001we'll call the meeting to order we'll start with roll call christina sharp here david walbrunner here jeremy mueller here brian jones here becky engel here jan wheetrick here moving on adoption of agenda and declaration of quorum so move second a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries citizens speak we now open our citizen speak portion of the agenda we would invite anyone in the audience who has completed a green comment card or others who would like to address the board to step up to the podium state your name and address so that our board secretary can capture it for our minutes we ask that you limit your comment to three minutes to allow sufficient time for all those interested in addressing the board and
002to ensure all other agenda items receive attention in an efficient manner please know that while the board is always pleased to hear from citizens who would like to address them we are not able to engage in conversation if you would like to further engage on any specific topic you may always contact board members before or after meetings or you can find our contact information on the district website with that being said i have a few green comment cards we'll start with kim stevens right over there to the podium okay well this isn't necessarily where i want to be but i felt compelled to come my name is kim stevens i live at 9855 90th street ottumwa iowa and a former teacher for 20 years and now retired i came because of a book and it's
003controversial i felt compelled to come my kids are grown but i have four grandchildren they don't go here to me that's irrelevant but i have a 11 year old should be 12 next year and could possibly have read this book and i guess i want to start with a simple question because i don't want this to be um me against people i it's just my heart and i don't know where you guys stand it's important to me i would like to know where you stand and so there's a paper that has one page out of the book i picked one page and you have it in front of you and i guess i would ask you if you i don't know if this is even okay to ask you to put your name on that
004brown paper and yes or no do you think that this book that that page came out of should be in the ottumwa community schools so i can give you a minute to do that if if you will and i can even pick those up later but i guess i i think it's okay to publicly know where people stand you know so if you're willing to say yes or no i'd be fine with hearing that how you feel about that book if it should be in ottumwa community schools if anybody wants to say i'm not going to put you on the spot but if you want to say how you feel about it okay my next thing was would somebody want to get up and read that excerpt that one page out of the book [Music]
005would someone read that out loud kim i um just we're it's not an interactive okay as far as public and i apologize for that tonight well i didn't want to be the one to read it i don't even know if i can i started reading it to my husband and he asked me to stop which i understood okay so it's out of the book the absolutely true diary of a part-time indian by sherman alexie i believe so this chapter said something about the geometric curves made him hormonal he was excited about curves and circles but not me don't get me wrong i like girls and their curves and i really like women in their curvier curves i spend hours in the bathroom with a magazine that has 1 000 pictures of naked movie stars naked
006woman plus right hand equals happy joy joy yep that's right i admit that i and i'm not saying the word it starts with an m i'm proud of it i'm good at it i'm ambidextrous if there were a professional blank eubadader's league i'd get drafted number one and make millions of dollars and maybe you're thinking well you really shouldn't be talking about this activity in public well and it's written there well tough i'm going to talk about it because everybody does it it's highlighted bolded and everybody likes it and if god hadn't wanted us to do this activity then god wouldn't given us thumbs so i thank god for my thumbs but the thing is no matter how much and again that's enough there's other pages so um so here's my take on the book
007i did look the author up he has um three okay yes uh i don't mean to interrupt you it's you're on four minutes now so it's fine if you wanna i'll just finish up yeah thank you there's many books that could prove a point if there was good things in that book and i've heard those comments made that there's all these good things in that book there's thousands of books that have those good things there's thousands of books that have them a different book could have been picked i think it's per pornography pornography i think it's perverted so and the other thing is it was not the place of my teachers my kids teachers my grandkids teachers to bring up these subjects in class it is not their place and i'm thankful for mr mcgrory
008for calling me and if i'm characterizing our conversation correctly you backed me up in my views i felt that was true and if it's not please say now because i that's how i felt was backed up by these views that it was over the line any line anybody has it was over the line so i hope we work on the curriculum committee i don't know how it got passed i don't know any of that but i think some work needs to be done i wouldn't have passed it maybe i need to get on the committee anyway thank you for your time and hopefully a lesson learned and i don't have to come back i really don't want to but i will if i have to thank you kim and kind of like mike stated we're
009not allowed to engage you because it violates open meetings i did complete my card if you want it okay brad johnson's our next speaker so my name is brad johnson my address is 425 south davis street otomo iowa and i just wanted to read a letter um same subject matter um and so i just i'm just gonna read it to you as it's to the board just in pertaining to this and just uh how we can hopefully keep content like that uh coming back into the schools so um so first of all i want to thank you uh the board for the steps that you guys have taken um suspending including the absolutely true story of a part-time indian in your seventh grade language arts curriculum i think that was the right step um we
010understand they're excuse me a reconsideration committee is in place to further review the book to determine if it will be used again going forward um we also understand a new policy is in place where notifications of upcoming unit study books will be sent out to parents and students along with the option to opt out and think that those are good steps in the right direction um but the content that blew up on facebook on friday was honestly beyond disturbing um and our goal and when i say our i was supposed to have a friend join me but he didn't show up um but anyway our goal is that content um like that is it found uh just in the curriculum going forward now just to be completely clear i'm a youth pastor my friend who's
011going to join me also is so when i say we that's what i'm talking about um i you know have a vested interest and so does he just in the well-being of the kids just around the community and so that's that's our concerns um so i'm going to try to be as quick as i can since i only have uh three minutes um so let's see where was that okay so we know that the young people are unfortunately being exposed to pornography through the internet the media their peers however there's a big difference between my son going over to a friend's house to spend the night being exposed to an internet site that has porn on it and me giving my kid a magazine and just letting him you know condoning it right big difference
012and and why is that it's because i'm supposed to be a role model obviously to my kids and so in the same way um teachers are obviously in that mode of being you know setting a moral standard for the kids um and so i'm going to skip ahead here i want us you know one thing that your guys core belief state is that you're going to use data to drive decision making and so i want to share a few facts with you guys that i think are important um number one 88 of people think their teachers have a significant role in their lives two out of three students say that their teachers are their role models and so that's a big big deal and i can give you sources if you need them i'll give
013you this letter a survey of youth ages 10 to 15 found that youth who reported exposure to pornographic materials were six and a half times more likely to display sexually aggressive behavior and then a meta-analysis of pornography research revealed that adolescent pornography consumption is significantly associated with starting to have sex earlier increased casual sex behavior and increased sexual aggression both as perpetrators and victims so there's a lot of data out there about the effects and the truth is that book really did normalize pornography and and everything else that was being talked about um and what i believe is it endorsed it and then by teachers endorsing it what they're doing in a sense i think in the student size is that it's basically like the teachers are endorsing pornography and so the concern and this
014is the bottom line is that we would be naive to not believe that the study sink recommended novel that encouraged kids to look at pornography that there are more books that could come down the line from there so what we would recommend is that the district either look into other curriculum options other than study sync or find a way to filter the approved content that's coming down just to make sure um and not just not just give the opportunity to opt out but just raise the bar overall that's all we're asking and we know that you guys probably didn't read the book cover to cover and honestly if you did probably wouldn't end it up here so not personally attacking anybody so thanks thank you sherlin hello hi everybody um my name is sherlin westrich
015i live at 432 brian road here in ottumwa and i am your state representative for district 81. um i just wanted to kind of stand up and let everyone know that i'm here and that i and that i have heard about these issues i'm kind of addressing the same subject about the books and um one of the pieces of legislation that we pass through the house is curriculum transparency and so that parents will be able to go online and to look at the curriculum that's going to be taught to the kids and and see what books are going to be used um i actually met with mike mcgrory and we talked about this and he was very forthcoming about that same subject and that they they had chosen that that's what they were going to
016do as well as to share in advance books that they're going to have available for the kids one of the things in the piece of legislation that i was concerned about is an amendment that was put through that excluded the um the libraries that are contained in individual classrooms so just a classroom library so it's not included in curriculum but the teacher can then put books in their classroom available to students to peruse at their leisure or you know at their advice and that those were going to be excluded from having to be shown online so that parents could see what was available in the classroom so i had issue with that in that i feel like parents should should be advised of everything that their children have available to them to read not just
017what's on the curriculum that amendment um took that ability away so if you're interested in in what your teachers have in their specific classroom library you'll have to meet with the teacher and most of the teachers i spoke to were happy to do so and happy to share that with the parents i think that we have great teachers and we have great administrators that are working hard to make sure that these type of things don't happen i think we could do a little better job at maybe reading the books from front to back cover and judging if no matter if they're they teach valuable lessons they should not contain pornographic materials images or anything like that even if they teach a great lesson that should be you know something that we exclude from from our
018schools in my opinion and so we're going to be working on further legislation just to make sure that that's not happening my issue with working on that further legislation and or putting teeth in it is that i believe that we need to do this at a local level we need to do it at our schools between parents and teachers and to try to keep it local so i'm hoping we just work this out you know with our school administrators with our amazing teachers and parents getting involved and working together like this and just letting their voice be heard because i think that's a lot better way to do it than to have us legislate everything that that will really drive me crazy and it's a lot more work for us so i just wanted to
019kind of put my voice in it say that we are watching what's happening and we'd love to hear from you if um if you my email is readily available online it's my name at legis.iowa.gov so shoot me an email if you have concerned or if anything comes up further and thanks very much for hearing me out thank you surely is there anybody else that would like to talk on the subject of curriculum or the booking question okay if not we're going to move on to a new topic with vern reed thank you my name is verna reed and i actually live above the welcome center if you're trying to track me down just for the record i work at ottumwa schools and we had a special thing happen tonight down below in the career campus
020we got to celebrate the graduation of two young people who might not have graduated if our school wasn't committed to those who either have dropped out or were probably going to drop out in this case these two young ladies diana and alexis would not have had the opportunity to get that diploma and then move on to indian hills without the support of our school and also our partnership with wioa iowa works so i wanted to share that with you because it was pretty incredible but also to share this idea most of us in autumn will probably know someone who had to drop out for whatever reasons your school wants to get them back in so if you know anybody that needs to finish getting that diploma please contact me vern reed i'm on the website
021call the school someone will track me down but it was pretty darn cool and that helps our community and it lets these kids have a shot to write their own future story and that's really what we're here for thank you thanks fern so moving on in the agenda employee recognition once again we're very pleased to recognize several outstanding employees of the month these individuals not only have distinguished themselves in the service of our students and families but certainly have been nominated by their peers and so the first one i'd like to recognize is has been actually nominated by two staff members uh tessa johnson and kendra moulton and that person is gary chedister gary can you come on up please they say gary is a fabulous staff member you can always count on gary to
022be at school and ready to conquer the day he's always willing to be super flexible and do whatever it takes to make sure the day goes smoothly gary is a true example of be the best in his work ethic and accountability his passion helps students shows in each of his classes that he gets the opportunity to work in especially with his knowledge of history one of my favorite things about gary is the amount he cares and shows for every student and staff member way to be the best gary and thank you for all you do gary goes out of his way away daily to show all the staff members he cares about during holidays gary spends his own money he sets aside and buys candy for the lounge for all teachers he's the first one
023to take on all tasks at the high school and gary especially adopts a change so on behalf of the school district gary thank you for what you do and your continued service as a long-term sub in so many roles so thank you so much gary congratulations [Applause] so i it's true i haven't missed a day in over two years but we have all gone through covid and i'm just blessed that i take what they tell me to take and we had the masks on all last year and so it's a little different this year when we can actually see the faces last year i had to learn people from their forehead and their hairstyle and when they cut their hair i had to relearn who they were so this has been a much better year
024with the kids thank you thank you gary [Applause] kayla glosser come on up [Laughter] [Applause] kayla's an associate who is nominated by staff carrie schwartz kayla is a very quiet dedicated employee she works one-on-one with a student in my classroom after watching her work with her this student for the past four months i have realized that she is not only a great bulldog employee but it's just much more than that her compassion and dedication to the work she does is quite remarkable kayla is reliable responsible and flexible she seldom misses a day of work and she's always willing to do whatever is asked of her even when it's over and above what her expected workload is to be kayla is an employee that works well with all students and staff because she shows respect to
025all even when she does not always feel respected herself the student that kayla works with has some high needs she has built an amazing relationship with him and watched him grow and develop due to the work she is doing with him has been very enjoyable with kayla's guidance support he's learned to navigate our classroom and interact with his friends more than he ever has before kayla has helped him become verbal with his peers and develop relationships that he he has he's had never before another thing that makes kayla stand out as employees that she is a one-on-one associate that has built relationship with the entire class yes they know she's tied to a specific student but they all know she's there for them all when she's been out of the room serving another student she
026returns and is warmly welcomed by everyone in the class on the days she's assigned to another student they truly miss her in my classroom it takes a special person to build a relationship with an entire fifth grade class when they are only signed to one person kayla has also been an active part of the prime time youth care program working there during the summer and serving as an on-call during the school year this is sometimes before starting her school day or after finishing her school day her dedication does not wane in my opinion kayla is the true picture of a dedicated bulldog that models all of our beliefs each and every day wow kayla differences [Applause] angela hoover angela was nominated by an orchestra parent mariah archer this is what ms archer said about miss
027hoover she's a district employee serving her orchestra program mrs hoover has been my daughter's orchestra instructor for three years mrs hoover has proved me more than just a music teacher she has encouraged my daughter to be her best cheered my daughter on and has given her the inspiration to continue her musical journey she's been an amazing mentor for my daughter and has provided her with more confidence i think we can all agree that parents we hope that our children's teachers will love them encourage them and help them grow mrs hoover has done all these things for my daughter she herself may not realize the impact she's had on my daughter's life but she has immensely our district model is to be the best and mrs hoover lives that model every single day thank you mrs
028hoover for putting music in my daughter's heart we are forever thankful congratulations lease a lot we have an entire cheering section flowers signs come on up mrs lot this might be the record number of nominations so three staff members nominator elizabeth reynolds jenny roberts and tiffany candy and we were told before we arrived at wilson actually warned she's not going to like this recognition the first thing she said the superintendent of gore is why are you here [Laughter] no she deserves it and so we're glad to nominate and recogni recognize you lisa has gone above and beyond by helping students with academic and social needs she even dug through a trash can to find a student's tooth she did not find it and made she did find it and it made the students day she
029makes sure that all students feel welcomed at school and keeps in contact with students who are in high in high school or even have graduated she has taught in this district for many years has made an impact on our community i think she deserves this honor because she cares so much about all students in both academics and their social needs that was elizabeth reynolds jenny roberts wrote lisa has been a role model teacher for me as a student as a student teacher in her to for me as students teacher in her building i witnessed lisa lot digging through a trash can to find a student's tools she did not hesitate to help the student find their lost treasure she went above and beyond to bring a little peace of mind to this dude lisa has
030also al also modeled exemplary interactions with students as well as staff she has made me feel like part of the second grade team tiffany canny just a big shout out she goes above and beyond for our students a second grade grader accidentally threw his truth in the trash and she went through and found it for him so extraordinary academic achievement as well as lost tooth so congratulations let's give her a hand [Applause] another one that does not like to be recognized or be embarrassed and we made we want to make sure that she works so hard behind the scenes uh a number of late night calls early mornings and especially in times of crisis for our family medals that's that spearhead of care uh and so metal reim was nominated by staff member salud leva
031and this is what she wrote i'd like to nominate our family service advocate medal reim as the staff member that goes above and beyond to help our students parents and staff and then in the entire district to be successful medal works tirelessly every day with our students parents and staff she never hesitates when asked to contact a parent concerning their child she's always willing to provide transportation to the student who needs a ride in the morning to get to school or ride home after school she participates in meetings concerning student attendance she's always willing to make a home visit if we have a concern or just simply can't reach a family she's a huge asset to our families who are in most need and works hard every day to remove remove barriers they have in
032their children's education metal's job is one of the most stressful jobs in our schools and yet she does it with a smile we are fortunate to have metal rheem as part of our bulldog family medal thank you for all you do [Applause] next agenda item looks like an update from the student council hi my name is isabel cunningham and i'm the president of student council so just a quick update on the things we've been doing we just finished our intramurals this year we had five teams and this year we played dodgeball basketball ping pong volleyball and then we ended with trivia and then this wednesday april 27th student council is hosting our last blood drive of the year and so far we have 32 of our 35 spots filled and then teacher appreciation week is
033coming up and on tuesday may 2nd we're going to have breakfast pizza for the staff and stu or the teachers and staff and then on thursday may 5th we're going to have cookies for them any questions thank you thanks next item is the consent agenda make a motion to approve the consent agenda second weller i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries next item james floor project dave's going to come up uh kind of go over two different projects that that we're currently working on and see if the board has any questions on thank you uh we're looking at replacing the james hallway floor uh it's currently uh past its lifespan and uh the the photo up here would be similar to
034what we put in the uh careertech uh building on the bottom floor that would really um you know uniform the district and also it's a maintenance-free surface that uh custodial uh staff would not have to wax and it'd really pop in the hallway so barney any questions would this be like a summer project yes sir okay so if there's no questions that's an action item we would need and make a motion we accept it second angle you have a motion and a second is there further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries uh dave you also have a wilson electrical project for us yes sir yes sir the service at wilson is uh currently under under um demand i guess or underused we need to upgrade it uh we're looking at upgrading
035our hvac system and this would allow us to upgrade the hvac system there we're currently getting a lot of nuisance trips on frequencies or breakers due to overload and by upgrading the system the backbone will allow us to future upgrades to also just not the hvac we'll be able to use s for funds to pay for this project uh due to us upgrading the hvac system i think one one other thing that might immediately benefit too is uh we're upgrading the kitchen there too and so that'll help with that that was going to be my question is if it was needed for the kitchen i'd make a motion to approve a second well i have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries and
036finally we have a non-bargain employee settlement yes yes sir we have two groups the miscellaneous staff in the administration we've already settled with the other five associations uh for instance the teachers uh we agreed with them on march 2nd at a 3.8 percent well that includes a thousand dollar uh retention bonus then the secretaries were on january 5th at 2.97 um then the custodians were on march 9th at a 279 uh associates were at 278 and then the food service was at 274. so uh our last two groups like i said so we can get contracts cut we're recommending uh the 2.9 wage increase for the miscellaneous administration staff with that does anybody have any questions on that if not i'm looking for a motion i'll make a motion we accept the settlement second we
037trick we have a motion and a second is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries moving on down superintendent report thanks morgan um jerry's gonna join me up uh at the table as well we thought uh we would like to get the board i know i've shared information with the board on on what was discussed earlier in public speak on um a novel that was used at the middle school uh i thought jerry it would um be nice for jared to kind of give you an overview and for us to open it up for any questions the board may have we are currently still looking at the matter and investigating it but we have some initial things that we can share with the board of how we'd like to
038move forward and so forth so jerry i'll tell you so to start with uh thursday evening it was brought to my attention we had an issue so right away i contacted superintendent mcgrory we decided we were going to pull the book at that time so i emailed the teachers involved the next morning i went around to each class to make sure that they were well aware so we could address that issue um from that point we've talked about of course we're going to review that book but not only that book but other books that were ordered as well and so we talked about how we need to make sure parents are aware and informed before any reading is done with any novels so that's an area that we need to make sure we improve in
039and so that way we can hope to prevent this again so that's that's the key parts of it jerry how many classes were currently using this book uh two we had two classes which was ten sections total at the same time okay and were there other classes that were going to use this book when those two no because it was being utilized in seventh grade and two two uh teachers were using it like i say a total of ten sections and i think jerry when we talked about it uh one reason this probably became more prominent as the board knows we have had this novel since 2011 but it really has never been required before so i think that was an issue in this situation and also the fact that it was read aloud was
040also caused some angst among our parents as well so this was the first year that we actually required the novel so just so the board knows how i have a tangential question kind of to share lynn's point with the legislation she's working on it's always kind of been my understanding that if parents want to review the curriculum they can go to the board office and do that is that the case like if i was a parent and i wanted to review what was being taught in class do they have the opportunity to go to the board office and do that yeah or does it not quite work that way well i in here's the best way i'll just be honest is we we would love that if somebody said they would like to do that
041we would we probably don't have it at our fingertips as far as all the if they wanted to but we would get it for them if they said hey i'd like to come out and review the curriculum the same would be at the building level too if we'd always welcome parents if they want to see okay at the building level as well i think as part of whatever messaging we relay to parents make that known to them that there's anything you want to see it's not it's not a secret come come look please um because i think that was one part of the situation that was frustrating people is it felt like it was a secretive thing and i just want people to understand there's nothing secretive here you're welcome to come see any of
042our curriculum any of our materials right and that's the whole purpose of making sure that we get that information out to parents right for with any novels right that they're fully aware of it before we even open that first book the cover of it i agree and then i know last year teachers used google classroom to inform parents of what they were doing and reading and everything so was that on the google classroom that i i'm not sure okay i can definitely look into that okay i just mm-hmm that's good yeah it was it was okay so they were informed to a degree right they had access to it i'll put it that way so do we actually have any question whether this book will remain or not remain well and that's really not for
043me to decide we're going to put we've pulled it and so we'll do the review uh with not only that book but other books that were ordered okay and i can assure you it's not going to be used this year to your question on that brian is uh we will we hope to start that process very shortly with a reconsideration committee it's made up of uh community members parents uh students high school students administration and also teachers and so um they will review the literature and then make a recommendation to the superintendent which then i'll share with the board okay mike so this reconsideration committee moving forward is this committee going to review every parent that's conflicted with a book going forward so we put the curriculum out there we put the novels we notify
044parents that these novels are out there right what's the criteria for that to get to the recon is it one complaint or is it multiple complaints like do we have criteria that gets it to that point right because this could be an issue where we never have a kid read another novel in school if we take one complaint and and wreck it i understand that's obviously not the case with the book at question tonight but moving forward i think we need to also have that criteria what sets it into motion to get it into the reconsideration committee yeah i think jeremy t your question is uh there's no set number that we have like in our policy that you know so many have to uh but i do have discretion um you know to determine
045whether i want to send it to the reconsideration i i make the recommendation that they convene uh and i would certainly take that into consideration um i i kind of vetted first uh but it goes back to maybe what morgan was saying too is that uh we also want parents to feel like if they have a concern we're willing to look at it but i do think i agree with you there's probably that fine line of you know we we want to be careful we don't go to the other extreme too and isn't it unless i'm mistaken i could be um with elementary it's journeys i can't remember what the secondary's called sync or something like that um but isn't that where essentially in that realm of curriculum there's a whole pile of books that
046you get to choose it's considered appropriate reading or age level reading or ability or whatever that may be so it's not like the school boards have sat there and reviewed oh here's one book yep that one's in this one's out isn't it a whole group of books or it could be yes i mean that would be very true it wasn't that this book was recommended with study sync it was there they're they're teaching certain concepts and then you find the novel that matches those concepts so right the board didn't approve uh necessarily they they approved the study sync but they didn't approve the necessarily the novel and kind of going back to maybe jeremy's question too is one way we hope to make sure if it goes to reconsideration it's probably an appropriate venue is
047is tightening up our process on our curriculum review so we don't get in these situations where we have scenarios that uh where the textbook or the or the novel is is questionable at a level where it's going to cause a lot of frustration among our parents so well i think that comes down to you know everything that's um maybe the new topics that weren't necessarily around when we were in school uh social injustice things of that cultural justice it wasn't talked a lot about 30 years ago 40 years ago so i would think any books that relate to topics like that are going to be pretty controversial and there's going to be parents on both sides of the fence not happy with it so it's if that is part of a chapter or a month
048of teaching or whatever that may look like i don't know what that is but right um there's a good chance we're going to have this all the time and so um i guess that comes down to well then we have to make decision are we eliminating that chapter so to speak from that and if so i don't think we're doing you know we're not doing or our teachers aren't allowed to do their job either and teach what's relevant and what's actually going on so i think it's i think we could end up having this happen a lot which is unfortunate right i think i i don't disagree with that david i think there's a balance what my hope would be is that by us providing like was mentioned before is and you mentioned is is
049providing people choice too to understand that concept that we should be able to come up with enough other curriculum options for for parents and students where they would we wouldn't have to forego the concept but we could maybe give them options would be my hope so we do that with other subject areas too because like in health class if there's a particular unit parents don't want their child to participate in we offer them other curriculum and we can do the same with the novels yeah i know um in elementary at least we would have lit circle groups and it would be an option right so if this were an option you know if there were several books in the class and this was one of them and right then would it be allowed to be
050read if that's the book they opted to read and i i think that's that's obviously will be part of the reconfiguration committee's work but uh to your point becky is that that's what this was used for be prior to this so it wasn't required okay but it wasn't in 2011 it was an option in lit circles okay yeah yeah that would go back to part of the challenge there is we didn't inform the parents we didn't get we didn't provide the titles beforehand okay and so had we provided that the parents that had concern could have come forward and said hey i'd like an alternative and mike as this review committee comes together it was i was going to say as a board member it would be my preference that any required reading materials maybe
051run it through that committee before we just re-up it automatically so that everything has been reviewed once by the review committee right and again that's only required readings that's not every book that's in the library right but every book that is required to be read by every student in english class give it a glance make sure it looks good if there's anything questionable let's talk about it before it becomes a problem rather than reacting to it after it's a problem right and i think we we could certainly look at that option i think the other option uh we can look at too is going back and through our curriculum vetting process before it even gets to that right re-looking at some of our novels in textbooks to see if and and and making that we
052could do that without the reconsideration committee as well yeah yeah cause that might be a lot of books that they'd have too yeah and i think i think the point some board members are making isn't very valid too is that we don't want to quell our teachers are trying to engage our kids they're trying to teach concepts that are important and we don't want to quell that and we don't want to send a message that we're looking over your shoulder at everything you do but we need to have a process that actually protects our teachers as well not putting them in this situation and i think there are things we could do to tighten up our process make sure that doesn't happen i think um just real quickly a comment not so much a question
053you know just jerry thank you for your quick response i was glad that the district responded in some way and it didn't kind of linger over the weekend but i really hope that this serves as some kind of a challenge or a wake-up call for parents i know it did for me and i would consider myself a fairly involved parent but i go to every single conference and my kids have had dozens and dozens and dozens of teachers through our years at the otemwa district and i've never met a teacher who says that they wish parents were less involved so i just hope that this serves as a reminder to myself my family my husband and all of the parents of our district about you have a very open door in this district and i've
054never met a teacher that doesn't welcome parents into their classroom to say here's what we're teaching your kids and so i just hope that this serves as kind of a challenge to parents moving forward about how can you get a little bit more involved so these things don't catch you off off guard i agree any other questions or thoughts good discussion um if not i want to uh thank jerry as well is that jerry was really proactive in the situation and um i appreciate all your work and jerry told me he's going to miss these type of things when he retires so yeah so we can bring you back jerry special projects but thanks jerry for everything all your work maybe jerry yeah right um some other updates i have for the board just a
055reminder tomorrow night is the superintendent board appreciation dinner and if you've signed up for that it's at 6 00 p.m social hour at indian hills uh it's at the main campus tomorrow night also we have a new registration event we're excited about april 26th and then also april 28th it's a reservation event registration event i'm sorry for new kindergarten students from four to seven at the district welcome center uh we had to move also our elementary track meet to this wednesday from last wednesday because of the weather so that's this wednesday at 3 30 at shaffer may 3rd our evan students councils are doing a fire and ice fundraiser with the ottumwa fire department from five to seven at the north fire station the funds rays go to purchase smoke detectors for families so great
056cause and then this will bring back memories for board members that our prom is saturday this saturday from 8 to 11 in the cafeteria and after i think they're still looking for chaperones so if any board member is interested in doing that yeah okay i think that's all i have morgan thanks mike yep next item looks like a finance update yeah yeah thank you um i'm not gonna go through the reports unless there's any specific questions i just wanted to give you a couple highlights as we normally try to do uh it's the march financials on there and as you're going through it if you look we try to compare last year's monies to this year's monies and kind of see where we're sitting and you'll notice the general fund balance is lower than last
057year that hasn't been the trend that's been growing for quite a while i just want to point out that this is in line with the budget it's expected we are doing an intentional drawdown because we were getting quite a big surplus built up a lot of the esser funds coming through several one-time allocations of supplies and resources to outfit the staff and address learning loss are going through this year so that's something that if you look at it at first glance you go oh wow that that's going down but it's intentional and it's what we intended to do another contributing factor to that is the way that the esser funds are handled we just had our last one of the last large projects finish up we had the classroom furniture purchase that all the classrooms
058got new furniture going through and sorting out all the specifics on those bills we finally paid off the balance of those so that was a large amount that came through and how we get reimbursement for that is we have to spend the money first and then submit it for reimbursement so we'll be seeing some monies coming in from esser in april or may to reimburse us for that so it could pop back up a little bit and the last thing is that if you look at that last report it kind of shows uh our revenues from last year to this year and one that's lowered quite a bit is local revenue that's the money that's provided through tax property tax money and that's a couple million dollars less this year than it was last year
059and what that is is just uh the the result of the change in some of our funding uh we're not getting it all through property tax there's an income tax surtax that came in that's going to generate some of the funding level for us in 2122 and those funds don't come till later so it's kind of a year wait as it's collected and then we'll receive that income tax surtax so as you look at it it's not that we are doing less with or or wanted to do less with two million uh two million dollars fewer and local revenues is just coming to us different and a little later um and those are kind of the big highlights and as you review those or if you've reviewed them already welcome any questions was that income
060surtax did that was that on the taxes that we just filed yes i didn't look at my taxes but that i didn't look at my taxes okay and then as it's collected through through the end of april then we get it later in the year thank you that's all thanks thanks john board member topics i'd just like to give a shout out to the atomic high school drama club for legally blonde you know i have to talk about the fine arts they did uh an outstanding job it was a very enjoyable show very proud of all the kids and the staff that worked very hard on it hey i i'm glad you brought that up becky because i i've been to a lot of high school plays and that was that was one of the
061best that was really good and i don't know if you know how many kids were sick and lost voices throughout um so it was a challenge for them and they they rose to the occasion yeah they did they did anybody else all right our next item is a closed session i make a motion that we move into closed session pursuant to iowa code chapter 21.5 sub 1 sub i second i have a motion and a second to go into closed session is there any further discussion those in favor raise your right hand motion carries we are in closed session we'll take you