001Mr. President, next we will have a presentation from our educational services team, Alana Monahan and Jelinda Sipo and they will be presenting our reading curriculum that we introduced at the last board meeting. Good evening, Mr. President, board members, Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent and Treasurer. I'm going to wait a few seconds as my computer catches up with us. Last month, or actually two weeks ago, we did a brief presentation of something that we were looking into, a change in our literacy curriculum for K-6, actually pre-K-6. We've done some more digging and some more research and we wanted to share with you some more of the information that we've learned so that this way you can ask questions and preview some of the materials that we've presented to you today. So we'll go ahead and get started with
002that. I think my computer is ready. So the program that we're talking about is Success for All and it is a literacy curriculum for students to learn how to read and that's exactly what our focus is today. So as you know, everything we do ties back to our vision, mission and core values. So we just want to make sure that we stress that this venture that we are hoping to go on really does align to the work that we believe as a district. Also to remind you, I'm not going to go back into all of the details from last month, but our trends right now in our K-3 literacy are kind of stagnant. We are better than we were pre-COVID. However, we still are kind of at that mark where 50% of our students are
003not proficient or reading on grade level and 50% of our sixth graders are entering middle school with a RIMP, which is a reading improvement plan. And we're not okay with that. And so we want to do something to get better and to help our teachers be more successful with our students. Our teachers who are working so very hard already, we want to give them some more support. So if you remember, this is one of my favorite graphics and it really comes from the R factor that there's a lot of great things happening in our district. We have all of these components of our literacy block happening. We have letters training. We have MTSS. We have professional development. We have structured literacy. We've made changes to our scheduling. We focused students on writing. However, all of
004those arrows are not aligned. And so our goal with SFA is to move towards a more structured, aligned pathway so that we're all moving in the same direction, that we have the same momentum going on. And ultimately, our goal is to have our students accelerate and become proficient readers and better than proficient. We want them reading above or beyond their grade level. So SFA, Success For All, is a program that is a model curriculum that is not just for literacy. It is a whole school reform. And so this is a great graphic that shows the five, six components. Leadership for continuous improvement, powerful instruction, professional development and coaching, research and results, and school-wide support and intervention tools. So we can talk a little bit about it because we've learned a little bit about it, but
005there's so much more. And this video is a great example of a video of an SFA school. So if you would please watch the following and you'll get a nice glimpse of what an SFA school would be like. People visit a Success For All school. They come looking for high quality materials, strong instruction and evidence of the science of reading. They'll find all of that. But what is really special about a Success For All school are the children. What they'll see is a complete research-proven system in action, a school-wide approach that turns research into daily practice in every classroom so every single child learns to read and achieve at the highest levels. And fast. Good job. It all starts with powerful instruction, which may look simple on the surface, but is grounded in how children
006learn best. When I was hired, I was handed the curriculum. I'm like, this is not going to work. But behold, a few weeks later, I'm like, oh my word, this works. First, students build the oral language and background knowledge they need to become confident readers. As they progress, they learn how to read through a clear, systematic phonics sequence. And as they grow, they shift from learning to read to reading to learn, discussing ideas, building knowledge and writing about what they've read. He doesn't say much because he's interested in what Freak is talking about. And when a student needs more support, tutoring is built right into the school day and connects directly to what they're learning in the classroom. They're getting this additional support based off of exactly what's being taught in their reading classroom. One
007of the real keys to Success For All's tutoring model is having kids working together just like they do in their regular reading room with the skills and strategies that they've been taught in their reading class. Everything with SFA is intentional. We do everything for a reason, and it clearly makes a difference, and the kids enjoy it. So how do we make powerful instruction work for every child? Success For All begins with the foundation of cooperative learning, daily structured practice that helps children think, communicate, solve problems and learn together. What happens if your partner does not know the sound of jellyfish? It's more student talk than teacher talk, and they're sharing their answers, they're telling why, they're, you know, think, pairing, sharing. Cooperative learning and them working together, it's also a life skill, and them starting
008it in kindergarten, working with groups, talking with partners, like it makes such a difference. You know, they learn from it, they grow from it, and then that's kind of going to take them into middle school, high school, and their career. Around that foundation are school-wide systems that help every child move forward. Every Success For All school teaches reading at the same time each day. That consistency makes flexible regrouping possible. Students move to the class that matches what they're ready to learn right now, and these groups change. Every quarter, every grade level, myself and my SFA facilitator meet with each grade level team, and we go literally student by student, and we look at all of their data. For now, if you're guys' classroom assessment summary, here's Jones. We can decide, is that student right where
009they need to be? Number 18, he would be the one that I would see being able to move up. What about this friend right here whose attendance has been a concern? We have school-wide structures from solutions teams that respond quickly to students' needs, to family partnerships that keep kids connected, to getting along together. Then you're going to breathe, which develops the learning and interpersonal skills that all children need, ensuring students are ready to learn every day. Chile is cool and ready for school. Getting along together is really teaching kids to be a really great partner and a really great teammate. Class, class. Working collaboratively, being able to explain our ideas and tell why this is how we learn. They're setting these goals because it's going to impact their daily experience in their classroom, and so
010kids should be leading that. When we were doing our labs, we weren't really paying attention and we got carried away a little bit. In Success for All Schools, leadership isn't separate from instruction. Coaching, facilitation, and principal leadership work together to ensure every classroom succeeds. I help support the teachers. I go into classrooms. I do observations. I give feedback. We are very lucky to have an SFA coach work with us. Every year is kind of different, but we collaborate with her to see, okay, what is our specific need this year and what do teachers specifically need right now. It's all over the place. Do you see all those E.D.s? Yes. Did I miss a line? I know. You missed one. Shh, shh, shh, shh. So much rock star readers. In a Success for All School, continuous
011improvement is a routine. It's built into the school week, the reading block, and the culture of the building. That reality that you thought was once only just a dream, like this is the reality of teachers get to teach, teachers get to make a difference in students' lives. Table five, number four, Lily. Max thinks Gwen is pretty cool because she doesn't care when he handed her a knife axe. For more than 35 years, Success for All has worked in schools of every kind, proving that strong instruction is possible in every classroom and real reading achievement is possible for every child. Nice job. So you guys can add five points. In class, if they're teaching us a new skill and I don't understand it, I can always ask my partner. And if they don't understand it, we
012have other teammates. In the real world, when you have a job, you're going to have to work with a team. We currently have an eight-year-old that's in second grade. When we're driving in the truck, I look over and she has a book out and she's reading a book. It's the foundation. It's the map. They buy into it. The teachers are bought in. The parents are bought into it. And when they do that, magic happens. I would describe SFA as exactly what it stands for, like Success for Everyone. Like everyone and everyone, day in, day out, we're constantly looking at data. We're constantly talking to other teachers. I'm talking with students. I'm looking at how they're interacting with others. And I'm trying to constantly make sure that they are the most successful that they can possibly
013be. Schools that use Success for All see more students reading on grade level, stronger teaching in every classroom, and results that last. Looking good, looking good. Give them a Texas. And it's possible for yours, too. What a great job, what a great job, what a great job. Okay. So as the video showcased, Success for All is a unique program. And that is due especially to its built-in cooperative learning structures, its flexible grouping models, and then really looking at that whole child model with social-emotional instruction and learning being built into its design. We sometimes do that separately with our SEL programs, and this is built in. And so it's authentic to the situation. This model also aligns with our current MTSS structures and teaming structures to ensure that we are gearing instruction and intervention to the
014whole child. So Success for All, and we talked about this a little bit last time, is built upon the Science of Reading framework. And it's been aligned with it for over three decades. And so, you know, we're just getting into that now, and we see it more now because in Ohio it's required, but they have been doing this work. And over that time, they have made adjustments because they keep up with research. They're connected with Johns Hopkins, and so as research changes, they make adjustments. So they mentioned in the video the Getting Along Together, and that is part of the SEL, or the social-emotional learning, components that are built into the program. Those lessons are research-based, and they are aligned with CASEL. And CASEL is kind of the gatekeeper for high-quality programs for social-emotional learning,
015and it's embedded in Success for All. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the components for Success for All and the three main programs that are within it. So the first program is Kinder Corner, and this is an all-day program. And the program, of course, focuses on literacy and language development for reading readiness. Those are just pictures of some of the materials and some of the vocabulary that's used. But basically each day, students will spend time with these components that are designed to provide a strong foundation in oral language and vocabulary development, the themes in the program incorporate science and social studies concepts, as well as math instruction in kindergarten. In addition to the focus on language development, students will build their literacy skills in phonological awareness, beginning reading, and writing. The second
016program within it is called Reading Roots. Reading Roots is a comprehensive reading program for beginning readers. So this starts in first grade. It provides strong literacy skills, and this is where the love of reading really begins. And as a reminder, last time we talked about the importance of fluency for first graders and that they must be fluent readers in first grade. And so this program is designed for that success. So again, Reading Roots, this program, students progress in their reading skills with systematic phonics instruction, rich literacy experiences, oral language and vocabulary development, as well as focused writing instruction, and plenty of decodable stories. And then the final program within SFA is called Wings, Reading Wings. And Reading Wings is targeted towards students who are reading at a second through sixth grade level. And the design
017of Reading Wings is to build comprehension, vocabulary, writing, and a love of reading as well. So the instructional components within Reading Wings includes targeted vocabulary development, reading comprehension, fluency, oral language development, and written expression. Students will experience both informational and literary texts through the many books that they're going to be reading. One of the three levels of instruction, the way the program's designed, there's three levels. Introduction is level one. Prompt and Reinforced is level two. And Independent Use is level three within the Reading Wings program. These are all built into each Reading Wings lessons to develop those comprehension skills. And then I know Alaina's going to talk a little bit about what's in front of you, but one of the paper copy of what's in front of you are all of the texts that we're
018referring to. Okay, so I always want to circle back to our vision mission and our core values. And so I've again highlighted some words there. Confidence, pursue their dreams using knowledge, skills learned in the Canton City School District, confident, creative, open-minded learners, excellent leadership, and community. And those words were words, a lot of those words were heard in the video. And then we go to their vision and mission, which is to develop and disseminate research-proven educational programs to ensure that all students from all backgrounds achieve at the highest academic levels that aligns with our vision and mission. And this is a program that we believe can support us to help getting our students what they deserve. So having said that, the key components of successful implementation of course involve professional development and coaching. And so
019this is not just a program that we are going to purchase and buy and put in the teacher's hands. This will be something that we will go through thorough training with. We will have implementation coaches for three years with us in the district coming to visit and help support our teachers. We will have our own teachers trained as SFA coaches to support teachers in the classroom. Our instructional coaches, it's right up their alley. It's the work that they do. And the beauty of this is that it's really about the science of reading, which is what our teachers have already learned about through their letters training and through the other training from the state modules. But what this does is put common tools in the hands of our teachers so that that way they are able
020to consistently teach and focus on the students and teaching in the classrooms as opposed to having to prepare materials to, and we have good materials right now, but they're not aligned. They're those arrows that are going in different directions. Having this allows our teachers to not make mistakes, to go in and do things right because the materials are there for them. So in front of you are some of the materials, and Jolinda already alluded to these. There is an SFA brochure, and that's the one with the beautiful little girl on the front. The next one is the impact report. So first of all, the SFA brochure has some testimonies from teachers, former students, and it's some heartwarming reads. The system changed the story. That's their impact report, so that will give you some nice data
021for those of you that enjoy that. And the final piece is the SFA summary and overview, so that will give you a better picture of what's happening in the classrooms. As Jolinda mentioned, too, there is a list, a photocopy of, not a photocopy, a hard copy of the texts that are at each level, and it also shows you what is being taught with those texts so that you can see that it's not, teachers don't have to go and pull to find how to decode certain sounds because it's all here for them. We are going to also have sample materials that will be available to you to preview, but this coming Tuesday during our PD day, we have a team of teachers coming in to look at those first, so we're going to save those for
022them to look at, and then you are welcome to come and take a look at those at any time after that. So budgeting for SFA, just be transparent with you because it is going to cost us some, but I also wanted to compare our wit and wisdom costs with our proposal for SFA, which we will do at the next board meeting. So the three-year cost start-up for wit and wisdom and 95% phonics, because we had to purchase two separate systems in order to meet all the requirements, was $1.5 million. SFA is a total over three years with all of the training and support, $2.7 million. However, they believe so much in us that they are working with the foundation to provide us with a $1.2 million scholarship, and with that, our cost would be $1.5
023million over the course of three years. So pretty even, Steve, in terms of wit and wisdom. The difference in this then lies in the estimated yearly cost that we have with our consumables. So with wit and wisdom and 95% phonics and all of the resources we purchase for our teachers on a yearly basis, we pay about $142,000 a year to support our teachers and provide them with the resources they need to teach their students. With wit and wisdom, after year three, our yearly cost will be $69,000. And again, these are all estimated costs, but the difference per year in that yearly cost that we will have to pay to continue to have our consumables, the workbooks and the little books that they'll take home to read, is $72,000 each year. So that is a savings
024across the board. Plus that scholarship, which is a beautiful thing. All right. Having given you that information, are there any questions? Ms. Watkins, I'm sure you have a lot of them. I don't know who beat you. If that was a buzzer, I don't know who would have won. Our education expert on the board. So the scholarship is guaranteed. We won't, like it cannot be taken away next year. We applied for it and they've given it to us. And in fact, they believe in us and our district so much that Julie Weibel, who is the CEO, when she found out that we were looking and pursuing this, she booked a flight out and came to meet with us and talk with Superintendent Talbert and Jolinda and I. And Steubenville uses this. So she has, and Barberton
025is just recently onboarded with this, just I believe this year is their first year. So she came by to visit with us and have a conversation and the scholarship, that was where we learned about it. And it is guaranteed. Is there anything we can apply for after the three years for continuing or we won't need? That's a question I don't know. So, but we can certainly look into. Okay, thanks. Thank you, Ms. Watkins. Any other questions? Oh, go ahead. You still have the floor. What we need to do is pull a popsicle stick and say, oh, Ms. Watkins. Just put my name on all of them. Is it leveled reading or is it? Yes. It is? It is, yes. Okay. Do they have leveled books that go with it and all of that? Yes. Yes.
026The students will be working at their own level and the books coincide with that. Like on your sheet with level two, that means that those are second grade leveled books. Level three is third, et cetera. So students, and this is part of the uniqueness of the program, students work at their level. And so that's where the flexible grouping comes in. So based on where students are performing and what their data says, they will receive instruction at that level. And then the goal is to instruct, accelerate them. And so that's part of how the results have been what they've been is because students are getting what they need. Right. It's like just right there instruction. And we're trying to do that, but trying to do that with materials that don't match up, it doesn't work. That's
027why our arrows are all over. But that flexible grouping piece is huge. Yes. Yes. So there's a mixture of consumable books. So that's part of the cost. And some of these, we will have printing rights too. We just print them and send them. Others, they're paper, especially with KN1, a lot of them are paper books that they're going to take home. And they're aligned to the exact skill that they're learning. So as they're learning the skill, there's a book that goes with it. They practice, it goes home. And so we have this ongoing partnership with reading in school and home. Okay. Last thing with parent connection. Are there a group of parents who will get training? Or is this just like usual? The book goes home, parent has a paper, they sign off. How was
028that parent pulled? Because a lot of times that doesn't pull in parents. It doesn't show them or help them with the type of reading we're trying to do. Because parents always go back to, we didn't have to do all this when we were in school. So with that parent connection, how does it pull them in? Can they come in for training if they desire? Will there be a parent workshop? Or how's that going to work? So I'd have to find some of those things out. But because it's a whole school model and fits with our MTSS structures, which are academic and non-academic. And in one of the meetings on the video, they talked about attendance and this friend. So those things all go together. As far as specifics, I'm not sure. But the parent component
029is in this because it is a whole child model. So I do believe they inform the parents of what it is and they start to build that partnership. That is why when they talk about the training, they want everyone trained. The entire building trained so that everyone understands this is what this means. Okay. And I wanted to piggyback on the acceleration model. Because right now, the way our data looks, we have many students that are below grade level. Steubenville was like that 35 years ago, where they had a lot of fifth and sixth graders that were well below going and at lower levels of reading. Now it's their first grade and their kindergarten that are the lower leveled students that are below level. But by the time they get to fifth and sixth grade, there's
030a handful of students that haven't haven't reached that. And usually those are students that come into their district that have not been in student all along. So this these next couple of years, there's going to be a lot of students below level until we can accelerate them. And with that acceleration, it's there's there's timing for that. There's data for that students move and the resources available allow us to close those gaps faster because the resources are there as opposed to teachers having to try to find those those resources to help them. Okay. Last question. So is it a K through six or what component does preschool have? Are we going to start this model with our preschool students also? Yes, we didn't include a slide with that. But curiosity corner is the preschool part. So
031there's kindergarten corner, curiosity corner. So we did have them provide information on preschool because that's really where it starts. And so developing that oral language in preschool and those routines and that carrying over to kindergarten is something that we're looking at. And actually that quote does include preschool. OK, thank you. And initially we wanted just K3. That's what we went into this thinking. OK, let's do this. And then pre-K was like, oh, me too. And 46 was like, oh, me too. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Watkins. Any other questions from the board? Yes, I wouldn't say I have a question. But as you were talking about the data, it's interesting on this page six of the impact report, it showcases the percentage increase over time that they saw for schools that were in this. And
032I think it speaks pretty highly of how high the improvements were. So I'd be excited to see whether there's projections or year-to-year data that could showcase what that's doing for us. I know we use a student bill as a big indicator. You know, even if we were able to get some of the data year-to-year, how it improved for them that we could use to kind of track how it's impacting, how it would impact for us. I promise you we'll come with data. And I would like to add to that. When I was in Alliance, when I became the superintendent of Alliance many, many years ago, SFA was the reading program that they used because their previous superintendent came from Steubenville. In the fall of my second year, I believe, the state moved from minimum standards
033to college and career readiness standards. And if you were in education at that time, every district reading scores and math scores and science scores all went because the standards increased. At that time in that fall, Alliance and Canton had the exact same reading scores. The elementary teachers in both places were actually all leading the county in doing letters training. They were the first ones being trained in letters and learning how to teach reading. The difference was Alliance had SFA. And all of the tools that you need and you learn about in letters were there built in the system. And the system was designed for students to be accelerated through. So you fast forward to three or four years down the road. Alliance's third grade students, 70 from 19% in that fall to 70 plus percent
034of the students in third grade reading at grade level happened. And a lot of that was attributed to SFA. Now, they've since moved on, but they moved on because they outgrew the program and needed to do other things. But it is still located at the lower levels. And they are using it at the lower levels to help kids get that great start. At the upper levels, they make changes. And that's why I think it's important for us to do this now. They shared with me this afternoon the data of our students. And in most grade levels, we have a lot of students that are two, three grade levels behind. But you also have kids across the spectrum. So I want you to think of a teacher that's sitting in a classroom of fourth graders. And
035they have of their 25 kids, they have 15 of them that are two to three grade levels behind. They have a handful that are at grade level or above. And they have some that are approaching grade level. And that one teacher has to teach them all. And so how do you do that to not lose the kids? And we have teachers who are doing just that. But that is very, very difficult to do. And so what ends up happening is you try to teach where you're not losing these kids here. You can bring them forward. And you're trying to keep the kids or a way ahead engaged. And what happens is there's this middle ground. So these kids are making ground. The kids at the top end aren't making as much ground as they can.
036So when you look at a whole school model where every kid is where they need to be in order to grow because you're using all your resources at one time and everybody moves and grows. And the students who are behind are getting exactly what they need for 90 minutes, 120 minutes. They're getting their attention that they need. And then on top of that, they're getting that extra tutoring. So instead of me being able to work with the teacher for 20 minutes of my individual group time with that teacher, I get to have the entire class period growing and not time spending working on my own. I think that's where the power is. I also think that it's a whole school model. So not only are we learning strategies that could be used in reading class,
037it could also be used in math class, it could be used in social studies class, it could be used in science class. And once a kid reaches fourth grade, reading is in every subject area, in every content area. So you will continue to see kids grow. When that social studies teacher spends time learning how to teach reading and interacting with the curriculum, they become a better social studies teacher, teaching the kids that vocabulary as well. So it's a really exciting opportunity for our staff. I think it's a really exciting opportunity for our buildings and our students and our families. And I look forward to making a big impact in changing how we do business in our elementary school. Thank you, sir. Any other questions from the board? Ms. Watkins? I'm excited about it, just to
038let you know. So keep us posted and include us wherever you can because this is a very exciting place to be where there's so many negatives going around, but we still have that ram in the bush and we're always still pressing and finding ways, finding money, finding avenues to continue to push for our kids. Never give up. You always find a better way. So thank you very much. Thanks, Jeff. And I will say when Ms. Watkins is excited as a 30-plus year educator, it gives me a lot of confidence in what you're doing. So, Mrs. Monahan, Mrs. Seifel, thank you for your presentation tonight. All right. Thank you. Have a good night. Mr. President, now moving on to the final item tonight. It's something that we've been talking about for quite some time, and that's
039been our reduction plan. We are making an adjustment tonight, one that... Wait, I need to get this to work. I promised you it worked earlier. I was getting ready to blame it on our curriculum folks for breaking it. Okay. So as you know, back in February, we made a recommendation to reduce a $17.7 million deficit that we were faced with in 2028. And because that deficit was in our forecast that Mr. Gruber did in October, we had to put a plan in place to reduce that, which we did. We were able to change that to a little over a million-dollar positive. But we did have a significant number in 2029 of over $10 million. And that will have to be erased by August, or we'll be doing the same process again next year. So even
040though we put the plan in place and we've been working the plan, I mentioned to you guys that we would continue to look for opportunities to save money. And so I'm coming back today to do just that. And we think that this is, while it is something that I didn't think we'd be doing, especially at this late a date, we do think that it's in the best interest of us moving forward for a host of reasons. So we are going to, I am recommending that we close one additional school to start the next school year. And that school is Gibbs Elementary School. And there are a variety of reasons why we are recommending that we close Gibbs. And I'll show you our enrollment numbers as we move forward. One, we have, we have, Gibbs has
041the lowest enrollment. There's 287 students scheduled to be at Gibbs, I believe, and I'll show that number. Now, Harter does have a lower enrollment for next year. But as you know, remember, Harter is only open for next year and then it's closing. We believe that making this change will add, will add the fewest number of walkers to buses. And of the families requesting to go to a different school, Gibbs had the highest, second highest number of students requested. I think Patrick had 18 students requesting to go to a different school, and Gibbs had 17. The difference between Gibbs and Patrick is that Patrick had just as many kids requesting to go to Patrick when Gibbs did not. I think Gibbs had maybe two kids requesting to go there. Also, Gibbs sits right in the middle.
042And when I show you the map, you'll see multiple school attendance zones. So it's, it's basically chopping off a part of their attendance zone and adding it to another district. So what we have is currently you can see that the way things are sitting right now, if we were to open school tomorrow, Belden would have 321. With the change, they'll be at 421. Cedars at 460. With the change, they'll be at 465. Clariden will not pick up any kids or lose any kids in this change, so they'll stay consistent. Gibbs has 282 students and they will close. Harder has 172. With the change, they'll be 170. Patrick will stay the same because they're not involved in this. Summit will go from 358 to 388. Timken will go from 521 to 593. And Yutz will go
043from 348 to 400. As the, the large, the school receiving the largest increase is, of course, Timken. Timken kind of drove this. Timken is a very large building, can hold up 650 students. And you can see that there's still space left in Timken, which will allow us to deal with some open enrollment requests and some students who are currently there, who want to stay there, and they were open enrolled, so they'll probably get to stay. And allow students in other buildings who still want to open a row. But what this move does, as you can see, it fills our buildings and gets them closer, all of them closer to capacity. And that's really important when it comes to efficiencies. Also, when we did this initially, we set some of our, our current class numbers that
044we use. K to 3, 21 or 22, we try to keep. Anything above fourth grade, fourth grade and up, we try to set it at 25. And with the reductions, we said we were going to have to switch that a little bit. And if you remember, we talked about that. We were asked by people, what are the class sizes going to be? Well, we moved up to, hey, we got to be closer to 25 and in the lower levels, and we're going to be closer to 28 in the upper levels. What we've noticed is that without doing this shift, some of the classes and even in the lower levels were getting kind of high because we didn't have any more teachers. By reducing a building, we were able to spread out more teachers and kind
045of balance out those class sizes. Will there be some hot spots where we'll have some higher numbers to start? Yes, because we need to wait to see. We're not just going to post jobs because we lose students come and go. We have a high transiency rate, so we'll wait until the beginning of the school year. But this helps us. It keeps us from having to hire new staff. At the next board meeting, I will be able to give you our total number of reductions. But what I can say is that back in February we said, hey, we're going to cut 30 classroom teaching positions. I can tell you that we are well beyond that, and we are closer to 50 than we are with 30, and no one has been laid off. And that was
046our goal. There's all retirements and resignations that we've been able to do that. We were saying that we were going to do over the course of this two-year reduction, we were going to do nine administrators. We've done that. And we said that we're going to do 35 classified staff. And we believe that that number is going to be closer to 50. So we're going to be really close to 100 or a little over 100 total reductions. And hopefully, if things go well between now and the end of the year, those will be people where we've done that through attrition. And that will help us get ourself in a really good place going into the fall, budget-wise. And so this move is needed. And while it's something we didn't want to do, we believe we have
047to. Now, the next question is what's going to happen with Gibbs? Gibbs is 25 years old, maybe? Yeah, it's one of our newer buildings. And so this has happened so fast. And really, how we got here, Mr. Dixon and his team, I'd like to thank them. What's happening with Timken is amazing. If you haven't, board members, we haven't gotten you to go through it, you need to see it. It is a heck of a building, a heck of a learning space that I think our community is going to be really proud of. It's going to be here for years. But as we walk the building and look at some of the new creative spaces, we identified that we could fit more kids into that building. And then we started to say, okay, when should we
048make that happen, right? And then we're like, well, can we wait, see what it's going to look like? And I'm like, if we wait, we're going to be moving kids multiple years in a row. So let's see what would work best. So then we started to look at all the different changes we could make. And what we realized is that one, we really want to keep neighborhoods together the best we can. And we had already took some kids out of Bellstone and moved them into Gibbs. The majority of those parents wanted their kids to go to Timken, and they were very unhappy. So adjusting the zone of Gibbs and taking Timken and bringing it to the south a little bit allows those families now to go with their friends from Bellstone to Timken. Then we
049had some students who went to Bellstone, and they didn't quite live far enough to the east to go to Yitz. So they have to go to Gibbs as well, and they're going to be leaving their friends. So now what we're going to do is that neighborhood is now going to come back, and those kids are now going to be able to go to Yitz with some of their friends. Then there was a neighborhood that we felt, hey, we have these kids that are walking across 12th Street. 12th Street's really busy. So we're going to expand the attendance zone for Belden to there so they can catch a bus and go to Belden. Well, that separated some kids as well that kind of live in the same neighborhood, and kids who live across the street from
050them are going to have to go to Gibbs. So now we're going to take those kids and we're going to expand that a little bit across 12th Street, and that bus will just cross 12th Street, pick some of those kids up and take them to Belden. And then there are kids, the lion's share of current Gibbs students are going to Summit. And so this, the remaining kids in that neighborhood now will go to Summit with the other kids who are going to Summit. So relationships and friendships will be able to continue. And so it really makes sense that this is the school that this happens to. Our plan for the building, again, it sits right in the middle of our district, right, that it will be used. Right now we have not determined which programs
051or services we will move there, but it will be used and it's a newer building. And I hope to be closer to making that decision and giving you that information when this is brought to you for a vote. Today, this is just us telling you that we're recommending this. You can see, and I'd like to thank Ms. Monahan for her artwork. This, again, this, we started to have this conversation middle of the week last week after we toured the building. And so it's moved pretty quickly. But what you can see is you can see that in the, to the north or to the top of the screen here, this red, this red at pink area here, that's the current Temkin attendance zone. So you can see us dropping the Temkin line to the south. Basically
052is what's happening. The gray area here is the current summit attendance zone. You can see us expanding that zone to the east. And you could see the purple is the Belden zone. And you can see us expanding the Belden zone to the north. And then you can see us taking the Yutz zone and expanding it further to the west. And again, what this does is it fills up those other buildings and allows us to increase efficiency for those buildings. So it is definitely going to work for us. I hate doing it at this late date, right? We've already determined where most of our staff is going to be. We let them know where they were going to be. And we had to go shake that up. And that builds some anxiety. I've got to pack
053my things. I've got to go. They thought they were staying. And so I understand that. And it is. We've done a really good job of building a culture around here where we're a family. And so you kind of hate to disappoint family members. And then also for students. Families are making decisions and they're probably building plans to how they're going to get kids to places. And now we're going to change that. Some of our families who are trying to get their kids to go to different schools and now this is happening for them will be happy. But, you know, we've got families that have had a history of brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles who have gone to Gibbs. And they really value that building. And so we know that this is going to
054be a shakeup for them. What we can tell them is that it will continue to be a part of the Canton City School District. It will continue to be a hub in that neighborhood. The school as it sits today will no longer be a school. But the Canton City School's presence in that community, we can guarantee, will be there. And that's really important. I think people need to know that. So the next steps that will happen for us, Gibbs, we'll have a Gibbs parent meeting on May 6 at 6 p.m. And at that time we will talk about the attendance zones, where they're going. It will not, again, it will not be official until you guys vote on the 11th on the recommendation. And so we will approve it on the 11th at the board
055meeting. And then we'll approve the attendance zones at that meeting as well. Are there any questions? Ms. Watkins, go ahead. So when you say fill the buildings, none of the buildings will be overfilled, will they? Because, you know, sometimes we put too many in and then art and a lot of the specials end up on carts. Will there be any specials on carts or will they also have their own space? You're not allowed to ask that question at this meeting. The plan for this was not to overfill buildings to where rooms and spaces will not be able to be used for the purpose of what they were designed for. Now, as soon as I say that, principals will make decisions on using rooms for different things. But when we looked at drawing the lines, for
056instance, Patrick, Patrick has always been well over 400 students and they've had art on a cart and music on a cart. And with this, you can see that Patrick is at, I think, under 400, real close to 480, I think. Patrick will have an art room and have spaces now. So our goal is to try to make sure that the rooms could be used. And we believe that we're closer to that than we've always been, than we've ever been. And so I don't want to speak for principals and tie their hands right now as they try to move people around. But our goal is to make sure that the buildings are closer to capacity. And I don't think anybody is over capacity, but they're close to capacity and that there are spaces that they're being
057used for what they were designed for. Okay. Any other questions, Ms. Watkins? No. Okay. Mr. Van Almen. Superintendent Talbert, do we have an estimate for the district's, if any, savings for repurposing Gibbs School? This school? Gibbs School. Gibbs, right. I would think that I will have that by the 11th. And what I could tell you is we will save in staff duplication. So there will be some staff costs that we will save. This will help us. This will help us with, like, I think we have two, there are definitely two support staff openings that because of this closure, we won't have to fill. I believe there's, I don't believe, I know for a fact there are at least three, four teaching positions that we were probably going to have to post that because of this
058move, we won't have to post. And so the average teacher salary that we use, what, close to $90,000 when we take fringe benefits and all those different things. So, you know, you can look at that, that's close to, at the minimum level, that's $360,000 plus thousand dollars. And the people that we're not replacing are not at the minimum level. So you're looking at close to over a half a million just in the teacher parts of it. And then that's talking materials and supplies, heating and electricity and cooling, all of that. So I think now you're looking at close to $750 to a million dollars in just this building alone for this year. And that's the type of savings. It's the reduction of, it's the reducing duplication that we will be able to do. And another
059thing that this does, and folks will tell you this, our staff will tell you this, that we've had, in order to be economically responsible, we've shared positions. So we've shared community workers and we've shared nurses. And what this will allow us to do is the staff, right, the building. So the nurse will be at the building and the community workers will be at the building. And those type of positions don't have to float and we don't have to post additional people to do it. So I think all of that's going to help. We will have closer numbers. And our goal at the next meeting will be to say, here's what we said we were going to reduce. Here's the exact reductions we've done. Here's the impact that's had on 28 and the impact that it
060will have on 29. And again, all that can change tomorrow because there are bills changing every day that are mandating us to do stuff. Like they're mandating us to have recess for every kid all the way up through eighth grade. Nobody's mandating them to pay for it. There's mandating that we have to do a new math curriculum, a new math assessment. Again, there's no mandate for who's paying for it. So if all of that stuff goes in, it could change how things are going. But I really do think we've really done a good job of making the cuts that we need to make that allows us to live up to our commitment to being fiscally responsible. If nothing is done with school funding, folks, we are going to have to go to the ballot. It's
061plain and simple. And I know that there are people on both sides of this. But the evidence is clear that this Board of Education and the board that was in place before it made a commitment to not needing to go for new money for seven years. That's the seven-year mark is next month. And we were well on track to do that until we were cut. And we were cut multiple ways. We lost targeted assistance, supplemental assistance. And the funding formula was changed and not fully implemented. And our tax valuation went up, which allowed the state to say, oh, Canton's richer than what we really are. So therefore, they cut the amount of money they were sending us. And they will do that again next year and the year after. So we will continue to see
062a reduction in what we're getting from the state on top of what they cut this year. And the feds continue to promise to do even more. So we're going to have to go back. And what I like to tell our community is that, you know, if you don't like that we're coming back, it ain't us. When this is all said and done, we've probably cut nearly $20 million in our budget this year. And so it's not us. So if you have a problem with what's being offered and what's being done, I think you start in Columbus. Any other questions? Thank you, Superintendent Talbert. Mr. Parks, would you read the recommendation for our executive session, please, sir? I would recommend the Board of Education in an executive session to discuss the employment, compensation, and discipline of
063a public employee with no action to follow. So moved. Second. Mr. Gruber, call the roll, sir. Mr. Van Olmen. Aye. Mr. Parks. Aye. Ms. Watkins. Aye. Mr. Russ. Aye. We are out at 6.01. Everybody have a good, safe trip home and a great night.