kids parents moved away and they no longer are able to come to our early college program this will give them that opportunity to say hey i want to stay i've been here i want to do that and so that's what we're looking for it's not about again we are all we have tons of partnerships with our neighboring district and i i want those to
046continue we we offer alternative programming for most of the for most of the districts in the county for them to come and use our alternative programming and and we have students sitting in some of our schools because we offer the special education type programs that they're not able to offer and we're going to continue to do that so we're not in this to compete with our neighboring schools we're in this to great opportunity for folks who already know that this is something they want they are going to contact us and try to get their kids here and the answer for me right now is always no and so this gives us the opportunity to do that again i don't see any place where we have a large number of seats open we took care of
047that when we reduced buildings in our last reorganization and you know it's a part of the strategic plan which you will also approve tonight we are reducing even further so we're talking five six seats here five six seats there that we will have that will be available for folks and we don't have to always say no when that situation happens okay mr president one more thing sure this is an annual policy that the board so though a couple of us won't be here if this turned out to be trending in a bad direction for us the board next year could reverse this policy yes every year the board has to look at this policy and and you we've done it and it's just been no keep going the same way and so this gives the
048board an opportunity to say yes this time we'll build the the procedures in place and we can go back and look how many kids did we get did it impact us in a negative way and i recommend that the board does that i think that's why the law reads the way it does and so i think it's a great opportunity for us to take a look and move forward but if i felt that it would impact us in a negative way i wouldn't bring it forward and you guys have heard me say that before and i've spent the better part of the last two or three months really looking into this and and i've honestly changed my mind on it mr president mr superintendent thank you for your time thank you mr kaminsky any other
049questions comments from the board mr renaldi i want to thank the superintendent i appreciate forward thinking and as you say the unwritten rule didn't adhere to some of the others in the game so i appreciate you having those candid conversations i'm sure with the other superintendents and i'm sure it wasn't pleasant but i appreciate you looking at our goodwill and our health moving all this forward i'll support your resolution and the thing that we always have to remember unlike our catholics in our charter schools out there we have to educate everybody that comes to us we don't get to choose and send back the bad blueberries our job is when they come through the door we hug you we educate you we don't get to choose who gets to stay they have that luxury they're
050not keeping everybody they're keeping the ones they want because their grades are well and all this other stuff so i'm excited 20 years ago we voted to make early college a choice for our kids and look at where it's grown to this day we have all these things that people want and you know you hear the phone calls so to me we're opening the doors up showing people here's our career tech department and so on and so on and so on so i'm excited about this because there's like two sets of rules and we've always had to play by a set that might be as old as me so kudos to you for bringing this forward and i support it any other questions comments from the board i will be the first to tell everyone
051sitting in this room me and mr topper to have this conversation many a times and many a times he told me no as did miss kainsbury who did the presentation tonight so for them to change their mind come on board with it like i said i'll pick you back off what mr renaldi said and thank you for your forward thinking and with that how and then one more item that we will have tonight let me try to the good thing with technology here so last month we we presented the strategic plan for the for 2025 actually some of the stuff we're currently already doing through 2029 and and we spent a lot of time talking about the success we have with the last strategic plan and where we are and and the board got a
052bunch of papers last month that went through it in detail because we went through it quickly and i want to give you an opportunity to ask any questions that you guys have that we can clarify before on the agenda here we have an opportunity for you guys to approve this going forward which will allow us to take this from draft if you look here on the presentation it says draft strategic plan but i wanted to show this to you once we do have the approval your approval then we will begin to work to make this live on our website and again it's it's a plan that we worked here together to do it but it's the community strategic plan i believe that once this plan is completed successfully we will be in a great place
053as a canton city school district this has given us an opportunity to take a look at not redesigning our elementaries going to from our grade band based elementaries to a district-wide k to six it's going to give us the opportunity to take our proven choice schools such as arts academy our steam academy and and run those pathways that stop at elementary and at the middle school all the way up to high school it's going to give us the opportunity to create more pathways of choice for our families so that all of our families will have choice here in the canton city school district and not just the choice of us and leaving us and so this is a great opportunity for us to move this district forward and so i'm really excited i'm really excited
054to have the opportunity to bring this plan forward for you to prove but i'm also excited that i get to work and make this plan a reality so this is the document as you can see this document will be public facing our community will be able to go and go as deep as they would like to go learning about our district and from our vision and our mission our strategy that we employ throughout the district they will also get to see how we go about living up to our district values that we've set they will learn and be able to see in a page document what we expect our students to graduate the skills they should possess when they graduate and leave us and they would also get to go through however the next five
055four years we're going to be able what goals we're going to target in order to make that a reality another thing that i want you to see is that we're going to do a better job of holding ourselves accountable this next page you will see here is this is our monitoring plan this monitoring plan will be public it will be on our website so we are asking that not only the board but the community hold us accountable to what we say we're going to do and so as we accomplish things these pages will change to show you where we are and so it spells it out it says hey here's the goal here's our objective here's the strategy and here are the action steps we're going to take we're going to over the next four
056years to make this achieving these objectives and these strategies happen and then you can see hey we're in the planning stages right now we're in progress and over time over the next four years these pages to change and more things to go from planning to in progress to complete and so we will continue to go through that and again it's about us being transparent it's about our community knowing exactly what we're working through and so when people are like i don't know what's going on in the Kansas City schools but it's very easy for you to go and see and you can see what we're doing well and and where we're making progress and where we're not making progress so i'm really excited about this the team has really worked hard on this and so
057i'm going to turn it over to you if you guys have any lingering questions about the plan do my best to answer them and then if not we'll get into the approval portion of my presentation today open up to the board mr president i don't have any questions because i read the planning and it had involvement in our meetings over the last four five months with this but i appreciate all the work that's been put into this plan with everyone that's been involved with our community our staff and our administration thank you thank you miss any other questions comments from the board mr president mr kaminsky very quickly a great strategic plan is put together by the people who have actually have to execute it and and um and commit to doing it uh and
058uh this is such a plan and i'm excited about that thank you any other questions comments from the board superintendent tober back to you mr president um i recommend the board of education approve section e superintendent action items which tonight includes the second reading of a board policy approval of our adult education lpn calendar approval of a recommendation for open enrollment and improvement of our strategic plan for 2025 through 2029 so move second we've had questions comments on the board any other before we move on roll call vote sir mr annaldey aye mr kaminsky aye this is brown aye mr russ aye moving right along new business mr kaminsky thank you mr president i'm speaking tonight in the role you've given me as our legislative liaison and it's a statement i need to read so
059be patient with me it doesn't take long mr president fellow board member superintendent talbert treasurer groover i would like to offer this message to our parents and all other voters who support the canton city school district the ohio house of representatives is now working on a new two-year state budget which would take effect in july of this year under a budget proposed by governor dewine funding for public schools which educate more than 80 percent of ohio's children is projected to be reduced by 103 million dollars while funding for vouchers to send children to private and religious schools is projected to increase by more than 220 million dollars public education advocates are seeking more money for public schools but they tell us that house lawmakers are not hearing from regular citizens who support their public schools
060to be blunt we are not telling the lawmakers why adequate funding is important to us i am asking you to help correct this situation by courteously reaching out to our state representative jim thomas who is a member of the education committee in the house and therefore is working on the education component of the two-year state budget the state's fair school funding plan the formula for figuring out how much the state government should contribute to our schools and how much we taxpayers should contribute is so complicated that i would have to ask treasurer grover or superintendent to take up the task of explaining it correctly and if they did that tonight we would be in here for a long meeting what i can tell you briefly is that our state funding for educating children in canton
061city is based in part on a series of cost inputs such as average salaries for school employees in various jobs employee benefits and cost of various building operations and activities you can think of these cost inputs as adjustments for inflation the most current cost inputs that are available are not being used in the governor's proposed budget instead the budget is using the cost inputs from the 2021-22 school year costs have risen since then many public school advocates have said that our best opportunity to improve funding for public schools in this budget is to advocate for updated cost inputs in other words by using the latest available figures here is what i'm asking you to do respectfully contact our representative jim thomas you can do that easily by going to the internet and searching for contact
062ohio house jim thomas contact ohio house jim thomas the top listing you should get from your search page is one that offers you his office phone number and a form you can use to email email him i've tried this on three different browsers and the top choice is always his contact page within the ohio house of representatives website i suggest you search for it in this way because if you go into the ohio house of representatives you go through several different layers before you get to the information i'm asking you to look up so then i ask you to call or write representative thomas and in your own words tell him why the canton city school district is important to you and to our children a petition or a form letter that everyone sends is
063not as effective as your own story then urge him to support updated cost inputs in the fair school funding plan do it soon the education budget may be settled by the ohio house before the month is out if anyone who is listening needs these directions again text me at three three zero four one eight four four zero two and i will be glad to send them and thank you thank you mr kaminsky moving right along executive session we have read um i don't i don't think i've detected mr president i move that we move into executive session to discuss the employment dismissal demotion or compensation of employee with no action to follow second mr gerber call the roll mr ornaldi aye mr kaminsky aye mrs brow aye mr russ aye thank you everyone for coming
064tonight be safe getting home and we'll catch you next month