Board Meeting May 17th, 2022

001[Music] so [Music] so [Music] so um [Music] so [Music] so [Music] testing like to call this meeting to order welcome to the school city of hammond tuesday may 17 2022 regular meeting of the board of trustees our next agenda item is the pledge of allegiance by hesse elementary school everyone could please rise and face the flag as students please come up to the mic is [Music] [Applause] nice job thank you so um i'm told you guys aren't in the shot so why don't you you guys come on over here and miss miss piedta was gonna go ahead and announce your names and give you a certificate all right jennifer turner [Applause] naily toronto [Applause] manuela sauls [Applause] miklo munoz [Applause] analia feliciano these are hedgehogs these are our student council members we also have mrs

002stringer our sponsor here and also our hero and education award winner so we are glad that she's here and thank you hess hawks for coming you've done a fabulous job representing hess and the student council [Applause] next we have our roll call trustee miller here trustee candelaria president trustee blake king we're here trustee murphy present and trustee zono present all members are accounted for superintendent miller good evening everyone good evening to those watching online as well our first order of business is a recognition um we have a lot of proud parents and students here we have a handful of students that scored a perfect on their i read 3 exam and they're in the audience yes and we are going to recognize them so i'm going to go ahead and i know not everyone is

003here tonight but i'm going to go ahead and read the names in the schools and when i say your name go ahead and stand up and then we're going to call you up to the front once i've read all the names okay so we have aiden bosby from hass elementary jennifer yes that's brian come on up we're going to get everybody's everybody who's here jennifer castro from o'bannon come on up you can come a little more towards the middle please tristan de jesus from lincoln [Applause] as well as kaylee dejesus from lincoln [Applause] victor flores chavarria from edison [Applause] miranda fox from irving [Applause] davion hall from kenwood [Applause] damani jackson from edison forgive me if i mispronounce it zalani johnson from harding [Applause] liliana juarez from franklin colin pagan from jefferson [Applause] jonathan patton

004from jefferson thomas ross from hess zoe salazar from franklin kaiden tolbert from any burn six [Applause] darius williams from irving and last but certainly not least gracie wilson from harding they need a standing ovation [Music] it's exciting here [Music] darius round of applause to our parents [Applause] um our students hey if you want to fold over your certificate and hold it in front of you like i am fold it over so you can see your name and turn it around there you go there you go [Music] all right [Music] all right congratulations [Music] god [Music] uh [Music] that's what it's all about [Music] uh [Music] how you doing oh good job man congratulations well done sir please do just watch your step there's some chords [Music] keep reading there you go [Music] turn around and

005face the camera son face the picture there you go smile you know what else oh don't put him on the spot i love you [Music] oh [Music] big congratulations again to our students and families um my observation of interviewing a lot of valedictorians and salutatorians is kids don't succeed without strong family support and so big shout out to our families as well and our principals [Applause] if we're ready to continue our next presentation is our monthly financial presentation for mr reese good evening mr miller members of the board i can assure you that mine will not be nearly as exciting as what you just went through and as it should be that same way tonight i have for you the financial report for the month of april 2022 two things i want to point out

006on the front page which is your education fund april was a three-pay month meaning there were three pays in the month of april which is why you see the significant decline i mentioned that the last couple of months to you that that would be upcoming one thing that also happened in the month of april is in the revenue section of the education fund the adjustment for the spring adm was made and you'll notice there's about a 300 000 decline in the month of april you'll see that same decline in may and june going forward that's because the adm was down much more than what we had anticipated or estimated back when the budget was done last fall just to give you some idea of what that means and i've looked at some some numbers here

007starting back with the fall of 2020 so just take you back one school year ago not this school year but the year before that and comparing it to the spring of 22 count you're down about 622 students at about 7 300 per student over the course of the year that's almost 4.6 million dollars now we estimated some of that decline because of the lower enrollment the the pace at which your enrollment is still declining is what's causing us some problems with our estimates as we move forward you'll see next month you'll see a decrease in the revisions we'll put that in there in the revenue line so it shows you what we're anticipating in a revised budget yes trustee king did i hear you say we're moving faster than what we anticipated the downtrend sorry

008i didn't hear the first part of that we're going down we're moving faster than what we anticipated is that what you're correct our enrollment is declining more than we intended not as much in the fall count the spring count this time we were down almost 281 students we did not anticipate that type of 281 students is lower than our estimate we did not anticipate that type of decline thank you do we have any reasons behind that i know that's not your question that you go to the superintendent um because sometimes it's for students that graduate in december so i don't know if that's the issue this time or something else going on i to be honest with you trustee murphy i really need to spend a little more time on that to give an intelligent

009answer i can speculate such as i do know our auto district enrollment was down 160 this year we did have a fair amount of graduates and for anybody watching right now the state does not fund you for a full year if a person graduates at at winter so that could be part of it but i really need to dig down in that and see hopefully with mr kurtz's help okay thank you yeah just so we're on the record april should be your worst month right we saw all the declines then you're going to pick up some additional money per pupil once we start the second half of the year obviously depending on what fall enrollment looks like will go a long way towards your total revenue but you will pick up some additional money per

010pupil as we go into the fall and you won't have another three pay month until september so you have some time to build up those balances any hourly employees who don't work over the summer you won't have those expenses over the summer so things should get back into focus and trending towards budget is actually significantly better than what it was even last month as we have that three pay month because we do stagger out what we expect to spend based on the number of payrolls in each month if you go to the second page of referendum fund this is the referendum operating fund in may we have requested uh actually miss pritchett has requested your advance drawing your property taxes so next month i'm giving this report you'll see a small portion of your spring

011property tax payment be made to you in this fun and referendum operating fund as with the other property tax funds that you have but this fund also impacted in april by the three pay month as well one other item we had talked about before i want to bring your attention to in march you'll notice under the instruction line that's where the chromebooks were purchased from and they're being reimbursed that that full amount we're anticipating uh the 2.2 million we expect to get the 593 before the 1.6 million we should have that shortly as that we've actually requested that reimbursement already going to page 3 is your referendum project debt service no activity in the month of april on to the next one is your debt service fund as normal just the common school loan repayment

012in abroad at that service and the fifth page is pension debt service which some other debt service funds has no activity in the month of april flipping to the blast page you have the operations fund again the three pay month in the month of april we'll start to see some property taxes come in as well in this fund in may but again we're trending actually okay as far as our budget is concerned i want to highlight last month when i gave my report compared to budget we were actually almost we were 4.9 million over budget we've known that since january due to the retro pays this month we actually picked up 1.2 million so we're only 3.7 million over budget and we're trending in the right direction obviously each month we've gotten better and better

013as we've gone through you will continue to see that because you don't have the retro pay and you'll especially see it as we get into the summer months where your expenses will go down fairly substantially for all your hourly workers under your your your board report we have and i don't know if it's on touch this or not no it's not um really not not too many comments our balances are running low we're ready for our property tax advanced withdrawals we're ready to get some revenue in the door uh and we'll be excited about putting that into the the bank accounts at that point but in general not too concerned really about anything it's the same path we've been on the last few months we know we're a little over budget due to the retro

014pays and we'll continue on that path as we get into the summer be happy to answer any questions you might have at this time any questions one question trustee blake king if this is not your last meeting with us is it no okay good very good that was my question thank you sir thank you very much okay that brings us to item c diversity equity and inclusion that trustees do due to some circumstances we rescheduled this presentation and probably for a good good marriage because that public work session went three hours long anyway um to tonight so please welcome dr goodlow our d.i champion and he will be presenting um he is been the role for almost a year now and has spent a lot of time examining what we need to move forward and

015this is the result of that work baby uh president zuno board school trustees members of the community fellow administrators scholars and parents uh tonight for your consideration i would like to present the diversity equity inclusion plan for the school city of hammond uh for implementation during the 2022-23 school year and beyond uh there are immediate priority portions of the plan that will be presented to you a proposal for a complete equity audit program audit of the school city of hammond and the next steps as far as professional development to achieve the goals within this strategic plan so there were a couple of organizations that were part of the creation of this dei plan for the school syria hammond the first one the global consultant solutions corporation which is uh milton and franklin reed um they

016were a part of the overall strategic planning they were part of the dei strategic planning and they've been an organization that's been here in the school city um conducting some of our courageous conversations amongst staff and and bias 101 it was even part of bridge the better the other half was the entity that i presented um the map center great lakes equity center under the the leadership of dr tiffany kaiser dr serena skelton and dr ruthie payno simmons so the plan was conjuncted constructed within two parts the first part was with the global um consulting solutions portion with those members from the dei dr dei but the strategic plan for the school city of hammond we had members who met and met that uh plan there were members from that committee that was part of

017the dei committee with the global consulting solutions and then there was a whole another committee that was part of the professional development with the great lakes equity center and so the plan that you'll have before you is a combination of both plans that's pretty thorough so first i want to present the components of the diversity equity and inclusion plan for your consideration there's five key areas administration and governance curriculum and instruction scholar engagement and support educational professional engagement and support and community engagement these are the five key areas that consist of this plan and under each key area there are specific portions so you'll see a vision goal the vision goal is the overall long-range result that we would like to see in the district as a result of the implementation of this plan upon

018your approval there are a couple of priority goals the priority goals are the immediate inequities that have been identified by our data within key performance areas that must be addressed and they'll be in a smart goal format with a specific timetable for response there will be measures some of the measures will be empty because um not measures but some of the resources will be empty when you when we get to that portion i want to give you that heads up but there will be measures for how each goal is to be assessed there's specific strategies that we're going to use to achieve goals and a timeline as far as the projected implement implementation time for each goal to be reached the resources that i said some of it will be fluid because that some that

019would be supported by grants some that be supported by budgets some within different collaborations with different entities uh resources materials and funding and then evidence of implementation basically what we should see as a result um that we are working or achieving the goals within the plan so i'm going to go through specific portions of the plan and point out specific um weightable items within the plan for your consideration in front of you you have the key performance area administration and governance the first one i want to point out to is within this plan we have to use all available and appropriate resources to execute the approved version by the board of school trustees of the dei plan the other part that's very important which is going to be later on in the plan that i'm

020going to present is a complete accessibility program audit of the school city of hammond there's also an evaluation of lgbtq resources and the measurement of the effectiveness of those supports for not just the scholars but for the families the community members and also the educators as far as resources for lgbtq plus community members can you define accessibility are you just talking about the ability to get into the buildings no accessibility as far as um we come from the stands of accessibility we're talking about resources so let's say i am a parent and i'm struggling that my child has came out and i'm looking for some resources as far as support for family therapeutic measures or some resources to help me become a better parent we have an outlet to provide some resources within that realm

021right that's not clear because like i said as soon as i read that i was like are you talking about buildings because i think federal i'm stan okay thank you curriculum and instruction um some of the key points in this area would be to assess and introduce instructional models that meet the social emotional needs of scholars and within that curriculum and instruction portion what should also be mentioned and reminded is that the mtss model is a model for equity so when you see miss michelle anders come and and she does her presentations on the mtss model the multi-tier systems of support that's also a system of equity as far as how we are aligning our resources to meet the needs of scholars within those three tiers tier one tier two tier three so i want

022to be sure to remind everyone of that the other portion of under uh student engagement and and support you'll find a priority goal and let me go back to that that priority goal specifically deals with special ed scholars and their matriculation within four years you'll notice a specific goal that the school city in hammond will increase the number of scholars with disabilities graduating from high school from 66 percent to 77 percent by the year 2024. within our data it is our special needs scholars that are the most impacted as far as the access of graduation so when we look at the state data statewide we are 10 behind the state average as far as graduating special needs scholars within four years and so that's why you see that goal specifically the other part of that

023goal is to increase the number of scholars with disabilities taking dual credit cte pathway courses or ap courses by five percent so that would cause us to look at our programs to see where we are as far as the supports for those scholars and you'll see at the bottom there's one that specifically speaks to um identifying the specific resources we're using for opportunities to remediate um and and shorten those gaps any questions about that specific smart goal dr good law yes mr president trustee blakey if i'm following you we see there is a gap for uh for our disability especially students well do you have the numbers for the gaps of other groups yes okay so um surprisingly those gaps are nowhere near the number of the disparity within special ed so when you look

024at african americans it's less than two percent when you look from the hispanic portion is about the same but when you look specifically within the four-year graduation of special needs scholars it's the biggest well i can believe that mr adam white presented the test scores he did show 61 of our scholars within the that group were were not doing well so the data does support that thank you no problem actually i want to follow up on what trustee king is saying can you actually provide us with that data because i i'm having a little trouble with that you're saying that only this is a two percent difference gap between african americans and white students taking dual credit ap classes no that's not going up that's not what we're saying we're talking about the four graduation

025when she's talking about the gap not specifically dual credit the first goal all right so i'm talking about the second one no because that's not what we're saying all right so the second one there i have concerns that we don't have children of color in there because that's one of our biggest problems maybe you have it farther in your presentation but that's an area of concern and it has been for quite some time is getting those numbers up along with the participation of students of color in our particular extracurricular activities after school so is that in here am i get jumping the gun again not quite jumping the gun is going to be covered very shortly but the inequity right here specifically is special ed and so we want to be sure we shine that

026flashlight first okay thank you for educational professional engagement and support you'll see another priority goal that goal is the school city of hammond will identify refine and create equitable policies and practices that will be used 100 of the time in the selection and hiring a staff by the beginning of the 2022-23 school year and so this goal came about as far as the disparities and within our hiring practices to see if we are truly trying to recruit and retain a diverse workforce and so it will constitute us doing a deep dive within our hiring policies our practices are the uniform do we have data to substantiate that we are looking for not just the most qualified candidates but also what are our targets you'll see a specific goal of set diverse hiring and head count

027goals and so when you look at that that specifically speaks to are we looking are we intentionally looking for specific hiring populations of minorities from different sources any questions about this key area because i wasn't going to go through the whole um aspect of it i know that's why i wish you were at the public works session so i'll try to make this short um when are we going to actually see those goals so we're going to try to increase by 10 um and things like that because i know this is not finished it still needs to be fleshed out more yes just an overview so what you have right now it'll make more sense when i get to the end of the presentation the other portion of that is develop culturally competent teachers capable

028of engaging and supporting a diverse uh student population and of course this speaks to culturally responsive teaching and strategies that are inclusive at our best practice when engaging a diverse scholar population so some of the key things i want to point out is the development of a deipd program including courses plans and timelines to provide more cultural competency and dei training to the staff it's a it's a hard it's a long task as far as with me by myself doing it we have a proposal with myself in the global education global consultant solutions always mess up their names milton and franklin reed where we will be creating a specific curriculum that will be spearheaded by by teams that will be set within each of the school city of hammond schools and they will meet with

029us once a month and we'll pretty much be helping to spearhead this program upon your approval but this is a whole other aspect that we have to present within the board that i'll have milton and franklin with me presenting this to the board for your consideration key performance area community engagement you'll see another priority goal school city in hammond will increase the parental involvement in decision making and be able to provide input in educational decisions by 25 by the 2023-24 school year this came from uh qualitative data as far as parents um providing input or having opportunities to provide input but us as a district being able to show that their input is taken seriously and and used within the aspects of the school city and so one of the things that came out within

030this goal is the creation of a community advisory council um developed by me um and to have that council meet once a month where they are able to see and speak on specific uh things within the school city and we're able to communicate with them how their input is being used within the facets of the aspects of the school city questions about this one i know you got one trustee murphy mr president actually i'm gonna direct it to the superintendent so um as everybody knows we're doing strategic planning and we've got the dei strategic planning and the board and so that's why i'm loving hearing what you're saying but the board hasn't met on the regular strategic plan so the community advisory council actually came out of the big strategic plan and we brought it

031into the dei so there is my frustration so we as a board still need to talk are we going to be merging these goals within the whole strategic plan this happens so it's good that you mentioned that this has to be a part of the overall strategic plan of the school city of batman and so i am not ready to approve any of this i want to hear about it what's going on but it needs to be part of the overall plan why the fiscals attached this board as a whole has to meet and give the superintendent say okay we want to see this stuff done and then he needs to figure out can we pay for it and then he may come back to us like okay we can do this this and this

032but we can't do that because we only have so much money essa dollars run out next year so right now we're flush with essa dollars and we can do all kinds of this stuff and it's wonderful but that's where my frustration is with this is that we're not meeting how it's going to be merging together i understand but at the same time i have to push and say we do need to go ahead and and proceed i hear you because there aren't aspects that i could do and start even though there are aspects that may need to be approved because of the overall strategic plan yeah i just want to make sure that your goals end up being the goals within the whole strategic plan that we are all coming together on this not that

033once we sit down it's like okay we like this this and this but you know what i don't know if we're going to do this one that that's where my worry comes in okay to make sure that they all that we merge them together okay thank you mr president trustee blake king time is of essence time we continually adopt these ideas concept dei strategic planning what have you and we never get to it because we never finish it but by the same token we can't continue to lag behind the other districts we got to catch up now either we are serious about diversity equity and inclusion or as i stated before we're just window dressing you you sent us to a dei conference to get the information we bring it back i'm excited and i

034want to see some implementation the strategic plan is lagging by no fault of mine you know when they called the meetings i was there so it's just a matter of doing our due diligence we can't wait on one for the other otherwise we'll never get there i mean to hear what i already know community engagement has been lacking forever we talk about disparity and hiring a people of color we've been knowing that forever so when are we going to begin really seriously addressing it this other issue aboard governance what was it student engagement and support i have continually asked when are we going to allow our students to participate you know we need to hear from them you know we had the dei and i had an opportunity for the first time to hear our

035students and we haven't heard from them since not moving forward and uh your first key area administration and governance that falls on administration we need leadership in this area and that's what i expect i i don't see waiting another minute another second to move forward with diversity equity and inclusion that's my comment for now thank you mr president thank you mr president murphy if all the board members have responded for the um meeting in june to review the strategic plan because that's i know not everybody has responded yet so it's not like the administration's not trying unfortunately the superintendent actually has had to cancel a couple of meetings because the five of us can't get together so some of it's on us we need to be able to get together and sacrifice our saturdays so

036there is a meeting coming up i don't know if the board secretary it's june what date 11th so if there's any board member that hasn't responded to the superintendent if they're available i've indicated that i was not available in june and i indicated that june is a month of weddings graduations it's just a busy month for everybody i mean we've been trying to do this from last year you know now we want to you know rush everybody june is a bad month for everybody that mrs reese indicated she wasn't available so certainly uh you're going to plan a meeting without me or miss breathing well we can't shut down for a month well we've been shutting down anyway period we haven't even been raising the question we have to the last time we asked about

037a strategic plan wasn't was weeks ago months ago because i even asked if three or four board meetings or whatever last year what was what's happening with the strategic plan again it says nowhere in our contracts no not that we have contracts but it's just nowhere that we take a month off in june and not to work well we've taken a whole year off and now we want to do everything in june mr president trustee miller can we please hear the rest of the presentation thank you the final portion for your consideration is the program audit and the purpose of that program audit is um through the lens of equity to see where we are in relationship to the plan so a lot of what you've posed as far as specific things and other inequities

038such as uh the inclusions of children of color within ap programs what happened would be a part of this so the purpose of this now that we have the diversity equity inclusion plan is to actually see where we are in relationship to the plan as a system also to see if there are any other things that we need to consider that should be a priority so this will be conducted by global consultant solutions in conjunction with dr roger cleveland who is the director of equity development and diversity initiatives at eastern kentucky university the timeline will be important because once this is approved they're going to look to try to get a date on the calendar to begin the following the first thing that will happen is there will be audit prep um basically this is

039with the central office leadership what have you and it's to just set the stage for everything that has occurred that is going to occur and please understand that once everything occurs you're opening yourself up and you're allowing yourself to be vulnerable to a process that is going to be deep in scope and so [Music] when they have those courageous conversations they're just going to make sure everybody understands that whole concept because it is a very extensive process there's also a data collection desk audit where they're going to look at specific documents the strategic plan the assessment results survey data survey results they're going to have a climate survey for us to give to scholars educators parents community members policies diversity plans recruitment plans the next set of steps occur on site once all of the

040pre-work is done there will be a span of two days where a team of between we'll say 12 and 15 people will visit the district for two days and those they will be conducting focus groups and individual interviews with students staff faculty leadership families community stakeholders at every site including the career center and then once that span of two days happens along with classroom walkthroughs the focus groups and things of that nature it would take approximately three months but you will have in writing a report that will have opportunities for growth the findings um specific next steps and a timeline overall the timeline for this whole process will be about three months so if we were to pre to have the audit approved let's say within the next board meeting and you secure the date

041the timeline will probably start around early september because you will want to get the school year at least started for the first couple of weeks and get a couple of things going but a lot of the pre-work can be done during the summer as far as the scope of policies uh specific surveys and things of that nature and so once the the visit will happen it would take approximately they gave me a timeline let's say if the visits were early september probably by early november you would have your report and it would be presented for everyone at a board meeting first with you all in the executive session and then in front of the public the next slide is basically um is the framework as far as what the audit entails uh from procedure process

042purpose target and deliverables and so you will see the school district consultation the communication plan because there must be a specific communication plan to to tell everyone who is going to be a part and tell the immediate school community about the process the importance of the process and try to intentionally recruit everyone to be a part of the process um the school district desk audit which i mentioned as far as the surveys and the policy scopes what have you uh the assessment inventory um as far as the surveys and then basically the focus groups the report and the action plan and i do want to note that the team that will be coming up will be a diverse team of seasoned teachers former administrators former board members former superintendents that would visit the district and

043conduct the audit and that is what i have for you for your consideration today any additional questions mr president trustee murphy um actually this is going gonna be for the superintendent so i love the equity audit obviously it's past you but one of my concerns has always been an ongoing is again recruiting those students to get in there are we going to wait another year for example we had all those kids lined up up here they 100 on their i read tests i'd be like next year so you want to be in legos we've got these research projects that you would be excellent at and doing that extra thing is that something we're going to be talking about over the summer how we're going to get more diversity into our extracurricular activities and students into

044those classes with supports because a lot of these students don't think they can do it but they've from the observation in the classroom a teacher is going to say you know what i think you need to be in honors english next year you can do this but they don't have it in them and so getting them into those classes and getting them to know you can do this with the extra supports when are we going to be going into that direction is that's something we've been i know that's a tough thing and if you want to get back to me another day if i just put you on the spot go ahead but that is one of the things we've talked about under dr watkins i know you've been talking about it um superintendent miller

045i know this is one of your goals but it's like we need to put it in place we've got the smart kids but we need to get them into the classes where they're just going to blossom and do wonderful any other questions mr president trustee blake king well what is our pleasure for tonight we're just gonna do nothing and ask him to come back at another board meeting or i mean time is of the essence we need to make make a motion on this about the equity uh audit uh and in the meantime the strategic plan could be moving in the same direction because he serves on that as well global consultant they serve on the uh strategic plan the same uh stakeholders people are working together on the same plans i don't see any

046reason for separating the two are waiting for one the strategic plan to be completed before we start off this otherwise we will never start this never ever president superintendent miller um the the plan that how we foresaw it was originally that at the public works session he would present the plan and then we would have the contract ready to go at this meeting because he wasn't able to be able we didn't want to put the pressure on the board to say that i've tried to move away from that of having the presentation and the contract on the same meeting so so you're hearing the presentation the goal would be to present the contract at the at the next board meeting that's that's where the board would approve it is they would approve the cost so

047we need a motion to that effect that he goes out and get a contract but he just can't go out and get a contract with our without ireland no no he would go and get a quote for the services and it would be under new business and the board would vote on it as a new business item to approve the country he's already identified who's going to do the audit this report he has already been identified so it's just a matter of and i'm sure uh money has been we've been talking money i mean that's just business so i'm going to also be put on the agenda i understand that but we still can make a motion to move forward with him you know presenting a contract for next our next four meeting i don't

048think we can do that why can't we we could do anything you could make the motion but i'm just i'm just saying it's not necessary it's our intention to go ahead and present it at the next meeting anyway i don't feel comfortable leaving this meeting without some clear direction from this board you know i'll just say to the other the other part of this uh to go back to trustee murphy's question is that we would want to see the the two plans to eventually come together and um the overall strategic plan is going to have three or four major district goals and one of them is going to be dei i just guarantee it it's just too big of an issue that it that it wouldn't be so i i i think that this is

049the time to go ahead and move forward with the audit di audit and see where we're at and with the speed that the other plan is having we you know even some of that data or process may may inform form that other plan but i think now is the time and let's get the ground worked over the summer so we're ready to go in september and we can have some results there's other things on here too like i i don't want to stop the the training of our employees like that's something that i think we all recognize is is a growth area for everyone what he was talking about of having a school person is um we would have in effect we would stipend someone to be in the building to carry the torch and

050dr goodlow can only be in one place at a time but that they would be responsible for doing building level trainings and championing the cause at the building level um that's a cost-effective way to do that we've done that before with different initiatives in hammond to to have a building-based person it's not their sole rest i'm not advocating we're hiring 18 people i'm talking about a stipend for teachers um to do this work along with under dr goodloe's leadership but i think both of those things absolutely we need to continue to move forward forward in we've had conversations about how we how we reach out best to the hbcus and and try to get more um degree candidates into the district so so a lot of these things we are actually moving forward on um

051i'm not content to to just wait on it because they're all things that we need to do and we just know that they're they're gaps whether we've had it identified in a strategic plan or not we know they're gaps yeah mr president trustee murphy i agree with the superintendent so i know um trustee blake king has some concerns since this is presented at this meeting if it's the contract's not ready for the next meeting i promise trustee blake king i'll bring it up under unfinished business because it was at this meeting for the next meeting um and ask where the status of that contract is so the superintendent knows full well he needs to get a contract it needs to be vetted by our corporate council we need prices the whole bits scope of work

052whether or not they can get that done in the next two three weeks we'll find out but i promise you trustee baking if it's not on the agenda for approval i'll definitely ask about it under unfinished business to make sure it moves forward mr president trustee blake king thank you trustee murphy for your complete 360 degree turn and basically i don't need you to nudge me on anything that needs to be that's dear to me i we have been talking about d-e-a-d-e-i forever and the fact and one of the issues we've talked about the fact that we've had such a major flight of black and brown teachers educators administrators leaving this district how uh what are we going to do to draw any other black and brown educators to our district that's a problem and

053one thing they said at that conference this morning about dei nobody wants to talk about it and that's the problem if we don't talk about it open up we'll never resolve any of this it's just window dressing and i'm tired of being part of window dressing and that's my whole point with this this uh engagement you need to move forward on it period do you think you create a safe space for people to want to talk about it absolutely okay period asap like yesterday thank you sir any other questions any other questions [Music] again thank you very much thank you all right that brings us to item number three public expression first period mr president trustee blake king we're not going to have the presentation on the federal grant um i did send an email

054to you that our presenter had a um an unexpected situation come up but please check your email please check my email it's not something i can talk about i mean i'm sure but i didn't see it you know we try to get ready for these meetings and sending emails well anyway thanks for letting me know okay back to the agenda public expression first period super trustee candelaria public expression first period limited to items on the agenda please state your name address and you will have three minutes first community member is going to be wanda puckett oh jesus you all know why i'm standing here cindy murphy how dare you sit here and the school board meeting talk about the culture of our black kid box break dreadlocks excuse me excuse me we don't we don't

055attack and do you do not and our culture is excuse me you can't go after a specific board member she brought it up in the school board meeting go back and look at the school board me we didn't bring it up she did it again all black coats about the way we we cut the crown law i did my research but when i came in she didn't have nobody's touching that our culture again it has to be a general statement regarding something the board is doing and i'm here to finish it if our kids want to wear lace front wig kanga dreadlock keep that out of your mouth cause you cannot tell us what to put on our kids head in that case don't that boy have a dress code i'm quite sure they do

056everybody up in here be dressed classy not trashy but when you bend over when you out there we can see your crack all right thank you very much my culture alone cause the next time i come here i'm gonna show you what class is all about i'm gonna show you how to dress from the head to the top excuse me thank you next community member please state your name address and you have three minutes cherry roberts um please don't start the clock you said it was misunderstanding about what cindy murphy said i re-listened to it because i had heard some feedback too i do think it's please don't start the clock because i need to get an understanding okay my understanding was that she wanted to remove this section that had any limitations for hair

057out of the the uniform policy together so there would not be anything about hair at all specifically mentioned she wanted to remove it yes so why was any black hair items uh or black styles for the black students list so i think would her point again when i re-listened to it she was referring to there was a couple court cases recently one that made national attention down in texas where they they tried to basically say that they didn't want him to graduate right because he had real life and i think what she was trying to say she could speak for herself was that that was not she didn't want anything like that in our uniform policy was it brought in the uniform part or brought after the uniform i mean because i understand i had

058children that attended private school and now they're in a public school so in the private school yes you can't have those rules where they said if you have long hair superintendent cannot be as long as your trustee murphy i believe this is her time this is her time i can speak to myself pause her time please yeah i can speak for myself when we got up to uniformity of color i i don't think this is her time to say her three minutes piece it's not for us to go back and forth that's true i mean because i'm concerned because i'm i'm really it's really ironic and i'm disheartened that i have to be here today talking about hair black kid's hair specifically my kids here my son was at the diversity and includes the symposium

059today with the other he was selected with other morton high school students he said miss king was there so the fact that we that is even it was even brought up it's very disheartening the crown act it was passed this year federal so if something happens y'all say something about hair you can it's possibility that you can lose federal money that's a possibility things that can be best that's brought that needs to be thought about before you think about harming the black kids or even saying anything to the black kids okay in summary i mean i'm gonna i'm gonna need to stop you there and if you would like to continue with your three minutes because we said we would stop it then you can continue on your three minutes i said if you would

060like to continue we can put three minutes back on the board because you were originally asking questions and you can say whatever you you want to talk about at that point but then you would have three minutes okay okay so we're just restarting as we start the clock at three thank you you're welcome um just just to bring it to you all's attention the crown act creating a respectful and open world of natural hair act of 2021 or the crown act of 20 no sorry 2022 this bill prohibits discrimination based on a person's hair texture or hairstyle if that style or texture is commonly associated with a particular race or national origin specifically the bill prohibits discrimination against those participating in federally assisted programs housing programs public accommodations and employment persons shall not be deprived

061of equal rights under the law and shall not be subjected to prohibited practices based on their hair texture or style the bill provides an enforcement procedures under the applicable law so that's why i'm concerned i mean we're talking about care shouldn't have been brought up i'm not understanding why i was brought up you're talking about diversity and inclusion you have this symposium where your students are attending and we're here and that's something that's brought up if it's a misunderstanding it needs to be clarified because this affects both of my kids my son was at the composing with his dreadlocks my daughter is walking around with her box braids so i'm just confused as to why are we discussing it you talk about box braids dreadlocks lace fronts faux locs that all discriminates against black kids

062it affects black kids and i'm not understanding why hair is brought up because it doesn't affect their learning it's not bothering the teachers it's not a distraction the kids are the teachers need to be teaching the kids they're not worried about hair so we shouldn't be focused on hair as adults we shouldn't be focused on here you talking about diversity inclusion and i'm sorry i wrote and took notes culturally competent teachers the school board needs to be culturally competent as well and that's the problem i'm struggling i'm really struggling is disheartening for me but we all need to understand what's going on the things that you say how it affects children how it affects the community you want the community involved it affects us the things that you say so that's why i'm here now

063and as i said i'll be here i'm here my kid i have dogs in the fight they say i have dogs in a fight before i was here i was listening i was like a lot of this stuff is crazy it's really crazy i'm not understanding but now i have my children here and affects my children it really affects my children and if you want more something else like you say the flight elect i'm sorry the flight of the i'm sorry your three minutes are up okay so thank you that concludes everyone written in for first session public expression thank you that brings us to unfinished business second reading and adoption of the board policy updates do i have a motion mr president trustee murphy just for clarification do i have to number them all

064or can i see as presented i would say as presented that's how we've done it in the past okay as long as the minute's reflected it's fine yeah you've got to make sure that the this was a subject of a lubbock access counselor um she number them all should state all the individual policies it's does the does the agenda have them all listed correct so so it's it's in the public content it is not the agenda item just says second reading adoption board policy updates yeah that's okay i can number them all sorry it's just this was a this was a um this was a subject of a public access counselor decision not long ago of a couple years ago um with regard to approval board policies and that you've got to go through you

065don't have to necessarily go through each one of the program but at least that there is clarity about the board policies that are being approved thank you mr president before we go christy blake king thank you again my unreadiness is the same unreadiness i had last word i mean as i have today we approve them as a whole but the public doesn't know what changes we made i don't even know i i've i sat in my big binder today went through every last one of them and i don't see i just didn't see the discussion i listened to the board meeting again to see what we talked about and how we were going to revise certain things i just don't see it uh in each one of these uh policies and only reason i say

066that previous to how he used to do it when mrs frey did it i mean we if we were crystal clear we knew the changes when dr green did it same thing but now it's just we throw it together we assume the public knows i don't know so again i will further do this under discussion but and i brought the mr miller the this you've run out if you could have taken the same document you broke each one by one and put in there what the change was that that would have this helped me but looking at this and looking at my notes i i don't see how we change especially the one when we talked about nepotism and hiring family members i'm going through there i don't see where we had any um conflict

067of interest uh forms that had to be made it was only identified for board members but we know we had an instance this past year when uh our assistant superintendent of operations daughter was hired we debated it on the floor but we learned after the meeting that she was required to put a conflict of interest in and so forth and we that is not in any of these board policies we set that precedent then and it's not in i am speaking murphy i am speaking here i am speaking and discussing speech with the motion you actually got interrupted all right mr um president trustee murphy we approve the second reading adoption of the following board policy updates zero one one two one two two zero two two four zero two two six six three one

068two zero four one two zero four four two five four four three zero five one one one five four one zero six two five zero seven four four zero point zero one seven four five zero seven four five five seven five three zero point zero two eight five zero zero eight five one zero eight six zero six one four two two point zero two one six two three one six six two two two six zero point zero one three one two two point zero two three one two three three three six two four one two two point zero two four one two three four three six two five five one seven as presented okay of emotion do we have a second second we have a motion and a second any discussion discussion trustee murphy all

069right so um if you're in the public under public content is all the board policies i just read off so you can go and board docs and you can look at them so one was called up about the anti-nepotism possibly so when you pull up board policy one two two zero you can see the new anti-nepotism policy in green then as you go down you see some crossouts so as we said in the public work session we added in the extras aunts uncles nieces nephews first cousins all that was talked about at the board policy and i know board policy is a lot of work and going back through with all the stuff we talked about the meeting for the superintendent i know these two administrators over here were taking notes too trying to make

070sure and so we got this two weeks ago and that was our time to go look at it and bring back any questions so i did for most of them and it is here all the stuff we discussed at the public work session the superintendent did the hard work made all the changes they're in green and if you wanted what came out that's what the strikeouts are in red so it's all there for the public everything i read off is right there for the public thank you thank you any other discussion mr president trustee blake king i'll just simply go on record and say i i think this process that we're doing is it's not it's not enough um again as a board member i can't understand it uh mr miller you did take the

071time to put this initially to put together any of the changes because all that scratching i took my notes i listened i don't see where the changes and there is no mention of uh conflict of interest forms where we've had to deal with that in an instance that is not in these policies and so i and to simply make it so to sort of simplify it trustee murphy to the public like it is just easy as reading uh abc it is not that easy and and and you are not taking this matter seriously if you think that so i am i'm just not ready for the bit i said it at the last fourth meeting you didn't make it any better mr miller you knew what my unreadiness was and and you didn't move forward

072on it so those are my comments thank you mr president thank you any other discussion any other discussion hope for a vote trustee miller yes trustee candelaria uh he stepped out it's okay i think it's okay though okay trustee blake king no trustee murphy yes trustee zonal yes three yes one no and one absent okay that takes us to [Music] uniformity of color uh trustees i did bring this back we had it under presentation two weeks ago when i put it under unfinished business because technically where what i'm proposing is just simply asking the board to get provide direction for me on whether or not we want to bring back uniformity of color i don't have any new data what i provided last time is all the data that we have on it um i

073did i don't know it did get up there today but i did provide a report from a law group that talked about how dress codes and uniformity of color statistically hurt children of color greater than other groups that is part of my concern my biggest concern as superintendent is just removing kids for their clothing i don't want kids out of class for because of their clothing or their hair for that matter so that's that's my opinion on it i i respect and acknowledge the other side if the board tells me we got to have a uniformity of color policy i absolutely respect it and implement it but that's that's where we're at um and and and i just would like to say for the public's sake i think they would want to know one way

074or another so i'm not sure which more what more we can discuss after today would anybody like to comment on that mr president trustee murphy i move that we direct the superintendent to publish dress code guidelines for the 22-23 school year that do not include a uniformity of color provision and that it continues on until further motion by the board second we have a motion and a second any discussion discussion trustee blake king i feel ambushed as much as i said that we needed some standards we needed structure what's currently going on in our schools is deplorable the issue was enforcement trustee murphy you you wanted to know who was going to enforce it well after mr miller sent us the board policy it clearly states that the building principle is the arbiter arbiter meaning

075the judge the one who makes the final decision it's right here in black and white so so that's an issue that should have been addressed lat when you first gave us these documents secondly i don't feel safe putting it in your hands because what i'm hearing from you is you don't care what they look like just as long as they're sitting in that seat there's as long as i can get that adm count that's the way i feel and that's how i take it i mean and for for you or any administrator to suggest that our kids don't need standards and structure when your child goes to school to crown point lake station or whatever they have standards i want those same standards school city of hammock and i demand those same standards now we

076had already tried it for a year and it was printed for everybody to see and read no halters no there's no there's no this and they did it anyway perception what are we raising what are we teaching our kids when they can come to school any kind of way they want to halter times navels showing it's it's just despicable and for a building principle or whoever to see it and not enforce it it's ridiculous and then there's an issue of if we don't have uniforms and then we try to enforce the girls that we're the halters we are setting ourselves up for libel they can turn around and say sexual assault if she's if she's exposed up here you know children are turning around go home and tell their mom as well he looked at

077me different he looked at me in such a way you're we're setting our male administrators and and teachers and educators up we need standards and high standards not mediocrity i'm tired of this low standards i want the best so far and we should demand the best and we're not we're not we didn't last year it wasn't before and your data is as flawed as the day is long nobody enforced it so how can you say only uh we only had 100 violations compared to the thousands in the previous years nobody enforces these teachers are tired they were given a task that initially they were not supposed to be given in the first place board policy building principle the arbiter and then mr miller you you talked about the other lake central other schools don't have

078have a uniformity color and i said mindset i see it's the mindset of the administrators because they want better for their kids and it's and it comes to degree where zero tolerance when you walk through that door you're gonna look like a little man or a little woman you're gonna look presentable ready for the world and we're not getting that here and i want the best and i'm i'm shaking in my boots to think what you're gonna come back with and who's going to enforce it and we might have the same scenario all over again for a semester year and i'm we're i'm not about that never been about that self-esteem imaging our children our young girls should not be walking around like that and we have permitted it for a whole summer this whole

079school year it has not been enforced period so i'm confused you mentioned that you want the same thing as lake central and crown point but they then you also said that they don't have that no no you misunderstood me again you hear what you want to hear mr bill no no you know i'm gonna straighten you out right now you said that they don't have uniforms because of a mindset their mindset comes from leadership leadership sets the goals they set the standards high they don't set them low we are setting things low when we allow that to happen when you set standards high no you won't i'm i said i'm afraid to put it in your hands because we already gave you a whole year to get it right and you didn't you and your

080team you let our kids down no enforcement it's um it's just it says clearly here no pajamas we saw pajamas it says clearly no tank tops we saw tank times no halters we saw we saw everything that was on this list for them not to wear and they wore it anyway and there was no enforcement i won't stand for it i'm not about that never have been i've been about excellence in everything and that contributes to their education to their learning period i would but you all did your thing you got together made the motion there's no even consideration for uniforms none period i'm through for right now but i'm mr president thank you trustee murphy um i'm gonna have to disagree so the majority of our students do follow the dress code we saw

081them here tonight they were all dressed just fine and i know they're elementary and usually the elementary students are the ones that follow i'm sorry i've got the floor um so and same with our high school students you know children do push boundaries and we're going to have students that go against part of this current code and if you read my email to the superintendent i have very similar concerns to yours enforcement and the superintendent said depending on what the vote was going to be today he would look into those concerns going back to hair hair definitely should be talked about i have purple hair and some clothes you can't do crazy colors because they're just not going to put up with it so here what's currently in here which i like to get rid

082of point of order so i point thank you at that point again i expected our attorney to do what perhaps she should have done last week my point of order our attorney should interject right now and shut this thing down about hair because i'm insulted hair is hair and trusty breaking anywhere of these problems what is your point of order my point of order is attorney conrad should step in and she has stepped in so many times when i have something to say she'll shut me down every time i expect the same thing again remember trustee blake king i let you talk you're through okay trustee murphy would you please continue currently you sure you're done so currently in the dress code that we're asking to get approved tonight it says non-religious head coverings include

083but are not limited to caps hats costume wigs bandanas hair curlers picks combs hoods do-rags wave caps bonnets and head scarves of any kind and are not allowed unless provided special permission by the administration so i said we should be looking at that because and i'm so glad you dressed the way you did tonight trustee king your hair is actually very pretty with the head scarf but under our dress code what you put in your hair tonight would not be allowed because scarves are not allowed at all so i'm saying we should be looking at that if someone wants to put a scarf in their head to accent their outfit i think it should be pro be permitted this needs some tweaks just like things over the tent so the question the crown act perfect

084so we need to let people know that our students have the permission to have their hair the way they want and long as it doesn't interfere so if i'm in chemistry class and this and the teacher says mrs murphy you need to go pull that hair back because you might get into the burner or it might get into the chemicals then the teacher should be able to do that instead of me saying no i want my hair down so there's certain things where it gets into safety issues we can go in that just like with foot coverings you know that's why we don't want flip-flops in chemistry class either chemicals or other things can fall on your feet that's why i brought up hair because hair is important to children it's part of their expression

085and the same goes with the um headwear so if someone wants to have braids and they want to put a pretty scarf to go match their outfit i think they should go ahead and do that so again i have great faith that our administration is going to be looking at the dress code they're going to be enforcing it but again superintendent miller as my email and you said you will look into it depending on how the vote goes tonight i look forward to further discussions this summer as we go into the next school year about the intricacies of this policy that is before us tonight thank you mr president trustee blake king for the record let me explain headwear it's really culturally insensitive to you to bring it up during slavery the master's wives were

086incensed at looking at the slaves hair so they were forced to wrap it and that's where the head wraps come from in our culture so when you're looking at that mr miller head headwear it's it should be part of they should be allowed to put a scarf or wear their hair in a wrap they do it black history month and nobody says anything so we only allowed one month one month out the year to wear our hair and overhead red i have no issue with it well evidently i guess not now because i gave you the history and see you don't know the history of a lot of our cultural and cult cultures in this in our within our demographics and until you do stop using and again you should have never brought up hair

087period it's nowhere it said head head wear not hairwear it should have never come out of your mouth i didn't believe it i couldn't believe it and i just and i'm waiting for attorney conrad to stop you based on the crown act but that never happened so you all do what you do um if you're going to put it in the hands of mr miller and his team i expect i hate to use that word enforcement it is such a strong word for young folks but if that's the term we use it should not be in the hands of the teachers according to the bylaws your own board policies it says the principal building principle is the arbiter period thank you president zollo just real quick on that superintendent miller like when a board policy

088says the superintendent shall or building principles shall it means that they can use all the resources at their at their dispose um i'm sorry i'm a little off that's your interpretation but no that's what it means scott miller does every one of those acts that would be impossible it means that that's the person who has authority over that to implement it and the principal does have the authority to implement the policy in the building thank you and to me now we have to may i read it into the record since there's some confusion i will read the policy so we are clear because we have a tendency to uh massage policies to fit our let's see here where is it but mr miller you know exactly the policy that says is the last paragraph and

089it clearly states that the building printer is the arbiter arbiter name makes the final judgment on that matter i don't disagree but the way that it happens is like teachers look in first period and they say okay you need to go down the office and then in administration as i stated before you have a principal and for assistance they should guard every door or whatever and that they should they have enough people to manage that and put putting it in the hands of teachers mr president call for the vote trustee miller i would like to call for the vote please we have call for the vote okay trustee miller yes trustee candelaria now trustee blake king no excuse me no would you stop yelling please you have no authority to tell me to speak any

090kind of way i wish to it would be that's that's d-e-i remember diversity equity inclusion for everybody though trustee murphy yes and trustee zomo yes motion passes 3-2 mr president trustee miller um i'd like to ask for a five-minute recess at this point [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] like to call this meeting back to order we will be one board member short for the balance of the meeting next on the agenda are the minutes we have the approval of the executive session minutes from april 5th board minutes from april 5th along with the board minutes from april 19th do i have a motion mr president trustee murphy i move that we approve the april 5th 2022 executive session minutes as presented

091second we have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion trustee candelaria yes trustee blake king no trustee murphy yes trustee zollo yes three yes one no motion passes next is the approval of the school board minutes from april 5th of 2022. president zono trustee candelaria a move for the approval of the school board minutes april 5th 2022 as presented second you have a motion and a second any discussion trustee murphy yes trustee blake king yes trustee candelaria yes trustee zelno yes motion passes four yes one absent approval of school board minutes from april 19th of 2022 president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the school board minutes from april 19 2022 as presented second we have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion trustee candelaria yes trustee blake

092king yes trustee murphy yes trustees only yes motion passes four yes one absent number six on the agenda the consent agenda do i have a motion president zono trustee candelaria i move for the emotions here approve all consent agendas items a through f as presented we have a motion and a second any discussion discussion mr president trustee blake king i would like to read and to record our uh excuse me uh our docket for our claims and our payroll for may 17 2022. for our claims they are 1 million eight hundred and ninety five thousand four hundred and eighteen dollars and nine cents and for our payroll it's three million three hundred and fifty thousand four hundred and ninety five dollars and sixteen cents and additionally uh i had one comment on our personnel report

093where did it go uh i've been watching our personnel report very closely hoping to see that we had hired a dean for scott middle and i see we haven't done that as yet do we have any updates on that and and and then the assistant principal at edgar's have been watching the personal report for that we haven't done that so um is there any explanation as to why these two brave positions have not been filled i think all i could probably legally say is that they're posted and any qualified candidates should check our our website we hope to run interviews in june and have those people identified for the start of next school year thank you and additionally i i had i sent you an email my concern of the um the elimination of the

094pt occupation um staff and i see they they are filling up on the uh personnel report but again i think we were a little premature uh in doing that they weren't given a whole lot of time to seek a position uh so i am concerned that when we start eliminating positions that we at least give our employees ample time to grasp the situation and move on but hopefully they will all be placed and i will be watching a personal report closely on that mr miller thank you any other discussion any other discussion trustee candelaria yes trustee blake king yes trustee murphy yes trustees only yes motion passes four yes one absent new business the approval of the 2022-2023 school hours memo presidents will know with respect because they brought a guest i would like to

095propose we move the mou with the crossing up to the first new business item news number one he must have an older version oh you should have been given a saying report it was probably all your last item jay okay we'll move to item j the approval of the mou with the crossing um trustees i'd like to introduce ryan hill he is the ceo of the crossing and he's going to talk a little bit about our partnership this is not a new partnership we've had it for a couple years now they're located over they do have an office in hammond off of our school off of climate avenue myself and the team have been out many times to see and i will turn over to ryan to talk a little bit how the partnership is

096going and why i'm recommending we continue it greetings members of the board and superintendent miller thanks so much for having us we're really excited to share tonight about really the progress that we've made in this partnership with school city of hammond we also have a hammond school student that's here to share as well and then one of our partners and and staff members so really excited about that so just wanted to share off the top that we've served over a hundred students from school city of hammond through this partnership we had a partial year and then a few years with shutdowns and combat and so forth and so i feel like we're really starting to get our our feet underneath us there at 6333 kennedy avenue and have really put some strong programming in place

097and i'll take just a bit of time here to share that with you so if you point it over that way there we go next slide please okay so we formed a partnership with xr technologies and they have a program called xr math and so we're really digging in and ensuring that students receive high quality training in mathematics and then also working on some literacy initiatives as well um with an organization called readable english and and some other partnerships so these are just some of the things that we're able to now establish in our third year in the community and this program is really helping students with difficult courses many of our students are behind when they come to us academically and so these wonderful folks from xr are helping us make sure we get

098those kids back on track our mission is to our vision is to transform lives and our mission is this is going the wrong direction there we go all right we'll figure this out one of the things that is proprietary to what we do at the crossing is we have a daily family time where we have discussions with students about life about life struggles about their story and like i said you'll hear a student's story here here shortly but this is a really powerful time to create a school community [Music] do leader development social development for students and so this has been a powerful piece of our story here in hammond we focus on developing students employability skills and this is just a it's a little bit a lot of information for a slide but essentially

099what this is this is indiana's employability skills broken down into a rubric where we teach students and once again as you'll see this evening to express themselves clearly actively listen um and then express viewpoints in a way that builds up others so just really working on that progression of communication with students and then you can sort of go through the rest of those at will but one of the keys that we want to make sure is that when our students leave us that they are prepared for their next step whether that's enrollment enlistment or employment and so really making sure that we we focus on that and so we have some some strong programming around employability skills we also have a partnership and i will let uh miss alicia hampton share about this in a

100minute but this is a slide that is very important we are a career and technical education eligible provider and so this program allows students to learn skills in welding and then transition into local business partnerships the current partnership is with toyota material handling and you can also see some products that the students manufacture in this program and that will cover a little bit more of that later there are also 18 students from the hammond school district that were with us starting in the first semester that have earned current technical ed credits through the program so that's an exciting update in our model is getting those current technical education credits so being a being more than alternative school being a school where students can go that are struggling but they can also get some really advanced

101programming and have that opportunity to graduate on a career pathway again work based learning is the model students run businesses and create products and they also have those opportunities to go out into into employment and these are some of the partnership slides there students have the opportunity also to earn current technical or sorry to earn industry certification and we do that our pathway that students are on is the certified logistics associate certified logistics technician that's the industry certification that they can get through the pathway and the pathway is business and logistics so that is a an update on the programming that we have brought in like i said bringing in partnerships partnering with toyota material handling party partnering with strike and walk the cup welding partnering with mssc and then also xr technologies and so

102forth so it's really for us a proud moment to share with you the advancements that we've made and i'm going to let our distinguished staff and students share a little bit more you want to introduce who you have ryan i'm gonna yes i'm gonna ali if you want to jump up and get started good evening thank you i'm so short sorry you're fine um thank you for inviting me this is actually my first time at um school city hammond board meeting so thank you for inviting us this evening um my student here is adriana crabtree ariana crabtree i apologize um she is one of our hammond students and she has a story that she would like to um tell you guys and show you guys about her experiences with the crossing okay so i am

103here with my story um and i kind of want to start off with uh like the struggle that i was going through and you know like the mid struggle and the end of the tunnel that i'm seeing right now and uh sorry i'm a little nervous you know i never did this before you're telling me okay so like i kind of want to start off with me um attending morton high school you know uh that was my original school that i was attending um and when i was going there you know i was i guess you could say a bad kid you know i was always uh walking out of school like not even coming to school smoking you know like it was really hard to believe that but i was so i was i

104had heard about the crossing and i had attended the crossing since freshman year uh they really put like a good impact on my life like sometimes it's not like who you know or what you know it's who you know to get somewhere and um like knowing knowing that like the struggle i was going through being bad and i was continue doing the same thing at the crossing for a little minute until i realized like i don't want to be like this no more and you know the other kids there too you know they're still doing the same i can't really speak for them but like you know they're not living life how we all should be i guess uh in a positive way um so as attending the crossing i definitely learned a new way

105to go about life i guess you would say there's a lot a lot of opportunities they give us and like i'm really grateful for that like i really am like it comes from family problems to like i'm gonna be the first graduate in my whole family um and i am graduating this june it's something to be proud of um yeah it's something to be proud of um sorry that's okay yeah okay okay thank you you did a very good job you did as ryan stated earlier um yes we are an alternative school however we are more than an alternative school we do provide a lot more opportunities for for our students a lot of our students do come academically inclined clearly a traditional public school is sometimes not what they need so when they do

106come to us they do come to us a little broken they do come to us um with low credits whatever the case may be however our job is to build them up so when we do find our staff that's what we're looking for not too much um degree that particular staff member has to have their heart in it when they deal with the struggling students that we have we don't have scholars that's not what they're there for and clearly um they need more than that so we go more in the heart when we handle with our students and we put in a lot of time with them outside of just academics so we give them a lot of those things that they're missing from home um we are faith-based that is a different thing as

107well so um spiritual wise we help them out as well giving them that face that that baseline of a faith-based foundation outside of that we do have our business programs where we partner with toyota so yoda has an internship we have a partnership with them they have an internship with us right now we have four students who are working as an intern for toyota as welders they go half the day three days a week three hours of the day working and then the other part of the day they come to school to finish their academics this job and this training helps them to be able to see a better life they know they're not may not go to college the military is not their thing so we put that employability skill actually in play we

108don't just talk about the employability skills we actually give them the skills give them the time and the space to be able to work so the company has allowed those students to come and work for them with the hope that when they get out of school and they graduate they will hire them full time as employees um that's one partnership and then of course we're we're adding more partnerships we have also developed a partnership with city connects so that we have social services for our students every day five days a week they will have someone there to help them with social skills that they may have outside of outside of the school so home issues therapy therapy things of that nature disabilities whatever other social issues that they have outside of academics we have someone

109in school there every day for them to help us with those type of issues clearly if they're there for um other reasons if they were kicked out of another school and they came to us that um they need help outside of just academics and schooling so we try to put that inside of the school to help them um we do have a candle business as well where the students actually produce the candles they make the candles brand the candles and then sell them out outside um of the school as well not just fundraising but that is something that they do outside of that so the business portion of the entrepreneurship of the school is the candles the grills my welding students make grills from scratch they build them they brand them make them paint them

110and then they sell them as well so we're giving them an option and letting them know that find academics college may not be your thing but pick up a skill in the welding program they also get an american welding society certification as well as an osha 10 certification a job place and um on top of the certifications also get them jobs or help them to get jobs in the trades not just a 10 15 hour job i partner with pipefitters um ironworkers boilermakers um steelworkers private companies as well local companies that that will hire welders defucu is a company refacts and gary multiple companies that are willing to take my seniors once they they reach 18. so a lot of the jobs are that they have to be at least 18. by underage students we

111get them jobs at other places that will accept um high schoolers under the age of 18. so those job placements are not just for welding students they're also for administration maintenance mechanical painting whatever that is toyota also has extended the option of not just taking welders but opening up different departments that are that's in their facility as well for my other students that are not welders so we are on the climb of getting these students to be productive citizens after they leave us with a faith-based foundation thank you you're more than welcome adriana ariana graduation okay so i have seen this young lady grow and this is her first time telling this story in front of a lot of people so earlier that was like very um it was an anxiety attack for her when

112she saw those people earlier today so she has not been able to express her story however she has grown um she's right at she's right on track where she needs to be as far as graduating which is not where she was when she came she came with like maybe what five credits five two credits two credits so my program is designed that a student can receive a credit every other week or every two weeks if they stay on track so a person who may be junior male and got affected from coronas and did not go to school for a week or so they can catch up within that year and be right on track or even a little ahead so it's designed for them to be able to recover versus uh you know regular school

113where they have in the court of 16 weeks they only can max out at five or six credits you cannot recover credits during the normal you know school year so when they come to us the kurdish recovery part is is crucial um outside of the credit recovery um the xr team is there and then the city connects so they also had a social services available to them as well not um outside of just academics other than that i do want to tell you good job i'm proud of you it's very hard to speak in front of very hard you are intimidating to my baby girl over here no but thank you so much you guys have a good evening thank you thank you wow that's good so so just for the record trustees the the

114way the funding works with this is they don't um they don't charge us a fee per se but they we enroll the students um under school city of hammond that attend the crossing and then a portion uh ninety percent of the adm goes to to the crossing and seventy five percent of the ct dollars goes to the crossing next year ten and twenty five percent the school city keeps to ourselves but i would like to stress that these are students that are not have not been successful in hammond schools they've been out of our schools or not in there so it's not like we're losing any money to do this we are we are providing a service to students who are at risk and and helping them to turn around their lives so that is

115why i'm recommending we continue the partnership we don't have a program like this right now at this level or this depth and i i'm glad to hear of the progress congratulations yes do i have a motion president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the mou what the crossing has presented do i have a second second trustee murphy um any discussion discussion trustee murphy i know the students you you've got the non-traditional students that's difficult and i reviewed your data um and i know you just came off of covid too so superintendent miller could we have them come back like in june of next year to let us know how they did for this upcoming school year i'd like to see if we get a lot of improvement hopefully no more coveted for

116next year and see how they're doing mr hill is that fine all right we'll plan on great thank you mr president trustee blake king thank you that was one of the questions i had emailed to mr miller that we have a more more update and then so you're saying we're not losing any money with this program mr miller correct because these are students that were not enrolled in our our schools could could these students just attend crosstalk without the partnership they could but it changes the way that that that it it works for them they then their families qualify for a voucher i believe is that how it is or ryan do you want to handle that question yeah so in order for us to come to a community into an area we do that

117through partnerships with public schools so we're not a charter school we're a private school that subcontracts services to public schools um and so we are that that is tip the typical structure for us to to enroll a student is through that that type of a funding structure we cannot we force when we're in an area and we have many times multiple uh school partnerships sometimes one of those school partnerships and typically it's actually due to like administrative or board turnover we may not renew a contract in that case we can for a period of time rece part of we're part of the school choice program so for a period of time we can receive vouchers for those students but for us we tend not to remain in a community um with that funding structure because

118our goal is to have those public school partnerships so what you typically see is um that may work for us for a short period of time maybe to finish out a year potentially for the following year while we're trying to secure contracts from districts but over time we would the community would actually lose our program if we don't have any school partnerships because we go to communities where we have school partnerships so we had 18 students correct it has grown in the second to the second adm but that was the first adm count yes thank you you're welcome thank you any other questions any other discussion trustee murphy yes trustee blake king yes trustee candelaria yes trustees only yes motion passes four yes one absent thank you very much and you did very well mr

119president trustee murphy um just for the record the new business has been re-lettered the crossing is now under a so i know it was jay before but it's been fixed so if anybody's following the agenda they now are first on it thank you all right that takes us to the approval of the 2022-2023 school hours memo do i have a motion the trustees real quick this is high school and elementary are staying the same hours this is pushing back middle school to eight 8 15 to 3 15 as presented at the last public works session to improve our transportation offerings do i have a motion president so now trustee murphy i move that we approve the 2223 school hours memo as presented do i have a second second i have a motion and a second

120trustee murphy oh i'm sorry discussion i apologize um because the president superintendent put this on it i i gave the motion even though i disagree with this i am not ready for this um i know we got a lot of data and it's a struggle on this one i know we've got the problems with transportation um i'm seeing what mr poats was saying during his presentation um i know we have a lot of walkers and i know parents we have a lot of parents that take their children back in school this is not something like i said at the public works session that i can support at this time thank you mr president trustee blake king my unreadiness is simply because the start time for teachers as far as i'm concerned has not been established

121and uh because of that i can't support this right now any other discussion trustee murphy no trustee blake king no trustee candelaria no trustees all no no it's 4-0 one absent okay next up we have the approval of the contract with indiana online trustees i'm recommending the approval of a contract with indiana online to provide virtual services to our students is presented by mr white at the last public works session thank you do i have a motion president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the contract with indiana online as presented second they have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion trustee candelaria yes trustee blake king no trustee murphy yes and trustees only yes motion passes three four one against and one absent item d approval of the contract with

122cooley's video um trustees this is a recommendation for over the next year to build up a library of professional photographs of our students in a variety of different capacities it includes attending nearly every single club both boys and girls in every single sport both boys and girls from our schools and making sure we can start using more of our own pictures and assets when we're producing resources if you have more questions about mr george is here he's the one who is asked me to get this approved because we really don't have any of those assets we don't have a library of digital assets of all of our kids to do thank you do i have a motion mr president trustee blake king i make a motion that we approve the contract with cooley's cooley's video

123to start establishing a library of items for our school district thank you do i have a second second i have a motion in a second any discussion discussion go ahead trustee murphy trustee candelaria who was first i know he was first okay thank you um yes we do need to start a library of this type of thing however i would hope in the future after we get through this year this is something that can be more site-based um again essa dollars are going to end in 2023 we've got and 2024 is coming so yes i totally agree we need to do something to jumpstart get our facebook pages just like over there and show all the great things that are happening in hammond so that there's no chaos going on in our schools and a

124lot of good things going on but i would hope that after this year's over that we can do stuff in-house thank you thank you any other discussion president trustee candelaria um a couple questions so where are they based out of uh mr phillip i'm sorry um i almost called him katrina phillips mr phillips he's got an office in valparaiso and one in gary okay and how did we come to the conclusion and um selecting this did we go through like us good good question so um when we had the initial discussion um first of all good evening everyone uh when we had the initial discussion uh superintendent of melon and i decided that it would be best for us to go the rfp route so as we would open it up to any and everybody

125who was uh interested in participating and uh submitting a proposal so on april the 1st we put an advertisement for an rfp in the post-tribune and in the times on april 8th it ran again on both of those in between the 1st and 8th anybody who reached out to me because my email address was in there as a point of contact for the rfp anybody who reached out received an invitation for a virtual meeting that we had to answer any and all questions that potential vendors might have so we did the virtual meeting and then on the 19th all of the proposals were due to the business services office president zion trustee candelaria one last question how many vendors do we have response to this to actually submit proposals to ask for proposals to submit

126proposals to submit proposals uh cooley's video was the only one who submitted one okay thank you thank you any other discussion call for the vote trustee murphy yes trustee blake king yes trustee candelaria yes trustee zomo yes motion passes four yes one absent thank you trustees thank you now we have the approval of the mou between the boy and girls club and the school city of hammond president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the mou between the boys and girls club and the school city of hammond has presented do we have a second second we have a motion in the second any discussion discussion does this include the swift uh you know uh we can explore the use of acc as well it does not we decided to separate out the two

127initiatives because it's taking much longer than anticipated for the what trustee king for no watching is referring to is we've floated the idea of being able to offer an employee-based daycare through a partnership with the boys and girls club at the career center that part is not part of this all this mou is is to allow our skills for life program to use the boys and girls club during the week during the day that's the scope of this and no cost and then one other question i have not so it pertains to this to our other special needs students that it the same type of life skill program if it's not developed it needs to be developed for them as well district wide all students thank you welcome thank you any other discussion trustee candelaria

128yes trustee blake king yes trustee murphy yes trustees only yes motion passes four yes one absent brings us to the approval of the agreement between scott middle school and life touch trustees this is a yearbook contract do i have a motion president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the agreement between scott middle school and life touch as presented second you have motion in a second any discussion trustee murphy yes trustee blake king yes trustee candelaria yes trustees only yes motion passes four yes one absent now we have the extracurricular account dormant fund transfer request for irving elementary school trustees we're just transferring some money out of accounts that haven't been used at a long time to other accounts at irving that are active such as student activities do i have a motion

129president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the extracurricular account dormant fund transfer requests second you have a motion and a second any discussion discussion trustee murphy the only reason i bring this up is legos is in there and i would hope if they start a legos team um at irving next fall that student activities give them that money because those kits can get expensive for legos that's my only comment okay thank you any other discussion trustee murphy yes trustee blake king yes trustee candelaria yes and trustees only yes motion passes four yes one absent approval of the head start cost of living adjustment funding award trustees each year there is a cost of living adjustment provided by head start and totals it's a equivalent of 2.28 for a total amount of the

130award of 39 000 split amongst our head start employees so this is overseen through geminis and our it just requires board approval thank you do i have a motion president christie candelaria i move for the approval of the head start cost of living adjustment funding award as presented do we have a second second we have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion trustee candelaria yes trustee blake king yes trustee murphy yes trustees oh no yes motion passes four yes one absent next we have the approval of the head start quality improvement q1 funding award trustees similar once a year they issue a quality improvement award this one is of 0.4 for a total dollar amount of 7 451 that is split amongst our head start employees thank you do i have a motion

131president trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the head start quality improvement funding award as presented second have a motion and a second any discussion any discussion trustee murphy yes trustee blake king yes trustee candelaria yes and trustee zone yes motion passes for yes one absent and finally we have the approval of the head start budget allocation adjustment 2021 2022 funding year february first 21 through january 31st of 22. um trustees i'm recommending the approval of of this amount to make sure we don't um waste any money the full grant to spend thank you do i have a motion president zono trustee candelaria i move for the approval of the head start budget allocation adjustment 2021 22 funding year february 1st 2021 through january 31st 2022 as presented second have a motion and a

132second any discussion any discussion trustee candelaria yes trustee blake king yes trustee murphy yes trustees only yes motion ps is four yes one absent upcoming board meetings tuesday june 7th school board meeting at 6 p.m tuesday june 21st an executive session at 5 30 p.m and tuesday june 21st school board meeting here at 6 p.m at the administration center all of these are at the administration center it brings us to public expression second president trustee king did you mention june 11th no i did not so we're not having it so it has now it hasn't been confirmed yet okay okay thank you you're welcome thank you public expressions second period regarding general matters first community member cherry roberts um just wanted to finish my thought uh with the flight of minority staff that was discussed

133previously um at one point uh many were hired many minority principals were hired in particular and they were progressive in their thinking and many of them got pushback from their teachers the teachers and the staff to implement the new processes and procedures so i'm thinking if you if you implement the dei the diversity equity and inclusion um but you have everyone everybody needs to be on the same page and that seemed like it was a problem if you have people trying to tell you to do something and you're just like no we're not going to do this it's a problem and also you uh you have to think um i've seen many women of color in particular um interested uh i just i'm thinking okay i'm sorry why would anyone of color be interested particularly

134women of color um to be part of the school city of hammond the way that they have been treated um there's been many lawsuits things being said like i say the pushback from the teachers um so i'd say if you want change um it has to start from the top and have to get everybody on the same page and the diversity equity and inclusion should really be very important to the school board if you want to see change if you want to see if you want things to be you want to make a difference so as i say action speak well i'll say actions speak louder than words so if you want to see a change let's see what you can do thank you next community member wanda puckett you're gonna pass okay that concludes

135everyone written in for public expression second period thank you a report from the superintendent i'd like to congratulate diane dudzik from edgars who was named the hammond teacher of the year at the lake lakeshore chamber annual awards dinner this past saturday night congratulations also to joseph green a student from hammond central was named the post-tribunes baseball player of the week last week i'd like to also congratulate the cast of matilda for their outstanding performance and we'd really like to encourage everyone to come to our spring instrumental concert which is um thursday night at 6 30 at our dr watkins black box theatre at hammond central dr swinsky sent me a picture of everybody practicing today it really looks great i'd like to congratulate the hapa orchestra concert and rock bands who all won first place

136for high school at the music and the parks festival at vernon hills high school we have our pta school city speaks our last one of the year tomorrow night from six to seven to morton high school in their black box that's where people from the community can ask questions that's hosted through the pta we'd like to encourage all of our ems employees emergency medical service employees from our health service department a happy national ems week we thank you for all your service to our kids registration for the upcoming year is still open i will be and just encourage parents please put that on your to-do list if you're just re-registering an existing student the the process is pretty painless it does not take very long at all human education foundation has extended their scholarship deadline

137to the end of may you can visit our parent and students section of our website to be able to apply for that tomorrow franklin elementary school is going to be receiving their award as the indiana fresh fruit and vegetable program school of the year just the announcement about graduation we have on franklin and i don't have the time in the note mr george you know 11 o'clock um on june 8th we have our hammond central graduation at the wolf lake pavilion and the very next day june 9th is the moorin high school graduation at wolf lake pavilion at 6 pm uh but i have been asked that no balloons will be permitted at wolf lake pavilion uh this is a request from the hammond parks department they are concerned about the impact on the wildlife

138up there if you know when the balloons go up they do come back down so um that is a request of that so we want to celebrate our kids and we absolutely will but let's let's not bring any balloons on on our commencement commencement days um all right that concludes uh my reports that completes our agenda for tonight can i have a motion mr miller can i have a motion to adjourn mr president do i have a motion mr miller trustee murphy thank you you