001Good evening everyone and welcome to this Board of Education meeting for Monday October 13th here in the heart of downtown Canton. If you are with us please silence your devices and would you please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. To our family staff community thank you for being the best in Stark County. We are very proud of you and we appreciate you. If you are 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 sir. Mr. Arnaldi. Here. Ms. Watkins. Here. Mr. Kaminsky. Here. Mrs. Brown. Here. Mr. Russ. Here. I'll make the motion to approve the minutes from September 8 2025 regular Board of Education. September Jesus. Okay I'll make the motion to approve the agenda
002as written. Second. And he changes are correct. Yes there are. We'll start on page three. Item number one out of the Treasurer's Report in the packet that has been distributed it has a forecast in there. Since we had to update the forecast this morning so I have passed out to the members a five page document with the forecast on the top page and it is all stapled together. This packet will be replacing item number one under the Treasurer's Report and the second and last change that I'm aware of occurs on page 23 under item two. Board meeting dates for next year. August should be changed to read Monday August 10th 2026. Thank you Treasurer Gruber. Any other changes or corrections? We have a motion we have a second. Roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Ms. Watkins.
003Mr. Kaminsky. Mrs. Brown. Mr. Russ. Now I'll make the motion to approve the minutes for our September 8 2025 regular Board of Education meeting. Second. Any changes or corrections? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Ms. Watkins. Mr. Kaminsky. Mrs. Brown. Mr. Russ. Do we have anyone signed up to speak tonight? We do not but I believe Superintendent Talbert has a response from last month's hearing of the public. Yes I do. First of all I'd like to thank Mr. Resnick for signing up and presenting his comments and in regards to our decision to approve an extension of the TIF agreement for the Ernesto building in downtown Canton. We understand your concern about the potential loss of the tax revenue due to the extension of this agreement and again we appreciate you taking the time to
004share your perspective. Our district carefully considered the long-term benefits of this agreement as a part of Canton City's broader revitalization strategy. Our core stance is that a thriving downtown is vital to the prosperity of the entire community which directly benefits our students and the district. The apartment project is the key component of the city's plan to increase number of residents downtown. These new residents contribute to the city's economic vitality in several ways that indirectly support the district's environment. They pay income taxes which funds essential city services and they are regular customers to downtown businesses strengthening the local economy and making Canton more attractive place to live and to work. Furthermore our strong partnership with the city of Canton is critical to both the district and the city's ability to thrive especially as we navigate the
005challenges of these unusual economic times. This collaborative relationship allows us to work together on infrastructure, safety, and community programming that benefits all of our families. I want to be clear that our primary focus and concern remains the stability of our overall funding. Canton City School District receives the majority of our revenue from the state of Ohio. Our real focus must be on addressing the state's efforts to reduce its share of school funding. The state has regularly withdrawn from its responsibility by enacting tax breaks or funding multiple initiatives outside of the standard foundation which is where the most significant threat to our long term financial health laws. While we understand the concern regarding property tax revenue we believe the positive systemic impact in revitalization downtown made possible through strategic partnerships like this TIF extension outweighs the
006immediate property tax contribution. We are committed to making sound fiscal decisions and will continue to advocate for stable and adequate state funding for our school. Thank you again for your thoughtful comments and we always value our community and their support. Thank you Superintendent Talbert. Treasurer's report. Treasurer Gruber you're up. Yes Mr. President this evening I'll be making two recommendations. The first recommendation this evening is that the board adopt the fiscal year 2024-2026 forecast as it is now presented on the packet that I provided the board and once I get a motion and a second then we'll go into the discussion. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments for Treasurer Gruber before he starts his presentation? Treasurer Gruber back up. Yes Mr. President this is the second time at this calendar year that the board has
007been presented with a forecast and if you looked back to the one that the board approved in May you could see that we were solvent to fiscal year 2028 and recognized that we had work to do as the years were going to go by. That is no longer the case I guess it's partially my fault because back in May I guess I never contemplated that our elective officials were going to pick fights with certain school-age children but they have and now what we are faced with is catastrophic consequences due to their actions. So for the first time in my 18 years of being a school treasurer I have elected to go start with what the state is doing statewide to 600 plus school districts and then we will focus on our school district exclusively. So
008if you flip over to page 2 up in the corner it says statewide. This is a comparison to what this new biennium budget looks like compared to the biennium budget that we just left. School funding consists primarily of 14 different revenue streams inside the funding formula. 14 are listed on this page. We'll start at the top. Keep in mind while I also want to point out the fact that the state is assuming the loss of only 913 students statewide in this biennium budget. The very first line item revenue base cost the state has elected to reduce that by 524 million dollars. Next line item I'd like to point out special education funding. The state has elected to reduce that by 23.3 million dollars. English learners reduction not too bad 16,000. Next one gifted funding reduction
009of 7 million dollars. Career tech education reduction of 1.9 million dollars. Interestingly I'm going to point out transitional aid. Transitional aid is actually going up by 222 million dollars. Transitional aid is in place to make certain that when there are changes in the biennium budget that negatively impact districts that they remain whole by what's called transitional aid guarantee. That's going up again by 222 million. There are 230 school districts that are going to be receiving transitional aid. We are not one of them. The next one supplemental targeted assistance. This is good. We're going to discuss this at more length when we get to Kansas City Schools. In fiscal year 2025 supplemental targeted assistance consisted of 52 million dollars in payments. Today it's zero statewide because the 136th General Assembly on September 25th elected to repeal
010that funding stream leaving 36 districts in the wind. Transportation funding reduced by 16 million dollars. And the last one I'd like to point out student wellness and success funds reduced by 14.4 million dollars for a grand total reduction in K through 12 public education reduction of 276 million dollars. Which equates because they are only anticipating ADM going down by 913 students statewide a reduction of 303 thousand dollars per student. Before we go on to Kansas City which is on page If you'd like to see the list of the 36 school districts negatively impacted by the repeal of supplemental targeted assistance we'll just go through some of the names. First on the list this is largest reduction to least largest reduction. Number one in the state Dayton. Second Toledo. Third Cleveland Municipal. Fourth Canton City. Fifth
011Lorraine City. Sixth Youngstown City. Ninth Akron City. All of these districts appear to have certain things in common. Now we'll go back flip back to page 3 and we're going to do an analysis of what they are funding here in this district looks like. The state is assuming a loss of nine students in ADM in fiscal year 2026 only nine. Base cost reduction 346 thousand. Targeted assistant reduction 68 thousand. Special education reduction 25,000. Disadvantaged pupil impact aid 494 thousand dollars and here's we've already discussed this the prior school board meetings. Disadvantaged pupil impact aid in the history of that. As the state identifies more students falling into disadvantaged pupil impact aid category they're actually lowering their overall obligation. English learners positive 48,000. Gifted education reduction of 12,400 dollars for a subtotal of a loss of
012871 thousand dollars just in formula aid. Now we get on to the core supplementals. Supplemental targeted assistance which I've already discussed. Last year we got 4.3 million dollars. As of a week and a half ago which we were actually promised if you take a look there are two separate ones that are not stapled together. These are actual revenue reports that come from ODU's portal. On September 15th you can clearly see that Kansas City Schools was set to receive 4.3 million dollars in supplemental targeted assistance. Then the vote occurred on September 25th. Look at the next report. October number one payment. Supplemental targeted assistance has been reduced to zero and they are telling us on the report they intend on taking back the money that they had already paid us. So that loss of 4.3 million
013dollars. Transportation they like to say that you know that they increase transportation funding. That's a lie. $210,000 reduction to us. Grand total formula funding a reduction of 5.4 million dollars. So for the nine kids that we lost those nine kids each cost us $525,000 in state funding. And then before we move on and we actually summarize what's happened on the five-year forecast I want to give you an idea of what's happened at the federal level too because that's not great either believe it or not. The last page, page five is a comparison of various grants that we received from the federal government. The grand total loss that we are anticipated to receive in fiscal year 2026 is approximately 3.2 million dollars consisting of title one funding reduction for $199,000. Title 2A which is set to
014go away completely. Loss of $107,000. Title 3 immigrant funding set to go away completely. A loss of $17,000. Title 4A which we use which is well rounded education safe and healthy students that's what that grants for. Loss of $60,000. IDEA which assists in educating students with disabilities. A reduction of $2 million. 21st century which is after school program loss of $200,000. Aspire which assists adult education students. Loss of $144,000. Last one McKinney-Vento. Homeless students. They cut that by $99,990. Again the grand total we are anticipating receiving this year is $3.2 million dollars less than what we got in 2025. Now let's return to page one and actually look what are the consequences of all the things that I just discussed. Again as I mentioned earlier in May we were able to remain solvent through fiscal
015year 2028 that is no longer the case. We are staring at a deficit of over 17 million dollars now in fiscal year 2028. You can clearly see on the forecast what what the state is doing to it with our particular district as it relates to state assistance. We are we are being told we should anticipate receiving a 76.3 million dollars of unrestricted state grant in aid. Take a look at the previous three years of actual results for that line item. 76.3 is the lowest that we have received in the previous three years. The same thing with restricted grant in aids which is supposed primarily funds career tech activities. That is at the lowest it's been in the previous four years. So when they pulled the rug out from us on September 25th it was a
016shock to the system. The forecast that's in the packet that was prepared prior to the vote. Once we knew the vote took place and the repercussions of that I had to update this. We updated this morning. It's in your hands now. Again we used to be solvent through 2028 that is not the case. As we are currently constructed we anticipate a deficit of 17.1 million dollars in 28. In 29 that rises to 37.5 million dollars and in 2030 it's an incomprehensible 58.5 million dollars shortfall. I don't need to tell the board or people watching at home that decisions are going to have to be made. With that being said I'll take any questions. Open the floor to questions from the board. Mr. President. Mr. Grouper would you explain the significance of the ADM estimate? Well
017you seem incredulous that they're only suggesting we'll lose nine students. That's again that they make assumptions and we have to wait and see if the assumptions that are making for us are actually going to come to fruition. I believe October's the first week of October is still count week. Is that true statement? Tenth? Okay so what we actually do is we take student head counts and we report those head counts right to the State Department. Sounds to me like I missed I thought you said the tenth. Is that true? So the counts have already happened right? So then our ADM expectation that was given to us by the state will be updated by the results of that. So let's just say hypothetically that we fall short of the number of students that they plugged in
018for us there's going to be further fallout from that. Because the because the funding is based on headcount? Yes. So all of this could be worse? Could be. I don't anticipate though however ADM shakes out for us I don't expect that to be the driving factor behind that whatever that if we fall short of the seven thousand and two students that they say we're going to have in this in the district this year. If we fall short of that I can't imagine that we're actually going to fall significantly short of that. So I don't think any adjustment that they make due to ADM count I don't think is going to have a material impact on the five-year forecast or the forecast it's no longer five years. Thank you sir. Any other questions or comments from
019the board? Hearing none roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Ms. Watkins. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Mr. President my second recommendation this evening is that the board approve items two through five under the treasurer's report which item number two is approving the July and August 31st monthly financial reports. Item number three is having budgetary amendments to our permanent appropriations. Item number three is budgetary amendments to our estimated resources and the last one is a lengthy list of donations which the board or the district greatly appreciates. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? My only comment is thank you for the donations it is greatly appreciated. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Ms. Watkins. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Thank you Treasurer Gruber. Superintendent Talbert. Thank you Mr. President. First
020item of business tonight I'd like to recommend that the Board of Education approve Section A human resources certified staff which tonight includes retirements, resignations, leaves of absences, appointments, and adjustments. So moved. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Ms. Watkins. 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 absence, appointments, and adjustments. So moved. Second. I have one comment can we vote on section two separately? Yes. My wife is involved in that. So we'll go back. All sections of section B is set for number two. We need to do a motion to second again. Yep. So moved. Second. Any more questions or comments
021from the board? Hearing none roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Ms. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Mr. President I recommend that the Board of Education approve section B item two which is which are leaves of absences. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Ms. Watkins. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Abstain. Moving on to educational service reports tonight Mr. President I recommend that we accept we approve items one through three which includes overnight overnight field trips, our summer graduates, and our federal program compliance policy review. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Just want to say congratulations to the graduates. Hearing none roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Mrs. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs.
022Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Mr. President I recommend that the Board of Education approve section C educational service report item number four which is a MOU for the MGT impact solutions. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Mr. Superintendent. Mr. President. Mr. Superintendent. The MOU talks about it this being a Department of Education workforce turnaround pilot project. Does that mean they're paying for it? Yes. Choices is one of the one of the two schools that we still have remaining in state oversight and because of that they were able to apply for school turnaround grant of $250,000 which will be applied to which will be used to pay for this organization that will already support the work that Choices is doing to to improve what their work with students. Thank you. Thank you
023Mr. Kaminsky. Any other questions from the board? Hearing none roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Mrs. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Moving on to our operations reports and tonight our operation report is full of items and I believe we should take each one of these separately so Mr. President I recommend the Board of Education approve section D operations report item number one which is an approval for us to host the state swim meet this year. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments? Other than the fact it's always great to have the state swim meet again. Mr. Gruber call the roll. Mr. Rinaldi. Mrs. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Mr. President I recommend the Board of Education approve section D item number two which is
024an approval of a resolution to deem some transportation services impractical. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? I have one that's the requirement from the state that we need to transport these students. Yes and when we deem that it's it's not practical for us to do it for the list of reasons that we can this is the first step to offering payment in lieu to those students. Now they're eligible for payment in lieu. Understood. Mr. President. Mr. Kaminsky. We've done this a number of times and I come to wonder tonight is this decision ever challenged by the state or by the parents? Yes. What happens then? Okay. Do we lose these challenges? Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi.
025Aye. Mrs. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Mr. President, I recommend the Board of Education approve section D operations report item number three which is the approval of a resolution to purchase additional x-ray detection system machine. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? This is in addition to what we currently have, correct? Yes. And same system and everything. Beautiful. Any other questions? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Mrs. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Mr. President, I'd like to recommend that the Board of Education approve item four under operations report which is the MOU between the Canton City School District and the Canton City Public Health Department for using Thurman-Munson Stadium parking lot as a staging for drive-through clinic as
026needed. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Mrs. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Mr. President, I'd like to recommend that the board approve item number five under operations report tonight which is the approval to purchase the property located at 906 3rd Street Northwest for the price of $1,054.15. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Ms. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Mr. President, I recommend that the board approve item number six under operations report tonight which is a joint development agreement for construction of the ODOT Safe Route School Project which is a project we're working with the city of Canton. So moved. Second.
027Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Ms. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. And finally item number seven under operations report. Mr. President, I recommend that the board approve new pay rates for our Camp Police Auxiliary Officers as follows $65 an hour worth for overtime if the officers cannot be secured through the schools and then $80 per hour for the double time. That's if they are required to work an event such a major event such like McKinley or Masson football game which is coming up. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Ms. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. Moving on to Superintendent action items one we have
028the second reading of our policy 9-1-1-1 which is telephone communications which if you remember our policy stated before that we were not allowed to have the phone answered by other answer other than with a live voice and this gives us the ability to do so when necessary so this will be the second reading for this and we'll have you guys approve this next for me and then number two recommend the Board of Education approve the following dates for the regular board meeting of for our regular Board of Education meetings for the 2026 school year and the 2026 organizational meeting. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Ms. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. And final recommendation for tonight under
029Superintendent's action items recommended the Board of Education approve the MOU and dependencies with OPC regarding our hiring rubric. So moved. Second. Any questions or comments from the board? Hearing none, roll call vote. Mr. Rinaldi. Aye. Ms. Watkins. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. And finally tonight we were scheduled to do our full state of the schools report tonight and instead we're going to focus on the first half of that report which is a report of our of our most recent district report card that was released back in September. We are required by by law to cover this in the month of October for our community and to review it with our board. So we will do that tonight. Then at our next board meeting take a deep dive in the action steps
030we will take as a result of this report card and then also talk about some things we believe we need to do to continue moving forward towards the completion of our mission for the district. So without any further comment by me I'd like to turn it over to Mrs. Kim Kingsbury who's our director Accountability and Federal Programs. Good evening. We're here to talk about the 2025 state report card which was released on September 15th as Superintendent Talbert mentioned we are required by law within 30 days of its release to present it to the Board of Education. So we made it just under the wire. Some changes to the 2025 report card. The College Career Workforce Military Readiness component is now rated. Used to just be in there for informational purposes and it is also calculated
031now into the overall rating and there have been some updates to the website the report card website. There's a new tab under achievement that shows proficiency by the enrolled grade. Progress now includes the growth index and effect size that's used to determine the rating. Gap Close has a gap closing component has an updated gifted page that provides some clarity for that measure and again the College Career Workforce Military Readiness component is now rated. It displays now the overall percentage and then the change from the percentage from the previous school year. There are now six rated components that make up the report card and factor into the report card's overall rating. Starting with the achievement component we wanted to highlight some celebrations. Our report card the achievement component is based on the performance index and the
032percentage of your performance index against the max performance index score. Our performance index this year increased by 4.3 points. It is 62.8. It is the the fifth year in a row that we saw an increase in performance index so that visual bar graph shows you the gradual increase over the past five years and it's the first time since the 18-19 school year report card that our performance index was in the 60s. Another highlight and celebration is that we reduced the number of students that were untested by a hundred. We continue to work on that if you recall when I was here with you in the 2021 or the 21-22 school year report card we had 354 untested students so we continued to eat away at that number. Again we reduced by a hundred and we
033will continue to reduce that number and we increased the number of students scoring proficient or I'm sorry scoring above proficient by 205 students so students that is scored in those advanced levels accomplished advanced advanced plus we increased 205 students and we increased 594 since the 21-22 school year so we're excited about that in our achievement component. In the achievement component we also have performance indicators these are not factored into the rating but they show us the percentage of students proficient or higher. I included for you this is looking at grades 3 through 8 in English language arts math and science a comparison from last report card to this report card everywhere that's green shows an area where we increased if it's red we decreased there was one area fourth grade math where we remained the
034same and in our high school and of course exams we increased in all of the tested areas from last school year so we saw an increase in 15 of 20 of those performance indicators four of those had double-digit gains and that would be algebra 1 biology US history in US government all up by double-digit percentage points and then the graphic at the bottom right is showing proficiency trends across the last five years this is looking at the total number of students that are proficient or higher in English language arts and math for grades 3 through 8 and then high school in all of the end of course exams combined so that red bar is the 2025 school year so you can see quick and easy that we've increased the total number of students proficient or
035above in all of those areas in the achievement component we had Portage Montessori achieve five stars Arts Academy four stars several buildings at the two-star level and three buildings at the one star level overall our achievement component rating is two stars we were at two stars last year but I want to remind you that our performance index continues to increase and we increased into the 60s this year increased 4.3 points so we're excited about that continued growth the progress component measures the impact of district schools and teachers on the growth of students from year to year this measure uses a gain a growth index and an effect size to determine the rating and it uses three years of data so the most recent year weighs more at 50 percent and then the previous year two
036years before that each at 25 percent this is what our growth looks like in the district across the grade levels in tested areas anywhere where you see green is an area where the district met student growth expectations so that is the goal to meet those expectations anywhere that's light blue we exceeded those growth expectations and anywhere that's the darker blue or dark grayish color we exceeded those growth expectations by a larger magnitude on the reverse side of that anywhere that's yellow we fell short of the growth expectations and if it's burgundy we fell short by a larger magnitude the building ratings this this component is unique in that the star ratings directly align with the growth so I'm going to take you back to this colored chart if you meet the growth expectations that's a
037three if you exceed the growth expectations that's a four-star if you exceed by a larger magnitude that's a five-star so when we look at our individual buildings we see that Portage Montessori received five stars Arts Academy Crenshaw McGregor and Worley at four stars so that's exceeding the growth expectations aim choices Claredon steam and Patrick at three stars they met those growth expectations and McKinley and Yates at the two-star level overall as a district our progress had a three star rating which is meeting growth expectations and that is an increase of one star from the 24 report card moving on to gap closing gap closing has various measures that make up the overall rating and you can earn points so we're looking at achievement and growth again in gap closing but this time broken down by
038the student group level we're also looking at graduation by student groups English learner proficiency so their performance on their English learner proficiency assessment chronic absenteeism is in gap closing as well as three individual gifted measures gifted progress gifted performance index or achievement and gifted identification and services so this is calculated by looking at the total number of points you earned as a district divided by the total number of points you had possible to you and that gets your percentage for your rating some highlights and celebrations in this area is our growth in math so the the first graph you see on the left is showing math growth by student group so we had eight student groups seven of those eight groups met their math growth goal that goal is the vertical yellow line so the
039expectation is all of the student groups meet a two for growth index and you can see that they met that and beyond some of them far far surpassed that goal on the right there's chronic absenteeism trends we met our chronic absenteeism indicator our chronic absenteeism rate continues to get reduced every year and it's something that we work at every day and we'll continue and then at the bottom gifted progress so this is looking at the growth of just our students that are identified as gifted so the expectation is that the gifted students meet their expected progress that is the three-star level ours exceeded that and exceeded it by a larger magnitude so we got five stars in gifted progress additional highlights in gap closing is that we had an increase in overall points by one
040since last year we met our gifted progress indicator we met our chronic absenteeism indicator and we earned seven out of eight possible points in math progress previously we had one of eight points sadly we were only two points away from the next level the three-star level individual building ratings and gap closing Arts Academy Cedar and Portage Montessori each at five stars Crenshaw McGregor and Worley at four stars stone McKinley and steam at three stars there's five buildings at the two-star level and two buildings at the one-star level and then as a district in gap closing we received two stars again we were just three points away from the next three-star level graduation looks at the four-year and five-year graduation rate and they are calculated to get what's called a weighted graduation rate so the four
041year graduation rate has more weight to it it weighs at 60% of the total weighted rate and the five-year rate at 40% when you calculate those against the weights you get a weighted graduation rate of 74.4 and that is what the component rating is based on as a district we had one star in graduation next is early literacy so early literacy component has three measures the component itself is measuring reading improvement and proficiency for students in kindergarten through third grade there are three individual measures that each have weights associated with them with the proficiency in third grade reading weighing the highest at 40% of the measure when you calculate each of the three measures against their weights you get an early literacy component rating of 56.7% specifically taking a deeper dive into the proficiency in
042third grade reading again this is the measure that weighs the most in the component we went down a little bit from last year 47% was our proficient or higher rate in just third grade reading last year dipped down to 45% but I wanted to show you this because if you look at the total number of students in the numerator so the total number of students that were proficient or higher in third grade reading we did increase in the total number of students but the percentage went down a little bit because there were more students in that class Portage Montessori received five stars in early literacy Arts Academy at four stars early at two stars and then the rest of the six eligible buildings for early literacy at the one-star level as a district we received
043one star in early literacy this is the last component that's rated on the report card it's newly rated this year it's been on the report card it just didn't calculate into the overall rating and it didn't produce a star rating this is the college career workforce and military readiness component so it shows how prepared the graduating class is to go on to post-secondary education enter the workforce or join the armed forces and there are 11 ways that students can demonstrate post-secondary readiness I failed to mention in the graduation component that that information is lagged a year and this information is lagged a year as well so this is based on our four-year graduation cohort the same cohort that's in our four-year graduation rate in our graduation component both of those are lagged a year so
044they're actually the graduates from 2024 and that's because that allows us to include our summer graduates the purpose of this component is to have every student demonstrate readiness in at least one way many of them demonstrate it in more than one way but you can only get counted one time so the numerator in this calculation is the total number of students in your four-year graduation cohort who demonstrated readiness in at least one way and the denominator is your total number of students in the four-year graduation cohort and that gives you a percentage so for us this looked like 317 students that demonstrated post-secondary readiness out of 610 which gave us 52 percent that was a small decrease 1.3 percentage points from last school year and we were very close in this component to the next
045level just four more students away from 53 percent which gets you into the two-star range we received one star in the college career workforce and military readiness component so again all of these components come together to make your overall rating there are different weights associated with them achievement and progress are always weighted equally you can see in this graphic that they're weighted at 25 percent the remaining four components are always weighted equally at 12.5 percent and that is half of the weight of achievement and progress and this is specifically outlined in Ohio revised code the overall rating uses half-star increments you can see where our buildings fell in the rating system with Portage Montessori receiving five stars Arts Academy four and a half stars Crenshaw McGregor and Whirly three and a half stars Cedar and
046steam at three stars aim Clariden McKinley Patrick and stone at two and a half stars choices Gibbs and Yates at two stars and harder at one and a half stars and as a district we received two and a half stars overall I did want to highlight that although our overall rating remained at two and a half stars from last report card to this report card if you look at the overall points that are used to calculate that rating we did increase in overall points and then finally just wanted to wrap up with some focus areas for us as a district so we want to continue to increase the performance index again we've increased for the past five years we want to continue on that upward trajectory we want to continue to reduce the number of
047untested students and reduce the number of tests that are in the limited and basic categories we want to get a three and gap closing we were very close only two points away so we need to make sure that we maintain our current points and then continue to add points we can add points in EL progress points for gifted identification and service and by adding more student groups for English language arts we want to focus on our graduation rate and the number of students that are demonstrating readiness and increase the percentage of students proficient in third grade reading with that I'm happy to take any questions Mr. President, I just have a question I don't know if Superintendent Tabor will answer or Ms. Kingsbury in our next meeting can we show how the cuts in funding
048will affect programs that may be cut specifically I don't know if we'll be there yet okay I think that's going to be a much longer conversation but I do think as we we talk attendance zones building great configurations large-scale 30,000 feet type of view we'll be able to do that I think that is one of the reasons why we wanted to pause a little bit because we don't want to speak on things that may not come to fully to fruition and and with our state of the school so that's why we're taking a pause and only doing the first half of this presentation so we will bring you some but but I think that that will be a conversation that will happen over months between now and the end of the school year. I have
049a question. Ms. Watkins. Okay this may sound crazy but how do they calculate workforce because we have students currently who have real jobs who have gone through on-the-job training and are working and matter of fact the work interferes with school because they're busy being productive with their life so those students do they count or is it according to some kind of standard that they put together that excludes our children because they have pre-college pre this but work is work and my next question is what can we do for them to really define this so that it shows work I mean who calculates what a job is based on points one I would say I don't know how many of our students already have that on-the-job training and are working and have been working and are
050supporting families right now so how do we show this so I'm going to assume you're talking about the last item the Ohio means jobs readiness seal plus 250 hours of work-based learning so the the the report card technical document describes work-based learning as being approved by the district's Business Advisory Council so for us that is our ESC so we've reached out to them to get some specific information on that process so we first have to make sure that work-based learning is approved the second thing we have to do is make sure that it's being tracked by the students and so I believe part of the state of the schools you're probably going to hear mr. Hatcher talk about the tracking mechanisms that we're implementing to start to use to track that work-based learning and then
051the third part of that is making sure that we get it reported through emiss correctly and that is part of my responsibility in department so it's the the approval of the work-based learning the tracking of it and making sure we're reporting it so the approval of the work-based learning who approved that it's called your your district's Business Advisory Council and for us that's through the Educational Service Center so if I had a job I went through training and I'm working at McDonald's I didn't have to go there to get my job approved or it doesn't count we could do that as the district so we're gonna collect the information from the students to find out where they're working and then we'll sit down with that Business Advisory Council and get approval for all of those
052jobs so will their job count as a credit for school since it's part of the testing for you to graduate and get points if the if the approval is done correctly and the employer is actually willing to go through the process of getting that site approved it could it's not guaranteed if the student is a part of a program that is a kind of a work release program then then it could count at some time for them as well but there's a there's an approval process and not all employer employers will go through it and so we'll have to continue to to work that process but I think what you'll hear from our in our state of the school presentation where we're looking to expand expand opportunities and exposure for students all the way down
053to seventh grade but we can start this moving forward now the hours don't count till they get the night but if we can already get kids thinking about the next step after high school what they want to do where their interests lie where their aptitudes are we think that we'll be able to get more kids over over this hump so we're really excited to talk about that but all of that could be impacted by what mr. Gruber talked about as well as you're seeing a cut and yeah right a cut in the amount of money that we have for career tech you're seeing a cut in amount of money we're getting in transportation and and and so all those things are going to impact the opportunities that our kids are are going to have and
054and so when you when you say that it's so important that kids are ready for a college career and a workforce but you don't want fun and then so that that's what we're here to kind of talk about we'll we'll we'll give you some information on that I think the team has has put together a really good plan that the plan is intended to to to take our school district into the next 10 to 15 years where we believe we should be for students and providing that first class education that prepares all students for what happens after high school and that that's whether you want to go to college that's whether you want to go right into the workforce that's whether you want to go and do kind of a hybrid right I want to
055go to college and work my way through college or whether I want to join the military and and so whatever you want to do we need to make sure that the kids have a pathway to that and and I think we're putting a plan together that will do that for all students our goal is just going to be trying to find a way to make sure that we're able to fund it and and and get away from just test prep that doesn't engage anybody and I think we're seeing a lot of our high school students show us that and that's why you see the decline in our graduation rate our students are going to work and they're getting out and working because they have to because they they're they're not connecting with what we're offering
056right now and so we've got a plan to put that in place but it will be impacted by the five-year forecast. Can I ask one more question? Okay a lot of our students you know they're they make money off of YouTube they're influencers is there some kind of way they can work that into that plan of workforce go through some kind of a strategy with them? I think I think that again when we talk about these career opportunities we want to put forward in the future I think you're going to see that there will be an opportunity for kids to use that that field of study towards this okay so we'll we'll bring that forward in November again it's going to be closely tied to where we are financially but it's where we need to
057go and we're going to have to get our community to support this change and how we do business because if we want our kids to be able to compete and when you think about what's happening with AI when you think about what's happening and where the world's going whether you are you have to have some type of skill in order to make money and so gone are the days where you could take a general education degree and use that we we need to make sure that our kids leave us with some type of skill and understanding of where their interests lie and where their aptitudes and where they meet so they can be profitable and so I think we have a plan to help all of our students do that and I think the key
058part of this plan is it starts young and it also involves parent input. Any other questions? Mr. President. Mr. Kaminsky. I think we should give a give a word of thanks to Ms. Kingsbury for her report and for all of the teachers and staff people who made these gains possible over the last year. Yeah kudos to you guys. Thank you. Mr. President and I want to follow up Mr. Kaminsky's comments. We've had these results we've been looking at them and pouring all over them since we the school ended last year and and we had an opportunity to celebrate these at our our district leadership team meeting in June and we did it again at our convocation in August but this is our opportunity to do it publicly. First of all we talk a lot about
059the report card not being a true measure of the work that's happening and and so for our staff members who are paying attention to this you don't see me standing on a box celebrating our our scores at the you know from the mountaintop because deep in my heart I know that this report card system is a false measure of what's happening and so if I don't believe in the system I can't celebrate it too much right because then that takes away but when things don't go the way we think they should go when I say it's a flawed system so I don't celebrate them greatly but I do take issue with people saying we're not making progress. I take issue with that. I do take issue when people say we're a failing school district. We
060are not a failing school district. We are not failing our students aren't failing our staff they're not failing as well. We talk about in in our district about making slow steady and daily progress right and we talk about that because that's life. That's the way the world works. That's the way we all go about doing our jobs every day. We wake up and we try to be a better person than we were the day before and if we miss it we don't quit. We don't cry. We get up the next day and we try it again and that's what's happening in our Kansas City school district right. We are making overall district improvement. If you if you look at our report card last year you will see that we got a 2.5 but on that
061report card you will see there is a watermark. That watermark is because our State Department of Education did not listen to Mr. Kingsbury which tried for a month to tell them that they weren't looking at our data correctly and that we reported different data and because they didn't do that until after the report card was released they put a watermark. That watermark showed that there was some data that was misreported. Actually it wasn't misreported. They just didn't look at it correctly and so that's that change in our in our early literacy score would have brought us down to two stars. So last year if you looked at our report card we had two stars. This year we improved the 2.5 stars. Since this star system has been in place right we've gone from a 1.143
062which is a total scored overall points to a 1.75 right. That means that we are getting closer and closer to three stars. If I'm correct you mentioned today that we were two students away from getting a three and gap closing. If we would have gotten those two students that three and gap closing would have pushed us to a three overall or close to it? Closer. Closer? How about if we had got a three and the college career readiness? Closer or a three? I don't say I don't want to answer because I don't have the numbers in front of me and so I don't want to make a false statement. So I would think that we would have gotten a three if we would have gotten with either one of those scenarios. Pretty darn close and
063that would have been a jump from a two to a three. Also if you look at our growth in student learning we went from a from a one star right at the beginning of this system all the way to a three star on 24 25. So we're moving there. What's that? Yep chronic absenteeism has has gone from 48 49.7 oh I'm gonna go back and give you wrong numbers from 48.9% basically 49% down to 33% 33% this year. She mentioned our performance index which has risen from 49.7% in 2021 to 57.2% and 24 25. Our buildings are improving. We've had Porter's collaborative Montessori as a five star. Our Arts Academy is four four and a half stars. Buildings like Cedar, Steen, McGregor and Worley has significant increases this year going to three stars which means
064that there and steam as well going to three stars. Crenshaw moved to three and a half stars. I believe those school buildings are meeting or exceeding state standards. McKinley went up from two stars to two and a half stars. Clarence went up from two stars to two and a half stars. We are moving all over the place but yet people want to say we're not making growth yet. I have to pick up the phone and people tell us that we're a failing school district and we're not going to take that anymore. We are not a failing school district and and so we need to stand up for it. We are making progress all over the place. Something that I really want to point out our career tech program went from three to four and a
065half star. They have their own report card so we a lot of times that doesn't get talked about but all of our career tech programs which I think are tops in this county. They continue to improve. Our students are passing their web exams and they went up again from three to two four and a half stars. We are making progress as a district and we are going to continue to work. We're going to continue support our staff, support our students, support our families so that they are able to make slow and steady and daily progress and we're not going to apologize that we don't keep up with everyone. Our good goal is to take our kids on the journey. Take them from where we get them to where we believe and where this community wants
066them to be by giving them the education they want and they deserve. So we thank you for for your support. I like to thank our staff for everything they do because it is all of us together working very hard. Parents get your kids to school every day. Young parents read to them. Parents of future students get them in preschool. If you do all of those things we'll continue to make growth. So that concludes our report. Well said Superintendent Talbert. Mr. Dixon, thank you Superintendent Talbert. Mr. Kaminsky. Mr. President, I plod along sometimes and think of things after I should have thought of them. Can either the superintendent or the treasurer give us a comparison number between the $276.5 million dollars that public schools got cut and the increase in funding for in the various schemes
067to pay for religious and private education for about 12 or 13 percent of the students in Ohio? Do you know how much they went up? I'll attempt to treat that information for you, but I can't guarantee I'm going to be successful. They weren't cut. No. Yeah, well. They had a rather large increase. Okay. Yeah, they increased the amount of funding, the voucher that was increased, and our charter school counterparts received just the other day 500 additional million dollars across the country for charter schools from the federal government when we're receiving a cut. This year it's a little lower, but next year between title two, title three, title four, we're going to be upwards of nearly two million dollars in cuts there as well. Thank you. Let's look at that number accurately in the future. So,
068Mr. President, you've called on me to make a motion. Do I understand that there'll be no action taken after the executive session? Correct. Okay, then I move that we, the Board of Education, enter into an executive session to discuss matters required to be kept confidential by federal law with no action to be taken later. Second. Mr. Gruber, call the roll. Mr. Nolte. Aye. Ms. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Kaminsky. Aye. Mrs. Brown. Aye. Mr. Rose. Aye. We are out at 630. Everyone be safe getting home and have a great day.