001good evening and welcome to the cedar falls community school district board of education meeting on this july 12th i want to welcome you to our meeting here this this evening uh to uh start with we'll call the meeting to order and move to the consent agenda do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda so moved thank you is there a second second thank you very much questions or comments i'd like to um pull the open enrollment from the consent agenda very well that that does not require a vote so we will pull that that will be pulled from the agenda so we will be voting on everything except for the open enrollment are there any other items that anyone would like to pull all right see now we'll vote on the consent agenda
002with everything except for open enrollment so all those in favor say aye aye aye aye oh same sign all right that that uh carries moving now to the consideration of open enrollment so now we need to have a first and a second uh for consideration of this do i have a motion to approve the open enrollment so moved all right thank you susie is there a second second thank you jenny and i'm guessing we'd like to have discussion i had just wanted to um haven't have an update on maybe just very high level of how how the applicants were reviewed knowing full well that we have some facilities some grades that are full some that aren't i think it would just be helpful too because it is such a hot topic right now within iowa
003if we could just touch on those things just slightly and i think andy if you could then everyone may not know who's watching know what's happened over the past spring and so maybe give them a brief or brief understanding of why we're talking about open enrollment at this point in the year yeah so typically open enrollment is something that has to be applied for and completed by march 1st every year for the for the upcoming school year the legislative session actually changed that for five districts in iowa those that have a diversity plan one of our contiguous districts which is waterloo had a diversity plan and because of that they had to have an open enrollment period longer and extended out past the normal deadline so we received some open enrollment requests from waterloo you'll
004see that within the reports going through the process iowa code allows districts with open enrollment requests to either accept or deny those if you deny those you have to have specific reasons or purposes to deny those and we have two that are listed in iowa code as well as our board policy we make sure our board policy falls closely with iowa code and that is for capacity if you have capacity limitations within your district could be grade level could be whole buildings it could be multiple different areas but it's capacity and then programmatic needs so if you have a program that is either full or can't support the needs of a student that might be looking to open the role in or don't have the program that best allows that student to reach their abilities
005that is the second reason so it's capacity or program you'll see within these we are recommending approval of 29 those are either at the elementary and i think there's three that are at the high school but deny 13 that are specifically at our junior high levels we have the capacity within our elementary at this time we know with the high school the three additional students won't make an impact within the overall capacity and there are one or two students with programmatic needs that we knew we couldn't meet just because of the capacity and the staff to student ratio especially if uh they're at a specific targeted level with an individual education plan we can go through and check those so we did that pretty thoroughly pretty strategically and that's the recommendations that we have perfect
006i really appreciate that thank you can um can you maybe give us a rundown of how we prioritize some of these obviously there were several of them that were that were denied and you you already mentioned that capacity was one of those is that the only factor that essentially goes into that or for instance are there efforts to keep families together uh some of those sorts of things any other demographics that might play into that um so no it's capacity and programs are the two factors that we can use there are a few that are due to program because we couldn't offer the program that would meet their needs based on the the services necessary due to the fact that again we just don't have the available program or the capacity challenges so no those
007are only the two factors and and we look at grade levels we look at class sizes we look at student-to-teacher ratios to make sure that we can balance those appropriately and we feel we can do that you know the great unknown for us always is august who who moves then in september who moves in and number of home starts versus new families that may relocate to the area which is kind of an unknown but we try to do this at least systemically and strategically so we have the right capacity and is the order in which the applications are received is that part of the consideration as well no because it's based on capacity it would have been but by saying none at junior high it doesn't come into a first come first serve scenario and
008the number that we had i think there were when you do the math 42 total requests the the number that we're approving or recommending to approve in the class sizes dispersed across the elementary and the three at the secondary or the high school level doesn't have a great impact go first come first serve so do we have any any uh other information on the applicant's demographic information that we consider or not it's just essentially who applies and and that's essentially all we need capacity and programs are those two factors that you can utilize any other questions and one more just just to make sure i'm clear on this once they are approved for open enrollment say in third grade they are with cedar falls schools until they move or graduate is that correct correct that
009correct okay so this is fairly late in the year obviously you mentioned that the deadline is much earlier in the year this was an exceptional year so from from our internal staffing planning it's i mean i imagine it's it's a little bit disruptive uh but thinking about next year was this a one-time uh item that the deadline was set so late and so next year we will not be dealing with this yeah so the following year applications for the 2022-2023 school year go back to the iowa code requirement of march 1st okay and then just to pull up kind of a financial question so when an open enrolled student comes into our district so we obviously get the the dollars assigned to that from an educational standpoint but if they live outside of our district
010we wouldn't get anything that corresponds to for example their people or any taxes that are tied to the property where they they live in so we get the benefit of their of the operational funds but we don't get the funds for uh that we use for facilities and and right correct yep yep any other questions or comments i was just going to share that also with open enrolled there's a paragraph in there that says we can move students at any time if they're open enrolled so we can use that to balance enrollment also between different schools yes gotcha okay thank you excellent well seeing no further questions or comments i'll move to a vote uh all those in favor of the open enrollment recommendation say aye aye aye opposed same side motion carries moving now
011to the next part of our meeting we have some annual meeting agenda items that we need to cover and the first of those is the depository banks and maximum deposit at each one of those banks we recently voted on this and so this was just an update of what we what we had before i don't know if there's any comments that you want to make there to know there's no changes from our previous approval with the board it's really just a list of institutions that the board is allowing the districts to utilize within the cedar valley and then the maximum amounts in which they can be hold held there so and this will be for fiscal 22. um just as a reminder due to the fact that we did have a bond issuance uh recently
012in june uh that it is anticipated that we will have a uh general obligation bond issuance again in fiscal 22. unfortunately we can't really prepare at this time for those dollar amounts according to that so there will likely be an adjustment again during this fiscal year at that time all right very good can i have a motion to approve this i moved at the cedar falls community school district board of education approved fiscal year 2022 depository banks and maximum deposit resolutions for the cedar falls community school district as presented thank you alan is there a second second thank you very much see no questions or comments we'll move to a vote all those in favor say aye aye oh same sign motion carries moving now to appointment of board secretary again this is an annual
013task that we as a board need to do that and we have had now graciously serving in that role uh for for several years now and so i would ask for a motion to appoint the continuance of now as the board secretary i move to appoint danelle gonerman as the cedar falls community school district board of education secretary for the 2021-2022 school year thank you very much is there a second second thank you very much all those in favor say aye aye opposed same sign motion carries so now we do need to i do need to administer the uh the oath to our secretary so no if you will all right do you solemnly swear that you will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of iowa and that
014you will faithfully and impartially to the best of your ability discharge the duties of the office of school board secretary in the cedar falls community school district cedar falls iowa as now or hereafter required by law who will very much thank you for that uh moving now to and maybe this will seem a little bit redundant um but we also need to have an authorized school business official which happens to be a role that danelle also fulfills we will not have to administer an oath to her for such role but we do need to take a vote to appoint her as an authorized school business official so could i have a motion to appoint her i move that the cedar falls community school district board of education approved the appointment of danel gonerman as the
015authorized school business official for the cedar falls community school district thank you nate is there a second second thank you alan all right we'll take a vote then all those in favor say aye aye aye opposed same sign congratulations to mel you may continue and happy birthday and yes and tomorrow is her birthday so if you want to focus in on her i'm sure she'll look to be turning red [Laughter] and the final item of the uh of the annual meeting is our board has an independent treasurer who is available to and and does review our financial accounts and presents a report to the board to certify that our our financial results and that is a role that is as every member of the board that is a volunteer role and dan lynch has been
016graciously serving in that role now for several years and has agreed to continue serving in that role and dan lynch has a very good background for this he's a banker here in town so he is very accustomed to looking at numbers and so we appreciate him very much uh agreeing to that now unfortunately he was not able to join us here this evening but he will also be administered the oath of office to serve as the treasurer uh for the for the school district board of education so i would ask for a motion to approve uh dan as the treasurer i move to appoint daniel lynch as cedar falls community school district board of education treasurer for 2021 2022 school year thank you very much is there a second second thank you nate all those
017in favor please say aye aye opposed same sign motion carries now moving into more regular items of our meetings first on the agenda is communications good evening we'll bring up our presentation here quick okay starting out tonight we are open for registration for the next school year it's hard to believe they're already at that point but we opened that registration last week so the online registration an email was sent to all of our current families and this is for grades first through 12th they'll be returning any new students though actually need to come visit us at the administration building and see our registrar jess smith you can call if you have any questions 553-2644 all the information is of course on our website as well so that will stay open until friday august 6th for
018all those returning students within the email that went to all of our families is all of this information for all of paying the fees fines meal payments the free reduced meal is now an online application that can be done by families and it's really important for those families to complete that information even though we know our meals will be free next year for all of our students it does impact a lot of funding in other areas so we're really going to try to push that out to our families through the next couple weeks also you can request your transportation understand the medical screening requirements and of course get your physical form information i also wanted to mention that the booster club's taking memberships again the booster club is a non-profit that supports the sole purpose
019is to support the athletic programs at the high school the junior high and holmes it's in its 46th year and supports 2 200 students within our 2600 student population 85 percent participate in extracurricular activities so it's really important for us to have this continued support of not just the parents within the community but also any other members of the cedar falls area that would like to join you can get that information through our website also wanted to mention we have some openings for next school year or we're having a something we're trying new as a para educator job fair it will be tomorrow from 3 30 to 6 30 it will be held at southdale elementary but this will be hiring for a wide variety of positions in the paraeducator role for our district from
020preschool all the way through high school anyone that is interested you can come and learn about the positions have any questions answered and then actually fill out an application on site so anyone that is just and generally interested you're encouraged to come if you can't make it of course you can just call the admin building and get more information but we have lots of openings specifically in our peer educator roles for next school year this was something that was brought to my attention at the end of the school year and i forgot to to bring it to all of you the professional disc golf association gave a grant to our school district who for new discs and new materials of curriculum for them to be learning disc golf this was really pursued by brian cross
021he's a physical education teacher at north cedar and at aldrich elementary so he applied for the grant and received it so then this spring he was actually able to teach the students at those two elementaries the program of disc golf so it was really great experience for those students that they were able to utilize that wonderful outdoor space at north cedar that has now been allowed it was raised up so they can use all that space so congratulations to brian and then this can be used across the district as well i wanted to mention a congratulations to our high school student simon plasman he was awarded a prestigious scholarship he's currently a cadet in the west high school air force junior reserve officers training corps rotc and he was ordered a scholarship valuing over 22
022thousand dollars for an eight week flight program at embry riddle aeronautical university in prescott arizona there were only 300 cadets from around the u.s that qualified for the scholarship and he is the only recipient from iowa so a big congratulations to simon and i know he has very proud parents as well also wanted to congratulate kyle engelhardt he's in the running for an award from the recording academy and the grammy museum he's among 219 music teachers from 204 cities across the country who were announced as quarter finalists for the music educator award the award was established to recognize current educators who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of music education and demonstrate a commitment to the broader cause of maintaining music education in the schools and anybody that knows kyle knows
023that he is exemplary in those things of demonstrating commitment and maintaining music education in our schools so we wish him the best as the process continues for receiving that award and congratulations also wanted to announce the otto schweitz foundation just awarded a grant to the cedar falls schools foundation to support our connect cf program again connect cf was established in 2018 and is a collaboration between the district and cedar falls utilities to address the homework gap in regards to connectivity and wi-fi into households for those students that don't have it so we're able to provide affordable internet access to students that are eligible within the free reduced meal program so just wanted to definitely thank the auto schweitz foundation and to mention this is only made possible by the donations from individuals businesses organizations and
024grants so thank you to the foundation i also wanted to mention our equity website continues to have resources added and we'll continue that throughout the summer and we'll be of course be launching new things starting in the fall and then just to mention this is all the ways that you're able to follow us and find out more information any questions a couple of uh quick comments you mentioned about applications for free and reduced even though we don't have meals also remind people though that those fees do apply to tuition and some of those other fees that can get pretty expensive at the beginning of the year yes and so that would be one more reason to apply for that uh the other thing to mention i believe there were some updates in the uh tax
025credit eligibility uh this year and i'm not a tax expert and don't want to advise you on that but definitely please look into that and and and give us uh you know take advantage of those tax credits if you're able to yep definitely thank you excellent thank you very much and continuing with reports we'll move on to the financial report absolutely if we could pull up the june financials it's hard to believe that we're in july obviously we're preparing for the new year but we have finalized june as well so this evening we'll take a look at june of 2021 and for our general fund we had revenues of four million eight hundred and seventy six thousand six hundred thirty four dollars we had expenditures of five million six hundred and seventy four thousand fifty
026six dollars for ending cash at june 30th and investments we had eleven million eight hundred and fifty three thousand uh six hundred and two dollars you will see that that is an increase from the prior year of about 1.5 and if you recall we did have and that would include obviously there are some timing issues in regards to payments that we receive from the department of ed and other revenues but it does impact with our cash reserves and in the board had made that decision to move forward with reserving for cash specifically for the past couple of years so that is the increase specifically for that and sorry for jumping in didn't we also have it seems like last year we had some expenses that kind of moved forward a little bit we did have
027a few expenses that did move forward in different areas within the general fund so that would be correct with our esther dollars and different things like that as well okay thanks yeah absolutely so our management fund we had minimal revenue of one thousand seven hundred and thirty three dollars we did no have no expenditures again the majority of those expenditures occurred during july which uh would be on the accounts payable this evening uh for the beginning of the year but for total cash investments for june 30th we had 675 757 which again you'll see that there was a decrease within that fund balance but the board had determined to utilize the fund balance accordingly for the past couple of years therefore the decrease this year as well moving forward with our save we had revenues
028of five million four hundred and ninety thousand three hundred and sixty five dollars we did have expenditures of one million four hundred and thirty thousand nine hundred and five dollars we did have a transfer out to fund 40 and that's because um the revenue that we received was our first draw for our bonds that were sold in june and so normally our revenue is about four hundred thousand dollars uh therefore the increase um in our revenue with the bonds but the transfer out is for fees that were associated to that um in regards to our bond sale into fund 40. for june 30th total cash investments was 12 million 408 442 dollars and 40 cents very similar to last year because if you recall at that time as well we had sold uh bonds a
029revenue bonds of 10 million dollars for physical plant and levy we had revenues of twelve thousand five hundred and seventy seven dollars we had expenditures of a hundred and eighty eight thousand two hundred and ninety six dollars for total cash investments of four million nine hundred and nine thousand six three hundred and sixteen dollars for our debt service moving on we had revenues of seven thousand nine hundred and seventy dollars you'll see that transfer in from fund thirty three of two hundred and seventeen thousand six hundred ninety two dollars expenditures of eight thousand one hundred and thirty dollars for total cash investments as of june thirtieth of two hundred and seventeen thousand six hundred and sixty four dollars as we continue our student activity we had revenues of thirty two thousand six hundred and seventy
030five dollars we had expenditures of forty four thousand four hundred and sixty eight dollars for total cash investments of six hundred and twenty five thousand two hundred and sixty two dollars for our trust and agency fund we had revenues of ninety five thousand two hundred nineteen dollars we had expenditures of seventy thousand nine hundred and eighty nine dollars for total cash investments ending balance of 267 thousand two hundred and twenty one dollars for our food service our enterprise fund we had revenues for the month of june of three hundred and eighty seven thousand three hundred and fifty four dollars and that would be for the meals that were associated to may and june for the ending of the school year we had expenditures of a hundred and sixty one thousand one hundred and sixty three
031dollars for total cash investments of one million three hundred and nineteen thousand eight hundred and forty five dollars as we continue with our coffee shop there was no activity as there were no students in our uh in our buildings so no activity for this month so our ending balance for cash investments were 10 348 dollars and then we finalize with our river hills we had revenues of 217 560 we did have expenditures of one million two hundred and fifty nine thousand seven hundred and seventy six dollars with a total cash investments of fifteen thousand five hundred and forty dollars and this is usually uh zeroed out at the end of the year as this is a flow through as a reminder with our consortium with our districts across the the cedar valley any questions in
032regards to the financials for june all right seeing none thank you very much actually just one quick question just looking at the enterprise fund uh the difference between the balance last year and the and this year and i know this is not necessarily an equitable year to be comparing this thing but can you explain a bit of that difference and and perhaps where that surplus might end up though yeah absolutely um as you recall the the district was closed for a time period obviously from march through june for the end of the school year and we were feeding students with the summer meal program but it wasn't the participation rate that we normally have within and so with the dollars that were received with this year with the participation rate we were there was a
033significant difference because of those three months that we did not have participation during that closure very good seeing no other questions uh the financial report of course will be put on file for future audit uh but thank you very much for the report this evening uh moving now to uh we have the board on a regular basis uh reviews our policies and and updates them and so what we have this evening is the first reading of board policies the 100 200 300 and the 506. board policy yeah so iowa code requires that we review policy every five years so we we have a rotation on when and how we review those policy committees reviewed these as well so the 100 200 and 300 series really are some of our shorter series so that's the reason
034why these three are together as we go through the 400 and 500 series those typically are done individually uh because they are much larger and and have um hundreds of pages of of code and and different information within those policies uh so again this is uh kind of a high level overview of some of the changes when we go through policy changes we look at any iowa code law changes we look at any interpretation changes that come from iowa association of school boards as they look at best practice and or we look at what we're doing to make sure it aligns with our current practice within the 100 series you'll see that there's just one change and that's just the new organizational chart just to continue to make sure that that is updated within the
035200 series we have a few different recommended changes number 201.2 as a replacement with the iowa association of school boards template it's just to make sure that we are aligned they they go through through their services to ensure that as code changes we that is aligned within their templates 201.3 is an update per iowa code we are replacing 202 just due to the fact that isab template and our code changed so we're replacing 202 with their template 202.1 is a change in language for the treasurer for iowa code we had a concrete date in there they changed the date in iowa code so we changed that to align with the iowa code then 204.1 is a change in time and remove location we specifically in inboard policy had a specific time and a specific location
036where we would typically meet and those have been updated to align with our current practice the 300 just a few changes we did have within our board policies this is administration policies 306.1 and 306.2 specified secondary and elementary education directors uh we've now replaced that with a new isab template that talks about central office administrators roles responsibilities and duties and then there was one change per iowa code in current practice that we needed update and that was in the 500 series which is student series we try to keep up to date with ensuring that policies are frameworked and framed against iowa code and that was has been updated and that's administration and medication for students and and specifically some of the things that we do with current practice working with our on our purchase services
037that we utilize with mercy one for our nursing services all right thank you very much i'm going to ask for a motion and second and then we'll move into discussion i move that the cedar falls community school district board of education approved the first of two readings of board policies 100 200 and 300 series as well as 506.1 thank you is there a second second make a choice any questions or comments on the first reading just one of the things i mentioned we had a little bit of a discussion of this when we were looking over these as a committee um under 200 you know i don't i have to admit i don't reread the policies every year but number four as far as duties of the board it says to approve compensation programs and
038since the change of scope and bargaining i'm not sure that we're doing that as we had before so when the scope of bargaining changed one of the things that's no longer in the contract necessarily are for instance reasons for paid leave just as an example my first thought was that maybe i should make a motion tonight that we review and approve staff handbooks but i don't think that would be maybe appropriate tonight but i'd like us to maybe consider that as a discussion for our next board meeting that whether or not we should be directly reviewing and approving the staff handbooks and item number five to consider and act upon policies for the school program makes me think that we should be doing the same for the student handbooks and it is an action that
039is taken by other school boards so it's not unprecedented but again i think that might be something that we want to discuss in the near future is whether or not we should be reviewing and approving those handbooks on an annual basis okay kind of follow up on on jeff's i have two comments and and one was not specific points during under the duties of the board of directors but just because some of us have been on the board for a while some of our our newer members and we will have a new member joining us this fall i mean i wondered if at some point you know having a work session where we kind of reviewed the duties of the board would make sense for all of us to kind of see you know are
040our practices kind of to jeff's point and really across the board following this um one i know that we have gotten a lot of feedback from people over a lot of issues over the past couple years and how we communicate those those appropriately as a board i thought would be a good time for maybe us to look at the possibility of a work session this fall my other comment was for our educational philosophy and i can't remember how often we look at the things we want our graduates to be able to do but under those points we we note several things one is skilled utilizers of technology and i do believe when we probably last reviewed this we were in the process of you know going to a one-on-one district and implementing ipads and and
041chromebooks and we are well within that now and i think this is something that our students are probably many of them not all of them but well-equipped to be doing already when they come to us as possibly kindergarteners so i wondered if that's something that seemed a little out of date to me so i wondered if you know when we take an opportunity to kind of review what those things are in terms of technology i think their use of technology in the terms of communication or social media is much more something that we need to be maybe addressing as a school district in terms of having them be competent responsible and respectful so just kind of wanted to throw that out there as i was reading through those points that one seemed a little dated
042to me so are you fine that it stays there the way it is or or you want to i'm not necessarily opposed to approving it um with this first reading but i do think as we maybe do our board work this year that is something um can you do you know andy the last time we really looked at you know what we are expecting of our graduates and when we you know what we refine these points to be yeah so the the last time this one was actually changed was that actual bullet in the past and i can't recall specifically what it said but we updated that to talk about we expect skilled users of technology and that's something that we i think are pretty strategic in teaching sometimes we look at digital immigrants our
043current students as being well versed in the use of technology but sometimes it's technology for social networks not necessarily for learning or for productivity so we changed that to really focus on utilizing technology for the sake of skill based components but that's probably been four or five years ago i don't know if and maybe brian would be a person to you know weigh on this as well i mean i wouldn't be opposed to pulling this one and just i i don't know what anybody else thinks i just feel like skilled users of technology i'm not sure what that means i think at the point at the time it meant we want you know it was really in support of our one-to-one initiative and i feel it's a little weak right now and i'm not sure
044that we're we're teaching our graduates if we're just talking about the use of technology i don't know that we're doing much more out of having them know how to use an ipad in a chromebook versus maybe how to use that in a more educational or intentional way if that i'm not sure if i'm being articulate or not but okay so we've gotten some comments on this um hey jenny come on yeah i kind of agree that that is a little broad and undefined you know it might be worth looking into you know because i see it as skilled utilizers of technology possibly being just using the devices themselves but like at andy's point where he he talks about training them in use of like productivity software and in you know in terms of like even
045like digital digital literacy just knowing how to evaluate what's out there you know going beyond the physical device itself and the use of it so i think it might be worth to jenny's point opening that up and just maybe try to redefine that point a bit joyce you understand i was going to say can we approve the first reading and move on to to approving all of them except maybe the handbook items and then that item that um jenny and jeff had alluded to also so that then we can kind of keep moving forward with reading those but then andy maybe you could take a look at it along with brian and wordsmith it a little bit better and then come back and have a conversation about it yeah we've always got our prerogative i
046mean i think it's just our best practice that we look at these and they get updated but i mean it is the prerogative of the board that we can update these policies at any time um so you know approving the first reading tonight and then assuming that we say we approve it at the second meeting it doesn't mean that we can't wordsmith it and and do that and i you know and i do think from the suggestion that you made jeff and you talked about jenny having a work session just talking about uh you know the board's role and and that is an appropriate session that we can you know arrange for you know in the next we're sort of light on meetings in the summer but once we get into the regular pattern when
047school starts it seemed like it would be if that's if everyone's in agreement with that that we do that for that so is everyone okay with that and so we just we go ahead and we vote on these changes as they've been reviewed so far for the first reading okay excellent we'll move to a vote then uh all those in favor say aye aye opposed same sign so at passes for the first reading of those policy revisions the next item on the agenda is a discussion of our 2021-2022 legislative priorities uh we don't need to define these this evening but we'll we do want to every year try and set those out and andy i think you had some had sent out to everyone what they were last year yes correct we had three last
048year they used to be numbered so they're not numbered anymore which makes it a little bit more challenging to kind of walk through those but last year on page two you'll see the one that we one of the ones that we selected was mental health supports page four we had supplemental state aid in a timely manner and on page five we had local accountability fiscal accountability so again those are just kind of guidelines to help with the discussion but really it's simply to look through these and come prepared to kind of finalize those at the august board meeting i was on the legislative resolutions committee and it was again mostly editorial changes that we made i thought they made some pretty compelling points for for our governmental uh liaisons there are a couple of issues
049that essentially were changes in this year's legislation that i might want to consider that try to rest back some of the some of the local control that seemed to be usurped from us in the last this last legislative session so in particular uh issues on um on on social studies the the uh it's very unclear what is meant by um the the uh the social studies standards and laws that they passed and and critical race theory was one of the big buzzwords that came up and i'm still not sure that anybody has a very clear understanding of it so at least some guidance on that and i almost feel like it's a like it's an electric fence underground electric fence for some of our staff that you don't know when you cross the line until
050you've been shocked and then you then you know you've done something wrong and so to clarify that and also uh quite a bit of our professional development that we've been working on over the last several years seems to have been targeted by the legislature too the other one would be health decisions based back on a local control rather than a state level so those are those are my opinions those are three that that i think would be something for our lobbyists to look at yeah and those those probably thinking tying that back to last year it's uh the item of local local control yes that let the local school board work on those issues right yep yep all right so that's an item then as you're thinking about our august board meeting uh for a
051discussion on that that will set those and and determine those at our august board meeting all right excellent uh moving now to the superintendent's report yeah just a couple different items first it is july it's hard to believe as we wrap and start registration wrap up registration some of the welcome back items that we'll be doing as we look and turn the page to august is going to be exciting but that is coming up as fairly quickly it seems like another one is esther three funds uh i think it was jeff that asked about us for three funds at the last meeting just wanted to give an update on that uh where we're at uh we're doing a couple different things with with our esser funds and sr components some of it is just supplies
052and equipment to continue to have some of the mitigation strategies the sanitation as well as some of the the pd on continuing to adapt and change some of the ways that we now are living in this new world be it postcovid or continuation of some of those strategies we're also doing some things with technology and and software as well as connectivity we're also as you look at some of the learning enhancements uh there are certain dollars that have to be allocated to kind of closing the gap the the learning or sometimes the the lack of learning that took place across the nation uh during the pandemic we feel like we're in a pretty good situation in location with this but we are using some of our esther dollars to focus in on interventionists to really
053look at skill deficiencies to ramp up and continue to focus on on our interventions and what those will look like so we can help enhance the education of all of our our students pre-k through 12. another area that we're looking at and continuing to focus on is extended learning time be it one-to-one tutoring before after school assistance credit recovery different summer school options as we look at ramping that up not only we did a little bit this summer but going to be much more targeted as we look to the future as well as different supports for students and staff with not only social emotional but behavioral health supports working with black hawk county mental health services but also with some of our professional learning community training because we know that's something that we had to
054take a step back on because we did not share students through some of our mtss work this past year because again we wanted to create our bubbles and and we've got a lot of focus on how do we build back to where we were prior and pre pandemic other areas that continue to focus on and look at will be air quality potential capacity components air conditioning or air quality circulations could be remodeling or additions this is very nuanced and small right now and not well defined but looking at how do we make sure that air quality is is where it needs to be we will also have information on our websites and and continue to provide more details as we finalize some of this work esther 3 was provided and allocated out to districts based
055on their title 1 dollars from the federal formula so it's very different across the state we waterloo for instance received 10 10 times more dollars than we received there are some districts that are half our size that receive the same amount of dollars that we received i think we had three or received 3.2 million dollars just with some of the ongoing mitigation and some of the other training components in this day and age that does not go as far as we hoped but we think our interventionists are going to be highly impactful with the work that we do paired with our instructional coaches questions so how does the the application for this funding uh work we have not actually received the dollars yet we've been allocated the dollars and then based on actions that we
056take then are the dollars then reimbursed to the district correct okay okay very good you don't get them until you spend them okay any other questions or comments for the superintendent um you know i asked dr t about this before the meeting and i'm going to do it again can you roundabouts have been an issue at the high school can you mention where the school's part in that i know you may not know the the financial numbers but how much input do we have how much responsibility do we have give us some sort of overall picture of that yeah so 27th street is scheduled to be redone and obviously that's in direct conjunction with the new high school that's going out there part of our budget is you know site utilities some of the the
057road work improvements um we've been in there's been quite a few members of uh committee looking at what that could be uh what that could look like i think roundabouts are going to be really efficient there is a traffic study that was done to look at egress into an egress out of not only the school but that whole neighborhood that's going to be built out over there and as that traffic study was completed it looked like this was the best option we have them across our community really they're across most places that you travel it seems like it's going to be a very efficient way to get into the site and out of the site so something certainly i know that the conversations i've been involved with it's been very focused on safety number one
058efficiency number two but also really looking at environmental factors there's less idling with with roundabouts less wait time stop and go time which causes more emissions so it's really been a good process but essentially it's the city asked for our input and they accepted our input and took us took it under advisement but it's still essentially the city's issue is that well it's a city project yeah it's a city road project and we provide some of the funding which is in our site acquisition site utility work within our budget um and then it goes through the city goes through site acquisitions and yes so it's a city project and similarly the aldrich sidewalk situation really isn't in our control either is that would that be fair to say yeah so um we put in sidewalks
059to the site but we did that and actually did that over some of the development and developers land but yes we don't control you know road access in and out on that site we paid for half of the road construction because it was a joint owned property but that was the on the 40 acres that we owned we can't edict or control what roadways or sidewalks are done on other properties yep thank you any questions or comments for the superintendent all right if not what we will be doing now is the board will be moving into closed session the reason for a closed session is to [Music] evaluate the professional competency of an individual and so since that is a highly personal matter the board will be moving into closed session and uh in order
060to uh i guess i need a motion to go into closed session a second and then there will be a roll call vote so is there a motion to go into uh closed session i move that the cedar falls board of education enter into closed session to evaluate the professional competency of an individual whose appointment hiring performance or discharge is being considered when necessary to prevent needless and irreparable injury to that individual's reputation and that individual requested closed session 2011 code of iowa 21.5 i thank you very much is there a second second thank you joyce we will now move into a roll call vote director gruber aye director hassman aye director heiserkemp aye director heinz aye director leeper aye director orvis aye director coyle aye all right thank you very much so from a
061public access to the meeting we'll be concluding now at the conclusion of the closed session the board will simply once again go into open session but only for the purpose of adjourning the meeting so thank you very much for joining us here this evening that concludes our televised session thank you you