001[Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you let's see foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you let's see thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] good evening everyone and Welcome to our February 28th Public Work session uh here for the School City of Hammond can we all rise for the Pledge of Allegiance of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all right roll call trustee Blake King we're here trustee Spencer present trustee Murphy president and trustee Candelaria present all members are here and accounted for superintendent Miller uh good evening everyone good evening to those watching online um we really only
002have one item on the agenda tonight and it is to discuss the results of our Equity audit that was conducted this past fall and I will go ahead and turn it over to our um the team that made that happen Milton and Franklin Reed welcome okay good evening everyone good evening am I pretty good I was told to make sure we use the mic so all right okay well let me start off by saying thank you for this opportunity to share uh our findings and our report with you uh my name is Milton Reed for those of you online uh with global Consulting Solutions and this uh this audit actually started um probably towards uh the summer last summer in June and July which the first part of it is the the desk audit and
003we'll kind of get into a little bit about how we got here it certainly uh pleased to meet uh the new board member who we have not as familiar with thanks for having us so with that being said we can be a little bit informal we do have a question uh period at the end but uh feel free again to just maybe interject and uh there may be some who say hey we'll get to that as it's coming up but we want to be as informal as uh as needed so with that being said um we have prepared a presentation and and again um we can I have the clicker here because I came down okay so the agenda that we will cover tonight is we will uh talk a little bit about the the
004process of the audit the objectives just to restate them and uh we did prepare this as a document that can be a standalone document so if you had no background or no history uh the readability of it should be able to fit anyone that it would be a stakeholder in the district and so I we approached it from that way but also understanding our process and some of the objectives uh from there we will go into uh a little bit about the content as far as the accommodations that we found uh the focus areas which we also call Key findings as well as that inclusive recommendations and then some of the next steps uh of what you know we feel uh can be uh real action items uh this is not designed to be a
005report that you put on a shelf uh this has actionable items and and real accountability accountability in in this report and of course after that we'll do questions and answers okay so um let me tell you a little bit about the team uh if you will uh the engagement managers that were charged as the principals of this effort uh myself and Franklin Reed and Dr Roger Cleveland um all of us have many many years of background and experience not only between um uh diversity Equity inclusion and educational formats and platforms and our process we think is uh pretty uh pretty pretty exhaustive so again that's just a little bit about us that we're leading the team and as you all know probably uh on the day of the on-site visit we had about 15 uh
00620 professionals out uh doing this so it's a collection of many minds and perspectives and backgrounds that help uh create this this report our full team back of houses probably about 20 people working on this okay so let's talk a little bit about the program audit um objectives and what I like to say first I will go through the slides but I want to say what it is not uh the program audit it is not a gotcha moment it is not a um a uh let's uh put somebody on the firing squad or or let's really uh uh really find a way to to find an aha moment more so than I gotcha moment and as well um it is not an evaluation process uh when we go into the classrooms and when we talk
007to focus groups and teachers and administrators we are not evaluating uh their performance as it relates to their job function what we are doing is we are assessing the efficacy of the programs the practices and the policies across the district now I will also say that um the there are most well let me say this the second part is we connect and review quantitative quantitative and qualitative data to reveal inequate disease and access and access and or outcomes and we assess the district culture and the environment and we also identify areas of high performance and opportunities for improvement so if I was to summarize this particular slide we find what I call The Good the Bad and the Ugly and we uh we report it all uh we report accommodations we report findings and we
008report comments but it also is a process of two major components uh quantitative and qualitative we do look at the data and we triangulate the data and we overlay with what we see and what we hear and we try to point out some of those discrepancies at the same time the report in of itself we do not include every single data point every single quotation from the interview every single um uh touch point and uh it's we look for themes we look for uh systemic uh uh findings that we find and we say hey across the board this is something that really needs to be addressed and this is something that pops out and this is something that is being good all across the board and things like that so it is not a uh
009get the data and then a data List It is an evaluation of a data set and they're triangulated to the other parts that we are doing is that is that pretty clear of the process everyone kind of get where we're going there okay thank you have such good eye contact thank you for that and so uh typically um so that that is our is our process and it's been tried and true and so you know but when I get granular um into that you know we have the district consultation which is when we come in and we really try to get the pulse on like what is going on and that is done with the superintendent and his office you know just really just come in and just let's just have an open conversation we
010don't we don't have any preconceived notions we don't have any frequency findings or recommendations everything is Catered and unique to this particular school district and from there we put together a communication plan as you know um some things in the area of diversity Equity inclusion have for some reason this becomes supercharged and we want to make sure that what is being done in the district is communicated in a way that no one feels intimidated no one leaves a process with any guilt and for those of you that have been in some of our bias you know we are not uh finger pointers and we are we don't have a dichotomy that is even relates to a specific race or think it's all things systemic things and these are the things that we evaluate and that
011we are uncovering in this particular audit and we want to make sure that's communicated so we helped out with some of the communications to all of the stakeholders which includes parents students teachers admin and other interested parties and then like I mentioned about the desk audit we request a ton of forms a ton of reports we look at Indiana Department of Education for public data uh that is out there and we just get those and it's behind the scenes and we just go to work dissecting these and saying hey what are some things that we see that uh stand out that need further investigation what are some things that we see hey we need to be listening for that when we go on site and does this data match up with the survey and does
012this data match up with this focus group and are the students saying something similar that's different or from representative representative of what we find in the data and again that's that triangulation that I'm talking about of how we overlay these uh these touch points for lack a better term uh with the but it starts with the desk audit what is what is something that is undeniable it's not an opinion but it is just fact and then how do you take these facts and really put them to correlate to a reasonable finding and a reasonable uh expectation of a recommendation and from there um one thing about the audit particularly here is the survey along with the process allows many many people in the district to be involved in the process it is not going getting
013to one group or one segment the survey goes out to parents it goes out to students it goes out to teachers it goes up to administrators to board members and so it it's really like saying you know if you have a project and you can get hundreds and hundreds of touch points and opinions and ideas to go into that data set it really is a greater representation of what you have and we think some of the numbers that on participation really makes this a valid body of work but just by a pure number of touch points and they are hundreds and hundreds of touch points that went into this this effort um and then we do the uh focus group interviews and so this is where we come on site and uh we'll have a
014group of teachers we have a group of Administrators and some of the uh sometimes we'll do one-on-one uh with principals assistant principles just everybody in the district and those that were here and remember I mean we were all over the place and we hit every school we hit the career center and we hit every level of office staff and so we want to make sure that these focus group and students you know I think uh fifth grade fourth grade and up I think it was we don't go too much younger than that uh but just to have like observations and to have um these these focus group interviews because sometimes what you see on paper what you see on a survey is different from what is said in the group small group settings sometimes you're
015very comfortable sometimes not sometimes we solicited so we just hit every Gambit of that and from there uh on the same day was I mentioned the school walkthrough was in the classroom observations again we tell the teachers this is not an evaluation process and we do know sometimes if you're in a room you may change the dynamic we try we've done this a few times and we know how to be as obscure and uh non-disruptive we don't disrupt the school day we don't disrupt the class change time there are no changes to a normal day other than the visitors that you might see and we wear our our badges uh as well our name badges and then from there is where we are here and we're kind of discussing the final report now I will
016say that there is nothing in presentation here or even in summary format that can really capture all of the metrics in the final report it is a long report and you you really have to just read and take some time and reread and digest a report for some of the things that are in there so we we do not uh we can't take a 40 50 page report and put it in the PowerPoint but we can you know look for questions or specifics and things like that things that may be a little bit uh unclear or the motivation behind it uh what we will do is um there may be a touch point that you felt like hey uh maybe there's an addition or maybe why was something left off because again we could not
017include everything because sometimes if we have a report that is too long it begin becomes a shelf item it's just too much to digest so our biggest challenge is how do we Whittle this down so it's manageable and that we can actually put some of these things in place so but one thing that we generally do not do is we do not make material changes to the report from the findings and from some of the observations and from the comments or quotes that were there some are Pleasant some are not so pleasant but they're very realistic in what we found so if there is something again that you feel like hey this is the touch point wide in this land or why does this land certainly welcome for that part of the discussion but the
018material content is pretty much where we consider this uh uh Final in that aspect and then with everything uh it makes no sense for us to do this without some recommendations and action plans and these are not recommendations that are so high above reach and just so well worth Smith and articulated that you know you'll never reach them in 50 years these are things that really can begin to put pen to paper and even um enhancing some of the things that you already have but with the specifics that need to get it up to a more successful implementation and sustainability and things like that so that is basically our process if you will and I'm not I'll let you go back to the comments sure did you I've already read the whole document that's great
019um did you put all the comments in here that were provided by staff students and everything if not I'm going to send an email to the superintendent asking for all of them okay there are thousands of comments probably okay go ahead I'm sorry sometimes when people who do these things they pick what they feel is what the best representative and I'd like to see a lot more okay because there's some things um as I went through this and I've already sent a couple of questions to the superintendent okay it's like how many people felt this way so as you go through the thousands of comments was it five percent ten percent twenty five percent so that's where I'm going with this because that's the problem when you don't get all the comments well here well
020here is where I can explain your process and maybe this may help uh ease uh that concern so the process is we don't specifically um say what is your comment in the focus in the focus group when we're having a focus group are um our assessors they pick up on comments and themes and then they jot that down so some of these are not direct quotes so you would have to take a non-recorded 30-minute focus group and some of the comments that have were Central themes I pulled out so I'll put give you part of the comment staff is saying they're lacking instructional material I like to know how many staff members are saying that okay and the broader discussion is what exactly are they feeling they're lacking in so I'm not going to put
021this as a point to discuss this now but that is my rationale for asking you how many of our staff are saying that that is an important point for me because if they don't feel they have the proper materials then there's I want to know why well and and again what I what I will say not to get into that specific one all of the comments that we put in they were from multiple sources so say for example you may have 15 comments that are saying relatively the same thing and so we would select the the comment that that most captured all those 15 and that's the one that land in the port we don't have a lot of one-off comments in that report so anything that you see was this this report is not
022about in the business it's all about themes that we saw if it's a comment in there it appeared enough to be a theme in a response to something and it was not listed as okay one person said this as an outlier and we put it in so if that if that's again kind of explain the process if you will I do understand what you're saying though yes trustee King thank you I um I don't I'm not quite clear on trustee Murphy's concern because we've had uh teachers coming before us uh saying that very thing I mean and you saw the face you knew who they were they are they identify themselves by signing in so I don't see any need for this report to capture every comment a teacher I mean to me that's basic
023and we've heard it's nothing we haven't heard before so my thing is why take up any more time it's a statement we've heard it's thousands of times and to try to somehow Galvanize it in a report I think is asking too much we've heard this I mean it's I wasn't surprised to hear that comment because teachers and staff have come before us multiple times with the same identical concern that's my comment thank you Madam president trustee Murphy you know I hate tit for Tad so my question is again for the superintendent eventually we're going to be doing action plans so this comment if it's a theme that's coming through here I want to make sure it's part of the action plan as in my comments you said we have literally spent millions of dollars on
024new textbooks if they're not doing the job then where's the disconnect so it's not you all I'm sending it to the superintendent so that's where I'm going with this eventually we're going to do some action plans I want to make sure that is part of it yes I I absolutely agree that those act that the action plans are needed but those action plans shouldn't be based on a one-off comment which is why we didn't include a thousand they should be based on the themes you have limited resources you have limited time and so our job was to give you a document where you can funnel your time and resources into the places that's going to give you the maximum lift for achieving the goals you have and to give you a report of a thousand
025comments including feedback from the the surveys you provided us some of the the references to the the themes were survey results that you all had that we noticed this is coming up a lot in the desk audit and we're also hearing it from the T whatever stakeholder group and so we presented it 40 without going and copying and pasting those comments from the surveys we want you for we wanted to present you with something that you can focus on your energy and your effort which is limited in a way that's actually going to maximize your input no no I I understand where you're coming from being a data person that's why I started throwing out percentages so is it 20 25 are half our teachers saying this that's why I was asking about the comments
026when you saying you're finding a common theme what percentage again we have a long report ahead of us belated the report at this point so that's why I'm got a page and a half of questions already that I'm sending to the superintendent and I and that's really what uh for sure I I think um the other thing that I would say that I did did not note in different um it means something different in in different districts but the the anonymity of no repercussion was emphasized quite heavily and we cannot get open uh what we call brave brave space or safe room it's hard to get that if if if if unless everyone feels that it was absolutely no uh no no even chance repercussion and even if there was a a particular uh quote
027and you could tell it was from a specific person because it had that level of specif it was that specific we had to without changing the quote if it was a theme it kind of merged into a a a another one to to get that same point across because that was very important to all of the people that we interviewed saying hey this is not going anywhere past our assessment group so okay now and if any more questions good good questions great comments okay we'll just continue I think I was saying uh the final report is where we are and we'll kind of go a little bit into the report and of itself especially the key findings and and the recommendations these overall theme layers and um and again that goes along with like I
028said the recommendation and the and the actual action plan where some things even in the accommodations that are there but there's an overlay saying Hey where's the follow-up what we this was great but what was next and then two a year or so of Cycles go by so there are things like that that are really in here and when I say really can be done and the organizing succinct fashion so with that being said we try to divide up half and half I may jump back in but I think I'll turn over to Franklin here all right thank you thank you so I want to Pivot and just pull out a couple of key oh going the wrong way I want to Pivot and point out a couple of key findings in the report as
029Milton indicated this was a report designed to not only identify the areas of opportunity but also to highlight some of the accommodations and just like we aggregated the themes for the recommendations we also aggregated the accommodations we did not include every comment I'm sorry or every area where we noticed that you all are doing fantastic or doing well if it was a one-off we didn't include it um so what you can feel confident about is if it made it into this report then it is a strength and it's something to to continue to leverage so I just want to point out four that I think are absolutely commendable and key the number one stakeholder for School City of Hammond are the students and the number one accommodation that came out of many uh of our
030assessors feedback was that um came from the focus groups we did with students and it was that the students feel that they are important to the teachers and the principals that serve them that in and of itself is a a a a concrete accommodation that came out from multiple focus groups that we did with the students top to bottom across all of the grades the teachers and classified Staff feel respected and appreciated by their school leaders the school the teacher I mean the students and the leaders are also commended um Milton and I we wound up visiting multiple schools and the welcome reception we felt was echoed by the team as well when we uh met up and so we um we noticed that just the environment itself is extremely welcoming and then finally there
031is a high degree of trust respect and respect among the teachers and their peers um and so um I just want to highlight those four accommodations for what we witness throughout our time and not only from the observations but also the data that we would do that made it into the report I want to shift gears and talk about the areas of opportunity the three key findings that we we recommend that you'll leave from this report and that is the organization of culture which I'll defining in a second district-wide instructional support and monitoring and communication now again this is just a summation tonight I'm not going to go into any significant detail because you have equipment for those that may be doing online until they have an opportunity to read it themselves I will just
032Define those three areas the organizational culture you define that is composed of the beliefs the expectations that are shared by the members the Norms the values and the beliefs of the individuals within the district and we believe that this was a key area of opportunity for the for the district the recommendations that we want to highlight um and I'm not going to read them all but I'm going to read two um one particular area was it's so important to us that we received feedback in the midst of the evaluations that we actually reached out to the central leadership because it was a concern of ours and that had to do with bullying and I know that's a focus for you all but identifying a district liability and prevention program we do believe is needed and
033that training should not only be you know training that's focused on the students but it's training that should be uh given to the employees so that they can not only prevent but that they can start to recognize uh quickly as well as respond and introduce a process that's consistent across the board that's one of those recommendations that we've highlighted second area of opportunity is that we recommend at the Board of Trustees to sponsor an annual Retreat including not only attendance from the board members but also key strategic partners that are part of the superintendent's cabinet nowadays our belief that a retreat of such you know his attendance is minimally expected but the goal from such Retreat is a couple of things one what you all do is Harvard and what and if we all have
034done over the last couple years is even harder because of all of the outside influences with the pandemic that we've had to deal with with all the various stakeholder expectations that you have to balance uh and so the the benefit of the retreat is it gives you an opportunity to be re-inspired about the mission build confidence and Trust in one another and also realign um as if it were as it were uh to the overall mission so those are two key recommendations that we want to highlight yes one thing we did not specifically say in the report is that the the spirit of the section about the board of directors it was more than to make a check box and say we did this you really uh develop better relationships if you aren't in The
035Fray of the day-to-day transactions the meeting and tough decisions that you have to make and we would encourage a regular non-work non-stress interaction and whether as the whether that's over meals whether it's over Retreat whether that's just you know highlighting one another there is something positive that can be said about just uh dialing back uh the the day-to-day and getting to the relationship and the trust and so we didn't really want to articulate the spirit of that in the report but I would definitely want to say here is that you know it was more than just a check box of saying hey we want to retreat and we really think that we can see that and um for the board members that did participate and very willing uh very thankful because that was very helpful
036we we had our what we call our top guy uh in during those sessions and and he was uh very pleased that the participation uh believe it or not we do have some dishes where board members opt out and um so that was very encouraging uh to have some participation from the board so appreciate that no I have to say I was one of the people who participated he was like a very articulate excellent conversation I really appreciated his time thank you I appreciate it thank you thank you and uh he was very pleased with the participation so I appreciate that instructional support and monitoring which we Define as the staff's actions and interactions play a significant role in an equitable school and environment so the way that the staff members interact with one another
037particularly the students the parents and families it actually impacts the climate of the school and actually creates the and the the context for greater learning the I'm just going to highlight it again I'm not reading through it but I do want to point out two of the key findings from that particular thematic area and our key recommendation the key recommendations for that thematic area one that central office should include the building level administrative leaders more often in some of the decisions that are being made that ultimately land on the events that came out fairly clearly that they would like to play a much more significant role in some of that process much sooner in the decision making and then the professional development of the staff Beyond just the the teachers we also got we had
038focused groups where we invited some of the staff as well and um more than one time it came out that there was a need for a more frequent professional development the final area that we highlighted was communication both internal as well as external strong effective communication we believe is the Cornerstone of any organization that I grew up believing that you know 70 of how successfully successful you will be in a particular engagement has to do with how well you're able to communicate 30 is The Sweat Equity um we definitely see an opportunity for enhanced communication and I just want to share one recommendation which is to create a strategic communication strategy that produces meaningful comprehensive messages that are specific to each stakeholder community and that may mean I believe in the creation of a Communications
039Council where you can test messages to see how it lands with those particular stakeholder Community stakeholder groups and so we recommend having a strategic approach to how you how you approach not only the internal communication but also externally because how the community feels about the school system has a lot to do with um with the health of the district as well and so again I'm not going to read the other the other recommendations but I'm having a very clear strategic plan I think it's extremely important questions comments trustee King based on what you just said do you have a guideline to uh Implement something like that um Step One Two Three or how do we go about doing it great question we don't have a guideline but we can we work with communication strategists that
040we can we can share and provide Frameworks for how you know how messages are disseminated when messages are disseminated who those messages come for come from um the secrets and Cadence of certain messages because today um there's just an information overload and oftentimes what happens is um information and emails and content goes out and we don't take into context we don't take into consideration the volume of other messages that there are those individuals have received and so it starts it just becomes gloss and glaze over their eyes and so we can we can definitely Identify some of the partners that we normally have that that specialize in strategic communication planning and I'll add you know his the term we use in the report is uh communication fatigue so the the communication the systemic uh communication
041things that we see are are not always isolated to lack of communication but the the terms that we use succinct um um in in in a process you know and and certainly uh and again in the meat and potatoes of a report you will see that there is a disconnect uh between uh what what central office may think and what the individual schools may may perceive and in that aspect a lot of times the perception becomes reality and then then so like like what happened you will also see um again I don't I can't I know the report like the back of my hand but I can't say it all but about that we heard as a theme involving early on in the decisioning at the building level now that may be totally impossible I
042don't know uh where that comes but that they the the sentiment of the theme is that in that it's all in the communication but but I will say as equally as balanced again if you read the report uh a lot of the parents uh have some positive responses to the communication and so uh there was uh there were parents in the overwhelmingly and I want to say a good percentage maybe over 50 I think was 52 uh we're saying that you know they felt very comfortable uh with the communication so that is again I don't know if it landed on an accommodation list but that is something that's certainly to be commended so communication is always a tough one because you had it you can absolutely have one sentiment that communication is horrible and exact
043similar profile of a person of communication is great and we did see that dichotomy in a few different places so it's always a tough one but the overwhelming was that it was strong enough that it definitely needed to be one of the key finding areas I think when I can relate to that to some degree sometimes excuse me Madam president trust you really King there's the tone of the emails you know and as you indicated one doesn't realize the number of emails other emails people receive and then you get this email this sort of totally off left field and I I think working on the tone of some emails among administrators to staff is a key that we probably need to work on to tell them yeah I think in considering the speed at which
044we move just as as a society let alone as a leader of a school um you know it it's it's natural that you get on and you just you fire away without necessarily taking a step back and assessing the audience that's going to receive the message and whether or not there's great a context that need to be provided and background so I completely understand what you mean I'll just share one one example of an organization we we shared a similar type of finding around the communication strategy and they did bring in someone to help them with the framework and one of the things that they implemented was they every Monday they send out a Communications calendar just to the top level leaders and throughout the week it specifies particularly the broad messages that have to
045go out to specific stakeholders and it says Monday this is the email that's going the email to parents the email to students the email to the principals if the administrators on Wednesday this is this is going we're gonna go out here here and on Friday this is the message that's going to go heal me so everyone could see so now as a leader if I know what the communication plan is of that week I know okay I'm not going to send my message on Monday because the attention span or the those folks is going to be consumed with the other three emails they're going to receive and so those are just different ideas that a strategist could help you implement okay Madam president trustee Murphy all right I'm going to go back to the bullying
046um my question relates to what type of data you have so again I'm sending this to the superintendent what was the main theme were they complaining about verbal physical gender lgbtq we are mandated by the state to spend money on bullying education and having systems in place if they're not working that extra data so again I'm going to send this question to the superintendent if you guys can identify what the students were saying so we can more I don't know direct what we need to do in that area if if a trustee had a question that rather than giving us guys the maybe the actual quotes but you could go back and review and see if there's additional sub themes that are identified like she just said that the report doesn't necessarily identify if this
047is an issue around um human sexuality or it could be something but would that be something you guys would be willing to do is go back and look and see examine if there are some sub themes that we need to address we can go back and take a look but the information that we did include in the report it did um it did mention uh uh again the quote in an aggregate way was more representative than of one person saying that and uh in the surveys uh that again we've put survey totals around some and again because of this is this is a report we could not put all of the survey questions results in this report uh we put we highlighted certain ones to make it a a sizable uh report that can be
048managed but we do have some of the data uh some of these the circle graphs uh that have that but we can take another look for sub themes uh absolutely but the mean potatoes of the report does give in our opinion a pretty good idea of of where the bullying uh weather bullying um is where it's more targeted some feel like um one of the one of the the comments throughout the report is that the and again it's an area to really pick up on is that the adults and teachers know about it but they have a tendency to ignore it okay so that is something that is saying that that was a that was not one school it was not one it was not one grade but it was just like you know we're
049we're we're seeing this theme of saying that you know maybe it's easier for the teachers to just let that one slide and try to address it now as far as looking for themes and I understand what you said was it like cyber bullying is it physical somebody getting punched out is it this or that we can look for that but I but the first thing is if there was something so overwhelming in bullying we reported right then okay so we found something that hey the the this school there at the bus stop and everyone's you know the the smaller guys are getting beat up that's not something we wait for a report but we will can go back and take a look for sub themes but I want you to know that too as far
050as bullying Madam president I'm sorry I'm not quite done but I did read the comments so the first one is um page 35. people are scared to tell adults that goes back decades people are always scared to tell an adult because they feel they're going to get retaliation I got bullied my freshman year it got better as I got older I'm afraid that people know where I live so that so I did that bullying is really important to me so I read through that part twice so to me it didn't give me what you're saying okay about what's going on and that's why I asked about the sub things because bullying seems to have gotten worse over the years and so if what we're literally spending a lot of money in this area and if
051it's not working we need to know why it's not working let us take a look and that's why I was asking the question absolutely and um go ahead Frank well I think the further um and I'm going to go to the recommendation around the the taking a look at the current prevention program that you have if it's if you're saying it's not working and part of I don't know that oh okay we're telling you that it's a it was a very clear response from students it was not it was not one school it was not one grade it was very clear so part of which is why it made it in the recommendations which is whatever the program that that's in place may not be as effective as it should be which is part of
052the recommendations to take a look and Implement a more comprehensive program or to evaluate the program you have that's part of the recommendation that we indicated so we will definitely take a look at the comments and pool and and pull those out but having read through the comments they're all the same I see billion all the time I feel bullied I don't feel like I can tell or the teacher knows I was pushed through they're the same comments over and over and over so we can share the volume of those comments but it's the same comments over and over and over what you're not going to get from us is the sixth grader in this school said this the fifth grade over here said that we don't we don't capture any personal information because we
053are looking for a thing and that's what we presented all right trustee boy King thank you again uh this did not surprise me and it behooves the board in the district to just address it again parents have come before us same situation The Bullying we've heard it from from our staff throughout the district so it should come a little surprise I have indicated in various instances we need to perhaps use additional funding to try to address it for the disruption that continually goes in our classrooms due to bullying so again I thank you for sharing something you already know I think this District already knows we just need to move forward this this enforces it so we just need to address it thank you very much [Music] all right thank you okay do you are
054you going to go over any more stuff because I have questions on stuff you didn't go over yeah we don't have anything else that's okay all right so q a yeah all right um Mission vision statements so you had a lot of comments about that one too so as you probably know we just spent a long time um one is having gone through two of those in this District the first one was like it's short and sweet the second time they're like they wanted a lot more verbage in it so I'm going to throw back to you did we just make our vision and mission statements too long because when you get them that long it's hard to memorize them and I feel for people well if you don't know them I can see why
055they're much longer than they used to be yeah I don't have the current one in front of me yeah I can speak to it okay okay well and so a part of our findings was that whether it was the timing of the on-site and the focus group interviews no one was just really aware of what it was so we could not really assess whether whether it was longer or too long or too short and we may have our personal opinions on it you know um but no one really knew that there was a new when I say no one I'm not saying no one I'm saying we did find many instances where it was just unaware you know people say well we heard there was a strategic planning process and something that was created but
056we don't really know what it is or we haven't seen it or maybe it was emailed and missed we don't know we could not get a central answer as to even like where do you go and find this uh this this this this this mission and vision but but I will say it was not overwhelmingly successful in the Old Mission and and vision either so uh maybe again the the awareness towards the mission and vision especially the new one that was out uh it was just not a lot of awareness well legitimately it was just voted on by the board yeah last Tuesday okay yeah so and again that was probably right because like I said that the timing of the audit versus what the when it was created and and the teams that created
057did so it was it was it was a little bit awkward and so uh uh even for for us we don't preconceive our assessors with any information they go in totally blind uh to the situation to the district and what they find is what they find so okay thank you well you said something that I think was key and I I do want to just double click on that which is the vast majority of our assessors are not from this area uh but they all are retired teachers principals professors you all you all interacted with a couple of them so they have no understanding at all Beyond a general overview here's a number of students here's you know the makeup of the board here the principal and in his cabinet and they come with a
058list of questions and so which we feel is was the most effective because we did not tap any of the our local partners because we wanted them to be as objective as possible so that when we presented something to you we could be able to make this comment that none of them were from around here at all you have a question Madam president trusted Candelaria I had a question regarding the the diversity audit process he stated you had about 15 to 20 professionals go into our buildings is that correct yes they're about 15 right yes okay so my question is regarding the 15 to 20 uh professionals that went into our buildings I was just curious if they were they from one specific ethnic background or were they as they're diverse as our student population
059they were as diverse as your student population from a Caucasian to Hispanic to male female younger older and we had Hispanics from Spanish-speaking families yeah yes because that's always my major concern because Me growing up in the school City of Hammond and my parents not knowing any English there's always a language communication barrier between the school system and my family yes so basically I ended up going through school from first grade to 12th grade completely on my own because my parents always had that uh disconnect from the school system because they couldn't communicate they would go to the schools and stuff like that but they always had that huge language barrier so yeah we know and we know that that's a challenge of many of the parents and even for the we hosted um parents
060that we could not meet with in person we hosted Zoom calls in the evening and we also made sure that we had uh Spanish-speaking um team members that were available okay thank you thank you other questions from the board I'm going to send the rest of mine oh go ahead I was trustee Murphy's no no trustee okay um thank you Mr Miller I I think we might need and again don't because again they start working on this in 2022 and uh 1.1 on page four those numbers aren't accurate at all the uh approximate number of students employee number of Congress change and the diversity breakdown has changed based on our EDM our most current so I think could we get an addendum as part of this to have the current data and be more realistic
061today when people you know just in a denim extra sheet or does it call for that or how would we do that um I I mean this is a snapshot of when the data collection happened and and true or ADM is right under 11 000 but when you include this was not just looking at ADM this was looking at Head Start pact program our adult education Learners it was including everyone who considers themselves part of school City Hammond and when you do that in those people like our preschool kids and our our adult Learners that number does go up over twelve thousand so that's that's that's where the number came from so is but you just communicated to us is not in here anybody reading this wouldn't know that so that's all I'm saying some
062kind of way if not now but well the listeners have heard where these numbers come from because certainly we know we don't we have less than 12 000. so if everyone 's satisfied with that fine and I noticed that there was no um data on the diversity of our staff the administrators teachers Paras janitors what have you was there any reason for that omission referring to the uh the demographic uh background of the the staff and teachers the numbers in terms of their breakdown by race yeah that's um that's actually pretty easy add um I think I mentioned that we collected a lot of data and we the report is not a data list but certainly like I kind of mentioned it if someone just wanted to memorialize that in a report I mean it's
063the information is readily available we don't create that information so um if if it if it pleases the board I mean we don't have a problem it's pretty easy to uh like I said there's so many data points but if that's one that that you think is very important here we're certainly uh well received that so um let me just write that down and then on page six so that I I can clearly understand table two Indiana Department of Education stamp ratings yes we've got ABCD goes across to f so the number this is school City helmet correct it must I just want to be clear this is our data okay so there's this is data at the time which we would have received uh what was available in 20 in some summer of 2022
064yes and we no longer no longer so the the state has continued to grandfather in the grades so the grades have not changed since prior to cold okay but I guess we do based on what you understand they've not vote there's been a lot of talk this legislative session if they want to adopt that Indiana GPS the graduates prepared to succeed to replace it but that has yet to happen so it's still the the grades from before covid and I think that's pointed out in our first paragraph in in on Page Six where the data set time frame came from and also the covet um the coveted impact there could that footnote be added to the chart could that footnote be added to the chart sure I'll put notes yes yeah that this is you
065know 1718 data or 18 19 data but it is on there with a footnote already it's 2017-2020 with a 2 is a footnote oh yeah you're all just walking all over right at the bottom of the uh second paragraph in the First Column of Page Six and let me check that footnote here what page is your footnotes we just noticed it's in here okay so that needs to be added on page seven that's the widespread impact of covid-19 U.S Department of Education Grant Indiana away from annual assessments accountability requirements for 2019-2020 school year ideal site reflects assessments for 2018-2019 school year so it was cited but it seems like the the footnote uh number two fell off of the siding just noticed as we were sitting here so that's our mistakes does everyone see that
066in this bottom of the second column of page seven that is this actual sighting of what you were asking for so it is there okay trusty blue King well I think I've lost my train of thought since you have literally walked off of my question I mean let me I'll just go to the next point I'm looking at what page 10. in your data on graduation and it says based on Indiana Department of Education graduation data at 81 School City and Hammond four and five year average graduation rate is lower than the state average of 87 percent and a downward trend from the 2017 to 2018 school year now I I see how you rate it towards the end your major recommendations that you considered was bullying and the other item that wouldn't sit somewhere
067in terms of a priority or that our graduation rate is seemingly declining based on your data well I mean it's in the report but when you summarized your um so in in embedded in the report is what is what is termed throughout the report is culturally responsive instruction and that all of that section more or less leads to that if you do these things your students will be more successful and that in turn impacts the graduation rate so there is an entire section uh more or less dedicated to instructional support and uh or let me see what pages I wanted this to be exact here the only reason I'm making this point is so much information in this report in my mind Mr Miller and board we almost need another sit down and go through
068it Page by page because when we talk about an action plan it's so much in here that that needs to be worked on could we well I'll wait till you all get through that's what I was going to ask if I may further address that question I think that's a good point in in just saying is that so the the development and the instructional things again that is the Tie to increasing the graduation rates and so that's a a few pages in here but it goes pretty in depth as to what that looks like and that also shows up in the recommendations of how to get to those to get to those things so the the I hate to give a short version because again you almost have to read it in the report but
069uh I I appreciate you pointing out that so and ultimately all of these findings and recommendations leads to enhancement of the educational experience the educational process and the educational outcomes president Trust by line so last night I read the whole thing when we got it um next time I'd like to have it at least the Friday before the meeting that'd be nice so I had to rush through it a little bit and set my questions and I'm gonna send even more it's our responsibility to read these big documents um summaries are nice but again it's our responsibility to read these and go through them so it's just like when Mr White came here he had the big document and then he had like a 20-page summary so I read the big document and asked questions
070in there you all loved it when I asked about the projected outcomes and he had to do all the math so next time I'll go see him individually and go over it so again the action plans absolutely when the superintendent gets back with his staff comes back with us as action plans I'd love to have that out here in public but not to go line by line through this we'll be here three hours Madam president once again I for some reason I'm not allowed to complete my comments you know I appreciate it if you would please give me an opportunity to finish before someone else interrupts me I really appreciate it what I was trying to say is simply this this is a public work session public us sending you an email or sending Mr
071Miller does not allow the public to know what we're doing with our until we I guess finally do an action plan isn't this is a work in progress surely I expect comets coming from the public based on what they're hearing or not hearing tonight they don't have you know this 4764 page document that affects their children and their outcome as parents and this this cannot just be taken lightly you know me sending Mr Miller my comments sending you this is a public works session and and I don't see why at some point uh it's so much in here I you know we received it yesterday by no fault of anyone else's but it's a lot to absorb and there's no way we can do an action plan without more public participation I don't think it
072would be our final yeah I mean I can go Page by page but I'm surely you all don't want me to take up that time of some of the comments in this this report regarding what we need to do and what needs to be done if we want to see any kind of increase academically mentally or physically you know is again we're not they're not pointing fingers but this is data we need to get ourselves together so action plan it's going to take the five of us the staff and the public period Public Work session that's what we fail to to forget about these Public Work sessions thank you president Miller um trustee bucklinger you're finished I said thank you okay I'm sometimes it's difficult for me to know so I'm just Lisa please I'm
073just double checking let's not go there please I'm just double checking um superintendent Miller yep um while we while we were talking there I went ahead and pulled up on the screen our strategic plan and just for anybody watching I didn't get to hear us go over the Strategic plan um we went over in great detail a couple of Public Work sessions ago but the board actually voted to approve it just last Tuesday in our public meeting but indicator 3 is improving the diversity equity and inclusion in School City of Hammond and I mentioned at that time that I I had the benefit of seeing the draft results of of the report so all of the strategies are exactly the recommendations from the report this this report here all of them no I didn't add
074one or take one away every single recommendation that's in this report I incorporated into the goal three of the district strategic plan and I summarized it so they wouldn't be so long because some of your your recommendations are big narratives but that's that's what they are you mentioned in your report that some people didn't know about the Strategic plan very first one communicate out the Strategic plan to all stakeholders you mentioned bowling I think the right way to address that is to form a district-wide committee to address bullying concerns that's the third from the bottom um you mentioned people in the building not having decision-making connections right underneath that commitment to include building level Personnel earlier in decision making process so all of these things came straight from the recommendations of of the report so
075the next step for my leadership team in the report is to identify the person responsible set with the Baseline data is and then over the next five years what is the measurable progress for each of these goals that we would like to see if that's what we're referring to action plan that's why I'm full agreeance that is the next step but I just want everyone to know like we put this into our strategic plan to address it like that's that's how this stays relevant and how it doesn't go on the shelf and we don't lose it is that it's part of the district's Improvement plan for the next five years and uh superintendent Miller when can we expect the next check-in I know we've talked about that a couple of different ways on how we're
076doing on the Strategic plan like when we anticipate that I'm I would like to have until April of of next year no no no no no no please so a month I would like I'd like a month and then I'll present the that plan in public work session as well all right and the president and that will be uh just on this or the overall it'll be it'll be the entire the entire strategic plan and what we consider the benchmarks and and such and who's responsible for that Madam president trustee Blake King Mr Miller thank you for that because I was not aware was any of the board members aware that he literally took audit and Infused it in our strategic plan uh I I do recall him mentioning it I don't think we spent
077I mean it's been like a ton of time discussing it so not I think it makes more sense now that we have um this in front of us it kind of all clicking for me now so I do appreciate that Clarity there I appreciate you asking trustee and and superintendent Miller clarifying that well again enjoying our strategic plan I raised the issue of to reinforce this plan we had an opportunity to infuse some of these same ideas and our public policy and we know are we going to do that because that's that's the law you know strategic plan in this audit it lets us know you know we're going to do an action plan but once we put it in public policy that's when I feel more comfortable that we are actually going to move
078forward with the real action plan so is there going to be any movement in that Mr Miller that's really good being part of our public uh public policy and other things that's in this report and honestly that's a that's a board decision I get that and then it falls on deaf ears of the board you know every time I seem to mention it so I I think one of the things we had talked about last time was uh tying our board items back to the Strategic plan and asking that there be a reference for each one of those items where does it tie back into the Strategic plan and I think that was one of the ways we had talked about we were gonna we were gonna hold ourselves accountable to to these documents is
079where does it tie back so we know this audit is tied back to the Strategic plan right not to avoid policy but that's my whole point be a part and as I mentioned at the last meeting to you you're talking about having to constantly like no nobody really enjoys doing board policy and if you actually take it and you tie it things in to board policy you're talking about even more updates to board policy like all of the time well that's our job so you're saying it's too much work uh trust people I'm sorry you asked me not to let people interrupt you but you're interrupting me please so um I I think a good first step is for us to to do that is actually have the items on our agenda tie back to
080the Strategic plan and kind of see like where do we go from there does that end up being being enough if we're holding ourselves accountable to the Strategic plan and the audit is tied into the Strategic plan does that does that give us room as a organization to kind of grow into these things and continue to refine that that process opposed to the laborous process of our policies being being so great and having to continually trying to update those things and we know how quickly they go out of date so well one other thoughts because we discussed this a little bit a couple meetings agourmet was last meeting but a resolution might accomplish the same thing and not require the updating of every all these policies I'm sorry could you say that again sir I'm
081just saying that that if if the board was inclined a resolution might accomplish the same goal without the the tedium of having to update literally hundreds of policies so why update any policy then if it's tedious to be compliant with the law well we can as we are policy makers as board members and if this board feels that this should be part of our policy that is just as our responsibility as anything else rather be put in a hard work or not but one other while I'm thinking about it one other thing that I think was omitted from the report uh I I so recall when Dr Goodloe came before us and indicated that this report was going to be done and I asked about are we going to review our financing in terms of
082Dei our vendors and and that kind of thing and I don't see that in this report and it was made clear at that meeting that that would happen and I don't see any indication of anything mentioning about financing I can speak to that as well so um uh after uh Dr goodlow did express that to us and and our assessment team did speak uh with the uh uh for lack of better term I don't want to cut Iran department but those responsible uh for vendor relations and supplier um issues if you will with the issue of purchase orders conscious what have you and uh in that meeting uh it was pretty clear to to our team is that um the the the onset of the meeting was that too many uh state or or government
083or federal regulations policies or procedures would not really allow uh the or or the the temperance to really delve into a MBE wbe DDE type of program uh unless it was a specific mandate out of some type of funding which it was not the case and uh we kind of tossed around suggestions of maybe uh something unofficial uh to be perhaps in like Foster the relationships between primes and mbes although you cannot mandate but the sentiment from the assessors was that you know their hands were pretty full with what they were doing and then there would be really no uh there's no tracking of that because it doesn't really uh exist to that extent uh maybe an isolated project or something like that and so you will see it doesn't really show up as a
084recommendation because we were pretty much told there's nothing to recommend it doesn't show up as a finding because it it it can't exist uh by by our understanding of not Municipal uh uh School financing and structure and so we did do that and we did take that time and uh those there's almost nothing to report that's why it doesn't really land in a report we have it in our strategic plan so I've done some homework on it as well and it doesn't appear we can do any sort of financial incentivizing like saying that if a minority-owned business was not the lowest bidder we could award it because we're trying to support minor in our own business we can't do that that part from my research from talking to Monica over the past couple weeks is
085illegal like you have to use the lowest qualified bidder that's there's there's no other way around it what the I actually sent something to the board I think was yesterday about it though there is some language in federal Monies to in to encourage um the use of this they still have to be the lowest qualified bidder but you can do things such as develop an internal list of women-based veteran-based minority-based businesses local businesses and you can do Outreach when projects that they could bid for qualify to make sure that lack of knowledge is not a reason why they're they didn't have an opportunity to bid on things and we if we wanted to be really aggressive we could even hold things like seminars or things like that one thing we can't do though is say
086like I had talked about how maybe we could have the board could identify a percentage that's illegal can't do that but we can we can be as aggressive as we want you to communicate that these opportunities exist that's that's probably where we'll end up Landing for that goal so is that what we're going to do so that'll be that when we identify the action steps for that item that's likely what we will land is to develop a database of vendors we'll probably have some form that they could fill out to register that or they can give us a copy of their Federal registration as MBI wdi our veteran home business and then yes we can put it into our vendor system where we would have something so yes I think that's where we will end
087up Landing honestly I'm speaking a little bit out of my realm Eric is there anything else you wanted to say about that for those watching Eric's rcfo no I mean the Indiana statutes are clear that we're required to use the lowest responsive and responsible bidder so there's been some litigation with other governmental units that have done some preference maybe a certain percentage difference and then they would award it to a qualified minority-owned business Enterprise and then contractors that have lost out on the work initiated litigation and ended up prevailing so you know that's kind of what sets the indication I think we're where we can do School City of him and can do a better job is identifying those minority-owned women-owned business enterprises that are located in in our area and make sure that we
088reach out to them and encourage them to give us quotes and proposals when we have those opportunities what were the three things you said the Lord said uh you have to we have to award to the lowest responsive and responsible bitter so the lowest what if they weren't responsible for a responsive I mean that's those are two key words I mean they might be the lowest but they might not be deemed responsible or responsive so typically responsible ties into their ability to perform the work their track record in performing the work so if they have a track record of not completing projects or not delivering goods or services as they proposed we would be able to use that responsible category to exclude a bidder but it does require homework on our part to make sure
089that if we're telling a business that they're not responsible we have to be able to back yeah I'll say this and let it go it just it seems strange Hammond has always even when I was on other boards you can go to any other city and there's always some kind of policy where women minorities and what have you had an opportunity to bid and were successful there's always seemed to be I don't want to say it's a barrier but it's just I mean even when building a new high school all the Hoops you know Mr Miller you know I almost had to beg people I mean I felt that I was begging Skillman and and that's not right when people live in this city they're homeowners they're taxpayers they have businesses here and the money
090just seems to go everywhere else but stay in our city so I mean that that's an issue with a lot of people taxpayers and ham and businesses women owned minority owned they don't ever get a piece of a pie and I'm tired of begging and I probably should have indicated there there is a provision in Indiana code that allows us to do a local bitter preference but local can only be confined down to the county so a bidder from Lowell would get the same preference as a bidder from Hammond but then a bidder that's maybe out of Valparaiso or Portage could be excluded and there's a percentage that state law allows us to favor someone that's located in Lake County thank you for the conversation Madam president trustee Murphy um the prior board prior to
091the high school even breaking ground we had this conversation so it's similar to what the superintendent's already said but what we also discussed with Skillman when they got hired is that we want them to break the bids down so sometimes it's hard so maybe one bidder gets all the windows but then we might be able to break the bid down on who does the installations between two companies so that's another way we can help out local businesses because a lot of them just aren't big enough to Big bid on these big projects so sometimes an interior work and things like that we can do what he's talking about with the smaller bidders and again that's something we try to do but if there's no company that's big enough we just don't have the choice we
092had a prime opportunity with Skillman it was minority owned business Hispanic in fact we were doing festive use and uh they could have broken it down but they refused to do it in a local minority Hispanic business missed out on a bed so we know we can do what they can do but they just won't do it and we don't enforce them we don't encourage them to do it so we that this this has to stop is madness in my mind Mr Miller and board we just have to be better do better at it or something I mean again homeowners taxpayers we own a business here and you have a hundred and ten million dollar project or whatever and you can't even get a slice of it it's unconscious but somebody from loyal available or
093whatever as you said local they can override someone that's here we just need to look at that a little better Mr Miller just hope we could I appreciate it thank you you're welcome Madam president trustee Murphy I'd like to go back to your comments about putting teeth into this I like the ideas that you had um I actually just sent a email to Lisa tansel see if she's ever heard of it being put into board policy or resolution since the isba is our guiding organization to see if she knows of any other districts in Indiana that may have done that I give the example of the first one communicate out the Strategic plan to all stakeholders well the superintendent may actually get that done before we do the first reading and approval which takes two
094months so putting this into board policy would be like you said a lot of work and some of the things we we talked about this prior when this is brought up it just may get accomplished before it even gets done so again I've reached out to the isba I like the ideas that you had and we should move forward with those all right are there any other questions or comments from the board as it relates to the audit itself one other questions trustee Blake King how is this going to be communicated to the community Mr Miller well we'll put it on our website it is on board docs right now so anybody watching the meeting you know you can like all of our meetings you can get every document um on board docs it's in
095the public content I almost feel this needs to be like the reference Mr Miller but I don't know that he was finished but again you don't know to me he was finished well as I was trying to say I'm okay as I was trying to say uh to me this almost feel like like we do the referendum it's so important that that the citizens the stakeholders everybody understand what what this is all about because right now we haven't been able to communicate in my mind communicate with this tip so however you decide to do it it's fine with me thank you all right um superintendent Miller did you have have more to add or no I I really don't um I want to I want to thank your whole organization I this was a and
096it it turns up into a paper document but like this was a lot of time effort and energy over the past six months on your guys's part and your entire team um I for one I'll just state it again publicly here this is not just something we did this is going to be a guiding part of of how it's going to lead us to meaningful Improvement the only reason that you do something like this is because you have a desire to improve organizations they want to stay the same they don't they don't pay someone and invite someone to come in and tell them what they're doing wrong only organizations that want to grow and help flourish the the people they serve which is our students and Community would do this so that's that's why we're
097doing it it not everything in there is positive uh but there is a thing I like about it is the way you wrote the recommendations I think we can have meaningful growth in every one of those items like I really do I think I would love to have you guys come back sometime in the in the in the future and reassess you know but um I just want to thank you and we're we've got a lot of work to do very welcome and and I'll leave my last comment our number one Commendation is just the courage it takes to do something like this because you do expose yourself no one told us what to put in what to not put in what to edit and things like that and we put it out there as
098we receive so it takes a lot of courage to really dial back those layers so I commend everyone uh for your support thank you very much thank you all right thank you so much um trusty Candelaria we'll move on to public expression First Community member is going to be Latasha Montgomery good evening everyone good evening I am here of a student um that should be technically in school right now in the school City could you move your mic down yeah sorry about that um let me just say even though what I've come to discuss or bring them before you to your attention um does not have um directly I should say anything to do with this here however in this time that I've listened um I'll have to say one I have never been at
099a school board meeting before and I am a graduate of this school City from the beginning to 12th grade in high school um but I will say I'm a little disappointed I heard a lot of stuff going on um I should say word wise I've heard responsibility I've heard you all say accountability um no offense but I've heard too much work and unfortunately some of these same things are my concern with my children now in this school system in this school district and city um I am a single mother I work I'm educated um I can send you my education I'm a first and foremost I have a job to my children and I have obligation and responsibility to them to do what's best for them my daughter is Special Needs I actually have two
100daughters they both have special needs both in this school City my youngest daughter unfortunately is nine and she was denied the right to enter into your schools at this current time she is still not in school I enrolled her prior to the beginning of the school year I made every effort to make sure that the staff at burn Hicks Elementary was aware of her needs her um educational needs and I was told even before school started when I followed up that one school started there would be meetings for accommodations for her since then I took her to school the night before for the first I guess initial parent teacher conference or night before school whatever back to school night in which my daughter met her teacher she was very excited unfortunately the teacher had no
101knowings that my daughter had any disability or had any accommodations that she would need with that being said I immediately went to the school nurse and also made sure that she was aware at this point of my daughter's needs she as well had no idea she did pull up a document that I'm sure was a print over from the application that I put into have my my daughter enter into the school and sure enough the information about her needs was on that application that the nurse just looked at for the first time with all the excitement that my daughter had even with special needs of going to school I received a phone call the night before the first night of school and was told that they could not accommodate her and that she could not
102come to school the principal reached out to me the next day that morning and tried to I guess pacify what I was told about my daughter being denied the right to go to school in person I was assured at that moment that we would have an IEP meeting and that this meeting would evaluate her and get her in the proper placement for school that was in August the meeting was held in September I as a mother did my due diligence I even called in source to be present at that meeting during that IEP meeting it was raised up and brought up um that the School City of Hammond at each school is allotted a certain dollar amount for special education even though I was told that my daughter could not attend um since then we
103are now in going into March unfortunately my daughter still has not been in school they said that the assessments that will be completed to determine what school would be appropriate for her they call that Homebound and I agree because they said it was for assessment for placement um that assessment for placement turned into um a journey of me losing time at work to try to get accommodations they had me go through the ringer for medical clearances that she did not need um long story short at this time the school the same case manager that has been responsible who is not being accountable for her actions has called CPS on me even though the school has denied her this right and I have done everything to protect my daughter and get her in in school she
104has been denied her right of Education she has been neglected by the school City by the teachers and at this point what I would like to know is where is the accountability whereas the responsibility and just like CPS will hold mean responsible and there will be consequences to my actions had I neglected my daughter I would like to know what are going to be the action Miss I'm I'm more limited to three minutes I'm sorry if they didn't put a timer up but you're you're at six minutes right now um so what I'm gonna ask is if you can stay after the meeting um superintendent Miller will get with you and get with the details and then he'll follow back up with us to kind of let us know what he he finds out from
105his investigation okay um so if you if you can hang around we're almost we're almost finished okay so if I'm clear on that there will be some type of investigation well he he will definitely check into it and let us know what he finds out okay okay so if you can hang out for just a few more minutes we'll we'll get him with you okay all right thank you thank you that concludes everyone written in for public expression all right um I just have a few things I'd like to mention um it was a close one at Munster West Side was actually up by one point over Hammond Central at the end of the third period but we did Prevail with a 62-54 victory all right don't you don't do that I say serious at
106the end of the third period so um yeah so that means uh and I hope everyone if anyone's watching this if they come out this Friday uh I have the exact time here where it's at monster Monster High School that's I think it was at six and on Friday it is at 5 30 at 5 30 a Munster versus morning so we have both Morton versus ham and Central for the next game of the Munster sectional for boys basketball several of us were able to attend the ptas event this past Friday night founders day was really a nice event to see everybody out there um you know celebrating the work between our parents our teachers in this in and the kids so thank you again for all who are able to come out for the
107PTA last I got a communication from Mr Verda about some of our um Student Success at the ismo state solo and Ensemble con contest in Indianapolis today Brianna Maddox and received a distinguished gold medal for her tuba solo she performed yes Sonata number seven by Franz Joseph Hayden Frank was awarded a civil civil Matt I can't talk silver medal for his trombone solo as well so exciting to see some of our performing art students do so well in in state competitions and that concludes my brief announcements for tonight awesome wonderful well we will see you all here next Tuesday March the 7th for our next public work session at 6 PM do I have a motion to adjourn so moved all right see you all next week